I found myself reflecting on the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 recently and how this relates to the modern technology which we use on a daily basis.
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Motivated by Tony Reinke’s latest book “God, Technology, and the Christian Life”, I’ve been more and more self-conscious about my relationship with technology as a Christian and how these bad habits can prevent me from leading a Godly life.
It’s fair to say that technology can be used to both unite and device. I can’t help but feel that in recent years, the latter is starting to become more and more evident. Echo chambers, polarisation and the ever-increasing misuse of AI are all compounded by a poor use of technology - social media in this case (a common example of misused technology). It’s fair to say that our relationship with technology can be driven by selfish desire.
Both the story of the Tower of Babel and social media share some common ground. Both….
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are a form of technology / innovation.
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can be used to create discourse and division.
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have devastating consequences as a result.