Go Big or Go Home

As a kid, I loved getting the Scholastic book catalogs. Several times a year, our teacher would hand them out, asking us to return book orders by the next week. I was an avid reader but my parents were not wealthy. I could order books, but was always given a modest limit. I would carefully look through the catalog, calculating how best to spend the money. Occasionally I would blow my entire budget on one large book, and that book was often the Guinness Book of World Records. 

The book was the largest in the catalog, offering hundreds of pages. I spent hours pouring over the lines of fine-print pages discovering the world’s largest ball of string, the world’s tallest skyscraper, the world’s heaviest twins, the record for the longest fingernails, the fastest human, the tallest human, and more. There were records for all kinds of interesting and crazy things. 

When I was growing up in the midwest United States, we took a family trip where I got to see the tallest building in the world. It was the Sears tower in Chicago, at 108 stories and 442 meters in height. That building is now called the Willis tower; today it ranks as the 23rd tallest building on earth. The tallest as of this writing is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 163 stories and 828 meters in height.

Why are we so fascinated with the largest, fastest, or heaviest? In his blog titled “Hubris”, Tim Fernholz reviews a study by the Danish researcher Bent Flyvbjerg that explores monumental engineering endeavors, concluding that projects costing more than $1 billion almost always go over budget. Flyvbjerg goes on to identify four reasons society pursues large projects even though they cost so much.

• technological: engineers enjoy building the newest or largest item of its kind
• political: big public works can enhance the reputation and stature of a politician
• economic: big projects mean lots of business for construction companies
• aesthetic:large projects often have a certain artistic appeal

These reasons are good initial explanations for why society pursues massive engineering projects despite their huge costs, costs that almost always surpass expectations. However, they are all superficial symptoms of an underlying cause. The deeper reason is implied by the blog title that Fernholz uses,  “Hubris,” impling that these reasons boil down to the age-old vice of pride. 

We are familiar with stories of pride as a significant driver for big projects. Your neighbors that vie to build the largest, boldest Christmas display on the street are often driven by a measure of conceit. Pride at a national level was at stake for Americans in the 1950s. They woke up one morning to learn that the USSR had succeeded in launching Sputnik into orbit: the world’s first artificial satellite. This event drove a wave of scientific and technological development in the US, culminating with the massive engineering project to put the first human on the moon. 

Fernholz also mentions the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel as the paradigmatic symbol of big projects that failed. One of my colleagues at Calvin, professor Gayle Ermer, examines this story in a paper at the 2008 Christian Engineering Education Conference, titled “Lessons from the Tower of Babel”. Considering the tale of Babel, she says “The implication could be drawn from this interpretation that Christians should not be investing a great deal of time and effort in technological accomplishments on a grand scale. While it may be true that over-reliance on technological achievements can detract from trust in God, it is questionable whether this is the primary lesson of the Babel story. “ She goes on to describe a God-honoring approach to technology that does not depend on the size and scale of the technology, but more so on its direction. 

I suspect that big technological projects are often driven by pride, steering the project from the start in a direction that is not God-honoring. However, even if pride drove the initial dream of the big project, that should not prevent Christian engineers from redirecting that purpose so that the project itself is God-honoring. 

Furthermore, pride is not the only reason for pursuing a big technological project. In the name of stewardship of resources, we might seek economies of scale, such as building large wind turbines instead of smaller ones. In pursuing a calling to develop and unfold God’s creation, we might build big. Competition might drive a big project, not because of pride, but in order for a company to survive. Engineers might view a large project as pursuit of their spiritual calling, following Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Should Christians participate in big technology projects? I believe so. However, we should do so with a discerning spirit and a keen sensitivity to avoid pride, working to design and build in a way that honors God and loves our neighbor.

Broken Christmas Toys

They could make toys better. They could make them stronger, less prone to wear and damage. They could make them safer, with fewer dangerous small parts and fewer toxic materials. They could perform more comprehensive testing. They could make toys better. But they don’t.

Christmas Presents

Once they have a few Christmas seasons under their belt, most kids learn to politely glance at a card or briefly hold up new clothes they have received to show a modicum of appreciation. Most kids also cannot help but show their true enthusiasm when pulling back the first corner of wrapping paper reveals a toy. The toys immediately become beloved and cherished gifts from the first moment they are revealed. Cards and clothes get stacked in a pile; toys are immediately put to work. The American Girl doll joins a tea party. The bright red Hot Wheels Ferrari races across the floor in the kitchen between the feet of the adults preparing a meal. The watch is strapped to the wrist, where it remains for a solid week. 

Toys Break Easily

When my children were young, it was not unusual during the days and weeks after Christmas for toys to break. Some toys needed repair within minutes of unwrapping, while others lasted many days. A few sturdy stalwarts lasted long enough to be handed down to a sibling. Why weren’t all the toys made that sturdy?  Why were some made of flimsy materials that easily broke in the hands of an industrious four-year-old?  

Toy designers and manufacturers have a choice. They could make better toys. They do not because we told them so. Not in so many words, but the result was the same. We consumers often choose lower price over higher quality. 

Imagine a toy seller who produces two models of the same toy. The first model is made of inexpensive materials, with little attention to durability. Costs are reduced further by slimming down the thickness of each part and minimizing the number of fasteners by using an inexpensive sealing process. The result is a fragile toy that is not easily repairable. The second model is made to last, with high-quality materials. The designer pays attention to likely wear patterns and beefs up the sections where weakness might otherwise lead to breakage. More expensive fasteners are used, enabling the toy to be repaired should any problems occur. 

Despite the contrasting designs, from the outside, the two toys appear somewhat similar. A Christmas shopper in a hurry would not spot the higher quality of the second toy. The only clear and immediately obvious difference is the price. Although a few astute shoppers may notice the difference simply by the heft of the toy, and others may assume that the higher price toy is indeed better, the majority choose the lower cost.

Towards the end of the shopping season, the first model has sold out, yet stacks of the second remain. The implications to the toymaker for next year are clear:  make low-cost toys, even if the quality is poor. 

Why don’t they make toys better?  It isn’t some insidious toy conspiracy. It is because we consumers won’t pay for the higher quality. You get what you pay for. We choose to pay little, so we get little. Our economy generates a huge data set characterizing consumer product preferences. Those purchases tilt the test data heavily toward cheaper. We might intend “cheaper” to be less expensive, but in essence, we have selected “cheaper” In terms of lower quality. You get what you pay for.

Communicating Quality

Whether the product is a toy, microwave, phone, or table, the consumer drives much of the market signal for lower quality.  However, the engineer, manufacturer, marketer, and retailer are not absolved of responsibility in the drive towards lower quality. To choose higher quality, reliability, and safety, the consumer must be able to identify those qualities accurately and quantify them to a reasonable degree. Clear and consistent product communication is not easy to obtain across an industry. However, we have an existing example of strong communication in one particular product industry: packaged food.

In 1990, the US Congress passed the “Nutrition Labeling and Education Act” requiring food products to be labeled with accurate identification of ingredients. The European Union passed similar requirements in 2016. Consistent labels quantifying nutrition enabled consumers to make fair comparisons between foods so that they could purchase the best value for their money. Over time, this information has driven the market so that lower fat, lower sugar, higher nutrition became more common and thus more affordable. It is not a perfect system. We still see unfortunate economic pressures that limit the very poor to rather unhealthy food choices. Nevertheless, accurate labeling has improved the overall food production system.  

We should apply the lesson of food labeling to technological products in general. Christians should be particularly eager to improve the way product information communicates safety and reliability because such information is a way to love and care for our neighbor. Christian engineers in a position to influence regulation can advocate for better consumer choice.

Furthermore, regulation is not the only way to improve communication of a product’s quality, reliability, safety, utility.  Reviews can help. Customer reviews are a good start, though they rarely provide a direct comparison of alternatives. Review articles by qualified people or organizations are better, as they often benchmark similar products head-to-head. 

Every Technological Design Requires Trade-offs

Toys are not the only technological products that require give-and-take design choices. Every physical device we design and manufacture requires a trade-off between cost and reliability. Extra design time to develop clever products that last longer implicitly adds cost. Extra or better materials to make structures stronger implicitly add cost.  Furthermore, balancing cost and reliability is just one trade-off. Trade-offs are implicit in every engineering design, requiring an equilibrium between multiple goals that each appear to be good, yet more of the one requires less of the other. 

Most designs will require an array of trade-offs. We trade weight (and indirectly safety) for higher gas mileage in automobiles. We trade early access for thoroughness of clinical testing in developing pharmaceutical drugs. We determine priorities for the competing goods of aesthetics, performance, reliability, safety, recyclability, and more. 

Of all these trade-offs, it may seem that safety should always be the top priority, tipping the scales all the way to complete reliability.

Trading Safety

I once asked students in an engineering course to consider how much rigor one ought to use in designing electronics for an entertainment device such as earbuds. I then asked them to compare that to the rigor one ought to use in designing a medical instrument such as a device to monitor premature infant vital signs. 

Some students thought there should be no difference in rigor. They thought that Christians should do their best to produce the most excellent and safe designs, regardless of the intended use. This position has some scriptural support. Colossians 3:23 tells us  “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”  No matter where we find ourselves, every occupation is worthy of our best efforts as an offering to the Lord. 

Other students indicated that the preemie monitor should be designed with utmost care and much more attention, compared to the earbuds. This position also has some scriptural support. Philippians 4:8 tells us  “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  Spending more time on a more noble technology is one way to implement Paul’s directive. 

Can you go overboard on safety?  Is there ever an acceptable risk?  I believe so. Consider two examples. First, look at the common nail hammer. It is designed to pound nails into wood. This purpose leads to a design with a hard striking surface, a relatively heavy weight to provide momentum when the striking surface is swung, and a long handle to harness the centrifugal force of that swing into a powerful impact on the head of the nail. The design is appropriate to the need. The design is also deadly. That same powerful impact on a person’s head will kill. We could alleviate that risk by reducing the weight and softening the striking surface, shortening the handle to reduce the swinging force, and so forth. The resulting pillow on a stubby stick would no longer be able to kill, but it wouldn’t be able to pound nails either. 

A second example is choosing the acceptable risk in automobiles. We could make cars safer by adding steel plating to protect passengers during a crash. However, the extra weight drastically lowers gas mileage. We could make cars even more robust during accidents by eliminating fragile windows. However, the lack of visibility would make driving much less enjoyable and might well increase the chance of accidents. Eventually, as we added more and more bulk, the car would no longer fit in the lane or in a residential garage. All the extra material would push the price of the safer automobile beyond the reach of most budgets. 

Balancing Act

Good designs are a balance of competing goals. If the balance is distorted, favoring one goal to the exclusion of others, the resulting product may be dysfunctional. Proper function depends on meeting multiple goals simultaneously. 

Not only are products the result of a trade-off, but the engineering design process itself is also a trade-off. The old adage “better, faster, cheaper -- pick any two” is a reflection of the balance between the scope, schedule, and cost of a project. Does this mean that one must always accept less of one goal to achieve more of another?  Not necessarily. Sometimes we find a clever new way to achieve both lower cost and higher quality, e.g., by reducing waste. Sometimes we find an innovation that lets us achieve both environmental stewardship and corporate profit, e.g., by reusing and recycling. Sometimes we find a way to make a part both lighter and stronger, e.g., by using composite materials. Such wise combinations are one way to pursue designs that are excellent and praiseworthy.

Running with Scissors

Super Power

Some superheroes were born with amazing abilities. Superman was born on Krypton, but upon arriving on earth, that birthright gave him superhuman strength, X-ray vision, and the ability to fly. Wonder Woman was born an Amazon warrior with phenomenal speed and strength. Other superheroes had ordinary births but gained extraordinary abilities through accidents. Peter Parker became Spider-man through a spider bite. Bruce Banner became the Incredible Hulk after an accidental overexposure to gamma rays. However, there is one other type of superhero that inspired young comic book readers: the self-made superhero. Bruce Wayne became Batman, gaining phenomenal abilities through his high-tech gadgets. Tony Stark became Iron Man, gaining super strength and the ability to fly through his specially designed exoskeleton.

We ordinary humans can relate to the self-made superhero. We are all susceptible to the lure of technology because it is a powerful amplifier of abilities. We see further with a telescope. We pound harder with a hammer. We cut faster with a circular saw. We compute faster with a calculator. Technology has become central to our modern world because it has been helpful, but also because it makes us powerful.

Super Danger

Technology can be a helpful power amplifier -- but don’t go too fast with it or you could get hurt. Hurrying to finish up an important document, have you ever neglected to save it and then lost everything when the computer crashed?  Ever pounded your thumb instead of the nail?  Ever sent a rather sensitive email to a large group that you intended for just one individual?  

We all have experienced technology’s power gone awry. A few years ago we rented a power washer to clean off a few things around our yard, intending to spiff up the deck, a brick patio area, the front sidewalk, and so forth. Some of the dirt, grit, and moss that collected over time looked like it might be rather stubborn, so we opted for one of the more gas-powered units with a higher pressure. While we were working through our list of items to clean, my wife washed off a few tools. She held them in one hand and sprayed them off with the other. The concentrated washer spray caught just a small area of the top of her hand, which stung so briefly she hardly noticed. Later, we saw that it had caused a significant bruise and damage to her skin. That pressurized water was a powerful tool that took its toll before she had a chance to react. 

The summer before the power washer incident, we were camping at a state park. While sitting around the campfire in the late afternoon, we watched a pickup truck roll past with the characteristic low rumble of a diesel engine, towing a large fifth-wheel camper. The driver stopped to let out the rest of the family so that they could direct. He then angled to back the camper into the lot while his family called out directions to ensure he didn’t back into a tree. Suddenly a loud pop cracked through the air. As the pickup had sharply turned, the front corner of the camper had pushed into and then through the back window of the pickup. Fortunately, the safety glass broke with a pop but without shattering. That pickup truck was a powerful tool that took its toll before anyone had a chance to realize the danger.

  

We’ve always known at some level that we must be careful with technology. When we were young, our mothers scolded us about running with scissors --  if we stumbled, the sharp points could suddenly become unintentional and perhaps even deadly weapons. Our heavenly parent also instructs us to be careful with our technology, such as our house and our possessions.

“When you build a new house, make a parapet [low guard wall] around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.” (Deuteronomy 22:8)

“If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death.” (Exodus 21:28-29)

Running with scissors -- going too fast -- is often our problem with technology. Perhaps we are going a bit too fast when the convenience of electronic purchases lulls us into permitting companies to retain our credit card number in a centralized database. It is convenient for us if our store already knows our numbers. It is also a convenient one-stop shopping store for cyber-thieves. Perhaps we are running too fast when we let young people start driving before their brains have fully developed, before their reflexes have fully matured, before their judgment and risk-assessment abilities have grown sufficiently. Perhaps we are running too fast when we use genetically modified foods. Have we taken enough time to evaluate the long-term health effects of a diet of foods that have had their DNA jumbled?  Perhaps we are running too fast with our rapid consumption of energy generated by fossil fuels, not recognizing the impact on the atmosphere until it has become quite significant -- or even past the point of no return. 

Slowing Down

Scissors can be beneficial, but they can also turn deadly if we run with them and stumble.

Many philosophers of technology have surveyed the dangers of gadgets that get out of control, concluding that we need to use a “go it slow” approach. They have advocated a “no-unless” precautionary principle. That is, we should say no to a new technology unless we have assessed the risks and have high confidence that it is safe. Let’s consider two examples: airplanes and trains 

Writing good software takes time. Writing safe software takes even more time. A modern commercial jet airliner has a variety of computer processors running software from the mundane (such as graphical controls for passenger entertainment systems) to the safety-critical, such as flight control systems. Any software related to the safety of flight goes through a rigorous process of assurance before the plane is certified for flight. This extra rigor can add a factor of 10x to the time to produce and test such software, with a similar increase in cost as well. As a society, we judge this cost and time to be worth the benefit of higher confidence in the safety of aircraft.

Recently the Metro subway system in Washington D.C. significantly reduced service as a precaution. The previous week, an investigation of a derailment incident on the blue line determined that a contributing cause was an axle that was out of compliance. To be safe, all the trains with similar axles (about 60% of the fleet) were taken out of service. The service disruption was significant, but it was prudent to protect public safety.

Humans do not foresee all consequences because we have finite abilities. We have limited mental capacity that can cloud our perception of how complex technological devices might fail in the future. We have limited imagination to anticipate the ill uses to which others might turn with our inventions.

Humans are not only finite but also fallen. We are affected by the taint of sin, and our powerful technology shows those effects. Sin is not only external but also stains us internally. “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”  (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)  

Precaution is warranted because we are finite (by God’s design) and fallen (by Adam’s choice). Taking proper precautions means taking the time to evaluate a technological device carefully before fielding it for public use. Because humans often miss some of the consequences of our technology until it is too late, the more powerful the tool, the more careful we ought to be. 

Slower is better. 

How Slow Can You Go?

How slow is prudent? Occasionally there may be drawbacks if we go too slow.

Occasionally, excessive precaution may cause more harm. In some situations, we cannot afford to wait. We may not be able to wait to completely test a technology that will prevent an existing or imminent harm. While precaution ensures the cure is not worse than the disease, there is also urgency to cure the disease before it kills the patient. Racing the disease may literally be the case. If we take too much time deciding whether to bring a drug to market, some dying patients may be prevented from receiving the only effective medicine that could cure them before the disease kills them. Racing the disease may figuratively be the case. For example, even though we may not fully understand the environmental cost of large batteries in electric vehicles, waiting for longitudinal studies over decades while burning fossil fuels may put us past a climate tipping point.

Occasionally, excessive precaution may cause competitive harm. Even if we -- as individuals, as companies, or nations -- refrain from developing certain technology, someone else will invent it. Those that delay are left at a  disadvantage. Those that forge ahead do not necessarily throw caution to the wind. They may be rightly pursuing better efficiency, creativity, and freedom. They may rightly chafe at overly-cautious regulation. It takes true wisdom to discern what level of risk is warranted.

Finally, while there may be times we should not go too slow, for the most powerful technologies the best choice may be to stop altogether. The more powerful we anticipate a new technology will be, the more cautiously and slowly we should proceed -- if we proceed at all. Our finite capacity to anticipate all possible outcomes leaves us vulnerable to the impact of unforeseen consequences, perhaps at a level that we should not accept. Our fallen nature should make us question whether anyone or any institution can be trusted with truly staggering power. When we get the idea of very powerful technologies, it is prudent to seek universally agreed precautions. International treaties about such things are not bullet-proof, but history shows imperfect agreements have been at least partially successful in slowing nuclear proliferation, delaying human cloning experiments, and banning many chemical and biological weapons.

Choosing Less Power

In a world that dreams of superheroes, it is difficult to resist the lure of ever more powerful devices. Yet we can resist. After the incident with the pressure washer, when we later purchased our own device to avoid an annual rental, we chose an electric-powered washer with somewhat less power. It still does the job we need but reduces the danger. 

Too much power can also be a spiritual danger. Power can lead to pride and arrogance which can then lead to cruelty and corruption. As Christ followers, we should go the other way. We should give up power and put aside selfish desires. With John the Baptist, we should say that Christ “must become greater; I must become less.” (John 3:30)

Predicting the Ending

 Surprise Endings are Good

Don’t tell me how it ends! We love the surprise of an unpredictable turn in the story. I won’t spoil it for you, but you know what I mean about mind-blowing plot twists in films like Arrival (2016) and The Sixth Sense (1999). Novels and movies with predictable endings are less dramatic and less memorable. 

My wife and I have watched some excellent television series, some of which run for many seasons. One of the genres we binge-watch is the crime-solving type -- especially when the series provides in-depth character development so that we grow to love the personality and quirks of the investigators. We often watch the program on Netflix well after it has aired on live television. Watching shows later has advantages. You can check reviews to ensure the series ran multiple seasons and was highly rated. The disadvantage is the risk of coming across a spoiler that gives away a plot twist.

We were a few seasons into watching a particularly good series -- far enough that we had come to know and love the main characters. One day my wife was having lunch with her talkative mother and mentioned this series. My mother-in-law then blurted out, “oh, is that the one where Detective X’s wife is killed?”  We were not up to that season. We didn’t know. We could never have predicted the writers would kill off this character. To her credit, my wife kept this particularly heart-wrenching twist to herself as we continued watching. She only told me that her mom had given away a crucial plot twist, but she didn’t divulge any further details. We didn’t reach that gut-wrenching episode until much later. It was only then that my wife pointed out the unexpected twist that her mother had given away previously.

Television crime series are not the only entertainment with unpredictable twists. In the 1980s, a popular children’s book series called “Choose Your Own Adventure” invited the reader to make a choice at the end of every couple of pages. Each decision sent them to a page number in a different part of the book, where the story would continue based on their choice. After a few more pages, another choice would be presented and the story would again fork into different paths. Eventually, the selected story path would reach a conclusion, sometimes a happy ending of the protagonist, and sometimes an unfortunate end. It was usually difficult to anticipate the consequences of the early choices to choose the path to the happy ending. 

An early computer game, The Oregon Trail, was similarly challenging. Originally text-based, many of the choices one made would result in progress for your frontier party to make its way to Oregon. However, the game could end short of that goal somewhat unpredictably. You could take an innocent drink from a cool stream and fall ill from dysentery. You could suddenly get bitten by a colorful snake and die of poisonous venom. 

Fictional stories are more dramatic and compelling with some good plot twists, however, as a society, we prefer stability and reliability.

Surprise Endings are Bad

We generally do not like surprises from our tools, since unexpected behavior usually indicates a failure. Technological products that fail often result in disgruntled customers demanding refunds and posting unfavorable reviews. Technological product failures that harm people or property often result in lawsuits and unfavorable publicity. However, while engineers can prepare for some potential issues, it is impossible to anticipate every possible situation.

On January 28, 1986, I was a student driving home after a class at Calvin College when I heard it on the radio. The space shuttle Challenger had exploded. In the coming hours, we learned that the seven astronauts aboard the spacecraft had been killed. In the coming months, it became clear that O-rings on the booster rockets were not sufficiently reliable at the cold temperatures of that launch morning. Their failure resulted in the infamous explosion. (The figure on the right shows a diagram locating the O-rings within the booster system.)

On September 11, 2001, I was an engineering professor preparing for my next lecture when I got a call to turn on the television. The Twin Towers had been struck. In the hours that followed, I watched in horror along with millions of others, gasping as one tower and then the other collapsed, killing thousands. In the coming months, it became clear that the towers withstood the initial shock of an aircraft strike. However, the intense heat of flames fed by jet fuel caused the steel structure of the building to fail, resulting in the horrific collapse of both towers.

Technological failure is a surprise ending that engineers work hard to avoid. Engineers are called to hold public safety as the paramount goal in their design work. Ensuring that a technological product is safe requires sufficient analysis and testing so that users can be confident the product will not fail under normal use. Users expect it will not fail after repeated use, over a reasonably long time. They even expect it will not fail after abnormal use, at least to some extent. 

The space shuttle O-rings were not meant to operate in frigid temperatures and were only tested down to a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The decision to launch the vehicle outside of its specified operating range was a fateful choice, resulting in catastrophic failure. 

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were designed according to best practices of the time and thus built to withstand the stresses of extreme weather. The terrorists’ fateful decision to smash into the buildings with fuel-laden aircraft forced the buildings outside of their specified operating conditions, resulting in catastrophic failure. 

Engineers who seek to put their faith into practice should see product safety as paramount, in part because we are commanded to love our neighbor. Whether designing smartphones or space shuttles, whether designing ice scrapers or skyscrapers, engineers have a responsibility to ensure their designs are safe. However, the extent of their responsibility is not infinite. Engineers must anticipate and design against many possible future scenarios, but not to anticipate all possible outcomes and certainly not operating conditions that are reasonably believed to be impossible.

No design is ever completely safe. It is not possible to develop a product that is guaranteed to cause no harm under any condition. At some point, the added effort and cost to improve safety produces diminishing returns. A product must be reasonably safe, even very safe. But there are reasons an engineer might be justified in declining to build in further safety features once a certain threshold is reached. Adding safety features may unacceptably reduce product usability, e.g., enclosing a hammer with rubber foam would prevent many accidental injuries, but the hammer would no longer be functional. Adding safety features may increase the cost of the product beyond what most can afford. Adding safety features is not always a net gain -- in some cases improving safety in one element is a trade-off that reduces safety in a different element of the same system. 

Trade-offs are inherent in engineering design.  Another constraint we face while attempting to design tools with high utility and high safety is the limited availability of resources, including raw materials and energy. Engineers putting faith into practice should also see stewardship of creation as part of their calling.

Even with the smartest designs that anticipate many failure modes, provide safety mechanisms, and are well tested, things can go wrong. Unanticipated consequences can never be fully eliminated. Sometimes the surprise endings are bad.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? 

Sometimes technology fails us in ways that no one could foresee. Who do we blame when the designer, manufacturer, and maintainer all did their jobs right and yet something still goes wrong? We do not blame, we mourn. We lament our human frailty, our inadequate wisdom, and paltry imagination. Though we are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we are finite creatures of dust. We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. We are not God.

Sometimes technology fails us because of corruption, negligence, or malice. When preventable failures cause harm, we can sometimes blame engineers for the foreseeable flaws in their designs. Sometimes the design is correct and robust, but it is manufactured or maintained poorly. We might then blame the manufacturer or the maintenance service for the resulting harm.

We blame, but we also mourn. We lament our human fallenness, the weakness of human flesh. This is not the way it was supposed to be. In the beginning, the creation, including humanity, was good.  It was characterized by shalom, a flourishing peace.  Though we were made good, sin has stained us and all creation.

Our mourning might lead us to despair. Despair might lead us to anger. In our anger, we might reason that while humans might be prone to failure and corruption, God is not. God is ultimately in control. God is good, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  Why, then, does God let evil persist?  

Asking the question is already a hint at the answer. Only a creature granted the gift of free will would be in a position to consider asking. God made humans his last and best creature on the sixth day of his creating. Unlike any other creature, he made humans in his image. Unlike any other creature, he gave Adam and Eve the power to make a moral choice. Of all the fruit-bearing trees in the garden, humans were forbidden from eating food of only one. Our collective fateful choice to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an act of free will. 

God surely knew that we would choose foolishly. God surely knew that all creation would suffer as a result. God surely knew he would sacrifice his only son to redeem the fallen creation. God had the power to prevent all that, yet he chose to make us humans, not robots, even at such a terrible cost. If God could create any number of possible worlds, and he foreknew how each would turn out, why would he choose one that he knew included the fall of humankind? Asking the question is already a hint at the answer. If God determined that man should not sin, then creating a world without the possibility of sin would imply that he did not give humans a true choice. Of all the wondrous aspects of creation, God’s endowment of humans with free will was perhaps his greatest creative act. 

The God-given ability of humans to make a moral choice is truly astounding. Consider how our most advanced Artificial Intelligence is still simply a set of algorithms and state machines that carry out computations according to the rules we dictate. Machines that think can only do what we tell them to do. Any apparent choices they make are simply randomized or purely determined by our program driven by the inputs we provide. I can imagine how to write complex software so that a computer recognizes images better than I can myself. I can imagine that one could construct a computer system that plays chess better than a grandmaster or a system that gives a more accurate analysis of medical conditions than a human medical expert. Computers can be designed to do many things. But I cannot imagine how to endow a computer with free will. Such a feat is beyond my comprehension. 

Despite the cost, I suspect that our good, all-powerful, all-knowing God gave us the gift of moral choice to make us fully human. God did not bring evil to the world, but he allowed humans to choose evil. God granted humans the ability to decide to turn from him in disobedience. 

Nevertheless, when evil harms us, God grieves for us and turns it to our good. Already in Genesis, we see this pattern again and again. Joseph’s brothers chose evil and sold him into slavery. Yet God used this situation to raise Joseph to be the highest official in Egypt next to Pharaoh. Joseph later assured his brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. “ (Genesis 50:20) God’s plan included miraculous dreams for Pharaoh that Joseph interpreted as a prophecy about the future seven years of abundance and then seven years of famine. It also incorporated technology, as Joseph directed surplus food to be collected in each city, preserved in storehouses against the coming years of famine.

Harm can come from natural disasters such as famine. It can also come from failures in our technology. Engineers should work diligently to design technology to be as safe and reliable as we reasonably can. Those that use technology should be able to trust it -- conditionally. However, no one should ultimately rely on technology or people. Our ultimate trust should be in God. In this world, he will turn evil to our good, and in the next world, ultimately, he will wipe away every tear. This is one happy ending we can predict with certainty.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Do Gadgets Facilitate or Isolate?

Isolate

Modern technology isolates us. Or so we are told. We have all read the stories counseling us to ditch our cell phones so that we can have real relationships with the people around us. We each have our anecdotes of tech isolation, such as a room full of people distracted by technology, when they should instead be having deep, meaningful conversations with each other. It seems like this problem gets worse over time as technology further invades our lives. 

MIT professor Sherry Turkle documents perspective in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, bemoaning the poor substitute that Facebook interactions provide compared to face-to-face conversations. She laments the loss of freedom as social interactions are objectified. Does technology necessarily pull us apart and dampen the very characteristics that make us human?

By nature, humans are relational. We are created to live in fellowship -- in families, neighborhoods, churches, and regions. God calls us to live in harmonious community with our neighbors and to offer hospitality to the stranger. Theologian Colin Gunton goes so far as to say that this relational character is fundamental to our humanity. He notes that we are

“...social beings, so that of both God and man it must be said that they have their being in their personal relatedness:  their free relation-in-otherness…. All things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation. Relationality is thus the transcendental which allows us to learn something of what it is to say that all created people and things are marked by their coming from and returning to the God who is himself, in his essential and inmost being, a being of relation.” 

(Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 229)

If inter-relatedness is key to the created order and inherent to our humanity, then we should indeed be concerned with Turkle’s thesis that technology draws us apart. If Turkle is right, then technology is a problem.

Is Technology the Problem?

Deciding whether technology is harmful is important. Technology is interwoven throughout our society and culture so deeply that it makes it rather difficult to untangle. In 1985, Al Wolters published a short but influential book called Creation Regained that clarifies two possibilities to consider. Wolters claims that “the task of the Christian is to discern structure and direction….structure denotes the ‘essence’ of a creaturely thing, the kind of creature it is by virtue of God's creational law. Direction, by contrast, refers to a sinful deviation from that structural ordinance and renewed conformity to it in Christ.” (Creation Regained, p. 72-73)  

Wolters would have us look at every aspect of our world and apply this bifocal lens, identifying the underlying creational structure and also identifying the corruption of sin that turns that creational good towards evil. Structure is like a magnet that is naturally aligned to attract us to God and toward the good purposes of his creation; direction is the sin that pivots the magnet away from that alignment so that it repels us from the good we should do. The magnet is not the problem. The problem is the direction that we point it. Thus, our next question is whether technology is part of the creational structure or is the sinful misdirection of it.

Technology is the development of natural materials into tools. A hammer is an example of primitive technology that combines wood and iron into a tool that is useful for pounding nails. A smartphone is an example of modern technology that combines metal, glass, plastic, and a host of other materials into a tool that is useful for communicating by voice, email, video, messaging, and more. 

From the beginning, the cultivation and formation of creation was part of God’s calling to us as his stewards (Genesis 1:28). Thus, technology is part of the creational order, part of the structure. Like the magnet, technology can be sinfully turned askew so that it is directed away from God’s intended purposes. As an inherent part of the good creation, technology cannot be inherently evil. However, it might be sinfully directed, and thus we must still consider whether Professor Turkle is right about the harmful effects of technology.

Facilitate

As a counterpoint to Turkle, meet Rutgers Professor Keith Hampton. Like Turkle, he is a professional observer of human nature in the context of technology. He is a people watcher. However, unlike most of us, who might sit at the mall or airport and idly watch people go by, he watches intently. Along with his students, he painstakingly analyzed segments of video recorded over several days at four public locations in New York City, such as the plaza and broad steps in front of the public library. Hampton wondered if technology has interfered with our ability to relate, so looking frame by frame in the video, he analyzed how people interacted with each other. 

Of course, when you want to check whether something has changed, you need to have a basis for your comparison. Hampton carefully selected his four sites because he had video footage of the same spots from thirty years earlier. The NY Times reports on this study (Mark Oppenheimer, “Technology Is Not Driving Us Apart After All,” New York Times, Jan 17, 2014), which used 38 hours of detailed video recordings of several public spaces in New York in 2008 compared to 1975 (when a previous research project filmed the same locations). Hampton’s team analyzed the interactions of people, to see if the progressively more ubiquitous use of technology had changed human relational behavior over those three decades. For example, mobile phones were invented and had become quite common over this period. Had cellphones made humans more isolated and lonely?  Did humans now tend to focus more on devices while ignoring other people?  Hamptons’s research team found that this was not the case. People were noticeably more interactive with those around them in 2008 than in 1975. 

The Hampton study has its limits. His team analyzed only a few locations during two specific periods of time. Although cellphones had become prevalent over the intervening time between the two samples, the first smartphones appeared in the early 2000s, with the first iPhone coming out in 2007, only a year before the second half of Hampton’s study. Further, it is not possible to do a controlled experiment so that over three decades we isolate changes to a single variable so that technology advances -- but nothing else. Thus, the Hampton experiment cannot give us a true analysis of variance to pin down which societal changes drove the increase in human interaction that he observed. During those decades there were also significant changes in broad sweeps of society, in education, politics, work, family life, and more. But surely technology was one of the most significant changes that also indirectly changed the nature of many other areas of society. Hampton’s study gives us at least some hint that technology is not inherently an isolator. Our need for relationships naturally leads us to adapt technology creatively so that it enhances our relationships. 

When used appropriately, technology can be used to enhance our relationships with others, allowing our communication to span time and space. Before mobile phones, if you walked into the waiting room of a doctor’s office or the lobby of a hotel, you would also see a spectrum of human interaction. While you might spot clusters of people in conversation, you would also see others sitting alone reading a magazine or newspaper with little notice of those around them. 

Today, newspapers do not seem like technology. But that is only because we have become so familiar with this tool that it no longer appears to be high-tech. Yet it is still tech, including some sophisticated and continent-spanning technologies. The thin paper requires constructing roads into the forest where the right timber is located, lumber harvesting with heavy equipment, long-haul shipping, pulping, and finishing with paper-making. The stories require communication from reporters in the field, word processing by editors, layout, typesetting, and final high-volume printing. As a society, we have gradually moved to online sources of news rather than print. This is not a move to more technology, however, but rather a move from one technology to another.

Whether old or new gadgets, sin can and does direct our technology away from the purposes for which it was ordained by the Creator. However, the structure is still there. A tool designed to communicate ideas has an inherent ability to enhance relationships. Whether reading a newspaper back in the day or viewing a social media post on a smartphone today, readers are not isolating themselves from humanity. On the contrary, they are connecting with the author of the article, reaching across time and space to relate to another person’s thoughts and ideas. While printed pages may seem like a one-way conversation, a book invites the reader to question the premise or extend the idea. A newspaper reader could write a letter to the editor to continue the conversation started in a controversial article. With today’s instant connections, the reader can react and interact with the author in near real-time. 

Today, if you were sitting on the steps of the NYC library surrounded by other visitors, would it be better to have a video conference call with friends, to tell them about your pleasant vista and even show them?  Would it be better to strike up a conversation with a stranger nearby, perhaps making a new friend? Better to sit alone in silent contemplation? Technology can play a part in some of these choices. If we individually and collectively discern wise uses of our gadgets, we can direct these creational structures to align with God’s will for us. By grace, we can recognize how sin bends our technology away from God. By grace we can act as God’s redemptive agents, choosing to use technology in ways that love God and neighbor. 

The Thessalonians Stayed Home

You might be surprised to hear that I am an introvert if you know that I spent 28 years teaching engineering. How can a teacher be an introvert, when the job requires one to stand and talk in front of a full classroom? Although I was initially timid when it came to something I was passionate about like engineering, my eagerness to share that joy overcame my reticence to speak in public. 

You might also be surprised to hear that I am an introvert if you know that I am an entrepreneur. I started one company and helped grow another. One would think an interest in business development would require an extroverted personality. It is true that I naturally seek the periphery of a crowded room rather than the center. I will likely strike up a quiet conversation with a few rather than boisterously tell entertaining stories to a large group. Nevertheless, I have been able to grow a network of colleagues and friends in my own quiet way.

Introverts are not anti-social, but we also don’t seek to be the center of attention. Our internal energy does not come from a crowded, loud party. Rather, we recharge in small groups of interaction, or better yet, from time spent alone. It turns out that introverts were not as distraught as their extroverted friends when the COVID-19 lockdown kept everyone home. Introverts do enjoy interaction, but the lockdown kept the interactions more manageable. For example, even while working from home I was interacting many times each day with colleagues. My calls not only connected me with others in my home state of Michigan but also with co-workers in the American southwest and others across the Atlantic. 

I am not only an introvert, I also happen to have mild hearing loss. It is a disability that can make conversations more challenging, particularly in situations such as listening to a soft-spoken person sitting on the far side of a large room. I have found the challenge is much less pronounced in a video conferencing meeting where each person is speaking into a microphone. The COVID-19 lockdown pushed many of my business, church, and even family meetings to video conferencing. Like most of us, I have become adept at Zoom, Teams, Meets, and more. Ironically, the move to video meetings has improved my social interaction because I can more accurately make out what others were saying.

Is the Great Commission for Introverts Too?

If introverts like me shy away from large groups and avoid public speaking, I’ve sometimes wondered whether the Great Commission applies to me. Perhaps only extroverts are meant to be missionaries, going into all the earth to make disciples. There is certainly an important role for gregarious missionaries traveling to foreign locales. For example, the itinerant apostle Paul visited the city of Thessalonica around 50 AD during his second missionary journey. His preaching brought the Good News to the Thessalonians for the first time. 

If introverts like me would also prefer to stay home rather than go out on the town, I’ve again wondered whether the Great Commission applies to me. Today, when we think of missionaries, our minds quickly associate such work with a foreign location. The missionary bulletin board at most churches displays pins scattered across a world map to represent the locations of the missionaries they support.  Mission trips similarly feature trips to a far-away location. For example, I have friends and relatives who work regularly for a relief agency that brings help in the name of Christ to areas stricken by disaster. They go wherever the disasters hit, traveling far and wide.

The association of mission with distance also comes up when we think of engineering and technology as a  service-based mission. For example, senior engineering students at Christian universities in the United States often choose “mission” projects as the focus of their capstone design experience. By using the label of mission, they typically mean an international humanitarian project. The specific projects can vary widely. One might be a civil engineering project developing a sanitary sewer system for a village in the Andes foothills of Ecuador. Another might be a mechanical and electrical engineering project to design a community solar-powered lampost that serves a dual purpose of night light and cell-phone charger for sunny Ghana. The common theme is as much the remote location as it is the need for technical assistance. While I am encouraged to see Christian engineering students serving others using their technical gifts, I worry that labeling these as mission projects implies that other projects do not provide opportunities for Christian witness and service. The label of “mission” creates a subtle division between the projects, characterizing them as either sacred or secular. Yet every project should be considered sacred: an opportunity to love God and neighbor.  

The Mission Field is Also Local

When the gospel came to Thessalonica, the first believers formed a local church. Having done so, as far as we know, they did not immediately depart on mission trips. They stayed home. Remaining in their neighborhoods and retaining their jobs, they became salt and light to their local community.  “Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” (1 Thessalonians 4:9-12)

The great commission to go into all the world and make disciples does not mean each one must travel as far as possible from one’s starting point. The harvest is not only in far-away developing countries, it is also in our own community. The lost not only live in another continent, they live next door. They are the poor and homeless on the corner. They are the workers in the same building as we work. They are the bankers, the real estate agents, and the coffee shop baristas. The lost walk the sidewalks, ride the bus, and drive the roads of our neighborhoods.

If all the world belongs to God (and it does), if Christ rules every aspect of our lives (and he does), then every aspect of our lives and every facet of our vocations should fall under divine dominion. Think about the way God made us as bodies, not simply spirits. We need to eat and drink. We need rest. God could have made us without those needs, yet he chose to design us with requirements for sustenance. Then aren’t those functions also holy? Our innate, God-given characteristics are cause for gratitude and praise. We thus pray “give us this day our daily bread.” Furthermore, God gave us characteristics that reflect his image, such as the ability to create and build. Our work is also sacred, an opportunity for gratitude and praise.

Work serves a practical purpose. Work puts food on the table and a roof over our heads. Introverts might even view their work as a means to generate money that can be charitably given to fund the mission work of an extroverted friend. However, work is not merely utilitarian. Work is also worship and witness.  Work is also part of all the world into which we are called to make disciples. This is not to say that anything we do at work is pleasing to God simply because it is part of our job. Sin can warp our work so that it no longer points in the direction God intended. 

For those of us working in technical disciplines, our work serves practical purposes, but it is also worship and witness. In principle, every engineering project is a mission project. Building a highway overpass is a mission project. Developing a new computer control system is a mission project. Designing a new four-bar linkage is a mission project.

Today the choice of pursuing a mission by staying home or by reaching out to remote communities is no longer mutually exclusive. Technology now connects us with the far-flung corners of the earth. Our global communication technology provides tools for introverts and extroverts to witness to the ends of the earth. Derek Schuurman puts it this way: “Indeed, technology has made the question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ even more broad, since we are able to reach anywhere on a global scale as never before.” (Derek C. Schuurman, Shaping a Digital World:  Faith, Culture, and Computer Technology, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013., p. 118) The breadth of our calling is all-encompassing because it all belongs to God. When I am traveling the digital highway, I can and must be the good samaritan who offers a helping hand to those I encounter.

God’s broad calling to make disciples goes beyond any geographical divisions and breaks through any temporal, civic, and professional distinctions. We are called to be missionaries on Monday as much as Sunday. We are called to be missionaries at work, at play, in our neighborhood. Wherever we go, virtually or physically, we form relationships. And in those connections, we have the opportunity to make disciples.

Technology and the Deadly Sin of Greed

One of my favorite Christmas tales is a ghost story: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This story has reportedly been adapted for the theater, musicals, and screen more than any other of his works. I remember watching it first as a black & white film, likely the 1938 or 1951 production. Then came later versions including Michael Caine in the 1992 The Muppet Christmas Carol, Bill Murray in the 1998 Scrooged, and Jim Carrey in the 2009 Disney version. Ebenezer Scrooge is the greedy central character of the story. He wants nothing to do with Christmas.

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

His dislike of Christmas becomes clear from how he treats his family, his employees, and his fellow businessmen. In a scene revealed by the ghost of Christmas past, we learn how the true passion of a young Scrooge became apparent to his fiancée, Belle, as she released him from the engagement with these parting words: “I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.”  Greed, the love of money, was the vice that would consume him. Unless he could experience a change of heart, the ghost of Christmas future revealed that he would die a lonely death.

Merriam-Webster defines greed as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed.” While gluttony is also an excessive desire for more, it focuses on consuming something to excess, such as overeating. By contrast, the excess of greed is not in consuming but in possessing. The goal of greed is not devouring, but hoarding.

In some ways, money is a technology -- a tool that humans have developed to represent material wealth, providing a compact form that can easily be exchanged. Technology often amplifies one ability while attenuating another. Money is a concentrated, efficient representation of wealth. It amplifies the instrumental and attenuates the intrinsic value of the things it represents. Thus, money easily becomes the object of our greed. 

Wealth and material possessions are some of the most often mentioned topics in the Bible. Searching biblegateway.com yields quite a few references to the subject:

Gold, silver	746
Rich, wealth, prosperous	291
Pay, wages, income	214
Poor, beggar, destitute, poverty	210
Shekel, denarius, talent, coin	147
Money	113
Purchase, buy, acquire	100
Possessions/goods	63
Debt, loan, interest	41
Tithe, tenth	37
Greed	25
Dishonest/unjust gain	13

A common theme connects many of these passages: the manner in which one handles wealth is a measurement of one’s character and true loyalties. Proper handling of money can be a sign of diligence and hard work: “whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.” (Proverbs 13:11)  Proper handling of money demonstrates our service as God’s steward: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” (Matthew 25:21) Improper handling of money can lead to destitution if we squander it. 

However, a common misreading of these passages leads to a prosperity gospel, where believers are always blessed with wealth. This is a misreading in several ways. Poverty is not necessarily a sign of sin, and wealth is not necessarily a sign of righteousness. Furthermore, when God blesses righteousness with wealth, this blessing can easily become our undoing. Wealth promises happiness but does not deliver. The moral of the Dickens story is that money doesn't buy happiness. Scrooge’s all-consuming greed siphons happiness completely out of his life. The apparent joy he gets from his wealth is a kind of obsessive pleasure that borders on the pathological. It is a hunger that will never be filled: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10)

Money is not Scrooge’s problem. Love of money is his sin. Like many of the other deadly sins, a good thing becomes sin when it displaces God from the throne of our lives. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24)  Greed makes an idol out of our wealth. Once money becomes an ultimate desire, then the love of money becomes “a root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10)  If money is our highest priority, if it has become the god we worship, then we will no longer limit ourselves to God-honoring gain. We will be tempted towards unjust gain by corruption, blackmail, fraud, embezzlement, stealing, or any other means necessary. 

Greed also manifests itself as frugality to the point of penny-pinching. A business owner underpaying her employees or a couple going out for a meal and skimping on the tip might rationalize that they are being good stewards when they are simply being greedy. “You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence.” (James 5:3-5)

Wealth enables other deadly sins. We can bankroll lust to satisfy our carnal desires. We can bankroll sloth that enables play without work -- particularly if wealth is unmerited or unearned. We can bankroll gluttony that enables us to gorge on expensive food. We can bankroll pride by creating a flattering facade of ourselves that others respect and admire.

Money and Technology

Money, like technology, provides power and a false sense of security. Thinking about these similarities can help us learn to be wary of these dangers in each.

Money, like technology, has instrumental value. Both provide a powerful means to an end, giving us control over our environment and even over other humans. Adam and Eve committed the first sin by eating the forbidden fruit to gain knowledge, out of envy of God’s omniscience. Likewise, we sin by pursuing money and technology to gain power, out of envy of God’s omnipotence. The problem with power is not only idolatry. Armed with technology, we become more powerful, amplifying our abilities for good or for ill. Power leads to pride, and pride leads to a fall. Power corrupts when placed in the hands of fallen humans, amplifying the stain of sin so that it balloons out of control. Ironically, our desire for control -- to make the world our slave -- is ultimately subverted so that we become a slave to sin.

Perhaps my desire for power is not quite so bad. I’m not trying to become God, I simply want a little safety and security. Money, like technology, gives the appearance of a solid foundation -- but it is a false sense of security. “Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.” (Ecclesiastes 7:12)  The problem with relying on money or technology is that I too easily place my ultimate trust in earthly things, rather than in my heavenly creator. Greed fosters misplaced trust. In 2 Samuel 24, King David commands Joab to take a census of the fighting men of Israel. Joab resists, asking “May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?”  Yet, David overrules him and they take the census. Later, David is “conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done.’”  It was sinful because David was putting his confidence in man, rather than God. By checking the size of his army, he was determining his strength based on human numbers, not on divine providence. Scripture repeatedly warns against trusting in human rather than divine strength: “woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.” (Isaiah 31:1)  Scripture also gives comfort that we need not trust  in money, we can rely solely on God: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” (Hebrews 13:5)

Wealth and technology are not only similar, but they also feed off from each other. Wealth feeds and amplifies technological envy and pride. The technologies of long-distance communication going back over a century -- telegraph, phone, radio, television, Internet -- have enabled us to learn of the economic plight of much of the world. However, this detailed knowledge of global poverty doesn’t seem to diminish greed. Instead, greedy people use technology to show off, purchasing expensive technologies for the sole purpose of displaying wealth. Even while we strive for attention from those down the economic ladder, we envy those wealthier than ourselves. Following social media stars, we envy what they have. This is not accidental. Profit-driven communication technology takes advantage of our propensity toward greed by showing us those wealthier than ourselves and making us wish to desire and accumulate the tokens of wealth we see on programs and social media postings. Many of the worst ills of technology have been driven, not by a malicious engineer intent on causing harm, but by a culture of greed that placed profit over people when evaluating the design. 

Technology feeds and amplifies the pursuit and hoarding of wealth. Technology holds the allure of a new alchemy to turn lead into gold, though today we dream of turning silicon-based computer gadgets into wealth. The fintech of cyber-currency like Bitcoin or subreddits focused on stock trading are recent examples, but financial technologies go much further back. We could consider credit cards and even interest fees on debt to be a kind of technology, enabling one to live beyond one’s means, at least temporarily. Scripture warns against debt in part because it creates an unhealthy power relationship between lender and debtor

Technology empowers the user. When this amplifying power is employed to generate wealth, it can twist the technology so that it is designed and tuned for profit, while detrimental to the safety of people or the environmental care of creation. For example, manufacturing robots designed to replace employees may increase the profit of the company, but at what cost to human workers? 

Money and technology are easily intertwined in ways that become the sin of greed. Neither is intrinsically evil, but together they are dangerous. For a few that are most vulnerable to this allure, the only cure might be to forsake wealth and technology completely, like a repentant alcoholic resolving to abstain thenceforth from liquor. For the rest, an attitude of gratitude can be a healthy compensator. The thankfulness of counting one’s blessings leads to contentment and satisfaction, counterbalancing the greedy desire for more. Once we become grateful, we begin feeling a desire to give rather than take.

Giving Neutralizes Greed

The greedy heart of Ebenezer Scrooge had become stone cold and only the supernatural visits of Christmas spirits could warm it. Humans are prone to sin and only by the grace of God can our hearts be turned from greed. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) By God’s grace, greed can become giving.

Giving our best keeps greed at bay. We are supposed to select from the best we have when we give to the Lord. “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops” (Proverbs 3:9) Most of us are not farmers selecting our offerings from crops or cattle, but the principle still applies. My church holds a food drive during our Thanksgiving service. While preparing our food offering in the morning before heading to church, my family was sometimes tempted to fill a grocery bag from our pantry closet with unwanted foods. Usually, at least one of us -- sometimes one of the kids -- would turn our thinking around and find some of the “good stuff” so that we were sharing our first fruits. Similarly, we might clean out our clothes closet and bring unwanted items to the local charity second-hand store. We might even consider it good stewardship. However, if we help a local family in need only with our cast-offs, we have not given from our first fruits.

Giving in proportion to means can tamp down greed. Many readers of this blog have well-paying technical careers. Others readers are students living on rather meager funds. Regardless of your rung on the economic ladder, God expects you to give. However, that giving is in proportion to your means. This expectation is spelled out in the Old Testament: “‘Anyone who cannot afford a lamb is to bring two doves or two young pigeons to the Lord.” (Leviticus 5:7)  It is also illustrated in the New Testament, such as when Jesus observes the wealthy and the widow as they make offerings to the temple treasury:  “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.” (Mark 12:41-44)

Giving cheerfully keeps greed at bay. “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7) Our attitude about giving is a litmus test for greed. If we are stingy with our giving, greed is likely the cause. Greed can lure us into looking for ways to rationalize a small gift. Greed asks whether the tithe is before or after taxes. Greed values the tax deduction of a charitable gift more than it values the charity. 

Technology can make it easy to give, with giving websites, automatic donations, and mobile payment options. Technology can help track finances, compute tithes, and schedule reminders to give regularly. Nevertheless, technology cannot change the heart. Only God changes greedy hearts of stone to giving hearts of flesh.