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.

Technology and the Deadly Sin of Sloth: Part 2

Aesop’s fable of an animal race with an unexpected winner illustrates the virtue of methodical diligence on the part of the tortoise and warns of the dangers of the hare’s overconfidence leading him to sleep on the job. In Part One we defined sloth, the sin of laziness, and explored how we might define work. In this second part, we explore the difference between sloth and rest, examine how technology might make us lazy, and end with a look at technological diligence. 

The modern workaholic world does not like rest:

• We will not rest until we succeed
• You need to give 110%
• No rest for the weary

There seems to be no room for anything besides our work. The corporate world expects us to work long and hard for our pay. Ironically, often such work is in service to a master who derives a monetary benefit from our labor, providing the master a life of leisure. The worker also deserves rest, for rest has a purpose.

The Purpose of Rest

Scripture tells us to work, but it also tells us to rest. God sets the rhythm of work and rest in the creation story, laboring for six days and resting on the seventh. But surely an omnipotent God did not need physical relief from heavy exertion, so then it seems that rest serves a broader goal. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer went so far as to identify the seventh day of Sabbath as “the meaning and goal of the week and its toil.” (Life Together, p 68)

God recognized our creaturely need for rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation, ordaining a cycle of work and rest in the Sabbath day and in the year of Jubilee. Taking a breather, stopping for a break, taking a vacation -- these are all legitimate forms of self-care that do not constitute sloth.  Resting after labor provides the opportunity to look back and take satisfaction from our work. Rest is necessary for rejuvenation, for re-creation of ourselves to restore health and energy. This kind of rest may take the form of sleeping or relaxing repose.

Another kind of rest does not appear to be rest at all at first glance. Our leisure time can also take the form of play or self-improvement, whether by active exercise or intellectual pursuits. This kind of rest can appear to be hard work, but it still serves a restorative purpose.

Rest is also necessary in order to worship. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)  Worship may look like rest to the outside observer, but it is also active dialog with God. We might be in prayer, or quietly reading and meditating on his word. These are all appropriate forms of rest that are not sinful sloth. 

Since all these forms of rest are warranted and even ordained by our creator, then lack of activity, by itself, cannot be the sin of sloth. Sloth is not equivalent to rest.  Rest is always balanced with work. When we avoid legitimate work our rest becomes illegitimate. Taking a permanent break is no longer rest -- it is sloth. Consider two examples: winning the lottery and taking retirement.

Any “get rich quick” scheme is a shortcut that should signal laziness. On the day that I passed my doctoral defense after several grueling years of hard work and research, on a whim I bought a lottery ticket for the first (and last) time in my life. That evening I watched the numbers pop up on little ping-pong balls that dropped into the slots. When two of my numbers matched in the first three drops, my heart raced a bit -- I only needed three numbers to win a little prize and five numbers would make me rich! Yet no more matched. My disappointment lasted only a moment and then the impulse to go buy another ticket hit me strongly. I was so close; the next ticket would surely be a winner. Thus, I learned how easily one can be drawn into gambling. Looking back, I am glad that I did not strike it rich. My hard work towards the Ph.D. would have become meaningless without the motivation to put it to use. I had pursued the degree in the first place because I felt called to teach, and I returned that fall to Calvin University to teach in the engineering program. That lottery ticket would have quickly subverted God’s will for me. Gambling has the allure of the shortcut to life’s rewards without the prerequisite work.

Is retirement a form of sloth? Perhaps. Like the lumberjack that uses the labor savings of the chainsaw to simply take naps most of the day, retirement that is purely self-indulgent slumber strays into sloth. Retirement might seem like the excuse to take a permanent break. However, retirement can also enable self-directed creativity, giving of one’s gifts and talents to noble causes, and spending quality time with friends and family. This is good and admirable work -- unpaid -- but work nonetheless.

Does Technology Make Us Lazy?

Isn’t it interesting that only humans can be lazy? Even when machines or animals are idle, we do not consider them lazy.  Though machines are not capable of laziness, they might be enablers.

To be clear, technology can aid legitimate rest. A playlist of favorite music quickly calms nerves. A fan or sound machine provides white noise to help us sleep uninterrupted. A brainteaser puzzle app improves our deductive skills in a playful manner. A riverboat lets us cruise through vistas filled with natural beauty and river towns with cultural charm. Another example is modern wearables. My wife and I both have an Apple watch that helps remind us to exercise, to take mindful deep breaths, and to stand up after sitting too long. The watch does not lull us into sloth nor does it overtake our lives, it simply is a tool to help us improve our physical health. Oh, and it also tells time.

Sadly, technology can also aid in illegitimate rest. Labor-saving technology can become a tool of sloth. Using technology to ease a burden is nothing new. From prehistoric times, humans delegated hard work by having animals do the work for us. Today we delegate much manual labor to machines. If we need to dig a ditch, we upgrade from bare hands to a shovel. If the ditch is large, we upgrade to a front-end loader powered by a diesel-fueled engine.

Almost all of us in the modern world have access to a wide array of labor-saving technology. Like the lumberjack with the chainsaw, we are given the freedom to choose how to invest those savings. 

Like the napping lumberjack turning to leisure with his labor-savings, it is not legitimate rest when we abdicate our responsibilities as stewards of creation. Labor savings need not eliminate labor -- it can redirect it to higher purposes. Technology is a tool that can amplify and augment our work as stewards, image-bearers, and disciples.

Seeking Technological Diligence

While technology might encourage the vice of sloth, we can also find ways that it can encourage the virtue of diligence. One way to brainstorm about how that might happen is to tackle some of the reasons one might fall into laziness.

We let fear become an excuse to avoid duty: “The sluggard says, ‘There’s a lion outside!  I’ll be killed in the public square!’” (Proverbs 22:13)  There is not likely a lion outside our door, but we might fall into sloth because we simply don’t know where to start on a big project and we fear failing. Technology can help us overcome fear. A quick search of the web can yield some ideas or even a step-by-step breakdown of similar projects. We can easily use tech to instant message informally with colleagues or friends to get ideas and encouragement. For example, on an afternoon when I was working on this blog, my son did a quick FaceTime chat with me to discuss the wiring of a replacement closet light pull chain switch. He did not fear starting the project because he knew he could Google for help or video chat with his father.

We might fall into sloth because we lack motivation for the task. Perhaps the task seems like drudgery or because the boss is making us do it. Technology can help us here as well. First, menial tasks can often be automated through tech. Designing that automation and seeing it work can add a burst of creative motivation and will often result in higher efficiency overall for the business. Second, our interconnected world provides opportunities to escape mind-numbing, degrading jobs. The gig economy provides more options, giving you more control over what work you choose to do.

Ironically, labor-saving technology winds up creating more labor. For example, we buy smartphones to organize our lives, only to spend more time updating and configuring the apps. Technology thus gives the appearance of staying busy, but this is an illusion, not real work that honors God. Our busy lives do not always seem fulfilling, because we are spending more time serving the machine and serving the bureaucracy than serving God and neighbor. 

Careful discernment is important while developing technology so that we design for diligence, not busyness. The vast majority of the engineers I know are like Emily from Part 1. They work hard and are proud of their work. While you might not often be guilty of the sin of sloth, I hope this exploration of one of the deadly sins and its connection to technology has spurred some creative thoughts about how you might use or even develop technology that enhances diligence, thereby enhancing human dignity and glorifying God. 

“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” (Hebrews 6:12)

Technology and the Deadly Sin of Sloth: Part 1

Emily had worked hard to make it to her senior year. majoring in engineering, she was usually hitting the books until late into the evening while her roommate was watching a movie or hanging out with friends. Her hard work paid off: she got good grades, earning a GPA high enough to keep her scholarship. The senior design project course was a final rite of passage, but not for the reasons she first expected. She knew it would require buckling down even more to produce an innovative design that built on what she had learned. She knew that she would expect as much or more from herself as her professors expected.  What she did not anticipate was the difficulty of working with a teammate who did not pull their own weight. She had seen Matt in some of her courses, but he didn’t seem to take them seriously enough. Somehow he still passed and made it to his senior year. They were assigned to the same team in the first week of the design course, along with two other students. They all dove into the work and contributed the blood, sweat, and tears that would form a great design. Except Matt. He showed up late to team meetings --  if he showed at all. There was always an excuse, some urgent reason that kept him away or prevented him from getting his part done. What work he did contribute was hurried with little thought or work, and outcomes that were half-baked or painfully wrong, In a word, Matt was lazy. Like Tom Sawyer trying to get the neighborhood gang to paint the fence for him, Matt was always looking for an angle. He was forever seeking that magic shortcut that would get him the result without the effort. Matt repeatedly tried to convince the rest of the team that he was the big idea man, not the worker bee. He would claim his contribution was leadership and vision whose value could not be measured by effort alone. Emily wasn’t buying it. Matt wasn’t leading the team; rather, his idleness was weighing them down.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sloth as a “disinclination to action or labor.” Sloth is the sin of laziness. A lazy person does not pull their own weight. They doze off instead of dig in. They lollygag instead of labor. They do not take responsibility for their well-being, hoping others will take care of them. They do not contribute to the team, hoping teammates will cover their deficiencies. A lazy person does not take their turn. A slothful person does not do their fair share. 

One form of laziness is procrastination. If our delaying tactics result in avoiding legitimate responsibilities or dutiful work, whether intentional or not, it becomes the sin of sloth. “Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest time they look but find nothing.” (Proverbs 20:4)  In school, you might have had classmates who postponed studying until the night before the big exam. They would suddenly be in a panic, and the less scrupulous would devise ways to cheat, even asking those that studied to help them in their deceit. At work, you may have participated in a team where someone was constantly late finishing their part of the work. This either diluted the quality of the product or resulted in others having to put in extra time to cover the gaps.

A lazy person sometimes explains their disdain for work by claiming to be looking for shortcuts to be efficient. However, their true motivation is the avoidance of exertion. An addict to the lottery is looking for such a shortcut, hoping that a big payoff will mean they never need to work another day. Investors that get duped into a sure pay-off are similarly gambling under the guise of investment, willfully ignoring that something too good to be true probably isn’t. 

At first, it may be difficult to discern whether an engineer seeking a shortcut is optimizing the work or avoiding the work. I understand the drive to optimize. I often catch redundancy because I tend to notice patterns. I spot repetition and rhythm in visual images, poetry, episodes of a television show, and more. When I am writing software and I recognize I am writing something redundant, I tend to refactor my code to make it more efficient, avoiding duplication. When I notice I am repeatedly performing the same complex calculation, I build a script or spreadsheet to compute it for me. The challenge in deciding whether to automate (or not) is to balance the extra cost of creating the automation against the savings in labor. If it takes me an hour to write a script to save a few seconds on a calculation I will only perform a dozen times in total, I have wasted the effort. However, if it saves me minutes of time on thousands of calculations, my side effort has paid off handsomely. 

The pursuit of efficiency is a significant driver for technology development. Since efficiency is sometimes the excuse for laziness, it may be worthwhile to consider the connection of technology to the sin of sloth. We often pursue technology as a means of saving labor. A labor-saving instrument enables at least two options that take advantage of the savings: increased leisure or increased productivity. A lumberjack armed with an ax might cut down three trees in an hour, but armed with a chainsaw can cut down three trees in just a few minutes. The lumberjack could now choose to take much longer breaks or to cut down a larger number of trees. If I am that lumberjack, is my purpose and calling to take breaks? Is it to cut down as many trees as possible? Perhaps the labor savings can be used in some wiser manner? Perhaps I can now spend more time considering which trees are the best to cut down this season for the quality of their wood and the overall cultivation of the forest. Perhaps I can now spend more time considering safety for myself and my co-workers when I drop the next tree.

Another form of sloth occurs when we lose sight of priorities, spending an inordinate amount of time on an unimportant activity to the detriment of important work. This muddling of our priorities can happen when we stop paying attention and lose focus. Before we know it, we have spent an hour doom-scrolling through bad news or swiping past Facebook posts -- with no time left for the important task of the day. Muddling priorities can also be a more conscious choice. First, we may choose to misprioritize out of fear, because we have anxiety about the difficulty of the work we should be doing, so we simply avoid it. Second, we may choose to misprioritize for purely selfish reasons, putting ourselves above others, choosing pleasure, power, or other self-indulgences instead of fulfilling our duty.

If sloth is the avoidance of effort and this is sinful, then it seems the effort is something God desires us to pursue. Why? When receiving a gift that is not as lavish as some others, but that was given with sincerity, we sometimes say “It’s the thought that counts.” What we really meant is that the giver intentionally put effort into the gift. It is not solely the thought that counts -- it is the effort. When we strive toward a goal, we are working. Not all goals are good goals. To discern good work for ourselves, we must examine its purpose. 

The purpose of work 

A lazy person will sometimes actually work hard at avoiding work. Mark Twain immortalized this type of laziness in his descriptions of Tom Sawyer scheming to convince other people to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence, thereby relieving him of the task. Do work and play have a legitimate purpose in day-to-day human life? Or is work a necessary evil to pay for our play? Considering his success at convincing others to whitewash the fence in his place, Tom mused about the nature of work. 

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

Tom realized that work is in the eye of the beholder. However, Twain lures us into a false dichotomy by contrasting work with play, as if work was drudgery to be avoided and play was enjoyment to be pursued. 

I admit that I sometimes fall into this wrong thinking about work. But this is not the way it is supposed to be. From the beginning, Adam and Eve were given work, even in the perfection of the garden of Eden. Work is not inherently associated with pain. Along with play, work also can give us pleasure.

There is another misleading contrast in the Tom Sawyer mythos that can easily dupe us. We can falsely define work as any task that is forced on us, as any activity that someone else directs us to do. Play is then the tasks we choose to pursue of our own free will. While the boss might assign us tasks that we would not choose ourselves, we do generally have a choice about whether to work for that boss. It is not indentured servitude. Most of us have some choice in our vocation, and this autonomy is a blessing. While we choose to stay on a job, it helps us work through the occasional tasks that are not to our liking. I loved teaching engineering, but I disliked the drudgery of grading. However,  it was my choice to teach and I understood the importance of feedback to students, so I did the work.

Modern society paints a certain paradigm of work:  the white or blue-collar worker who draws a paycheck for their effort, reports to a boss, and is employed under contract to a corporation. Such a definition is painfully narrow, resulting in a system of worth based on how much one is paid. Work becomes oppressive because we are “working for the man.” Such a definition also results in subtle disrespect of low-paying jobs, careers in non-profit organizations, and a wide spectrum of work that is not paid but is a noble effort towards a purpose. Think of teachers, artists, parents or grandparents caring for young children, adult children caring for elderly parents, and so many other vocations that are valuable out of any proportion to the pay. One blessing of COVID has been the discovery of a new respect for certain types of work. Sure, we already admired front-line workers such as doctors and nurses, and we now appreciate them even more with the pandemic. But we have also learned a new respect for grocery store clerks and delivery drivers. We have gained a new appreciation because of the exposure they risk to supply some of our needs.

If work is not defined simply by drudgery or coercion, then how do we define it? What is its purpose? One could say the first-order purpose of work is to put food on the table. Paul said as much in one of his letters: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)  The wisdom literature of the Old Testament tells us this as well: “a sluggard’s appetite is never filled” (Proverbs 13:4) Not only will the lazy person miss a meal, their other basic needs will also go unmet, such as shelter:  “through laziness, the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks.” (Ecclesiastes 10:18)  What is the ultimate result of sloth?  “The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work.” (Proverbs 21:25)

We might stop there, defining work to be a means to an end. Work is purely instrumental, a necessary drudgery. Work provides subsistence at least. If there is anything worthwhile beyond that, it is perhaps a means to fund good causes, give to the poor, to fund spreading the good news. However, I suspect there is more to work than merely drawing a paycheck. I believe work also reveals the imago Dei. It demonstrates that we are created in God’s image. We are appointed by God as stewards of his creation, to cultivate and care for it. That is, we are called by God to work. I suspect that work is thus a deeply human characteristic. At its root, work is an intentional effort directed towards a purpose. When we strive toward a goal, whether paid or not, whether physical or mental exertion, we are working. When that goal is aligned with kingdom purposes, when it glorifies God, when it demonstrates love for our neighbor, then that work is itself a sacrifice pleasing and acceptable to God.

Designing technology is work that reflects our Creator and fulfills our role as stewards cultivating the creation. Unfortunately, the choice of which technologies to design and build are driven largely by the ability of customers to pay for the product. This makes sense to a degree, but it tends to make technology a luxury for the wealthy. It takes extra diligence and passion to design for the less well-off in society, e.g., those with physical challenges that need physical aids or the poor who live in areas that lack clean water. If we only design for the wealthy, are we enabling laziness?  An argument could be made that someone is going to design it and get paid, so it might as well be me. Yet we could choose to design something nobler, even if the pay is little or naught.

When I first approached writing an article on the deadly sin of sloth, I wondered if I would have much to say. Most engineers I know are not lazy, and I consider myself reasonably diligent. To my surprise, as I started jotting down ideas, it struck me that studying sloth also led me to think about the definition and purpose of work -- and then I had more than would fit in one article!  Stay tuned for part 2, where we will explore the purpose of rest, whether technology might make us lazy, and how to seek technological diligence.