Let’s begin with this question: Does digital technology contribute to human flourishing? Surely this is an important question for any technology, and not least one that is so clearly poised, according to some futurists, to tempt us to jettison our humanity. Here, of course, I’m thinking not only about transhumanists,²⁴ but also any who are tempted to believe in a kind of technological inevitability that will eventually outgrow human capacities and require us either to fight for our very lives or succumb to servitude to the Machine. Just so, sociologist Katherine Hayles has written, “Humans can either go quietly into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a little while longer by becoming machines themselves. In either case . . . the age of the human is drawing to a close.”²⁵

What sorts of creatures are we humans? And what does human flourishing look like in a burgeoning digital technoculture? What burdens do digital technologies pose for human well-being? These are profound questions in this phase of the twenty-first century.

We are innovators. The proliferation of digital media, like other technological innovation, demonstrates that Homo sapiens (human knowers) are also by nature Homo faber (human makers). What economist Michael Novak has called “the fire of invention”²⁶ burns in the belly of human beings. In the beginning, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). God’s mandate to Adam and all his progeny “to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the face of the earth” (Genesis 1:28), extended to every non-living thing too. Indeed, in the Genesis story we find people making tools, boats, weapons, and cities. Sometimes called “the cultural mandate,” this injunction is a tacit directive to create technologies and culture.

Creativity is one of those attributes that God shares with his human creatures. And create we must. Inventiveness and innovation are woven into the very fabric of our natures. So we develop, improve, conquer, subdue, and steward natural and other resources, including our own bodies. Generally speaking, we should celebrate, cultivate, and reward creativity as a divine gift.

We are social. From the beginning human beings both desired and found benefits in community. Although God saw that everything else was good in his new creation, it was not good that man should be alone (Genesis 2). Technology has contributed in unparalleled ways to help humans build community. From the family farm to the construction of small towns and large cities, we demonstrate that we are social creatures. Sewage treatment, electricity, telephones, computers, and technologies like wifi, help us manage population dense communities. Connectivity is a buzz word today because, among other things, it emphasizes our commitment to cultivating social networks of people across extremely diverse locations, populations, and cultures.

We are playful. Play is a natural expression of our creativity and sociability. Put two human beings together and give them a moment’s release from the burden to survive, and they will develop games and competitions. Doubtless Adam and Eve played hide and seek in the garden. Josef Pieper has argued convincingly that leisure is the basis of culture. At its best, entertainment is a form of leisure—rest for the soul against the pressures of worry, the hurry-up culture, and the burdens of duty. Technology not only helps us find more time for leisure by doing some chores more efficiently, but digital technologies have also become an enormous source of entertainment. Radio, television, video games, and web-based social networks are ubiquitous forms of entertainment in most parts of the world.

We make choices. Humans are willing beings. Philosopher of technology, David Nye, reminds us that, “Machines are not like meteors that come unbidden from outside and have an ‘impact.’ Rather, human beings make choices when inventing, marketing, and using a new device.”²⁷ Although it sometimes feels like there is a kind of inevitability about technology, we can and do resist certain technologies. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should, much less that we must. Even when a ubiquitous digital technology like text messaging is so pervasive, that does not mean we are determined to check our phones every second. But, as sociologist Sherry Turkle says, this takes the will to “both redesign technology and change how we bring it into our lives.”

We are desiring beings. Our desires, our loves, our affections are expressed in our habits. To borrow one of the titles of Jamie Smith’s books, You Are What You Love.²⁸ Or as St. Augustine taught, sin is disordered desire, disordered love. The Christian life is one of re-ordering our desires to bring them in conformity with the love of God. We should love God with our whole hearts, love our neighbors as ourselves, and enjoy God through our relationship with him and through the things he has made. Jesus said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

We are embodied. All humans are embodied beings. From conception to death, and from resurrection throughout eternity, to be human means to have a body. We learn this not only from the Genesis account where we are told that God made Adam’s body from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7), we learn it supremely in the coming of the God-man, Jesus Christ. “Offspring of a Virgin’s womb,” as we sing during the Christmas season, Jesus is perfect God and perfect man. From his conception, Jesus is an embodied human person. Or, as the apostle John put it in his account of the good news of Jesus, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as from the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Through the incarnation—the enfleshment of God in Jesus Christ—God sacralizes the human body. Our humanity is a bodily state of existence just as Jesus’ humanity is a bodily state of existence. Radical dualism is not only mistaken anthropology, it is mistaken Christology.

We are limited and fallen. In short, we are not God. In fact, our Lenten confession is that from dust we have come, and to dust we shall return. Despite the many marvelous human accomplishments, we are limited, mortal creatures. God alone is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. We are limited by time and space—we can only be genuinely present in one place at a time. We are limited in our powers—mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. We are limited in our knowledge—including our native intelligence and memory, so we are unable to anticipate every possible consequence of our decisions. Moreover, we are not only morally limited so that we do not always choose what is best for us, but also because of our sinfulness, we sometimes choose that which is ultimately harmful to ourselves and others. So we petition God to forgive both our sins of commission and our sins of omission.

A New Tower of Babel

The dual plagues of naïveté on the one hand and hubris on the other have often resulted in profound harm to individuals, communities, and societies. The Tower of Babel looms large as an example of human pride (Genesis 11:1-9). In his most helpful volume, Virtual Morality: Christian Ethics in the Computer Age, Graham Houston observes:

The ziggurat is a well-known feature of ancient Mesopotamia, and was often built with mud bricks and tar due to the scarcity of local stone. It is therefore a symbol of technology-gone-wrong, the result of the ingenuity of humankind in culling materials and using them for their own evil purposes. But it is also a symbol of their pride, their desire to make a name for themselves (11:4). Excavated inscriptions indicate that these towers were meant to serve as stairways to heaven. They had a purely religious significance and had no practical use apart from religious ritual. According to the biblical narrative, they were symbolic of the desire to usurp the authority of the landlord. They were declarations of independence from the true God, yet also expressions of underlying religious needs. ²⁹

Since the fall in the Garden, the proclivities of humanity are toward rebellion against God, often manifest as the desire to be gods ourselves. Although they are expressive of our creativity, technologies have also provided the means for us to feel more self-sufficient and less dependent on God. In many ways we have become masters of our own fate, developing life-saving technologies like chemotherapy, coronary artery by-pass grafts, and organ transplantation. We can now stave off the ravages of disease. The tower grows taller. Next is immortality and human perfection, or is it?