Audio Transcript

We live in an age of hate. One political party hates the other. One nation hates another. But the polarity of our national and international struggles of 2022 is nothing new, as you can imagine. They’re as old as sin. Forty years ago, Pastor John said in a sermon, “The 1980s are becoming the decade of hate, and oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group and start hating the other group.” Same today. We’re tempted to fall in line with the world and hate our human opponents. But what a very different calling God gives to his church.

To understand God’s countercultural calling for us today in 2022, we rewind 41 years to hear a clip from a John Piper sermon. He was preaching on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. It’s one of my favorite sermons, especially when we face geopolitical chaos in the world. It’s an early sermon, preached on January 20, 1981. We heard another clip from this same sermon last Wednesday. There I mentioned that this sermon was preached two days before the Iran hostage crisis came to an end, and the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the new president of the United States. There was a lot of national and international news in the air when Piper preached on 1 Timothy 2:1–4.

The apostle Paul’s words were very relevant. Paul was eager for Christians to hold to the faith with “a good conscience,” according to 1 Timothy 1:19. That includes, as Paul explains, that Christians take a global worldview to offer

supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings . . . for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)

Piper took up this plea from Paul and preached on what it meant to pray for others in the age of global hate. Here’s Pastor John.

It’s a great blessing to have our daily bread. It’s a great blessing to have our trespasses forgiven. It’s a great blessing not to be led into temptation, but to be delivered from evil. But we don’t pray — Jesus didn’t teach us to pray — “Lord, bless us. Amen.” He taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:11–13).

We have not been taught to pray in broad, sweeping generalities. We have been taught to pray for particular kinds of problems. When Paul wanted help for himself, he asked the churches, “Pray for me in particular — don’t just pray for the missionary cause,” for example. Therefore, I do not think that we will satisfy the demand of 1 Timothy 2:1 if we say something like, “God, bless all men everywhere. Amen.” What does it mean? How can we satisfy it?

Prayer for All People

If we give Paul a sympathetic reading here — that’s what you always should try to give anything you read: give it a sympathetic reading; try to put yourself in the shoes of the writer — I think what he’s going to say is something like this: “Timothy, push out the boundaries of your concern. Don’t let your prayers be limited to any group, or any kind of people. Enlarge the circumference of your love, Timothy. Don’t be provincial or sectarian or elitist or nationalistic or racist in your prayers, Timothy. Let your prayers embrace all kinds of people — high and low, white and black, Democrats and Republicans, Soviet premiers and Iranian ayatollahs. Enlarge the heart of your prayers, Timothy. Go to school at Calvary, and learn to hate the bigotry and the racism of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, but to pray with earnest yearning for those men and women.”

“Don’t let your prayers be limited to any group, or any kind of people. Enlarge the circumference of your love.”

Isn’t Paul’s point the same as Jesus’s? “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies” — and do what? — “pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:43–45). Or to put it another way, “Timothy, there is no category of people of whom it can be said, ‘You ought not to pray for those.’” There is none. Here’s a message for our day, isn’t it? The 1980s are becoming the decade of hate, and oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group and start hating the other group.

Jesus warned us in Matthew 24:11–12, “Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” May it not be said of Bethlehem Baptist Church that we’ve made any contribution to the destruction of the world through icy hate, but let it be said of the Christians at Bethlehem — and oh, of all Christians — “Behold how they love one another. Look how they do good to those who hate them. Look how they bless those who curse them. Look how they pray for those who abuse them. Look at the parameters of their prayer. Why, there’s no boundary.”

Isn’t that the point of 1 Timothy 2:1? And if we pray like that and act like that, won’t people begin to say, “There must be a God of grace in the heavens, and he’s got a peculiar people on earth and in Minneapolis at this corner, people who are not conformed to this age or to this decade”?

Prayer for Kings

Now, after he stressed the wideness of the circumference, for some reason, Paul focuses in on kings and all in high positions. Pray for kings and all in high positions. Why? Why did he narrow in here? It’s clear from 1 Timothy 2:4–7 that Paul wants to emphasize that nobody be excluded from our goodwill, for nobody is beyond the grace of God. Why, then, do kings and people in high positions come in for special mention? I think there are at least two reasons — perhaps more, but I’ll just mention two.

The first is this: there are characteristics, aren’t there, about leaders that make it hard to pray for them — at least hard for those early Christians to pray for them, and I think still for us in many ways. One, for example, of those characteristics is that they are so distant and so remote — if not visually, or in miles, then in accessibility, anyway. They’re so remote.

It’s hard to pray for somebody earnestly, with heart yearning, that you don’t even know or don’t ever see. and yet Paul says, “That difficulty must be overcome. We must pray for the emperor, Nero. We must pray for the governor, Gallio. We must pray for proconsuls, and we must pray for Pilate and Herod and the like.” Those people must be prayed for, if you don’t ever see them. They may seem remote to you. They are not remote to God, and you can get as close to them through prayer as any of their closest advisors.

Here’s another example of a characteristic that makes them hard to pray for. They are often godless people, insensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. That was almost universally true in Paul’s day. I think in our day, if you take all the countries of the world — and let’s not just limit this command to America — it’s probably still true today. It doesn’t matter where or when we have lived. If we are going to pray for those who are kings and all in high positions, we are going to wind up praying mostly for people who are hostile to or indifferent to our faith. That seems to be a stumbling block for many people.

Stream of Water in God’s Hand

What do I pray for them? Well, Paul says, “Don’t hesitate to pray.” First of all, God can save. God can change kings and those in high positions. And second, he uses unbelievers in high positions to accomplish his purposes anyway, whether they believe or not. A couple of examples. In Isaiah 10 in the Old Testament, God takes the wicked king of Assyria and turns him into a rod of his wrath when he wants to punish his people, Israel, and then he casts him aside because of his arrogance when he’s through with him.

Once Nebuchadnezzar, the great, proud king of Babylon said this: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). You know what God did? He took away his reason and made him eat grass like an ox until he learned this lesson. In Daniel 4:34, Nebuchadnezzar says,

[The dominion of the Most High] is an everlasting dominion,     and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,     and he does according to his will among the host of heaven     and among the inhabitants of the earth;and none can stay his hand     or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34–35)

No king, no president, no Soviet premier or Iranian ayatollah can stay his hand when he has purposed to do a thing. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). The wise man said, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man [and a king], but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). Therefore, we have strong encouragement to pray because God rules over men, whether they believe him or not. God reigns, and none can stay his hand.

Working Through Wicked Kings

Now, one implication of that is that our prayers for these kings and these people in high positions will not only be for their conversion, or even their sanctification — that we must pray for, or we disobey our Lord Jesus. But we will go beyond that, and we will pray that God’s good saving purposes would be accomplished through them anyway, even if they are impenitent. That’s the second reason why I think Paul mentions the need to pray for kings and those in high positions — namely, because God is able to do so much good in the world through people in high positions.

Even a bad king, Paul thinks, is better than anarchy. Paul is in a Roman prison or is under house arrest in Rome when he writes 1 Timothy. The emperor is Nero. In a couple of years, he’s going to put Paul to death. Probably, he died in the lions’ arena. Now, Paul is saying what he says under those conditions. Therefore, he is not naive when he says, “Make thanksgivings for all men, for kings and all in high positions.” Thank God for Nero? Why? How can he say that?

At least for this reason: Paul’s perspective on the world is so good. It’s so big. It goes above and beyond his own little life, or even his own little (great) ministry. The emperor who puts Paul to death in Rome keeps peace in the provinces where the gospel is spreading like wildfire, and for that, Paul is very thankful. So, our prayers for kings and for leaders and for all men should be seasoned with thanksgiving.

Peace for the Gospel’s Sake

But the main thing Paul says to pray for is this: “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:2). Now, taken by itself, that might seem to fly right in the face of everything I’ve said. Is it really the case that in the last analysis, the only reason we pray for leaders is so that we might have the good life, so that we might have peace and tranquility and build our estates?

“May we never forget it, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we are exiles here in America.”

Many professing Christians seem to think so. But that would be a terrible misunderstanding of this text, wouldn’t it, because 1 Timothy 2:3–4 sharpens the focus of what Paul is really after. Why pray that we have peace and tranquility? Answer: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” God approves of peace and tranquility because he approves of the advance of the gospel. Peace is not the main thing; salvation is the main thing. Tranquility is not the main goal; the knowledge of the gospel of truth is the main goal.

May we never forget it, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we are exiles here in America. And I would say the same thing if I were talking to the Russians, the Iranians, the Mexicans, the Brazilians. We are exiles here in this land. We are not at home in America, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, or anywhere on this earth. Our commonwealth is in heaven. We do not pray, I do not pray, simply for the prosperity of any land. I pray for the magnificent spread of the saving purposes of God in every land and for whatever conditions it takes to achieve that.

Pastors have no shortage of issues that they are called up to address in their ministries. The pressure to be an expert on every new issue can be daunting when thinking about everything else on the pastor’s plate. Most pastors need fewer burdens, not more. But when issues of what it means to be human surface — and this is at the center of the debate over transgenderism — it’s important that pastors seek to bring the full counsel of God’s word to bear on the issue at hand.

Having written a book on transgenderism, my purpose here is to simplify for pastors what I think are the absolute essentials for them to consider when addressing their congregations and counselees on the challenge of transgenderism.

Necessity of Nature

What is a man? What is a woman? Until just a few years ago, these questions would have hardly been controversial. But now one cannot answer them without fear of offending someone who identifies as transgender. But this is where ground zero of the debate really is: whether the category of maleness and femaleness means anything concrete at all. In theological terms, we call this ontology, which is the study of being.

When a male claims to be a female, that is not only a psychological claim, but also a philosophical and biological claim about one’s being. From Genesis 1 onward, Scripture teaches that males and females are biological and embodied beings with immutable natures. We cannot change who we are. To speak of nature is to say that there exists an ideal form and function of what something ought to be. The nature of a family, for example, is to care for and raise offspring. To say that something has a nature is to insist upon the existence of concrete purposes to that thing’s being, which supplies our understanding of what the thing in question truly is.

This is where the true debate resides. Christianity views reality through the lens of Scripture, which speaks of male and female as beings defined by their anatomical and reproductive organization (Genesis 1:26–28). Hormones or surgery cannot override the underlying realities of our genetic structure. If culture tries to define male and female apart from anatomy and reproductive organization, male and female become fluid, absurd categories. Hence where we are as a culture.

The transgender worldview is an active thwarting of one’s nature. It is akin to defying limits or swimming upstream against a current: you might try, but eventually limitations and the strength of the current are going to sweep you up against your will.

“Scripture does not allow for a dualism between the body and the ‘self.’”

This reality of nature leads to one of the most important truths: actual transgenderism does not exist. Sure, there are people who may have genuine confusion over their “gender identity” (a concept itself riddled with problems), but the idea that there are persons truly “trapped” in the wrong body is false. Scripture does not allow for such a dualism between the body and the “self.”

Reality of Flourishing

Flowing downstream from the reality of our nature as male and female is the idea that males and females should flourish in accordance with their being. Flourish is a term that describes the fullness of a thing’s being. A flourishing family is a family with no disruptions or privations undermining its operations. A thing experiences its fullness of being or excellence when it lives according to what it is and what it is designed to do.

The issue of flourishing connects to transgenderism because, from a scriptural worldview, we understand that a person can never thrive or flourish apart from living in harmony with God’s design in creation. A person might claim to flourish according to how he or she defines flourishing, but flourishing is not a term left to the eye of the beholder.

Drug addicts might see their intoxication as a form of flourishing, but this we understand as a cheapened form of flourishing that will, over time, result not in the fullness of their being but, rather, in their undoing. Defined biblically, flourishing understands and welcomes the idea of limitations and boundaries (Psalm 119:45). We are not purely autonomous beings who can create and re-create our nature and our paradigms for flourishing. Flourishing is a pathway we are called to live in line with, not against.

“True flourishing cannot come at the expense of rejecting our nature and our embodiment.”

To love our transgender-identifying neighbors is to seek their good. We cannot teach or imply that any form of transition will actually achieve what they desire: the joy of flourishing. When one reads in-depth about the scourge of depression, anxiety, and suicidality even among persons who have undergone some degree of transition, we realize something essential to this discussion: true flourishing cannot come at the expense of rejecting our nature and our embodiment. It simply cannot happen.

As time goes on, I expect to see an explosion in the number of people who experimented with transgender identities, or who even transitioned to some degree, who are living testaments to the falseness of transgender ideology. Indeed, we see these testimonies online already. Called “de-transitioners” and silenced by mainstream sources, a growing chorus of voices is warning others of the contagion-like consequences of embracing a transgender worldview.

Central to our ethics as Christians is the command to love our neighbor. This means seeking their flourishing (Matthew 7:12). Undoubtedly, activists will disagree with our motives of love. In fact, they will see our definition of love as opposite their own. To that, we must simply accept the cost of biblical conviction and do whatever we can to convey that we’re not interested in anything less than their relationship with God and their flourishing as human beings.

On one final note, I want to caution readers from thinking that every transgender-identifying person is an angry activist. That is not the case. There are activists whose identities are wrapped up in ideological warring, but there are also many people, I’m convinced, who are vulnerable and volatile persons, with deeply unresolved personal and psychological issues, who need counseling and love, not scorn or mockery.

Call for Courage

To be a Christian in our day requires courage. Whether in the form of licensure denial, a lost job, suppressed speech, or the threat of coercion, Christians are going to find themselves on the wrong side of elite culture. But take heart. Jesus has overcome the world, and to be persecuted for his sake is to be blessed (Matthew 5:10–12; John 16:33).

As of this writing, however, there are glimmers of optimism that the secular foundation upon which the transgender worldview is built is beginning to crack. There are a growing number of people, some of them quite prominent, who are not Christians, who are raising concerns about the unsustainability of the transgender worldview. From privacy issues, safety issues, and equality and fairness issues, the world may be slowly coming to grips with the truth that its commitment to transgender ideology has outpaced its commitment to reality, sound thinking, and true human flourishing.

Audio Transcript

Hello, everyone. Tony Reinke here with a solo episode — just me today. An exciting day for me today because my new book is out: God, Technology, and the Christian Life. That’s the title, and I get to share with you a few thoughts today on why I wrote it.

I’ve dreamt of writing this book for several years. Back when I wrote 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, it proved hard to write, harder than I expected, because I couldn’t find a baseline theology of technology that would root my thinking with smartphone habits specifically. I came to discover a theological gap in how Christians think about modern-day technology, which surprised me.

Without that foundation, I had to build one of my own. So, I wrote a little ten-page introduction in the smartphone book, and I called it “A Little Theology of Technology” (pages 29–39). Some big categories had to be in place before we addressed Steve Jobs, his iPhone, and our social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

I also knew this smaller theology of technology would need to eventually become a larger theology of technology. And I knew, if I could pull this off, it would serve a need in the church in the tech age. But I would have to answer one massive question: What is God’s relationship to Big Tech? What does he think of smartphones, and space travel, and nuclear power, and agricultural innovations, and on and on? I had to answer that huge cluster of questions. Are the innovations we use today from God? Or is it all a product of godless worldliness? Because what we do with our technology will never be clear if we cannot answer this more fundamental question.

Bigger Theology of Technology

So, I am thrilled to announce that my fuller theology of technology is written, published, and now out from our friends at Crossway Books. Soon I will be, Lord willing, inside Silicon Valley, busy with four events spread over two days across the Bay Area, to celebrate the book launch and to give away hundreds of free copies. It’s never about book sales. It’s about books distributed. So, we are giving away hundreds of copies of my new book to key leaders inside Silicon Valley, something possible because we have generous ministry partners making those giveaways possible. So, thank you for your support! You make it possible for us to do this.

Your prayers would be greatly appreciated for those events, if you think of me, on January 25th and 26th. One event, on that first day, January 25th, is scheduled to be livestreamed online. Watch Desiring God’s social channels for details if you want in on that. I’ll be talking about the origins of electricity and jumping into a huge theological debate that Ben Franklin accidentally stirred up in New England. It’s a great story. I’ll be sharing it on January 25th. And we are launching my book through our friends at Westminster Bookstore, our official retailer. There you can get the book for 50 percent off. Check it out at wtsbooks.com if you’re interested.

Hard Reset on Tech

So seven years ago, when I began writing my smartphone book, I came to see that the church lacked a basic framework for evaluating technology. This is tragic because, on the one hand, it breeds a Christian dystopianism, where it seems like one key to holiness is to shun innovation, or at least never say anything nice about it — furrow your brow, squint your eyes, turn up your nose, be suspect of all new tech like you would treat a new R-rated movie. That’s godliness.

But it’s not godliness. It’s a mindset that often leads to a type of wannabe agrarian who lives with this air of anti-technology about him, but who also has an iPhone and drives an SUV and sees no irony in it.

On the other hand, without a clear framework for approaching tech, it also breeds a Christian who eagerly adopts every new gadget from Apple without working through any of the consequences of how the new, shiny device will serve him or undermine his life. Both of them — the wannabe agrarian and the eager adopter — tend to live from a flat, overly simplistic view of the world.

So, I came to discover that the church could use a hard reset. In understanding God’s relationship to science, innovation, and Silicon Valley, we need to take this whole topic and unplug and re-plug it back in. That’s how I typically fix electronics problems. And that’s what I’m trying to do in this new tech book. It’s a restart. Power down. Power up. Let’s clear the cache and start from scratch.

Calvin’s Scaffolding

But it also means returning to an age when theologians began building the scaffolding for the vision that we need today. I’m particularly thinking about the French Reformer John Calvin in the sixteenth century. Calvin was a Reformer — he sought to bring reform to the church. And he did reform the church in many important ways, three of them significant for how Christians relate to science and industry.

First, Calvin destigmatized wealth. He distinguished the sin of loving and hoarding wealth from the virtue of capital employed for the good of society at large. That was big, especially when a dominant vision of peak spirituality was the monk in a desert monastery. Calvin said, “No, you can be a shining example of godliness as a wealthy Christian who stewards that fortune selflessly to employ others, to grow industries, and to serve needs.” And of course, that’s where new innovations originate — from industrial wealth. So, Calvin unleashed diligent Christians to pioneer new businesses.

“Calvin set a vision of science and human innovation that was radically God-centered.”

Second, Calvin unhitched the church from what Rome attempted to do, which was to adjudicate major scientific discoveries. He said, instead, “No, the Protestant church will preach Christ and him crucified. Scientists will do their thing without the church meddling in their business as the final arbiter.” When you remove the threat of heresy for observable phenomena, it changes the church’s whole relationship to science, it encourages new discoveries, and it encourages Christians to make those discoveries.

Third, and maybe most importantly, Calvin set a vision of science and human innovation that was radically God-centered, a vision we simply call “common grace.” He said there were two plans enacted by God. God was unfolding his plan for the church — “uncommon grace” or “special grace” in Christ, in his gospel, and in his people. But God had a second plan — a “common grace” for the growth of society, economics, and industry. And Calvin went so far as to say that the same Holy Spirit that regenerates us is the same Holy Spirit that causes profitable human culture and scientific discovery and innovative creativity among Christians and non-Christians alike. Amazing.

Fifty Years That Changed Everything

Calvin’s remarkable vision of the world would later find its highest expression inside the world’s greatest watershed of human innovation. When we speak of tech today, we often make the mistake of limiting our discussions to Apple gadgets, computers, smartphones, smartwatches, electric cars, robots, AI, and things like that. But the story of tech stretches way back to past centuries. One of the most important came in the late 1800s.

Three hundred years after Calvin died came a fifty-year span of human innovation in which everything changed: 1863 to 1913. During this generation, cities were electrified. Light bulbs replaced candles in homes. Electrical motors came to power industry. Music was first recorded. Photography was first employed. Video recordings were invented, made, and movies projected. Airplanes first lifted off the ground. Huge iron, ocean-worthy vessels connected continents. Gas-powered engines began to pop. Cars replaced carriages and family horses. Tractors replaced farm horses. Typewriters replaced pens. The QWERTY keyboard layout we still use today was invented. Telegraph wires began sending electronic messages at unthinkable speeds over unbelievable distances. Wireless radio waves united mass audiences by live broadcast. Medical advances in germs and vaccines ended many awful killing diseases and viruses.

Literally everything in life changed between 1863 to 1913 — advances in science and medicine and travel and shipping and communications and industry, permanent changes that continue to shape our daily lives today.

With all this new innovation speeding along at full tilt, Christian thinkers leaned in and asked the key questions: What does it mean to be a people of faith living inside such a massive, life-altering technological revolution? How are we to think of these endless scientific discoveries and new innovative promises? Where does it come from? Is this innovation of God? Is it of the world? Is technology godly? Is it godless?

Inside this tech era, a writer by the name of Abraham Kuyper took up these questions and returned to Calvin’s old vision. Kuyper was a journalist, theologian, and one-time Dutch prime minister. He knew the world, he knew politics, economics, industry, and he experienced this great, watershed technological revolution firsthand. And he knew his Bible well. And he came to see — like Calvin three centuries earlier — that God was still governing the story of human innovation by his Holy Spirit in his gifts of common grace.

Dystopian Visions

So, it seemed like the church was progressing well in understanding innovation in the nineteenth century. But this technological revolution, these fifty years, with all its incredible promise and progress, was abruptly followed by World War I, followed by World War II, followed by the Cold War. And it became really clear, really fast, that for all our new innovative powers to heal, humanity had also mastered the art of massacring at a scale never before witnessed.

The conversation over God’s common grace changes when your tech can now incinerate 100,000 people in the hyperblink of a nuclear explosion. Theologians would have to account for new powers of mass destruction. Following two world wars, then the nuclear standoff of the Cold War, the church’s theologians changed their tune. The tenor of the Protestant conversation about human technology veered dystopian. Our theologians more likely demonized technology in Babel-like categories — innovations as agents of power, dominance, inequality, and mass destruction — rather than as expressions of God’s Spirit and gifts of his common grace.

Reclaiming Common Grace

And so, without diminishing very legitimate concerns, I’m bridging back, over two world wars, to a vision of God’s common grace in which there were both tech warnings alongside a healthy dose of Godward thanks for the technologies that adorned daily life. Those must exist together: warnings and appreciations. And they do — they hold together nicely when we turn our attention to the Bible.

So, we need to look afresh at the origins of industry and the birth of human innovativeness (as we find them in Genesis 4). And we need to see where technologies — the actual material technologies themselves — emerge from the created order (as we discover in Isaiah 28). And we need to look at God’s relationship to the most powerful and dangerous technologists in the world (as we see in Isaiah 54). And we need to look at how man so easily idolizes his technological powers as idols and false saviors (as we see in Psalm 20). There are idols at play, but the incredible generosity of the Creator is also at play in giving us a universe loaded with oil and gas and electricity and uranium and metals and plastics and silicon and computer chips and the sixty natural elements that comprise our smartphones. All our innovations are owing to the incredible generosity of our Creator.

“For me, talking about tech is just another way to explore the generosity of our God.”

In other words, the challenge is to reclaim a vision of human innovation in which we see God’s common grace once again. For me, talking about tech is just another way to explore the generosity of our God. And so, I’m asking, Which is bigger? Is Big Tech bigger than your God? Or does your God dwarf the powers of Big Tech?

We know the right answer in our heads. But do we believe it — truly believe it in our hearts? Because I fear when it comes down to practice, for many Christians, Big Tech seems stronger than God. So, we get insecure and threatened by tech, because we hold a vision of a god bullied by the power players inside Silicon Valley. That must be reversed. And it’s not reversed by demonizing tech, but by seeing the gift of God in the tens of thousands of innovations we use daily and take for granted, not to mention for the layers of innovations at play for you to hear me right now. All of these are gracious gifts of common grace.

This Book Is For You

I wrote this book for non-Christians, for Christians, for techies, for non-techies. And I’m launching it inside the belly of the beast, inside Silicon Valley. But you don’t have to live in a tech center to see its relevance. We all live in the tech age.

Ultimately, I want all the innovations you take for granted every day to turn your eyes to see the generosity of our eternal, unchanging God. So, you can imagine my thrill when Pastor John took time to read my book slowly, and then said, for him, it was “a worship experience.” That’s my aim. I hope you’ll join me in worship. God, Technology, and the Christian Life — my new book — is now out.