The serpent tempted Adam and Eve to become more like God on their own terms, yet this tragically resulted in them becoming less like God. Digital technology extends a similar promise to make humans more like God on their terms and has a deforming effect on our minds, bodies, and souls. Weekly Sabbath observance is a re-formational practice that not only creates distance between us and the deforming power of digital technology but also creates the possibility of renewal through undistracted connection to Christ through the Spirit.

The serpent promised that the fruit in the garden would make Adam and Eve more like God. While the fruit reduced the capability gap between God and humanity, it widened the character gap. This article aims to demonstrate that digital technology parallels the fruit in both its promise to grant us God-like abilities while also deforming God’s character in us. I use current psychological and sociological research to demonstrate that high digital technology use steadily deforms God’s character in humanity. I conclude by suggesting that weekly Sabbath practice counters this deforming technological pressure and creates space for God to re-form his image in us.

“Take the fruit, and you will be like God,” the serpent whispers in Eve’s ear. The reality was that Eve was already like God; humans uniquely reflect and represent God’s image. And though Adam and Eve were created like God, this was not enough. A desire to extend the boundaries of their God-likeness consumed them, leading them to bite the fruit that the serpent promised would make them even more like God. The irony is that the serpent was both telling the truth and a lie. The fruit opened Adam and Eve’s eyes, allowing them to access knowledge that previously only God held—and yet taking the fruit on their own terms twisted the image in them, making them less like God than before.
The information age’s digital revolution parallels the serpent’s deceptive promises in the garden.1 With just a few keystrokes, Google allows anyone to access almost any knowledge known to man. Alexa enables us to illuminate our homes with just a word. Social media grants us the ability to be present to everyone all the time. And now with the proliferation of ChatGPT and other AI applications, the upper limits of human productivity have never been so high. One might even say technology makes us gods.2 These abilities are doubtlessly used for pure ends, but might these expanded abilities be similar to the serpent’s god-like temptation in the garden? Do these technologies simultaneously reduce the gap between God’s abilities and our own while also widening the gap between God’s character and our own? Like Adam and Eve, the irony of technology is that in becoming more like God, his image is becoming less clear in us. God desires we resemble him, but we desire to rival God.3 And just like Adam and Eve couldn’t undo the bite they had taken, the technological genie has left the bottle. Is it wrong for a surgeon to consult a global medical community for wisdom on treating a patient with a rare disease? Is it wrong to use FaceTime to maintain connection with elderly shut-ins during a pandemic?4
This article aims to demonstrate that the digital revolution allows us to act more like God and yet has a steady deforming pressure that moves our character away from God’s. Like a car in drive on level pavement, creeping forward unless proactively and thoughtfully impeded, digital technology steadily bends our character away from God in our unconscious and uncritical use of it. To proactively fight against digital technology’s deforming pressure, I argue that observing the ancient practice of the Sabbath both counteracts the lie that we can ever truly rival God’s power while also providing the ingredients and space for God’s character to be deeply formed in us. Thus, the Sabbath allows us to use our digital tools with humility and wisdom and keep us in the position of masters over our tools rather than our tools mastering us.
My argument unfolds in three broad sections. In the first section, I unpack the assertion that the fruit in the garden came from a temptation to make Adam and Eve more like God on their own terms. Additionally, I trace the plot line of God restoring and forming his image in his people despite its distortion in the garden. In the second section, I demonstrate how digital technology parallels the temptation to inch closer to God’s power while practically deforming his character in us. The final section explores how the practice of Sabbath observance offers us space to cooperate with God’s forming his character in us while also causing us to delight in the reality that God’s incommunicable attributes are utterly foreign.
1. Imago Dei in Humanity
This section first explores the imago Dei from a biblical-theological lens, demonstrating that it was always God’s desire for mankind to be like God in significant and unique ways. This “likeness” was distorted by Adam and Eve’s discontent with the boundaries of this likeness. Yet, God remains committed to this imago Dei vision of humanity despite the damage that had been done. In unpacking this trajectory, I examine four movements: (1) God desired humanity to reflect him; (2) the serpent promised greater godlikeness on their own terms; (3) the result of listening to the serpent was becoming less like God; and (4) God is redeeming his image in his people, and the fruit of the Spirit is one of the clearest examples of this in the New Testament.
1.1. Godlikeness Granted
The serpent’s deception is that God was never threatened by Adam and Eve (Gen 3:6). The Creator always intended for Adam and Eve to resemble him, but by striving to become more like God, the two humans became less like him. Genesis teaches that humanity is unique from all other creation in that they alone are created in God’s image.5 This is no accident; God chooses under no compulsion or fear of competition to form humanity in His image (Gen 1:27). Each of the previous creatures is made “according to its own kind” (Gen 2:11–12; 21, 24–25), but only Adam and Eve are created “in [God’s] image” (Gen 2:26–27).6 To be image-bearers means humanity both reflects God and represents God.7 In reflecting God, we ought to see a similarity to God when we look at humanity. In representing God, we ought to function similarly to God in his place.8 Unlike any other creature, God wanted Adam and Eve to be like him. So what exactly did it mean for Adam and Eve to reflect and represent God?
This question must be answered with humility as the text does not explicitly give us an answer.9 Theologians throughout church history have provided varying, sometimes contradictory, answers on what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.10 Though absolute agreement is allusive, many see the image Dei reflected in man’s character.11 This may not be directly evident in the creation passage, but John Calvin argued that only in reading ahead to the New Testament could one fully understand the imago Dei of Genesis 2.12 In other words, only by looking at how the image is restored in believers through the Spirit and displayed in Christ can we fully understand how Adam and Eve imaged God in the garden.
1.2. Greater Godlikeness Tempted
Genesis 3 details the moment Adam and Eve first sinned against God and were thus expelled from God’s presence in the garden. The serpent’s deception finds its strength in enflaming Eve’s pride; his half-truths extend the possibility of divinity by offering the possibility that Adam and Eve could truly achieve equality with God’s divine glory.13 And who wouldn’t want this glory? Who wouldn’t want the happiness that comes from divine knowledge?14 And thus, the serpent suggests that the Creator is not the type of God he lets on. Adam and Eve’s limitations must come from a place of fear that Adam and Eve would become like him15 because he must be the type of God who withholds what is truly good.16
The tragic irony is that Adam and Eve were already “like God; they had been created in his image.”17 More than that, God had filled the earth with all kinds of good things (Gen 1:3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31; 2:9), and he remedied the only thing that was lacking by blessing Adam with a wife (Gen 2:18). This insidiousness of the lie, however, is not found in its false premises but rather in the complete inverse of its result. Instead of the knowledge moving them closer to God’s equal, it creates a greater division between humankind and their Creator.18
1.3. Godlikeness Diminished
The type of knowledge that promised to make Adam and Eve like God ended up making them less like him. It undid part of the miracle of bearing God’s image. The image was not lost completely19 but diminished. Augustine writes, though they desire to be like gods:
in fact, they would have been better able to be like gods if they had in obedience adhered to the supreme and real ground of their being, if they had not in pride and made themselves their own ground…. By aiming at more, a man is diminished, when he elects to be self-sufficient and defects from the one who is really sufficient for him.20
Reformer Wolfgang Musculus agrees with Augustine: “Satan promised divinity if they would eat of the forbidden tree’s fruit. They ate, and they were so far from acquiring the glory of divinity that they became more like vile and subhuman beasts than like God.”21 Here we see a crucial insight into the nature of Adam and Eve’s sin. Pride promises to make us more like God but always does the opposite. Pride pledges to bridge the gap to God’s abilities but always ends in greater separation from him. Pride first manifested itself in taking the fruit in the garden, but every human has made the same choice: our prideful desires remain discontent merely bearing God’s image rather than being self-sufficient, all-knowing, and all-powerful.
1.4. The Image’s Redemption
Though sin had deformed and distorted God’s image in humanity, God had not given up on his original intentions. Though this meta-theme is sweeping in scope, for the parameters of this paper, I focus on only two aspects: Jesus as the perfect image of God and the Spirit’s role in redeeming the image in us.
1.4.1. Christ, the True Image
The New Testament presents a portrait of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine, which the Nicene Creed summarizes.22 By implication of Jesus’s divinity, he lives a perfect, sinless life.23 This means that when we read about Jesus, we see both a portrait of what God is like, and we also see what a human, unstained by sin, is supposed to be like. Jesus, therefore, is the perfect image of God, the one by whom we compare all other claims of what it means to be like God and become more like God as a human.24
1.4.2. Formation of Christlikeness
There are many places in the Bible we can look for a catalog of Christ-like character qualities, though none may be as famous as Galatians 5:22–26, where Paul lists nine character qualities: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is not a list of do’s and don’ts of the Christian life but rather the Spirit forming the Christian’s character to resemble Christ’s.25 This is the character manifestation of what Paul, a chapter earlier, says is “Christ [being] formed in you” (Gal 4:19).

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Fathers and mothers both need to have the flexibility that allows them to come to an agreement on rules and limits and clearly define them for the children. Doing so prevents the possibility of the kids playing one parent against the other. Our efforts to teach our children to obey both parents make it easier for them to obey God later in life when they are faced with making their own decisions.

Part two of a four-part series on fatherhood.
My dad was of the old school where a father was to hold himself above outward displays of emotion, especially where the kids were concerned. The father of old was to be above question regarding his decisions as well.
Don’t get me wrong; my dad was a Christian man, a good dad who provided for his family and treated everyone well, including the dog that he didn’t particularly like. But he thought his authority was better preserved by exhibiting an air of infallibility and avoiding outward displays of emotion. What I learned from his example is how not to make the same mistake. A biblical dad needs to be flexible by being willing to show how he feels and also willing to admit mistakes when he is wrong.
Fathers are to be flexible.
Paul writes: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
The Greek word Paul uses for “bring up” carries the idea of nourishing a child from the very beginning with tenderness and compassion. But you protest, “mothers are the natural nurturers!” Yes, that is true to some extent, but men are capable of learning the flexibility that the old school fathers of the past seemed to avoid.
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Life after death is not one that begins only after the great resurrection of the dead or with the second coming of Christ. Even after the body and soul have been separated in death, there is an ongoing existence of the soul even after the body has decayed.  

One of the more common questions I’ve been asked since 2020 relates to death. Covid-19 has brought a sense of urgency to many. That urgency has led some to search the scriptures to find the answers to their deepest questions: What happens after we die?
Many people have been taught a generic “afterlife” concept. There is a generalized cartoony afterlife in mind among some of my friends who are unbelievers (some quite staunch atheists). This cartoon takes on either a “darkened red glow” or a “blue shining glow”. The red place is a place of torment, torture, and pain. The red place in many Americans’ minds is a place of a general deprivation of all things entertaining, lovely, and delightful. The blue place is a place of happiness, light, relief, rest, music, and peace. The blue place in many Americans’ minds is a place of general presence of all things pleasing, akin to an eternally open theme park or beach.
There are other generalizations that accompany these two cartoonish pictures of eternity. Some have vague notions that the afterlife spells an eternity spent floating on clouds. Others speak of disembodied souls. Some have hope of reunification with lost loved ones, though they know not how this is possible when the bodies once inhabited are long since decayed. Some have an ascension in mind, that this life is dirty and less than the life to come, and that in that life to come a loss of the physical state is a new promise of freedom.
These questions are partially what has led me to preach on this topic in August of 2021, and the two audio read-aloud series we are doing currently on YouTube. The Saint’s Everlasting Rest by Richard Baxter is a beautiful book of devotional delights as Baxter contemplated and exposited what God’s Word has to say about the believer’s eternal life after death (you can click here to access that playlist and join along listening to the book). Andrew MacLaren preached a set of sermons on the book of Philippians, a letter from the Apostle Paul to a church without a hint of rebuke, but instead an abounding measure of praise and joy. Often this praise and joy Paul speaks of in Philippians come from reminders of the eternal joy Christians have awaiting them after death.
So as I’ve been pondering these things, studying these things, and preaching on these things, we come again to the question at hand.
What Does God’s Word Have to Say About What Happens After We Die?
It is good to expose whatever we may believe, think, or imagine to the truth of God’s Word (Psalm 139:1). Like a patient in need of life-saving surgery, we risk much by coming to the Word of God. In searching God’s Word, are we open to what God has to say? Are we willing to listen and follow where Jesus speaks and leads (Or will we come away sad like the rich man before Jesus in Mark 10:21-22)? If God’s Word says something very different from what we’ve been taught, will we lay aside our own notions and cling to the revealed truth of God? It is a dangerous thing to submit to the sword of the Spirit (Hebrews 4:12). We may lose face, our friends may think our faith strange, and our relatives may betray us (As they did to Jesus, thinking him crazy in Mark 3:21)! Yet for all that we lose by seeking God’s revealed truth, we gain much more (Mark 10:29-31).
‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ’no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’—Mark 10:29-31
When we come to God’s Word we do not enter into a conversation with a friend over coffee, offering speculations. When we come to the Word of God we are on holy ground. We are in the presence of Truth revealed. What a blessing God has given to us in His Word! It pushes the darkness of doubt away and lays open the treasures of reality.
So recall your cartoony thoughts. Remember what you’ve been taught about what happens after we die. Bring to mind what you’ve considered while mourning for lost loved ones in the Lord. Bring these thoughts and beliefs captive before the Lord of glory and face the exposure of the truth of God’s Word.
Passages from God’s Word
1. God’s Word makes clear that death itself is a consequence of sin. Death is not natural to God’s created order for mankind. In other words, without sin, there would be no death. Death first came to humanity as a result of Adam’s sin. Death is not a glory in itself, death is a consequence.
By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust, you will return. (NIV Genesis 3:19)
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. (NIV Romans 5:12)
2. God’s Word makes clear that mankind has been given a physical body inhabited with a living soul. At death, the body ceases its activity, while the spirit or soul continues. There are at the foundations of who and what we are as humans these two components; a body and a soul. We ought to guard that we do not overemphasize either of these two components which can lead to new-age paganism, agnosticism, or materialism. The sacred scriptures speak of both the body and the soul as being impacted at death.
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
…and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
…because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. (Psalm 16:10)
You, LORD, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit. (Psalm 30:3)”
3. God’s Word makes clear that in death our body and soul are separated. Our bodies return to the ground (to dust is the often-used expression), while our spirits depart from our bodies. The speech of Jesus to the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43 is particularly telling as it indicates that the bodies of the thief and Jesus would be dead yet, Jesus spoke of the thief being with him in paradise. It is this separation of body and soul which occurs at death. The material body after death to experience decay (or corruption is often the term biblically), and the immortal soul to dwell outside the body in another place.
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. (Revelation 6:9)
4. God’s Word makes clear that there are multiple destinations or locations for those who have died. There is after death awaiting God’s people eternal rest, and awaiting the enemies of God an absence of rest. These destinations are spoken of biblically in many word pictures throughout various passages.
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (Matthew 25:41-46)
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ Everyone will be salted with fire. (Mark 9:42-49)
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