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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Written by Michael F. Bird |
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is striking in how it exemplifies Jesus’ overall mission and message. For Williams, Jesus was more than a religious talent and literary master. His teaching was part of a messianic career, climaxing in his death and resurrection, a career that was part of the story of God’s plan to create and renew the world. As Williams suggests, Jesus’ genius if rooted in both his identity and his origin: he came from God and he is God. 

It’s wrong to reduce Jesus to a moral teacher or mere philosopher. Jesus was not a wordsmith selling word salads, nor a crank peddling new ideas, nor a sophist showing off his rhetorical verve, nor an intellectual establishing his own academy à la Plato. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, even “Immanuel.” Be that as it may, while Jesus is more than a teacher, he is certainly no less than one, and his teaching remains poignant, powerful, and challenging even today. This is where The Surprising Genius of Genius: What the Gospels Reveal About the Greatest Teacher by Peter J. Williams comes in. Williams’ thesis is that Jesus is just as much a genius as Aristotle, Mozart, or Einstein. Jesus’ teaching contains “impressive factual knowledge” along with an “impressive depth of insight, coherence, and simplicity.” For Williams, the Christian revolution that rocked the Roman world and birthed western civilization goes back to the “genius” of Jesus.
Williams takes as Exhibit A Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15:11–32. The genius of Jesus is evident, claims Williams, by virtue of three things found here. First, the sheer cleverness of the parable itself. It’s the third of three parables about lost things: lost sheep, a lost coin, and then a lost son. These parables serve to defend why Jesus dines with the “deplorables,” sinners, and tax collectors, much to the consternation and disapproval of the Pharisees and scribes. Williams points out that the story is both brief and beautiful, creates tension, and mentions family, a farm, famine, pigs, poverty, and a fattened calf. The ingratitude and indulgence of the younger son makes us angry; we’re then shocked and surprised by the mercy of his father, and even sympathetic to the anger and jealousy of the older son. Yet, as Williams notes, the story is not really about the prodigal but about the older son, because he, just like the Pharisees and scribes, refuses to join the celebration that someone lost has been found, as in Jesus’ fellowship with sinners. The lost son’s redemption is not the main point; he is but a prop to show the hard-heartedness of Jesus’ critics, who think they possess “a greater share of God’s favor”—a brilliant narrative bait and switch.
Second, the parable alludes to and echoes various Old Testament stories. Jesus was no trained scribe, but he was able to weave in allusions and echoes of the Old Testament in ways that might have impressed even the “experts.” In particular, Jesus’ parable rehearses many themes and key motifs from the Book of Genesis. To begin with, there are a number of OT characters who had two sons, most notably Isaac (Esau and Jacob).
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The iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet….In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.

In a few years, Cyberdyne Systems will create a revolutionary defense system.
It’s called Skynet.
A computer program that automatically controls the defense of the United States. The system goes online on August 4th…Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, the US government try to pull the plug. But Skynet fights back.
Those are the haunting words of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Robotic T–800 Terminator character in the movie, Terminator 2. Skynet is the US military’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) that turns on its makers, destroying and enslaving humanity.
Skynet is the epitome of nightmares about AI.
While Skynet-level Artificial Intelligence is not imminent, many are sounding the alarm about the dangers of unregulated AI with the advent of ChatGPT. And the spread of AI into everyday life raises the question of what it means for us as individuals, families, schools, workplaces, and society at large. How will AI impact us? Will we one day face a ‘Skynet’ moment, like in the Terminator movies?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve taken a deep dive down the AI rabbit hole, listening to podcasts, reading books, taking courses, and testing it myself. And let me say, it’s been a roller coaster ride of emotions, from dread at how this AI might eventually take our jobs and possibly even our freedom, to optimism about what AI could do for us.
Here are 12 things that I’ve discovered:
1. AI is Like Nuclear Energy: It’s Both Promising and Dangerous
Microsoft Founder Bill Gates has said the power of artificial intelligence is “so incredible, it will change society in some very deep ways…The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous—we had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons”.
2. Technological Change Isn’t Additive; It’s Transformative
When a new technology comes onto the scene—especially one as powerful as AI—it doesn’t just add itself to the existing technology we’re using: it often upends it, changing our society.
Think about how the iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet and just about any new technology.
In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.
3. A Christian View of Humanity Will Impact How We Approach AI and New Technology
In the biblical view of reality, humans aren’t machines we can discard when better machines come along. We need to care for our neighbours, who are made in the image of God and who will be impacted by technological change.
Love for our neighbours should lead Christians to discern and influence how technology is developed and used, rather than just jumping on the narrative that technological change is inevitable, whether we like it or not.
4. AI Is not Ethically Neutral, but Is Furnished with the Ethics of Its Designers
AI is being used in all sorts of applications that have ethical implications: from hiring for jobs to predicting whether a criminal will re-offend. Concerns have already been raised about racial and gender bias in these programs.[1]
As Christian author John Lennox points out, “If the ethical programmers [of AI] are informed by relativistic or biased ethics, the same will be reflected in their products.”[2]
This is why Christians should try and have a seat at the table of AI design, especially of AI products that have ethical uses.
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