Jesus and technology

Jesus never held a smartphone, and it is a strange, beautiful fact that this changes nothing. He had a trade — wood, tools, measurements — and He had hands. The God who made those hands also made the elements your screen is drawn from, and the mind that designed it, and the laws it runs on. Technology is not outside His world. It is made of His world, borrowed from it, returned to it.

What He cares about has never been the tool but the aim. A coin in the hand was made honest or shameful by what it was for. A boat became a pulpit. A borrowed colt carried a king. He never condemned an object; He redirected a heart. “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27) — things serve; persons are served. That single line will carry you through every technology question you ever have, including this one.

So hold your devices the way He held tools: lightly, skillfully, for the sake of love. The Logos — the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3) — is not nervous about your laptop. He is interested in what you build with it, whom you reach through it, whether your light shines from it. A tool in a consecrated hand is still just a tool. But nothing consecrated is ever just anything.