Humanity in a world online

Sermon thumbnail

14 Jul 2024

Humanity in a world online

Passage Genesis 11:1-9

Speaker Hugh Bourne

Service Morning

Series Good News for Today

DownloadAudio|Connect Group Notes (PDF)|Connect Group Notes (DOC)

Passage: Genesis 11:1-9

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Transcript (Auto-generated)

This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. It's just a tool, though, isn't it? No, it's not.

No, no, it's an alien life form. What do you think? I mean, when you think then about, is there life on Mars? Yes, it's just landed here, but it's simply a different delivery system there. You're arguing about something more profound.

Oh, yeah. I'm talking about the actual context. And the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment, where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympathic, it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.

They go, that was David Bowie. Bowie? Bowie? What is that? Bowie?

That was David Bowie speaking in 1999. How long ago is that? 25 years ago. Talking about the Internet and the way in which he foresaw how the Internet would change our world. He was talking five years before Facebook was launched.

He was talking eight years before the first smartphone was released. And if anything, as we look out across the world, we see his predictions, if anything, were rather conservative when he predicted the scale and pace of change which would come through inventions like the Internet. Now, we're going to take some time this morning to consider this whole question of technology. What does it mean to be human in a world online? And what we're going to do this morning is hopefully paint, if you like, a framework, a biblical framework of how we understand technology.

We'll look at some specific examples of how they are changing us and changing our world. This isn't going to be a how to sermon, to be honest, I'm still teaching most of you how to open your email on a Friday morning and log into church suite. So first things first. But what I want to do is give a framework so that actually, as we see our world changing and evolving and new technologies emerging, that we understand what's going on and we understand what God has been doing and is doing in our world. You see, as we read.

Thank you, Jenny from Genesis, chapter eleven. Facebook was not the first social networking project. No, it wasn't MySpace either. Or friends reunited. No, actually the first social networking project happened some 4000 years ago.

Because of course, that's what Babel was, wasn't it? The cutting edge technology of the day. We read it about the technology there in verse three, a new method for baking bricks, bitumen for mortar. These new technologies put to use to bring people together. What do they say?

Verse four. Come, let's build ourselves a city. Let's make a tower that reaches up to the heavens. Let's make a name for ourselves so that we won't be scattered across the world. It sounds at first glance like a Nobel lane, doesn't it?

Build a city, make a culture. But as we read in the first chapters of Genesis, we see it was an act of defiance against God. It was God alone who reached to the heavens, not a tower. And it was God who wanted these people to scatter. That was his commission in the early chapters.

Go and scatter. Go and fill the earth. Subdue it. Be a blessing to the earth. It was God who wanted them to go out, not build a city, but to go out and fill the earth.

And it's striking, isn't it? When we read in Genesis, the first city built. The first time we hear about a city being built comes in Genesis, chapter four. Do you know who the first city builder was? Cain.

Cain, the one who murdered his brother Abel. We're told he was exiled to the east, and there he builds a city. This is humanity's response to God's curse, leaving the garden behind and going to build a city to create something, to invent something, to make a name. That's so often humanity's response. Build something, fix the problem.

I'll save myself. We can build a tower to reach back to the heavens. You see, there's a sense in which, from the very beginning, technology has been used in rebellion against God.

And yet, even in these early chapters of Genesis, we see glimpses of God using the same technology in redemption, in saving his people. It's an interesting detail, isn't it? In verse three, what was the build of material? What was it that allowed them to do this? It was bitumen.

It was tar. They used it for mortar. They glued the bricks together so they could build a tower.

So it's striking, isn't it, that in those early chapters, that same technology, that same bitumen is used to save Genesis. Chapter six, Noah builds the ark. How's it going to float? How's it going to keep the water out? And they coated it with bitumen.

Or Moses in the basket, how was he kept safe? The basket was covered in bitumen. This material, this technology that the people used to build a tower for themselves, God uses to save, God uses to rescue. You see, that's why, as christians, when we think about technology we don't want to fall into too simple responses. On the one hand, the response of many in the world just to embrace it unthinkingly.

Technology, great progress, let's have it. Because we know that so often technology is used as a tool for rebellion, but neither can we just reject it. Neither can we say technology is all bad because we see God uses technology and progress in the world to save, to rescue, to help his people. Now, for the next few minutes, what I'd love to do is just lift the lid on three areas of technology that we see in our world, to understand them a little bit more and to see how they are changing the world and shaping us for good and for ill. Here's the first thing I want us to look at.

That's devices. Devices that conform us.

What's the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? Now, I reckon I don't want to be ageist at all, but among this demographic, I reckon it's more likely to be brushing your teeth. At the 930 service. I said, I think it's more likely to be checking your phone. Where does the phone live?

For so many, it lives on the bedside table. Last thing at night, plug it into charge. First thing in the morning, unplug, pick it up there when we wake and there when we sleep. And of course, the smartphone or tablets or other devices have massively changed us. They've shaped us, conformed us.

They changed the way that we read, the way we write and the way we talk. They affect how we communicate, interact. They change how we travel, how we make plans. They affect how we sleep and eat. And there's all sorts of scientific studies showing how they change the very workings of our brain.

They deliver dopamine hits when we get a notification, when the phone pings, our brain wakes up. Our brain has been we rewired. The way we process information is different.

There's even a feeling that you get sometimes if you're someone who keeps your phone in your pocket and you have it on vibrate, you can get hallucinations where your phone's not actually vibrating, but your leg thinks it is. Because your leg is so used to that feeling of your phone vibrating, that just does it. Every so often your body hallucinates because it's so used to that feeling of your phone buzzing in your pocket. Our brains rewired one author who's written about this called Nicholas Carr. He describes this change like this.

He says, once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski. He says, our brains have been so wired to sound bites, quick information that we've lost the art of being patient, of reading in depth, like a guy on a jet ski.

These devices have changed and shaped us. Now, in Isaiah, chapter 44, there's writing about a craftsman, a craftsman who shapes an idol. He's pictured there with a block of wood. And there he is chiselling out to create an idol. From the block of wood, he is shaping this block of wood.

But as you read on in that passage, what we're told is that the block of wood shaped into an idol starts to shape the craftsman, or from start, he starts to worship it. His life now revolves around this idol, and it changes him. He can no longer distinguish what's real or fake, what's right or wrong.

David Bowie is right when he points out this Internet is not just a tool.

If anything, it's shaping us. It's changing us. It's conforming us. And I wonder if part of the problem is we don't always understand what this technology is or what it's doing. Like that craftsman in Isaiah 44, we no longer see what's real and what's fake.

The lines, the boundaries between real world and online world are blurred.

That's one of the theories behind Jonathan Haidt's new book called an anxious generation. He says this. He says, my central claim in this book is that there are two trends, overprotection in the real world and under protection in the virtual world. He's particularly there talking about parents parenting children and how actually in the real world, the danger is we smother our children, and in the online world, we just say, oh, go for, it doesn't matter. These devices that blurred the way we think between what's real and what's fake.

We have devices which conform us, shape us. Second thing we see as technology emerges and changes is fears that control us. Did you know that birds aren't real? Do you know that birds aren't real? At least that's what we're told by a conspiracy theory that was launched in 2017.

Its creator, Peter Mackindo, does know that birds are real, and he doesn't really believe that birds are, in fact, government operated drones. He doesn't really believe that. But he thought, why not put it out there and see what response he got? I should say he's from America. That might change how you expect people to access.

But he did this, and loads of people started following him. Loads of people generally started to think, what if birds aren't real? What if, what if they are drones controlled by the government? Now, of course, he did that as a joke. He did it as a kind of piece of satire.

But then people started believing him and started following him. It raises all sorts of questions, doesn't it? In a world online, how do we ever really know what's fact and what's opinion, what's real and what's fake? You know, for a long time we've lived in a world which has sometimes been called surveillance capitalism. That means every purchase you make, every click you click, is logged.

Whether it's when you scan your Tesco club card, you purchase something on your Amazon account or with your Mastercard. These big companies know you and your purchasing habits better than you know yourself. They really do. They know you better than you know yourself. And even they listen in on your conversations through your devices so that they might serve you up the product as an advert that you want next, that thing that you've been talking about.

Here's the thing. You know that when the service you're getting is free, whether you're getting a free email account, a free social media account, or you're. You're getting rewards as you buy things, when the thing that you get is free, you know that you're the product. You're the one being bought and sold. Because big data is big money.

And it's not just products we're sold, it's ideas and beliefs, too. Social media, indeed, all online media. And to be honest, a lot of print media, works on the premise of monopolising your attention, hooking you in and keeping you clicking and scrolling. And in order to do that, it's in their interest to serve you up content that you get excited about the stuff that you enjoy. But it's also in their interest to serve you up content that drives your fears.

And you'll see this most clearly. In the realm of politics, the most extreme views from either end of the political spectrum are the ones that are amplified the most. Why? Because they want to get you excited or angry or scared, whatever. They want to hook in your emotions so that you keep reading, keep clicking, keep scrolling.

Now, sometimes the content does that just because it's interesting and provocative and that's okay. But other times it's because there are bad actors and foreign regimes in the world who want to deliberately sow seeds of discontent and division.

What are sometimes called russian bot farms are real. They exist. Which means that not everything you read online is real. And not only sometimes is it fake, but it's deliberately designed to provoke, to get you angry, to get you riled up.

Of course, the solution to this is actually to live more in the real world, isn't it? To come offline, to talk face to face, to engage as humans, not as political views out there, but to talk to one another so often, the tool to manipulate our emotions, to amplify our fears. Of these ideas presented online, there are fears that control us. Thirdly, there are hopes that captivate so much of the tech world at the moment. Indeed, all sorts of industries are captivated by hope.

And the hope is artificial general intelligence that point, that hope, where one day in the future, machines will be not only as smart as us, but smarter. A day will come when one day the machine can do anything we want it to do, or it can do anything that it wants to do.

There's all sorts of exciting possibilities, all sorts of problems that artificial intelligence could transform the way we work, healthcare, all sorts of industries. It will solve problems, it will make life in some areas much easier. But it doesn't come without risk, it doesn't come without fears. And that's the people who are building these things that say that for some, this will be utopia, this will be our reaching to the heavens.

But for some futurists, those excited about the future possibilities, they become so enthralled with technology and the potential for progress that they lost sight of humanity. For some, robot consciousness on Mars is more exciting than human flourishing on earth. And that's a problem.

You see, technology, throughout the centuries, has always had that double effect, both to bring drastic improvement to human existence and simultaneously to dehumanise us. Take the industrial revolution as an example. Massive advances in technology, the growth in cities, and at the same time, awful conditions, pollution, child labour.

And what were the christians doing at that time? That's a key question, because I think that's going to be instructive for us as we think about our own technological changes in the way our world is changing. What were they doing? They were bringing real hope, real hope. Elizabeth Fry was reforming prisons.

Wilberforce was fighting the slave trade. Muller was building orphanages. Hudson Taylor was taking the hope of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

You see, even as technology changes, christians were there, bringing real and certain and transforming hope. And many believe that, actually, times of technological change are oftentimes for revival within the church. One american economic historian writes, this religious revival is propelled by the tendency of new technological advances to outpace the human capacity to cope with ethical and practical complexities that those new technologies bring. What's he saying? As the world changes, as technology grows drastically, humans are left behind thinking, what is this?

What does this mean for me? How is the world changing? Is this good? Is this bad? What does this mean for my children?

And as we start to ask those kind of existential questions, questions of deep hope and deep fear, we begin to wonder, where's God in this? What is the future? Is there a higher purpose or a higher meaning behind any of this? Technology fuels those questions that seek after God. Now, we're standing today on the cusp of a new industrial revolution, one which will be powered largely by our artificial intelligence.

These next few years will be filled with all sorts of fears, ethical and practical complexities, and also all sorts of hope about what the world could be. But into these hopes and fears, the gospel speaks a better story. Jesus offers a more compelling vision for the future and a more certain hope. The church really does have a message for a world online. Let me conclude with two brief things.

Firstly, the Gospel offers a better story. Now, it offers real hope in the here and now. You see, in a world where I feel conformed, changed by technology, like life is dictated by screens and computers, I read, as we read last week, that actually God is at work doing a different kind of conforming. Romans, chapter eight. How is God conforming me?

He's conforming me to the image of his son. God's at work in the world far more than any technology. What's his hope for you? He wants to conform you, to change you, to be like Jesus. That's the work God is doing.

And in a world where I feel controlled by events, when I'm filled with fears about ever confusing new technology, I read about something more powerful that controls me. Two Corinthians, chapter five. What controls me? There. The love of Christ.

The love of Christ controls my life. One John 418. His perfect love casts out all fear. In a world filled with fears and anxieties, the antidote is Christ's love. For me, that's a joy filled with fears, nay, filled with Christ's love.

And in a world where I'm told that technological progress is the future and is the hope of humanity, I know that we have a better hope, a deeper hope, a stronger hope, a hope for an eternal future with Christ. As Paul says in Romans, chapter five, this hope does not disappoint. This hope does not let us down. This hope does not put us to shame. We have a more certain hope than anything that the world of technology can offer you.

See, the gospel offers a better story now, but the gospel also offers a better story for the future. You see, if the story of technology is one of both rebellion and redemption, as we saw in the early chapters of Genesis, then we need to say, well, how does the story end, friends? The story doesn't end with rebellion. The story ends with redemption, because that's what we see God doing at the very end of the Bible. Genesis, revelation, chapter 21 and 22.

What's God doing there? God's making. He's restoring, he's recreating the world. He's making it perfect again. And what does the world of the future look like?

It's not a garden. It's not a garden. God's not pining to recreate the garden. What does he create? A city.

A city. And it's not a city reaching up to the heavens. It's a city coming down from the heavens. God's gift to his people. But it's not just any city.

It's a garden city. Not like Wellyn or Letchworth or anywhere like that. No, not one of those garden cities. The true garden city. Because what we see in revelation is the garden in the middle of the city.

It's Eden restored. It's the curse removed. At the middle of the city, there's a tree of life, there's a river flowing that gives life built around this great city. And the cities filled with the nations no longer scattered but brought together as God's people. Friends, technology isn't the future.

God's city is the future. It's not all bad. It's certainly not all good. But as we see these changes in the world and the hopes and fears they bring, we're reminded that God is creating something bigger and better. A more certain hope, redemption, overcoming rebellion.

A new city to which we, friends, are all invited. Amen. Amen. Close.

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

New International Version – UK (NIVUK)

Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

This transcript has been automatically generated and therefore may not be 100% accurate
Tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. It’s just a tool, though, isn’t it? No, it’s not. No, no, it’s an alien life form. What do you think? I mean, when you think then about, is there life on Mars? Yes, it’s just landed here, but it’s simply a different delivery system there. You’re arguing about something more profound. Oh, yeah. I’m talking about the actual context. And the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment, where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympathic, it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about. They go, that was David Bowie. Bowie? Bowie? What is that? Bowie? That was David Bowie speaking in 1999. How long ago is that? 25 years ago. Talking about the Internet and the way in which he foresaw how the Internet would change our world. He was talking five years before Facebook was launched. He was talking eight years before the first smartphone was released. And if anything, as we look out across the world, we see his predictions, if anything, were rather conservative when he predicted the scale and pace of change which would come through inventions like the Internet. Now, we’re going to take some time this morning to consider this whole question of technology. What does it mean to be human in a world online? And what we’re going to do this morning is hopefully paint, if you like, a framework, a biblical framework of how we understand technology. We’ll look at some specific examples of how they are changing us and changing our world. This isn’t going to be a how to sermon, to be honest, I’m still teaching most of you how to open your email on a Friday morning and log into church suite. So first things first. But what I want to do is give a framework so that actually, as we see our world changing and evolving and new technologies emerging, that we understand what’s going on and we understand what God has been doing and is doing in our world. You see, as we read. Thank you, Jenny from Genesis, chapter eleven. Facebook was not the first social networking project. No, it wasn’t MySpace either. Or friends reunited. No, actually the first social networking project happened some 4000 years ago. Because of course, that’s what Babel was, wasn’t it? The cutting edge technology of the day. We read it about the technology there in verse three, a new method for baking bricks, bitumen for mortar. These new technologies put to use to bring people together. What do they say? Verse four. Come, let’s build ourselves a city. Let’s make a tower that reaches up to the heavens. Let’s make a name for ourselves so that we won’t be scattered across the world. It sounds at first glance like a Nobel lane, doesn’t it? Build a city, make a culture. But as we read in the first chapters of Genesis, we see it was an act of defiance against God. It was God alone who reached to the heavens, not a tower. And it was God who wanted these people to scatter. That was his commission in the early chapters. Go and scatter. Go and fill the earth. Subdue it. Be a blessing to the earth. It was God who wanted them to go out, not build a city, but to go out and fill the earth. And it’s striking, isn’t it? When we read in Genesis, the first city built. The first time we hear about a city being built comes in Genesis, chapter four. Do you know who the first city builder was? Cain. Cain, the one who murdered his brother Abel. We’re told he was exiled to the east, and there he builds a city. This is humanity’s response to God’s curse, leaving the garden behind and going to build a city to create something, to invent something, to make a name. That’s so often humanity’s response. Build something, fix the problem. I’ll save myself. We can build a tower to reach back to the heavens. You see, there’s a sense in which, from the very beginning, technology has been used in rebellion against God. And yet, even in these early chapters of Genesis, we see glimpses of God using the same technology in redemption, in saving his people. It’s an interesting detail, isn’t it? In verse three, what was the build of material? What was it that allowed them to do this? It was bitumen. It was tar. They used it for mortar. They glued the bricks together so they could build a tower. So it’s striking, isn’t it, that in those early chapters, that same technology, that same bitumen is used to save Genesis. Chapter six, Noah builds the ark. How’s it going to float? How’s it going to keep the water out? And they coated it with bitumen. Or Moses in the basket, how was he kept safe? The basket was covered in bitumen. This material, this technology that the people used to build a tower for themselves, God uses to save, God uses to rescue. You see, that’s why, as christians, when we think about technology we don’t want to fall into too simple responses. On the one hand, the response of many in the world just to embrace it unthinkingly. Technology, great progress, let’s have it. Because we know that so often technology is used as a tool for rebellion, but neither can we just reject it. Neither can we say technology is all bad because we see God uses technology and progress in the world to save, to rescue, to help his people. Now, for the next few minutes, what I’d love to do is just lift the lid on three areas of technology that we see in our world, to understand them a little bit more and to see how they are changing the world and shaping us for good and for ill. Here’s the first thing I want us to look at. That’s devices. Devices that conform us. What’s the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? Now, I reckon I don’t want to be ageist at all, but among this demographic, I reckon it’s more likely to be brushing your teeth. At the 930 service. I said, I think it’s more likely to be checking your phone. Where does the phone live? For so many, it lives on the bedside table. Last thing at night, plug it into charge. First thing in the morning, unplug, pick it up there when we wake and there when we sleep. And of course, the smartphone or tablets or other devices have massively changed us. They’ve shaped us, conformed us. They changed the way that we read, the way we write and the way we talk. They affect how we communicate, interact. They change how we travel, how we make plans. They affect how we sleep and eat. And there’s all sorts of scientific studies showing how they change the very workings of our brain. They deliver dopamine hits when we get a notification, when the phone pings, our brain wakes up. Our brain has been we rewired. The way we process information is different. There’s even a feeling that you get sometimes if you’re someone who keeps your phone in your pocket and you have it on vibrate, you can get hallucinations where your phone’s not actually vibrating, but your leg thinks it is. Because your leg is so used to that feeling of your phone vibrating, that just does it. Every so often your body hallucinates because it’s so used to that feeling of your phone buzzing in your pocket. Our brains rewired one author who’s written about this called Nicholas Carr. He describes this change like this. He says, once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski. He says, our brains have been so wired to sound bites, quick information that we’ve lost the art of being patient, of reading in depth, like a guy on a jet ski. These devices have changed and shaped us. Now, in Isaiah, chapter 44, there’s writing about a craftsman, a craftsman who shapes an idol. He’s pictured there with a block of wood. And there he is chiselling out to create an idol. From the block of wood, he is shaping this block of wood. But as you read on in that passage, what we’re told is that the block of wood shaped into an idol starts to shape the craftsman, or from start, he starts to worship it. His life now revolves around this idol, and it changes him. He can no longer distinguish what’s real or fake, what’s right or wrong. David Bowie is right when he points out this Internet is not just a tool. If anything, it’s shaping us. It’s changing us. It’s conforming us. And I wonder if part of the problem is we don’t always understand what this technology is or what it’s doing. Like that craftsman in Isaiah 44, we no longer see what’s real and what’s fake. The lines, the boundaries between real world and online world are blurred. That’s one of the theories behind Jonathan Haidt’s new book called an anxious generation. He says this. He says, my central claim in this book is that there are two trends, overprotection in the real world and under protection in the virtual world. He’s particularly there talking about parents parenting children and how actually in the real world, the danger is we smother our children, and in the online world, we just say, oh, go for, it doesn’t matter. These devices that blurred the way we think between what’s real and what’s fake. We have devices which conform us, shape us. Second thing we see as technology emerges and changes is fears that control us. Did you know that birds aren’t real? Do you know that birds aren’t real? At least that’s what we’re told by a conspiracy theory that was launched in 2017. Its creator, Peter Mackindo, does know that birds are real, and he doesn’t really believe that birds are, in fact, government operated drones. He doesn’t really believe that. But he thought, why not put it out there and see what response he got? I should say he’s from America. That might change how you expect people to access. But he did this, and loads of people started following him. Loads of people generally started to think, what if birds aren’t real? What if, what if they are drones controlled by the government? Now, of course, he did that as a joke. He did it as a kind of piece of satire. But then people started believing him and started following him. It raises all sorts of questions, doesn’t it? In a world online, how do we ever really know what’s fact and what’s opinion, what’s real and what’s fake? You know, for a long time we’ve lived in a world which has sometimes been called surveillance capitalism. That means every purchase you make, every click you click, is logged. Whether it’s when you scan your Tesco club card, you purchase something on your Amazon account or with your Mastercard. These big companies know you and your purchasing habits better than you know yourself. They really do. They know you better than you know yourself. And even they listen in on your conversations through your devices so that they might serve you up the product as an advert that you want next, that thing that you’ve been talking about. Here’s the thing. You know that when the service you’re getting is free, whether you’re getting a free email account, a free social media account, or you’re. You’re getting rewards as you buy things, when the thing that you get is free, you know that you’re the product. You’re the one being bought and sold. Because big data is big money. And it’s not just products we’re sold, it’s ideas and beliefs, too. Social media, indeed, all online media. And to be honest, a lot of print media, works on the premise of monopolising your attention, hooking you in and keeping you clicking and scrolling. And in order to do that, it’s in their interest to serve you up content that you get excited about the stuff that you enjoy. But it’s also in their interest to serve you up content that drives your fears. And you’ll see this most clearly. In the realm of politics, the most extreme views from either end of the political spectrum are the ones that are amplified the most. Why? Because they want to get you excited or angry or scared, whatever. They want to hook in your emotions so that you keep reading, keep clicking, keep scrolling. Now, sometimes the content does that just because it’s interesting and provocative and that’s okay. But other times it’s because there are bad actors and foreign regimes in the world who want to deliberately sow seeds of discontent and division. What are sometimes called russian bot farms are real. They exist. Which means that not everything you read online is real. And not only sometimes is it fake, but it’s deliberately designed to provoke, to get you angry, to get you riled up. Of course, the solution to this is actually to live more in the real world, isn’t it? To come offline, to talk face to face, to engage as humans, not as political views out there, but to talk to one another so often, the tool to manipulate our emotions, to amplify our fears. Of these ideas presented online, there are fears that control us. Thirdly, there are hopes that captivate so much of the tech world at the moment. Indeed, all sorts of industries are captivated by hope. And the hope is artificial general intelligence that point, that hope, where one day in the future, machines will be not only as smart as us, but smarter. A day will come when one day the machine can do anything we want it to do, or it can do anything that it wants to do. There’s all sorts of exciting possibilities, all sorts of problems that artificial intelligence could transform the way we work, healthcare, all sorts of industries. It will solve problems, it will make life in some areas much easier. But it doesn’t come without risk, it doesn’t come without fears. And that’s the people who are building these things that say that for some, this will be utopia, this will be our reaching to the heavens. But for some futurists, those excited about the future possibilities, they become so enthralled with technology and the potential for progress that they lost sight of humanity. For some, robot consciousness on Mars is more exciting than human flourishing on earth. And that’s a problem. You see, technology, throughout the centuries, has always had that double effect, both to bring drastic improvement to human existence and simultaneously to dehumanise us. Take the industrial revolution as an example. Massive advances in technology, the growth in cities, and at the same time, awful conditions, pollution, child labour. And what were the christians doing at that time? That’s a key question, because I think that’s going to be instructive for us as we think about our own technological changes in the way our world is changing. What were they doing? They were bringing real hope, real hope. Elizabeth Fry was reforming prisons. Wilberforce was fighting the slave trade. Muller was building orphanages. Hudson Taylor was taking the hope of the gospel to the ends of the earth. You see, even as technology changes, christians were there, bringing real and certain and transforming hope. And many believe that, actually, times of technological change are oftentimes for revival within the church. One american economic historian writes, this religious revival is propelled by the tendency of new technological advances to outpace the human capacity to cope with ethical and practical complexities that those new technologies bring. What’s he saying? As the world changes, as technology grows drastically, humans are left behind thinking, what is this? What does this mean for me? How is the world changing? Is this good? Is this bad? What does this mean for my children? And as we start to ask those kind of existential questions, questions of deep hope and deep fear, we begin to wonder, where’s God in this? What is the future? Is there a higher purpose or a higher meaning behind any of this? Technology fuels those questions that seek after God. Now, we’re standing today on the cusp of a new industrial revolution, one which will be powered largely by our artificial intelligence. These next few years will be filled with all sorts of fears, ethical and practical complexities, and also all sorts of hope about what the world could be. But into these hopes and fears, the gospel speaks a better story. Jesus offers a more compelling vision for the future and a more certain hope. The church really does have a message for a world online. Let me conclude with two brief things. Firstly, the Gospel offers a better story. Now, it offers real hope in the here and now. You see, in a world where I feel conformed, changed by technology, like life is dictated by screens and computers, I read, as we read last week, that actually God is at work doing a different kind of conforming. Romans, chapter eight. How is God conforming me? He’s conforming me to the image of his son. God’s at work in the world far more than any technology. What’s his hope for you? He wants to conform you, to change you, to be like Jesus. That’s the work God is doing. And in a world where I feel controlled by events, when I’m filled with fears about ever confusing new technology, I read about something more powerful that controls me. Two Corinthians, chapter five. What controls me? There. The love of Christ. The love of Christ controls my life. One John 418. His perfect love casts out all fear. In a world filled with fears and anxieties, the antidote is Christ’s love. For me, that’s a joy filled with fears, nay, filled with Christ’s love. And in a world where I’m told that technological progress is the future and is the hope of humanity, I know that we have a better hope, a deeper hope, a stronger hope, a hope for an eternal future with Christ. As Paul says in Romans, chapter five, this hope does not disappoint. This hope does not let us down. This hope does not put us to shame. We have a more certain hope than anything that the world of technology can offer you. See, the gospel offers a better story now, but the gospel also offers a better story for the future. You see, if the story of technology is one of both rebellion and redemption, as we saw in the early chapters of Genesis, then we need to say, well, how does the story end, friends? The story doesn’t end with rebellion. The story ends with redemption, because that’s what we see God doing at the very end of the Bible. Genesis, revelation, chapter 21 and 22. What’s God doing there? God’s making. He’s restoring, he’s recreating the world. He’s making it perfect again. And what does the world of the future look like? It’s not a garden. It’s not a garden. God’s not pining to recreate the garden. What does he create? A city. A city. And it’s not a city reaching up to the heavens. It’s a city coming down from the heavens. God’s gift to his people. But it’s not just any city. It’s a garden city. Not like Wellyn or Letchworth or anywhere like that. No, not one of those garden cities. The true garden city. Because what we see in revelation is the garden in the middle of the city. It’s Eden restored. It’s the curse removed. At the middle of the city, there’s a tree of life, there’s a river flowing that gives life built around this great city. And the cities filled with the nations no longer scattered but brought together as God’s people. Friends, technology isn’t the future. God’s city is the future. It’s not all bad. It’s certainly not all good. But as we see these changes in the world and the hopes and fears they bring, we’re reminded that God is creating something bigger and better. A more certain hope, redemption, overcoming rebellion. A new city to which we, friends, are all invited. Amen. Amen. Close.
Share this