Why I'm wary about mixing twin interests in faith and technology: Bird Lovegod

I must confess, my first response to the invite was deep wariness, or just straight No.

Tech creep can, as far as I’m concerned, stop right there. It’s not necessary, and is far more likely to be counter productive than anything else.

Faith is a phenomena, a mystery, a gift from God that enables a person to have a living and actual relationship with God. Technology has nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Any attempt to replace the authentic process with anything artificial is by definition the opposite of Godliness, holiness, faithfulness, and reality. So FaithTech gets my alarm bells ringing, especially as my personal journey has taken me fully into and through the valleys of commercial technology, and I still have a residual tendency towards commercialisation of that which should be kept pure and unadulterated. No one can serve two masters.

One cannot serve God and money, nor God and technology.

I’ve been a tech journalist and entrepreneur for many years, and the veneer has long since worn away to reveal the repackaged ideas coming round in cycles, the youngsters entering the arena are blinded by the possibilities, and never seem to seriously ask if the direction they are driving is leading to paradise or dystopia.

They’re just excited to be driving. Like any kid behind the wheel for the first time. Veterans of the game know better.

Yet there is a place for technology in the communication of truth. I’m writing this on a computer. I listen to audio books of AW Tozer, one of the great men of God from the last century, and I watch TheChosen.tv online. Technology can deliver the words and images that help faith to flourish, just as technology can deliver fear and anger.

Technology cannot deliver faith itself though. It can deliver every emotion, but faith is not an emotion. Faith is a true mystery, and perhaps the greatest gift that a person can receive. Not even the Bible explains what faith actually is, it gives multitudes of accounts of people with faith, and acts done in faith, but what faith actually is, is a mystery. It is something of God in man. It’s not of this world.

So to try to bolt tech onto it, well that’s a very human thing to do. We have healthtech, fintech, deeptech, and an array of subsects of technology, all of which are being overshadowed by Ai, and soon we will have healthAi, financeAi, and so on, and yet none of it has anything whatsoever to do with faith.

Having said that, there are some Christians involved in tech, and perhaps FaithTech is more about those people and how they can live in such an environment.

I often wonder how technologists can deny the existence of a creator God. It’s like believing a vastly complex computer simulation just came into being, without any programmer. There’s an observable intelligence embedded within material reality, creating systems that create everything else, there’s an intention, a design, it’s so obvious that I wonder how they cannot see it. Then I remember. It’s because they have not the gift of faith. So they cannot see the things of God.

And I also wonder, does our technology do more to blind, than enlighten?

Bird Lovegod is a business consultant and Christian commentator