Digital technology like smartphones has revolutionised the way we navigate daily life and the way our whole society functions. Such technology has its downsides. Even so, our stance as Christians is often something like, “Let’s use this technology wisely, but not abuse it”, as if the technology is simply a neutral instrument. But the good things of our world (like technology or money) can become much more than this: they can become master-teachers that dominate and disciple us.
In Part 1 of our series, we explored the extraordinary power and usefulness of the smartphone, as well as the powerful effects and consequences that follow from its widespread usage—the way that the phone, in fact, shapes the way we think about our lives and the way we act as humans.
In this episode—Part 2—we’re going to think about what God says about all this—what he says about what it means to be human, and how human technology and manufacturing relates to God and to the purposes he has for humanity. How do the Scriptures shape our understanding of technology in general and the smartphone in particular? We’ll find it does so in surprising and disturbing and liberating ways.
(Please note: Part 3 will be published in a fortnight’s time.)
Runtime: 32:41 min.
Links referred to:
- Books referred to:
- The Extinction of Experience: Reclaiming Our Humanity in a Digital World (Christine Rosen)
- Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Brian Brock)
- Find out more and register for “Left right out: The strange position of the political Christian” (Wed 20 May 2026, 7-9pm)
- Support the work of the Centre
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been checked against the audio and lightly edited, but still may contain errors. If quoting, please compare with the original audio.
Introduction
[00:00:05] Tony Payne: Hello, I’m Tony Payne. Welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast. And you’re listening to Part 2 of a three-part series called “The smartphone disciple”. Now, in Part 1, in our first episode, we explored the extraordinary power and usefulness of the smartphone and also the powerful effects and consequences that follow from its widespread usage in our lives and in our culture—the way that the phone, in fact, shapes the way we think about our lives and the way we act as humans.
[00:00:36] And in Part 2, we’re going to think about what God says about all this—what he says about what it means to be human, and how human technology and manufacturing and making things, how that relates to God and to the purposes that God has for humanity. How do the Scriptures shape our understanding of technology in general and the smartphone in particular? We’ll find that it does so in surprising and disturbing and liberating ways.
[00:01:04] But that’s the story we’re going to explore in this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
[Music]
[00:01:24] Tony Payne: Human technology in general and smartphone technology in particular propagate a way of understanding and living in our world. They teach us a way of seeing, of knowing, of participating in the reality of life. And as we suggested in episode 1, this is really saying that the smartphone disciples us in a way.
[00:01:46] But as Christians, of course, our life is about a different kind of discipling—a different sort of discipleship. It’s learning a way of seeing and knowing and living in the world by sitting at the feet of our master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that that’s the necessary response and outworking of his grace to us in the gospel.
[00:02:05] And so our task in Part 2 of this three-part series in this particular episode about the smartphone disciple is to think through what it means to be a Christian disciple in the world—to see, and to live and to know the world on the basis of what God has revealed in Jesus—and bring that knowledge to our understanding of this extraordinary technology called the smartphone.
[00:02:29] Now in learning to live as a disciple of Jesus, there’s an inevitable kind of two-part movement: there’s a putting off of an old way of thinking and an old way of living, and a putting on of the new, as New Testament often describes it. And there are lots of places we could see this reflected, but nowhere better than in Romans 12:1-2:
[00:02:51] Steph Larkin: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
[00:03:14] Tony Payne: Through the gospel, Christ liberates us from distorted and dysfunctional ways of thinking—distorted habits of mind—and by the mercies of God, he creates within us a new possibility, a new potentiality—to be renewed or to be renovated in how we see and understand the world in our daily lives, so that as we live, we might test and approve the good, pleasing and perfect will of God.
[00:03:41] So that’s our challenge in this second episode of this three-part series: to explore how Christ, speaking the word of Scripture to us, transforms our understanding of technology in general and of the smartphone in particular.
The story of human making
[00:03:57] Tony Payne: Well, where should we start? I suppose it has to be at the very beginning. And in the opening pages of Scripture, we discover that from the beginning, humanity’s place in the world is intimately connected with the growth and development of the created world. There’s an intriguing little verse in Genesis 2—Genesis 2:5:
[00:04:18] Steph Larkin: “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground, and the mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
[00:04:42] Tony Payne: Thank you, by the way, to Steph Larkin for being our Bible and quote reader for this second episode as she was in the first. But did you notice in that verse in Genesis 2:5, that two things are required for certain bushes or small plants of the field to spring up: rain that the Lord would send and a man to work the ground? From the very beginning, in other words, humanity’s place in creation was as an agent of development or change. God puts Adam in the garden to work it and to keep it, as he later says in verse 15: to work the ground so as to bring forth new things from the ground—to make something of the world, to name it, as Adam goes on to do, to develop it.
[00:05:30] And as the story of the Bible unfolds, as the story of humanity unfolds, this is indeed what humans are like and what they do: we make things. We are manufacturers. We are literally makers by hand. “Man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots,” says Job in his very evocative description of the technological mastery of humanity in Job 28. As Job describes it, man is a technological master. He dangles from a rope. He sinks shafts into the deep and digs up precious things from the earth. He dams streams, he brings into plain sight those things which were previously hidden.
[00:06:13] And yet, all this technological ingenuity is also profoundly limited in Job’s poem. The one thing that our technological efforts can’t ever find or dig up or discover is the wisdom of God, by which the whole world was created and has its being. And that’s what Job goes on to say.
[00:06:34] Steph Larkin: “But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man does not know its worth and it is not found in the land of the living.
The deep says, ‘It is not in me’, and the sea says, ‘it is not with me.’
It cannot be bought for gold and silver cannot be weighed as its price.
It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire.
Gold and glass cannot equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal; the price of wisdom is above pearls.
The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it, nor can it be valued in pure gold. …
[00:07:18] “From where then does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air.
Abaddon and Death say, ‘We have heard a rumour of it with our ears.’ …
[00:07:33] “God understands the way to it and he knows its place.
For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.
When he gave the wind its weight and apportioned the waters by measure,
when he made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder,
then he saw it and declared it; he established it and searched it out.
And he said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’”
[00:08:06] Tony Payne: Job is very clear: it’s only on the basis of the fear of the Lord that wisdom can be found and the real nature of things—the real nature of the world—be understood. Job raises for us here a really important implicit question: will human technology be conducted within the ambit of Godly wisdom or not? In fact, might there be such a thing as godly manufacturing—godly technology—and ungodly?
What sort of mastery?
[00:08:36] Tony Payne: Well, these two possibilities also emerge in the opening chapters of Genesis. Ominously, the very first people to build cities and to forge instruments of bronze—that is, to show some technological innovation—those people come from the degenerate line of Cain.
[00:08:54] But there is also godly manufacturer in Genesis: there’s the godly building of the ark by Noah, who constructs the ark in all its dimensions and materials exactly and specifically as God commands him. But if Noah in Genesis 6 represents a kind of high point of obedient technological achievement, the tower builders of Babel in Genesis 11 are a low point, so to speak.
[00:09:19] Steph Larkin: “Now the whole Earth had one language and the same words, and as people migrated from the east, they found a plane in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’”
[00:09:50] Tony Payne: In their desire for security and fame, and in their implicit trust in their own abilities, the tower builders of Babel embark on a vast, ultimately doomed technological project. It’s a haunting picture of what the city will become in human history, both for good and for ill. It will be, on the one hand, Zion, the city of God’s choice and pleasure, but also the great Babylon, the city that rebels against God and suffers his wrath.
Contrast
[00:10:19] Tony Payne: In fact, as the Bible unfolds, godly and ungodly manufacturing and technology keep on being contrasted. On the one hand, there’s Pharaoh, who builds a shrine to his own divinity with brutality and wickedness, and then there is God, who directs the building of his tabernacle in great detail and fills people such as Bezalel with his Spirit to equip them with the intelligence and the knowledge and the craftsmanship they will need for the task. That’s in Exodus 31.
[00:10:51] In other words, technological innovation and skill are integral to the God-given human project of making something of the world and living in the world as God’s servants. And yet, like all God’s good gifts, the human ability to design and to make things is compromised by our enmity with God. The wisdom to design and devise and employ technological solutions rightly and well is only really available through a knowledgeable understanding and trust in God, who is the creator and preserver of everything. And when life in the created world is pursued in rejection of this—in rejection of the creator—then dysfunction inevitably follows. Seeking to be wise, we become fools. Seeking to save and improve our lives, we lower and degrade them. Seeking to master the world through created things, we become slaves to those created powers.
[00:11:49] This final ironic possibility of falling into the power of things that we actually make with our hands is ridiculed and lampooned in the Scriptures under the heading of idolatry. Isaiah, for example, speaks of a skilled woodworker who uses some of his wood to burn and to warm himself, and then the rest he uses to cleverly fashion an idol before whom he falls down and worships.
[00:12:15] Steph Larkin: “The carpenter, stretches a line. He marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with the compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man with the beauty of a man to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak, and lets it go strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself. He kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also, he makes a god and worships it. He makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half, he eats meat. He roasts it and is satisfied. Also, he warms himself and says, ‘Aha, I am warm. I have seen the fire.’ And the rest of it, he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my God!’”
Money and Mammon
[00:13:13] Tony Payne: Something that our technological prowess allows us to make ends up becoming a god over us. And one of the interesting moves that the New Testament makes is to make this exact same point about another kind of technology: the extremely useful financial technology we call “money”.
[00:13:33] Money is a human invention and there’s nothing inherently evil about it—about using coins of silver and gold as units of exchange to make economic activity more efficient and more viable. It’s a good and ingenious way of facilitating all kinds of benefits and exchanges of goods and services.
[00:13:51] And yet at the same time, the very same coins that we find so useful can become idolatrous gods that we end up serving. Money can come to have a power and to exert a power over us. And in Matthew 6, Jesus personifies this powerful god-like form of money as “Mammon”—that is, money as an alternative god whose service is incompatible with serving the true God.
[00:14:21] Steph Larkin: “Do not lay out for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay out for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. …
[00:14:41] “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? …
[00:14:57] “No one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
[00:15:07] Tony Payne: Now, in the paragraph following this famous statement, Jesus contrasts the Gentiles, who anxiously run after food and drink and clothing, with those who trust his heavenly Father’s provision and seek first the kingdom instead. And in so doing, he illustrates the hold that mammon can exert over us—how it can direct the course of our lives. Mammon is a revealing example of how a good and ingenious human instrument, created by us for our benefit, can come to have a life of its own, a power of its own, and end up dominating our lives.
[00:15:44] By God’s gift, we’re able to fashion and manipulate the goods of this world into really useful new forms. And yet these creations of ours get away from us. They accumulate a kind of power that ends up enslaving us, changing us, reshaping us, and redirecting what we want, what we run after.
[00:16:04] Now, this is because the rebellion of humanity against our creator not only destroys our relationship with our creator, and it not only spoils and compromises our relationships with each other, it also creates a conflict between us and the created order itself. You may remember following the curse, that the ground itself yields its bread reluctantly to human work. It offers thorns and thistles, as well as flowers, and a sophisticated human artefact like money, while offering us many advantages, also rises up against us and resists us and becomes our master.
[00:16:42] Now some theologians have identified the rebellious nature of the world and these rebellious created powers with the powers and authorities of this world that St Paul often talks about as having been overcome by Christ. And whether or not that particular identification is justified and on balance, I suspect it probably isn’t. It’s a very suggestive thought, all the same. There are powers in this world that direct and shape our thinking and behaviour, behind which it’s very difficult to identify any one human actor or group that is really responsible. These powers are like the powers that the sorcerer’s apprentice sets in motion to help him do his work, but which quickly get out of control and act independently of him and against him. The theologian Karl Barth suggests that these powers are kinds of human ability or capacity that have now gotten away from us and now exert a power and influence over us.
[00:17:43] Steph Larkin: “To be sure, man thinks he can take these powers in hand, control them and direct them as he pleases, for they are undoubtedly the forces of his own possibilities and capacities, of his own ability. In reality, however, they escape from him. They have already escaped from him. They are entities with their own right and dignity. They are long since alienated from him. They act at their own pleasure as absolutes, without him, behind him, over him and against him, according to the law by which they arose, in exact correspondence to the law by which man himself thought that he should flee from God. As he did to God, so the different forms of his own capacity now do to him. …
[00:18:27] “These forces can and should serve man. As their cheerful lord, man can and should make use of them. But suppose the relationship has long since been reversed, so that man is no longer their cheerful lord, and he must serve them, not possessing them, but being possessed, driven and obsessed by them?
Smartphone as god
[00:18:47] Tony Payne: It’s not too difficult to see how this line of thinking might apply to human technology as one of these powers more generally, and to the smartphone in particular.
[00:18:56] At a fairly basic level, the idea that smartphone technology might end up exerting a power over us, and in some sense, enslave or master us—this fits very closely with the testimony of many smartphone users—that feeling of being distracted constantly, of being tied to our phones, of being dependent on them, lost without them, anxious about the notifications that may or may not be coming through, and to varying degrees, addicted to dysfunctional and dehumanising practices—things like doomscrolling and, of course, pornography. At this fairly basic level of human experience and common behaviour, it’s not hard to replace mammon in Matthew 6 with your smartphone without much loss of meaning or significance.
[00:19:45] However, in light of what we saw in Part 1 of this podcast series and of the Bible’s broader theology of created human life, we must say more than this. Technology masters us, disciples us, even enslaves us—not just by leading us to become trapped in various behaviours that are dysfunctional; it also changes the whole way we see and understand the world and our nature and purpose as human beings. It represents a pattern of thinking and living to which we are conformed, to return to the language of Romans 12—a pattern of thinking that undercuts, that subverts the nature of human bodily life and the purposes for which God created us. A robust theology of creation affirms that although the created order of the world is complex and it’s malleable and we can do all sorts of things with it, it’s not infinitely or arbitrarily malleable. There’s a stubborn good God-given order to the world, an order of kinds and ends, an order that’s woven into the fabric of the creation itself. The goodness of the world—the goodness that God gave it by creating it a particular way according to his own goodness—is real. It’s recognisable and it’s not arbitrary.
[00:21:04] So to state some of the more obvious features of this good God-given order, humans are created with bodies. We are located in a particular time and place. We’re created with senses in order to experience and enjoy and navigate our way through the world and to respond to the goods that the world offers us. We are created socially: we’re relational beings. We desire to encounter and relate to other embodied human beings in time and space, and we find meaning and security and purpose in those relations. We are created to work and to do things in our world, in relation to God and to each other. And in our fallen and resistant world, we find that work always contains an element of resistance, of friction. In fact, having to work at something, as we say—to overcome the friction or difficulties that are always involved in doing things in our world—is how we come to be more able and resilient, more fully human. As I heard Christopher Watkin recently put it, friction leads to formation in the human character.
[00:22:11] Now these are all aspects of creatureliness—of being created in the world and of the world having a certain order to it. But the technological enterprise explicitly excludes any consideration of these God-given realities. It’s a project whose whole purpose is to break down and reconfigure and improve the nature of human life without reference to any given order or any abiding moral claims, or any sense that God has made the world to function a certain way.
[00:22:43] But of course, in so doing, technology frequently diminishes or destroys aspects of our created selves. We find ourselves living and working and communicating in a non-human way, at a non-human scale, always faster, larger, better, bigger, more efficient. Technology frequently offers us a superhuman life, an existence that leaves behind human embodied life so as to communicate and relate to others in ways that are far beyond the rhythms and capacities of unaugmented human existence.
[00:23:20] But as Christine Rosen and many others have observed, and we noted this in episode 1, this superhumanity extinguishes real human experience. We no longer live in a human way, in a human place, at a human scale, in a human present. Through our phones, we’re constantly somewhere else and seeking to cram ever more stimulation and experience into our racing distracted minds.
[00:23:47] Humans are created not just with a certain nature, but with certain purposes. We’re made to rule and subdue and make something of the goodness of the world, and to do so in light of the two great goods that we are commanded to love above all others—that is, of course, God and our neighbour.
[00:24:05] Steph Larkin: “And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. A second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’”
Great commandments
[00:24:30] Tony Payne: These great commandments describe our purpose—our telos as humans: to love God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And on the basis of this foundational all-encompassing love, to love also our neighbours and to seek their good in God. As our true master and Lord, Jesus Christ disciples us in these two great loves. His commandments are not burdensome, but they redirect us to the true nature of our human lives: to love God as he’s revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and to love one another, just as Jesus loved us. These are the commandments we follow and into which we disciple the nations until he comes again.
[00:25:12] But smartphone technology has a different set of commandments, if I can put it that way—a different set of discipling goals. It shapes and directs our way of seeing and understanding and the patterns of life that we undertake with a different set of loves in mind—a love of self, essentially—a love of being entertained and diverted whenever and wherever possible—to never be bored, to never do anything the old, slow way, but always the new, faster, frictionless way.
[00:25:42] Whether or not this new way is in fact better or more satisfying, it schools us to avoid physical, personal relationships in favour of disembodied, virtual ones, with snippets of communication that validate my choices by people who agree with me. It teaches me to prioritise whatever is somewhere else over what is presently and physically before me.
[00:26:05] The smartphone disciples us, in other words, in a way of inhabiting the world that is ingenious and very successful in its own terms and according to its own rationality, but which is flat opposed, in most respects, to the new redeemed life of a disciple of Jesus Christ, because it teaches us a rationality, a way of thinking, a consciousness that constantly excludes God and our neighbour.
[00:26:31] Brian Brock, in his book Christians in a Technological Age, puts it like this:
[00:26:36] Steph Larkin: “What appears ordered to technological rationality can be perceived as severely disordered to theological rationality. Thinking theologically in such context is for this reason, essentially a battle against the false consciousness that hides the neighbour.”
[00:26:51] Tony Payne: I think that last phrase is very significant. Our battle with technology generally, and with the smartphone in particular, is a battle against false consciousness—a false way of thinking about our world. And that false consciousness constantly hides the neighbour. It constantly direct our attention away from God himself, as our creator and Lord, but also away from the neighbour that God has put in front of us to love.
[00:27:17] The smartphone captures our attention and redirects it. It redirects it to somewhere else so that we might be prevented, at one level, from living a life that doesn’t require a smartphone, but also that we might be prevented from focusing on what is really true and real in our world—that is, God, who created it, and our neighbour, who we’re given to love. And of course, from this redirecting and harvesting of our attention, large corporations derive the massive profits that their worship of mammon requires.
[00:27:48] This sense that many smartphone users testify to—that they couldn’t live without their phones—that their phones have an outsized role in their lives and in various ways dominate and determine their lives—this is one facet of the captivity in which fallen humanity is trapped. We try to organise the world around ourselves, rather than God, and through God, our neighbour. But instead, we find ourselves caught in a kind of dystopia of our own making.
[00:28:17] But the liberating message of the gospel is that change and liberation is possible. God’s greatest work is to open all our senses by giving us a new heart. That’s one of those quotes that Martin Luther is supposed to have said, and no one can quite find where he said it. But it’s powerful all the same: God’s greatest work is to open all our senses by giving us a new heart. He gives us a new heart through the gospel, and restores a new way of seeing and understanding and living in our hearts and minds.
[00:28:47] And this new way can perhaps best be summed up as simply Jesus Christ. He transforms us by the renewing of the mind and by the heart-changing work of his Spirit so that we might no longer be conformed to and oppressed by the dominant patterns and powers of our rebellious world, but instead, that we might live out and prove in our experience what God’s good, pleasing and perfect will really is—that will, of course, being summarised in loving God and loving our neighbour.
[00:29:16] But what does this mean in practice? What would that transformed mind and life resemble, with respect to the smartphone? Well, that’s the subject to which we now need to turn, and we’ll do that in Part 3 of this podcast series, “The smartphone disciple”.
[Music]
Advertisement: Left right out
[00:29:40] Tony Payne: As Christians, how interested and involved should we be in the political life of our society?
[00:29:47] Now, some of us couldn’t be less interested in politics. We ignore it as much as we possibly can and try to just get on with what we see as the important aspects of living the Christian life and ministering to others.
[00:29:59] Others of us are really much more interested in politics. We dive right into the online debates. We keep ourselves informed. And we think that Christians have a real contribution to make politically.
[00:30:10] Now, which of these two kind of approaches is the more faithful Christian approach? Or is it somewhere between the two? And why is it that when we do get involved in politics in some way as Christians and we try to engage in the debate, we often feel that we don’t fit in? We’re not quite Left; we’re not quite Right; we’re kind of both and neither at the same time. Christians often feel marginal in the political life of our society and wonder where we fit.
[00:30:39] I’m Tony Payne and we’re going to be examining these questions at a Centre for Christian Living ethics workshop on Wednesday, May 20th at Moore College, starting at 7pm. The title of the workshop is “Left right out: The strange position of the political Christian”, and I do hope you’ll join us to talk together about these important matters.
[00:30:59] You can get all information, including how to register, at ccl.moore.edu.au. That’s ccl.moore.edu.au. I do hope you can join us on Wednesday 20th May for this important workshop.
[Music]
Conclusion
[00:31:29] Tony Payne: Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast from Moore College. For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website: that’s ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the way back to 2017, videos from our live events and articles that we’ve published through the Centre. And while you’re there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College.
[00:32:04] We’d also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources. And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions: please get in touch. You can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
[00:32:23] Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week.
[00:32:37] Thank you for listening. I’m Tony Payne. ‘Bye for now.
Photo by Creative Christians on Unsplash
