Jesus Was a Techie

Detroit Institute of Arts

Technology has been with us since the beginning of humanity. Jesus himself, writes Craig Detweiler, was a "techie." We see this in Mark 6:3. Jesus is in his hometown, and people are asking, "Isn't this the carpenter?"

The Greek word (the Gospels were first written in Greek) we translate as 'carpenter' is tekton. (οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων)

Detweiler says tekton means more than 'carpenter.' He writes:

"Strong's Greek lexicon defines a tekton as a worker in wood, a carpenter, joiner, or builder. It may include a ship's carpenter or any craftsman or workman. A tekton may also refer to those accomplished in the art of poetry, a maker of songs, or an author. He may be a planner, a contriver, or a plotter." (Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes our Spiritual and Social Lives, p. 23)

Mark 6:3 could be rendered, "Is this not the son of the Artisan, the Maker of all Things?" (Ib.)

All who visit Israel learn that it is a country with countless stones, and comparatively few trees. "Perhaps," asks Detweiler, "it is wise to think of Jesus more as a mason than a carpenter?" (Ib., 24) The word tekton allows for that.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that Jesus was involved in construction. Detweiler concludes:

Jesus "may have specialized, but given the technology of the time, it is easy to imagine Jesus being well acquainted with winepresses, millstones, olive press stones, tombstones, cisterns, farm terraces, vineyards, and watchtowers. We might call such a builder a tinkerer or a jack-of-all-trades... Perhaps he was a techie, an artisan content to make others look good." (Ib.)

Toxic Megachurch Cultures Make Narcissism a Prerequisite (The 'Hot Pastor' Problem)

 

                                                      (North Custer Road in Monroe)

This is good - "Carl Lentz and the 'Hot Pastor' Problem." 

From the article:

For how much the Bible tells us what Jesus said and what he meant, it’s striking how little it tells us about his appearance. Based on his ethnicity and birthplace, he was almost certainly brown-skinned, with dark eyes and hair. He had a beard. But the only comment on the Messiah’s looks comes from the biblical prophet Isaiah, who Christians believe foretold Jesus’ arrival in Israel: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

Translation: Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t hot.

So it’s striking that the most successful church-growth trend in the United States, one ostensibly meant to point people to Jesus, is putting forward male leaders who are, by conventional standards, physically attractive. In the world of several (not all) megachurches, charisma more than character has become a requirement for leadership — and it’s axiomatic that physical beauty is a key component of charisma, especially if you are trying to attract other beautiful people.

After all, the gospel is for hot people, too. If hot pastors are what God uses to take the Good News to hot people, well, God works in mysterious ways, some requiring very toned biceps...

This desire is at the heart of the hot pastor formula. Some megachurches recruit spiritual leaders who are designed to be found desirable by congregants. Their mission becomes bound up in their need to fill their ego, a need to be loved and desired. 

Christian humility is about forgetting oneself. “True gospel humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself,” writes the Presbyterian minister Timothy Keller, who has planted several successful churches in New York himself. “In fact, I stop thinking about myself.”

It’s hard for anyone standing under the bright lights of a megachurch stage to forget about themselves. Maybe the problem isn’t the hot pastors like Lentz but a toxic megachurch culture that makes narcissism a prerequisite.

See also Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

Why I Am Still A Christian

(Self portrait)

(I re-post this periodically, to keep it in play.)

At the end of one of my Philosophy of Religion classes a student asked me why I am a Christian. Why, among the world religions, would I choose Christianity? My answer went like this (I'm expanding on it here). 

My Christian faith is based on the following.

1. My Conversion Experience
2. My Subsequent Studies

3. My Ongoing Experience.

I came to believe because of a powerful experience that changed my life and worldview. The result of this experience included subsequent study and increasing experience. Credo (I believed); Intelligam (I grew in understanding).

Credo: My Conversion Experience

From age 18-21 I was heavily into alcohol and drugs. I flunked out of college. A lot of things were getting ruined in my life as a result of my addictions. I was in a deep hole dug by myself. I was afflicted, and didn’t know where to turn. Actually, I didn't think I needed help.

One day I hit a low. I thought, "I am screwed up." I prayed and said, “God if you are real and if Jesus is real, then help me. If you help me I’ll follow you.” That was the last day I did drugs. 

This happened. My worldview was rocked. I attribute it to Jesus.

I'm no C. S. Lewis, but I see similarities between my conversion to Christianity and Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity. Lewis wrote:

"As the dry bones shook and came together in that dreadful valley of Ezekiel's, so now a philosophical theorem, cerebrally entertained, began to stir and heave and throw off its grave cloths, and stood upright and became a living presence. I was to be allowed to play at philosophy no longer. It might, as I say, still be true that my "Spirit" differed in some way from "the God of popular religion." My Adversary waived the point. It sank into utter unimportance. He would not argue about it. He only said, "I am the Lord"; "I am that I am"; "I am." People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understanding the horror of such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about "man's search for God." To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat." (From Surprised By Joy)

The cat found the mouse. God found me. I was receptive. God exists. God loves me. 

Intelligam: Understanding What Happened to Me 

This didn't happen in a vacuum. The soil of my heart had been softening for some time. I was looking for Help. Help came. My life forever changed. What shall I make of this?

• If this event had not happened I would not have become a Jesus-follower. I needed something experiential that could change me. It happened. 
• I agree with William James who, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, writes: "A mystical experience is authoritative for the one who experiences it. But a mystical experience that happens to one person need not be authoritative for other people." I'm good with that. (With the exception that the mystical-religious experiences of certain other persons have carried authority with me because of, to me, their credibility.)
• My initial religious experience ripped me out of non-reflective deism into full-blown Christian theism. I now believed in God, and in Jesus. This experiential belief had an evidential quality for me, and propelled me to go after an understanding of what had happened. 55 years later, this has not stopped. Today I am a deeper believer in God and Jesus than ever.
• True religion (not the jeans - they are not costly enough) includes experience. Theory without experience is empty. Hebrew-Christianity is essentially about a relationship with God, a mutual indwelling experiential reality. This includes prayer-as-dialogue with God, the sense of God's presence, being-led by God, and so on. And worship. 
• Worship is experiential and logical in the sense that: If God is love, and God is real, and love is about relationship (love has an "other"), then it follows that one will know and be known by God. ("Know," in Hebrew, means experiential intimacy, and not Cartesian subject-object distance. For more,  see Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga's chapter of faith as knowledge, in Knowledge and Christian Belief.)
• I realize certain atheists claim to have no religious experience at all. John Allen Paulos, for example, in his Irreligion, claims not to have a religious bone in his body. I don't doubt this. This fact does not rationally deter me, just as I am certain C.S. Lewis's religious experiences don't budge Paulos from his atheism. (I'm now thinking of Antony Flew's conversion from atheism to deism. Flew was moved by the logic of the fine-tuning argument for God's existence. And the case of the famous and brilliant British atheist A.J. Ayer who had a vision and began to be interested in God.)
• I keep returning to my initial God-encounter. It functions, for me, as a raison d-etre. Philosophically, it's one of a number of "properly basic" experiences I've had, still have, and will have. (See, e.g., philosophers like William P. Alston.)

I began to study about Christianity. I wanted to know: is Christianity true? Is there any epistemic warrant for my God-encounter experience? I changed my major in college from music theory to philosophy.

My studies confirmed my initial act of faith. Here are some things I believe to be academically sound.

• Good reasons can be given to believe in God.  I have, since 1970, studied and taught the arguments for and against the existence of God. I believe it is more rational to believe in God than to disbelieve.
• The New Testament documents are reliable in their witness to the historical person Jesus. (The minority Facebook claim that Jesus never existed is sheer unstudied goofiness. See, e.g., something like Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, or Craig Keener's The Historical Jesus of the Gospels.)
• A strong inductive argument can be made for the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. (I shared briefly about this in my response to the student's question.)
• Miracles - I have seen many, by means of inference to the best explanation. That is, I have seen and written of events that are best explained supernaturally, not naturally.
• Christianity is qualitatively distinct from the other major world religions. Only Christianity tells us that God loves us not for what we do or where we live but for who we are. The Christian word for this is “grace” and, to me, this is huge. The other major world religions are rule-based; Christianity is grace-based. And, in distinction from other religious alternatives, Christianity's claim is that God has come to us. These kind of things make Christianity more plausible than the other alternatives.

My initial life-changing encounter with God led to a lifetime of Jesus-following, God-knowing, and God-seeking. God did and continues to reveal himself to me. My faith is experiential, relational, and rational/reasonable. (Note: it's not without questions. Anyone who studies their own worldview will have intra-worldview puzzles. This includes me.)

For these reasons I became a follower of Jesus and remain one. This has made all the difference in my life,

***
I describe my ongoing experience with God in two books:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Integrity

(Door, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem)

I lack perfect moral and spiritual integrity.

Long ago, as a freshman in college, I declared my major to be metallurgical engineering. I didn’t end up as a metallurgical engineer, but there are still things about the science of metals that have fascinated me. 

One of them is called “metallurgical integrity.” Metallurgical integrity concerns the consistency of a piece of metal. Structurally, if we have a block of metal, we want the metal to be the same at every point. If it’s not, the metal will be weak at the point of least consistency. So, when stress is placed on the metal block, the chances are greater that the block will dis-integrate at the point of least integrity. 

Metallurgical integrity is extremely important. If the metal on a Boeing 777 lacks complete integrity there could be problems at 35,000 feet at 600 mph. 

I think the same is true of persons. When the pressures of life come on us, we will crack or fail or crash and burn at that place where we lack integrity.

A person of integrity is someone who has moral character, or moral “fiber,” in every situation of life, whether in the workplace, the marketplace, the sanctuary, home, or when alone. 

A dis-integrated life is the life of someone who is polite and friendly and gracious when you see them at the grocery store, but impolite and cynical and legalistic in their home towards their family. In one environment they are a friendly and sociable Dr. Jekyll, while in another environment they are a misanthropic Mr. Hyde. Such a person lacks “integrity,” being like a piece of metal that’s strong in one place and weak in another. They are morally and spiritually inconsistent.

What does a truly integrated life look like? How can we live as integrated people today? Here are some of my thoughts about this.

Measure your character, not by looking at other people, but by looking at God. The classic biblical text is Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah, arguably the most spiritually-together person in Israel, has an encounter with God. In the face of the holiness of God, Isaiah confesses, “Woe is me, I am undone!” “I’m in big trouble. I thought I was integrated, but I see I am dis-integrated.” The fibers of Isaiah’s moral and spiritual life were unravelling in the presence of The Perfectly Integrated One.

When we compare ourselves and measure ourselves over against other people, we can eventually find people more disintegrated than we are, thus making ourselves look good in comparison. It’s only when we measure ourselves against God that we see who we really are; viz., as people who don't have it as much together as we thought we did.

This is a good thing for us to see. It’s the beginning of real, authentic integrity. It’s a healthy dose of reality. God wants us to see this, not to leave us disintegrated, but to knit together the moral and spiritual fabric of our lives. The brokenness thing Isaiah experienced is the necessary precursor to a truly integrated life.

So - consistently place yourself in the presence of God. Get broken before God. This isn’t something you need to force or worry about faking. In the real God-encounter, brokenness just happens, inexorably. This feels painful, but it’s also refreshing, since it’s not about religious game-playing and posturing, but about the Real God who loves you and me and wants to rebuild our lives so we bring glory to Him.

Technology and Spiritual Formation - Bibliography (in process)

(The Lutheran Home, in Monroe, MI)

(I'll be giving a 90-minute seminar on April 11, 2026, 11 AM EST. “Christian Integrity and Discernment with Social Media.”  $5. Register HERE.)

Here are books I have used to help me better understand the relationship between technology, culture, and Christian spiritual formation. 

A note: Linda and I watched "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix. Helpful. Well done. Concerning. Frightening.

Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.

Aiken, Mary, The Cyber Effect: An Expert in Cyberpsychology Explains How Technology is Shaping Our Children, Our Behavior, and Our Valuers, and What We Can Do About It. 

Mark Bauerlein, ed. The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking

Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

David Baggett and Jerry Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning

James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology

Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

John Brockman, ed. Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI

John Brockman, ed. What to Think About Machines that Think

Harold I. Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment: The New Philosophy of Science

Alan Burdick, Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation

Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Heidi Campbell, Networked Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture 

Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers are Changing Us

Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

John Cheney-Lippold, We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves.

William Davies, The Happiness Industry

Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

Jacques Ellul, Presence in the Modern World: A New Translation

Ellul, The Technological Society

Amitai Etzioni, Happiness is the Wrong Metric: A Liberal Communitarian Response to Populism

Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

Donna Freitas, The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost

Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, The App Generation

Craig Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukionoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. 

Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays 

James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality

Don Ihde, Philosophy and Technology: An Introduction

David Kaplan, ed. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology

Larson, Eric. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do.

John Lennox, 2084 and the AI Revolution

Tim Lewens, The Meaning of Science: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

Raymond Martin. The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity

Adam McHugh, The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

Carl Mitcham, Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology

Moreland, J.P., Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology. 

Richard Muller, Now: The Physics of Time

H. Richard Neibuhr, Christ and Culture.

Newport, Cal, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life In a Noisy World. 

Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

Pellegrino, Edmund. Human Dignity and Bioethics. 

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business 

Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Powers, William, Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You

Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human In a Disembodied World

Schuurman, Derek. Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture and Computer Technology 

Jacob Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today's Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship

Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

Felicia Wu Song, Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place In the Digital Age

Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up

Mari Swingle, i-Minds: How and Why Constant Connectivity Is Rewiring Our Brains and What to Do About It

Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity

Taylor, The Secular Age

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

Jean Twenge, iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy - and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood - and What That Means for the Rest of Us

Twenge, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement

Jose van Dyck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas

God Does Not Affirm All Behaviors (Real Love Embraces and Excludes)

 

                                                                    (Redeemer Monroe)

In this post I attempt to establish one point, using 'pedophilia' as an example. 

"Pedophilia is an ongoing sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children. It is a paraphilia, a condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depends on objects, activities, or even situations that are considered atypical. Pedophilia is defined as recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children—generally age 13 years or younger—over a period of at least six months. Pedophiles are more often men and can be attracted to either or both sexes." (Psychology Today)

Does God love the pedophiliac? Yes. 

Does God affirm sexual activity with a child? No. 

The Christian belief is that pedophile activity is sin. That is, it misses the mark God places before us. (See, e.g., what in ethics is called "divine command theory.")

This troubling, yet simple, example proves the following: God does not affirm all behaviors. 

Neither do people affirm all behaviors. 

Whether they believe in God or not, good parents morally screen what beliefs are to be championed in their home. The good parent will not allow their child to be taught the beauty and happiness of pedophilic beliefs and behaviors. 

All institutions have moral filters. These moral filters emerge from worldviews. People may differ in their worldviews. People do not differ in having moral filters rooted in a social imaginary. (See Charles Taylor here.)

Churches are no different. As a pastor of a church, I testify that we would not allow someone to teach our children, youth, and adults, that God affirms sexual activity with children. Obviously.

Every person, every institution, embraces some things and excludes other things. (On this, see Amy Chua's Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.) That's what doctrine does, and why doctrine is important. Understand this: Real love embraces and excludes.

The matter than becomes how, as Christians, we are still to love the pedophile, while establishing moral boundaries. To begin with, a lot will depend on how the pedophile views pedophilia. And, do they want us to embrace this belief, or exclude the belief? If the latter, do they want help?

Now, instead of 'pedophilia', plug in any sin.

Was Reepicheep a Just War Theorist?

Way back in the 70s I wrote a song about Reepicheep, the mouse in C. S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Theistic philosopher Paul Copan, in the Introduction to War, Peace, and Violence: Four Christian Views, presents Reepeicheep as a just war theorist. Copan writes:

"Why did Reepicheep carry a sword? Because he, as a knight of Narnia, lived in a dangerous world, he went to dangerous places, and he wanted to protect his family, countrymen, and his leaders. Although Reepicheep was easily offended, he was not an aggressor. He did not bully his fellow citizens. He did not seek to conquer or enslave foreigners. He was a protector, a defender, a champion. He was motivated by love: love of home, love of family, love of country, and, ultimately, in Lewis’s rendition, love of God. That is the essence of just war statecraft."

P. 17. 

The Ancient Easter Creed

 

                                        (Cross, in my front yard.)

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. The oldest words written about the resurrection of Jesus are in the ancient creed that followers of Jesus recited, within months after the resurrection. 

It's found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. This is the "gospel." (See 1 Cor. 15:1-2.)

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 

 he was buried, 

he was raised on the third day 

according to the Scriptures, 

he appeared to Peter

He appeared to the Twelve. 

After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 

 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

We just celebrated Resurrection Sunday!

Jesus is risen!

He's alive!