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How should Christians engage with technology?

Update: This is really old and there’s a more recent follow-up post that goes with it

Computer keyboard

The other weekend I went to speak at a men’s breakfast at St. Luke’s Wimbledon Park on the topic of “how should Christians engage with technology?” It’s something I’ve been wanting to put together a talk on ever since my time studying on the Cornhill Training Course and working as their IT guy, a period of my life which gave me plenty of time to think about how theology and technology interact (this was also when I first developed the PrayerMate app).

I think this is a topic which Christians ought to be encouraged to think about a lot more than we do, because it’s something that’s both really important and all too easy not to think about all that hard. For that reason, here are my notes from my talk.

The fact is that technology is absolutely everywhere. Even if you think you’re a luddite who’s hopeless with technology, there’s a chance that you own a pair of glasses – well, that’s technology. There’s a very good chance that you use electric lighting to stay up beyond sundown – that’s certainly technology. Even if you go to bed at 5pm in the winter, you’re certain to have read a book or two in your lifetime (though frankly, if you’re going to bed at 5pm, I don’t know where you find the time!) The humble book employs an enormous amount of technology – from the paper it’s printed on, to the printing press used to copy it (perhaps one of the most revolutionary pieces of technology ever invented), to the alphabet itself, which believe it or not hasn’t always existed and once upon a time somebody sat down and invented.

“Technology” is basically anything that is created by human beings to help us reach beyond what we would be able to do without it – whether that’s just doing an old thing more efficiently, or whether it’s doing something that was entirely impossible before. Technology is all around us, and it’s so deeply woven into the very fabric of our lives that we barely even notice it’s there. That’s precisely why it’s so important that we do take time out to consider it from a Christian perspective – because the technology we use always changes us.

There’s masses and masses I could say on the topic, but I’m going to basically address three areas: technology is not morally neutral; technology changes how we think; and some practical thoughts on using technology.

Technology is not morally neutral

When it comes to technology, it’s very easy to respond in one of two ways:

  • There’s the approach that just rejects all new technology outright – we don’t like the change it represents, so we reject it en masse as evil. It took me years and years before I got my first mobile phone, and in the mean time I stubbornly rejected it.
  • The other common response is that we embrace it wholeheartedly as an unambiguously positive force for good. The culture around us often portrays all technological progress as a step forwards – newer is always better, and just because something can be done, then that something should be done.

But if we look at what the Bible has to say, then I think we can say that both of these approaches are lacking. Have a look at Genesis 1:27-27:

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'”

So we see that God is a creator – he makes things. And one of the pinnacles of his creation is that he creates men and women, and he creates us in his image, so that we too will be creators who in turn like to make things. As we master the world around us and bring our ingenuity to bear on the problems that we face, we’re actually reflecting something of the image of God, and that’s a good thing and a right thing. It’s part of how we’re going to fulfill that creation mandate that God gave to Adam and Eve, to “fill the earth and subdue it” and rule over it.

So our ability to create technology is a good and a positive thing that reflects something of the image of God. But we also need to recognise that we live the other side of Genesis 3: in Genesis 3 we see humanity rejecting God’s good purpose for our lives, and in judgement God puts a curse on his creation.

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17)

So things are now distorted and warped. The creation order is turned upside down, the things we created to help us master the creation now try to master us. It’s a few chapters later that we get the first clear example of technology in the Bible, in the hands of one of the murderer Cain’s descendants, “who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron” – it’s not loads clear, so don’t attach too much weight to it, but it’s not presented as entirely positive. Then you get the first major building project in the history of humanity in the form of the Tower of Babel, which again is not exactly portrayed in an overwhelmingly positive light. There it’s an example of technology being used to exert independence from God – making a name for ourselves apart from our relationship to God.

So the basic principle which we need to establish when thinking about technology is this: technology by itself is what we might call “amoral” – that is, it is neither overwhelmingly good nor inherently evil. Like lots of things in this world it’s something with great power for good but which is also deeply affected by the fall. What’s important is how we use that technology – what we use it to do, and what we allow it to do to us.

Technology is neither overwhelmingly good nor inherently evil – it’s how we USE it that counts.

Some of the benefits of technology are easy to spot – maybe it’s an app like PrayerMate that can help you in your prayer life, maybe it’s a Facebook message to a struggling friend that gives them the encouragement they need to keep going, maybe it’s just the way that electric lighting and central heating helps our midweek Bible studies go better, or the way that the printing press has enabled the Bible to be distributed far and wide and put into the hands of ordinary people. Technology has enabled some wonderful things.

But technology can also very easily become an idol in our lives. Most of what I have to say here is really inspired by Tim Challies’ book “The Next Story” (which you should all go out and read immediately), and he says this:

“Though the devices and tools we create are inherently amoral, at the same time we would be foolish to believe that they are morally neutral. The things we create to assist us in overcoming the consequences of the curse also seek to dominate us, drawing our hearts away from God rather than drawing us toward him in dependence and faith.”

Anything created has the potential to become an idol in our lives – something that we put our trust in instead of God. And technology has perhaps a greater-than-average risk of being turned into an idol because it is so powerful in extending our abilities and what we’re able to achieve – it promises to help make us a little more like God, and overcome our finiteness and weakness. And that’s something we need to be aware of and pray against. It can be that the technology is an idol in itself (the latest iDols from Apple, perhaps?) or they can enable other idols, such as my pride, as I project an image of living the most remarkable life imaginable on Facebook, or lust, in the form of Internet pornography and so on.

My goal here is to encourage us all just to be a little more thinking in our attitude to technology – not to reject it outright, nor to embrace it unquestioningly. Instead, to try to see beyond the superficial and to think a bit more about how it affects us, and why we feel about it the way we do.

Technology changes how we think

It’s really important to recognise that our technology has the power to radically alter how we perceive and think about the world around us. If you’ve ever read Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death“, he argues that the advent of television completely revolutionised how we engaged with everything from politics to education (had the internet been invented at the time he was writing, I’m sure he’d have said his hypothesis was even more true of that). Because of the television, we’ve become a very visual culture. Postman talks about how important it is these days for politicians to look the part if they’re to get elected, because so much is decided by the public watching them on telly. He asks how many of the great leaders of the past would still have been elected if they were to run for office today?

So, technology can change how we think. How many of you have ever made a decision about what to wear or what to do, because you’ve been thinking “how will this look on Facebook?” Or maybe that’s just me!

Let’s briefly consider just two examples of ways that technology changes how we think. Even if you don’t think these are relevant to you, they’re sure to be relevant to your children or the people that we’re trying to reach in our churches.

1. Technology means we’ve redefined community

In the old days, your community was defined by your physical geography – where you lived – and primarily that usually meant your family who you shared a house with. So if you wanted to contact somebody, you’d call the family telephone, or you’d write a letter to the family address. Now it’s shifted from our geography to being much more about the individual, and our preferences – so our community can be a virtual one defined by common interests. You email me as an individual, you send me a text message as an individual – and it’s all completely cut off from my geographical context, my family context.

So does that mean I should throw away my mobile phone, close my GMail account and refuse to communicate with anybody except by snail mail? Of course not! Apart from anything else, it’s probably too late for that! But being conscious of the way that our technology has changed us, we can be armed to think about how this might have a knock on effect for our godliness, how we relate to God and to one another. There’s no doubt that this is one of the reasons why as a culture we increasingly find church so hard work these days, because very often we don’t have a whole lot in common with the other people we go to church with, we’re not that bothered about our local community, and it all feels a little bit too much like hard work. We’re going to need to go back to our Bibles to figure out why we should bother with church, and how to persuade the next generation to bother with church in a world where meeting together physically in one place is increasingly less interesting. Communication is increasingly about “mediated” contact these days – it’s much less daunting to send a text message or an email to somebody that they can read at their leisure than it is to look them in the eye and give them my full attention and require their full attention in response. Going to church is such an alien concept in a world of mediated contact!

2. Technology means we’ve redefined truth

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried anything on Wikipedia before – but there are very strict guidelines that determine what you’re allowed to say on Wikipedia. It’s all based around the concept of “consensus” – everything you write has to have a citation from another source, everything has to be backed up by somebody else who agrees with you. They explicitly say that it’s not a place for original ideas or new thinking.

Or if it’s not about consensus, it’s all about “relevance”. As sites like Google and Facebook have to deal with larger and larger volumes of information, they’re getting more and more sophisticated in filtering things out so that they only show you what they think you’ll consider “relevant”. You’ll see more and more content from the friends that it thinks you engage with and less and less content from the friends that it’s decided you’re not really that interested in, and it’s all very self-reinforcing.

Both of these ways of defining the truth – consensus and relevance – have problems for the Christian, because we believe in revelation. Biblical truth often clashes with consensus, and doesn’t necessarily seem all that relevant to an outsider who’s thinking superficially. But it’s the ultimate truth, and it’s supremely relevant because it’s about our eternal future – if only we have the ears to hear.

Obviously there’s loads more we could say on that topic – plenty of further examples of ways in which our technology changes how we think. But in summary: be on your guard! Don’t engage with technology unthinkingly and expect to come away unchanged.

Some practical thoughts on using technology

Really I just want to talk about one thing under this heading, and that’s distraction. Our technology these days increasingly leads to distraction. If we allow it to, our technology can really begin to own us, with all of the beeps and buzzes and notifications that constantly vie for our attention and drag us away from the real interactions with the people right in front of us.

As a result of all this distraction, we’re less and less able to concentrate for long periods of time, we find ourselves less and less able to do something simple like just sitting and reading a book. It can even get to the point where we find ourselves feeling quite anxious and fidgety if we have to sit with our own thoughts and nothing to distract us. It can draw us away from the people we’re face-to-face with, and be a disaster for our working productivity.

Our hearts long for that little beep, so we feel like we need to leave the volume turned up. But the reality is that the world will still go on if our emails go unread for 30 minutes, and we’d be much better off if we just turned the notifications off and instead just checked in every once and a while.

All this can be a real issue for habits of personal devotion like having quiet times where we spend quality time in God’s word and praying. So many times I’ve been trying to read the Bible, only to find myself checking my phone or my iPad because some idea has occurred to me part way through, and before I know it I’ve completely forgotten what I was looking at.

I think if we’re going to be serious about putting God first in our lives, we have to be pretty radical with our technology.

For myself, it’s a real discipline of trying to make sure that my Bible reading is the first thing I do in the morning, rather than checking my email. It just feels to me like it says a lot about my own priorities that I’m more excited to know if anybody around the world has sent me a nugget of novelty in my inbox, than I am to hear from the Creator of the Universe who has some eternal truth to share with me – and trying to make sure I hold off checking my email until I’ve listened to what he has to say just feels like the right thing to try and do. Apart from anything else, often I’ve only got about 3 minutes of peace and quiet before the baby wakes up, and if I use it to check Facebook then the quiet time may never happen!

Coupled with the short attention span, we have less and less need to exercise our memories, as we become more and more reliant on Google to give us the answers. We don’t know how to memorise scripture any more, because we know we can just look it up on Bible Gateway instead. How much the poorer are we for it?

So let me urge you: keep reading your Bibles, keep reading good Christian books, and why not try to memorise the occasional Bible passage?

Questions to ask our technology

I am aware that this was a bit of a whirlwind tour, with lots left out. However, I hope there’s been something there that was vaguely useful, and some fuel for further thought on the subject.

To close, let me leave you with some questions from Tim Challies that we should ask of any technology. You’ve heard of the discipline of talking to yourself – well here’s some ways you can talk to your mobile phone instead:

Re: The best way to stop your child becoming an athiest – a Christian Response

I came across something desperately sad this morning and felt compelled to write a response. It was David M’s cynical (atheistic?) answer to the question “What is the best way to stop your child from becoming an athiest?” (sic) and assuming that it reflects the respondent’s view of what Christianity is, it was truly tragic. Below is my own answer, adapted directly from the original.

Begin by educating them, expose them to critical thinking, logic and science. Teach them how to think and the history of thinking, to show its immense value and also its limitations. Talk to them about important contributors to science like James Maxwell, people whose Christian faith was the whole reason they believed science was worth studying in the first place – because they trusted in a God of order and a world of reproducible results. Make them read the great Christian thinkers of the past and the present, people like Jonathan Edwards, Jim Packer, Don Carson. Show them that Christianity can be intellectually credible and stands up to scrutiny.

Encourage curiosity about how the world works. Show them that the Bible has things to say about every aspect of life – use everyday experiences as an opportunity to encourage meditation about God and his word.

Make them hold their own natural bodies and functions in high esteem. Show them that they can admit that they are small and weak, but that despite all that, they are of supreme worth in the eyes of their Creator and He longs to redeem them from their failings – they don’t need to fix themselves before He’ll love them. Tell them everything enjoyable is given by God for their good, and that when it’s used rightly and kept in its proper place it can be even more fun. God invented sex! God invented good wine! In fact, the Bible’s description of heaven is a great banquet with the best food and drink, at a wedding.

Ensure that they respect everyone and anyone as individuals made in the image of their Creator, and therefore born to be in relationship with Him – it doesn’t matter what their skin color, nationality, political opinion or even their creed, they are still precious to God and therefore worthy of your respect. Even when their differences might tempt you to be afraid of them and think them less than human – teach them that Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and it was for such as them that he died. Teach your child to love them enough to long for them to come to know their Creator and be the people they were made to be.

Teach them to laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously. Teach them to respect their church leaders, but also not to believe everything they’re told. Encourage them to keep going back to the Bible for answers, but also to ask questions of the Bible – who wrote it? can I trust them? is it reliable? what is the manuscript evidence for it? These are all vitally important questions, and finding the answers can only strengthen their faith. From an early age, teach them to identify superstition – received wisdom that has no basis in fact. And teach them that there is such a thing as error – a false view of the world can be dangerous and crippling. Teach them the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament – show them that there is no contradiction between them, and that the God of grace and love who sent Jesus is the same God who will judge and punish sin. Teach them to weap over those who will be lost, just as God himself does not delight in the death of the wicked – but also to rejoice in God’s justice, and that there will be an end to sin and wrongdoing. It will be a good lesson that sometimes the truth is hard to swallow, but it’s far better than living a lie.

Instruct them and discipline them so that they know you care – but don’t be too severe. Import to constantly question for themselves – to think for themselves – to live for themselves – to want to own this faith for themselves, and not just because their parents believed it – but knowing that the Christian faith is built on solid foundations: encourage them to keep coming back to the person of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection, whenever they get lost. Either he did rise from the dead or he didn’t – and if he did then it’s really worth trusting him.

And one more thing – though I wouldn’t want to overemphasize this – try to make sure they can spell, use correct grammar, and understand basic English words. It is actually spelt “atheist” and not “athiest”. God is a God who speaks, and language matters – though he won’t love you any less if you struggle with it.

There are no tricks, but by God’s grace, they’ll come to know and love the Saviour you so cherish yourself.

Why God Is Better Than the Chairman – Thoughts on ‘The Adjustment Bureau’

The Adjustment Bureau

I’m not going to bother writing an all-out review of “The Adjustment Bureau” – I’m sure many people have already done a better job of that than I ever could. But in summary: as somebody who finds it very easy to enjoy even the worst of films, I rather liked it! Yes, the script was a bit shoddy in places, and yes, the final chase was perhaps a bit lacklustre.

But at the end of the day, what I enjoyed about it was that it’s a film that makes you think. It’s a film that none-too-subtly explores some favourite themes of mine – the meaning of free will, human choice & responsibility, the sovereignty of God, etc. – and in the process reveals a lot about what our culture believes and cherishes on these issues. Here’s a great quote from Russell Moore’s theological ruminations on the film:

“This film might, though, prompt us to see in our neighbors a sense of helplessness, a sense of captivity, and a rage that, just maybe, is misdirected toward God. And, perhaps, the film will spur us to wonder whether our neighbors are feeling something of what is true for all of us, apart from the liberating power of the devil-defeating Cross: We are being chased.”

I’m not sure the film was really good enough to actually make me feel any of that. But what I did feel, after seeing the film, was profoundly thankful: thankful that the God of the Bible is nothing like The Chairman. God would beat The Chairman in a fight without even breaking a sweat. Let me explain why (warning: spoilers ahead)

First, consider for a moment the nature of the Chairman:

  • The Chairman exists in a deistic universe – the kind of “clockwork universe” that by and large works itself out according to the laws of chance. Every now and again the Bureau has to make a little nudge to adjust its course and make sure that things stick to The Plan, but as far as possible they allow it to take care of itself.
  • The Chairman has to constantly revise his plan in the light of new data – he’s constantly at risk of being outwitted and having his plan overturned by pesky humans, and his minions seem pretty inept at preventing this from happening. He seems to have aspirations for how he hopes things will turn out rather than sovereign authority to make sure that they do.
  • The Chairman thinks we’d be better off without him – this is the ultimate message of the film: rather like training wheels on a bike, The Chairman’s influence is designed to be only temporary. He’d much prefer it if humanity was able to take responsibility for itself and its choices, and indeed seems confident that we’d be better off if we could. He only reluctantly steps in when it seems that we’re making poor use of the privilege of free will.

In this way, The Chairman is, of course, a product of our age – a profound confidence in the innate goodness of humanity if only we would be true to the potential within ourselves; and free will and the right to choose as the most cherished possessions we have. As Norris says in one of his early campaign speeches: “the most important thing is the choices we make”. Within this worldview, for God to impose his will on us would be cruel and inhumane – making us paramount to slaves.

But this could not be more different from the God of the Bible:

  • The God of the Bible sustains and upholds the universe every minute of every day – without his constant intervention the sun would not rise in the morning, nor the moon by night. The early scientists were given confidence to trust that the laws of physics would stay constant from day to day because they trusted in a sovereign God who never changed and who was able to sustain the movement of the planets and the spinning of the atom. There is nothing “hands off” about the way God runs his universe.
  • The God of the Bible cannot be thwarted – contrary to the assertions of Open Theists, the Bible teaches that there is no Plan B: what God has purposed always comes to pass. “I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose'” (Isaiah 46:10). The real decisions that we make every moment of the day are all part of his plan, not in opposition to it.
  • The God of the Bible knows how much I need him – the Bible says that to be rid of God’s influence in my life is not to be free but to be desperately lost without hope. By nature I am a slave to sin, following the futile desires of my darkened heart and mind. Thank God that he doesn’t step back and leave me to it! And thank God that his involvement in my life isn’t some temporary state of affairs that might be revoked at any moment – it’s painfully obvious to me that without God’s constant moment-by-moment intervention in my life, even when I least deserve it, I would be utterly ruined.

As finite human beings existing in a single moment of time, we can only see one minuscule portion of the picture. What’s more, even if I could know what the best choice in any given situation was, I’m far from rational – we constantly choose the things that are against our own best interests based on misplaced affections and sinful desires. Now, I need God’s intervention in my life. I hope I come to depend on his direction more as time goes by, not kid myself into thinking that I can do without it. To surrender to his sovereign will, even when it seems directly opposed to the things I would have chosen for myself – now that’s true freedom.

Why Programmers Find It So Hard To Be Christians

Say anything related to Christianity in an online community of programmers and you’ll quickly discover how unwelcome you are. Partly this is due to the influence of secularism – there’s an implicit understanding that Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with programming and therefore you’re simply way off topic (a subject I intend to come back to on this blog). But is there something more going on? Is there something about the programming mindset that makes us especially resistant to organised religion in general, or evangelical Christianity in particular?

Faith and the Fear of Inconsistency

Michael Lopps has a brilliant summary of nerds as essentially being “systems thinkers” – we love to analyse complex systems and figure out all the rules that make it work, what’s going on underneath the surface to produce the behaviour we observe on the outside. We feel safe in the world by constructing these mental models to explain things, and when they deviate from our expectations – when something breaks one of our rules – that’s when the nerd rage kicks in and we start to panic, as though our safety net is beginning to unravel. Nerds love consistency, because where consistency exists there can be understanding, and where understanding exists there is security.

But so often faith is presented as the enemy of consistency. Programmers absolutely hate it if you ever say “I don’t have all the answers to this theological conundrum but I trust that God is good and so I’m content to believe his word on it” because it allows God to have a “get out of jail free” card that lets him bend the rules of the system whenever he pleases. If there is a supernatural world out there – a world where divine beings exist who we cannot see and therefore cannot understand, and where dead people come back from the grave – then that’s a world which defies all my mental models and lacks the consistency I crave. It’s a world I cannot control, and therefore can never feel entirely safe in.

Not Invented Here Syndrome and Organised Religion

Our ability to grok an overview of a complex system also tends to produce a certain amount of smugness in your average programmer. We like to think we’ve arrived at a level of understanding inaccessible to lesser mortals, and although we’re eminently open to argument if someone wishes to present new data we hadn’t factored into our models, the idea of buying wholesale into somebody else’s model doesn’t sit easily. Partly that’s because half the fun is in the challenge of working it out for yourself, but also because the effort involved in fully understanding their solution often seems like more work than just figuring it out for yourself. It’s classic Not Invented Here Syndrome. I believe that’s why it’s easier either to dismiss organised religion as unnecessary or deride it as being motivated by factors less worthy than the pure quest for truth. We come up with further models to explain away why people believe things that to us seem so obviously false – “it helps them feel superior to others”, and so on.

But as any seasoned developer will tell you, starting again from scratch is rarely the wisest course of action. God is the ultimate geek, the systems thinker extraordinaire, and so if he’s provided documentation for why the world is at it is then the competitive advantage will be with those who pay attention to it. But more than that, he’s invited us to hang out with him at the launch party – and I, for one, don’t intend to miss the opportunity.

Programming Under the Lordship of Christ

Yet another coding blog?

When I relaunched geero.net a month or so ago, I did it under the slightly ambiguous subtitle of “Christian software development”. It’s true that I planned to talk about software which is explicitly Christian, particularly centring around my Bible-teaching computer games, but it is also my intention to talk about issues that affect Christians who are involved in software development, both professionally and as a hobby. But there are loads of brilliant programming resources out there written by people far smarter than me. So why does the internet need yet another coding blog, and why would I be arrogant enough to think that I can contribute anything unique? In fact, isn’t it a bit weird to a have a blog devoted to Christian software development in the first place? Isn’t being a programmer completely orthogonal to being a Christian?

Whilst the connection may not seem apparent at first glance, I think that being a Christian actually has quite a significant impact upon your computer programming. The Bible says that Jesus is interested in the everyday details of our lives, including our coding – and not just what we code, either, but the nitty gritty of how we code it. If he is the source of all our gifts and abilities, then it makes sense that he would be concerned with how we use those gifts, and it brings him glory when we use them well. To paraphrase Colossians 3:17, “whatever you do, in word or code, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

One of the big themes of the New Testament is Jesus as King- the ruler of everyone and everything. As Abraham Kuyper once famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”. Nothing is outside of his rule, including our work and our coding. So what will it look like for us to bring our programming under the Lordship of Christ? It seems to me that there’s plenty of space for a blog that helps us think that through – I know I’ll certainly benefit from writing it!

Conduct in the Workplace

It seems obvious, but first and foremost, Christian programmers are Christians. That means that 99% of living under the lordship of Christ is exactly the same as if we were lawyers or secretaries or school teachers or acrobats. We’re called to be salt and light in the world, being a good witness to those around us, graciously speaking of Jesus when we can and commending him with our lives and our work. When speaking to slaves performing the most menial of tasks, Paul writes this:

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24)

It can be tremendously encouraging to know that Jesus cares about our work! Whether we’re professional programmers doing it for a living, or just a hobbyist hacking something together in our spare time, we’re to imagine Jesus as our real boss, calling the shots. We’re to work heartily,
putting all of our effort into it, and not just when our manager is looking over our shoulder (“not by way of eye-service as people pleasers”).

This is an area where I constantly find myself falling short. It’s so easy to slack off and start browsing the net when nobody’s looking, or to start grumbling if we seem to be going through a phase full of bugfixing and maintenance instead of any exciting new development. But this can be a terrible witness – especially since grumbling is like gangrene and is so quick to spread amongst a team, with disastrous effects on morale (incidentally, if you do find yourself wading through a month full of boring bug fixes, it may be an indicator that the code you wrote last month was a load of old rope – bear it in mind!)

Writing Quality Code

As a general rule, programming under the Lordship of Christ is going to mean doing the best job we can. Even when you’re programming for fun, it still glorifies God when you make good use of the gifts he’s given you, honing your skills. When you’re doing it professionally, however, it’s absolutely vital to your witness to be writing good code. Bad code is a headache for everybody who has to maintain it, so you can really serve your colleagues by writing code that’s easy for them to understand and change, with
good comments and unit tests, and so on. Even if you’re on a team of one, you can still show consideration for the poor soul who’ll have to maintain your code once you’re gone!

But as in most fields, quality doesn’t just happen by accident. So how do we learn how to write good code? Firstly, I’d say that if you’re not in the habit of reading programming blogs (in your lunch hour, of course!) then I’d highly recommend adding a few to your favourite RSS reader. Some of my
favourites are the Daily Worse Than Failure, and the joel reddit. These kinds of things can be great for exposing you to ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own, and for keeping on top of the latest trends. Secondly, nothing beats getting your hands dirty for learning how to code better. The most valuable experiences
for me have been when I’ve had to maintain some truly awful code left behind by my predecessors – it really teaches you the pain that you can cause through sloppy coding practices!

The Problem of Proud Programmers

I want to close by addressing one sin that I think programmers are probably particularly prone to, and that is pride. We all know the stereotype of the computer
programmer, and great people skills aren’t part of it. But I wonder if part of the reason the stereotype is so often accurate is because of the kind of people who are attracted to computers. Other people are so inherently unpredictable, which some people find really hard to cope with, and computers can provide real
solace for them. I find it much easier talking to my computer, where I can tell exactly how it’s going to respond to a given input. But I wonder if this means that programmers are especially likely to slip into pride. We’re used to exercising complete dominion over our CPU, bending it wherever our will determines – we are like gods among men! Except we’re not – Jesus is the king, and programming under his lordship being quick to acknowledge that. It’s why the Bible devotes so much space to the issue of pride, since it’s a particularly nasty form of idolatry that sets us up as rivals to the Lord Jesus. Yet it’s not a topic that you’ll find covered in many other programming blogs. There are certainly writers like Jerry Weinberg who talk about the practical benefits of “egoless programming“, but I think there’s a massive spiritual dimension to pride that means there’s real benefit to be had from a programmers’ blog from a Christian perspective.

Programming under the Lordship of Christ won’t always be easy, but he’s promised to give us grace enough for each day as it comes, so let’s keep going in his strength as we spur one another on to love and good works.