There may be an appropriate government/security/regulation type response to this – I won’t claim to speak to that. What I do know is that no amount of technology will stop all sinful acts.  We’re too creative for that.  More importantly, the sinful heart needs the Gospel.

I’ve followed the news of the bomb attack in Boston.  Many, such as a pastor in Boston, have written on how to react to these events.  We now understand that the bombs were made in part from “kitchen pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails and other lethal shrapnel.”  That got me thinking about the nature of technology and something I think I can safely claim:

Any technology can be used for evil.

Doing evil is inherent in our nature as the creators of technology.  We are fallen and sinful.  “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9.  We are also creative, able to create amazing works of practical use and art out of the earth’s raw materials.  Put those together and we can creatively make technology to increase our ability to sin.

I vaguely remember some cooking with a pressure cooker when I was growing up, and that seems so incongruous compared to the events in Boston.  How could the same device be used in both ways?  But it is so, and we must face it – face the sin and evil that dwells in human nature.

There may be an appropriate government/security/regulation type response to this – I won’t claim to speak to that. What I do know is that no amount of technology will stop all sinful acts.  We’re too creative for that.  More importantly, the sinful heart needs the Gospel.

Dr. George “Lee” Nickles, a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, is Assistant to the Dean for Technology and Curriculum at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. This article is reprinted from his blog and is used with permission.

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