He may use you to discover the genetic cure for cancer, or he may use you to weaponize a superravager, but he disposes of every innovator as he pleases in his wisdom. We are each accountable for our volitional decisions and our sins. But make no mistake—each and every one of us finally fulfills the Creator’s purpose for our lives.

Innovators Create by Divine Appointment

Many of the sharpest Christians, who rightly celebrate God’s providential governance over all things, tend to wrongly assume (in practice) that his reign ends somewhere around the boundary lines of Silicon Valley. In reality, innovators—both virtuous ones and nefarious ones—are created by God. Scripture protects us from the myth that God is trying his best to stifle and subdue the unwieldiness of human technology. No, for his own purposes God creates blacksmiths and warriors, both welders and wielders of new tools. Our most powerful innovators exist by divine appointment.

More troubling, many of the world’s most powerful technologists imagine that they have transcended their need for God. And it is their common agnosticism or atheism that explains why Christians today often adopt a negative view of technology. The godlessness of Elon Musk reminds us that the closer you approach Silicon Valley, the fewer Christians you’ll find. The percentage of professing evangelical adults in the US (25.4 percent) drops in California (20 percent) and plummets in San Francisco (10 percent). And the percentage of adults who read Scripture at least once a week in the US (35 percent) sinks in California (30 percent) and plunges in San Francisco (18 percent).¹ We assume that God must be withdrawn from such a place. But Isaiah corrects this assumption. The pagan societies where the ancient smith and ravager operated make San Francisco look like it’s part of the Bible Belt.

The rejection of God and the accumulation of innovative brilliance doesn’t give you the power to operate apart from God, like a queen on a chess board who thinks she can move anywhere she wants, impervious to the Master’s ultimate plan. Your innovative brilliance is how God is choosing to wield you in the world.

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