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While the truths of our faith are eternal and absolute, our understanding of the faith is contextualized by the world in which we live. Our environment provides the language, the metaphors, and the images by which we think about and contemplate our relationship to God, to others, and to His creation. Today, we are immersed in a world of technology and computers. We communicate via email, the Internet, and digital mobile networks. Our commerce, industry, and media are electronic. We work on computer desktops. All of this creates new ways in which we interact with others, new constraints on how we do things, and new concerns about security and reality. The psychology of human/computer interaction deals with the relationship between human thought and behavior and the design of computer systems. Much has been learned in last two decades about how humans learn to cope with computers and how technology has changed our patterns of thought and how we think about others and ourselves.

Technology has changed our language. We ascribe human and even godlike characteristics to the computer (anthropomorphizing) and view humans as nothing but machines (mechnomorphizing). Many analogies exist between the human/computer interface and the interface between God and man. As people of faith struggle to understand the mysteries of God's nature and His plan of salvation, metaphors from technology come to mind. Could the Internet be a technological metaphor of the Holy Spirit? The Internet Server could be analogous to the Father and the Client the Son. What are the psychological and theological implications of such metaphors?

On the plus side, technology has offered solutions to many human problems (e.g., world wide communication, relief from repetitive tasks). Human expectations however often exceed reality. Reliance on technology rather than God will prove to be a mistake. On the negative side, technology introduces new instances of a corrupt world (e.g., a corrupted file, a crashed hard drive, a computer virus). Technology opens new channels of sinful behavior (e.g., porn sites, computer fraud). Technology draws new lines of discrimination (e.g., accessibility, computer illiteracy). Technology, whether modern or ancient, must be factored into our study of psychology and our understanding of theology.

Poster presentation at the National Faculty Leadership Conference (2004), Washington, DC. [HTML] [PDF]

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Survey on technology and theology (Coming soon)