July 14

Adapt Or Die?

 

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.  ––Matthew 9:17

Since Creation, we have never experienced a time where human technology is advancing faster than today. Consider the Internet. The mid-90s gave us the Information Internet, which in the mid-2000s became the Interactive Internet (where we went beyond information gathering to social media interaction [Facebook, etc.]), and now we are seeing the Integrated Internet. This is an era where we will be able to build our own communities and tribes—rather than logging on to a “place” like Facebook, we will create the “place” and meet there with our friends. 

And make no mistake, the more powerful the Internet gets, the more powerful our hardware becomes. The technology isn’t driving the Internet, the Internet is driving the tech. AI is influencing everything we touch, from online orders to supermarket food chain delivery, to how we communicate. The metaverse is an emerging technology that uses virtual reality to allow us to interact in a digital world. It’s enough to make your head spin.

As God’s men, it’s tempting to throw up our hands and say, “I’m just going to hunker down and wait for Jesus to come back.” That, of course, isn’t what the Lord wants from us. Instead, we need to put aside our preconceived ideas and fears and look for ways we can use these new technologies to more successfully spread the Gospel.

Here’s just one example: Consider the fact that AI has now made it possible to communicate in real time with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Think how this might revolutionize the Gospel and our work to fulfill the Great Commission. The same can be said for Bible translations into other languages: What used to take years (i.e., translating a Bible into an exotic language or for an isolated people group), can now be done in a fraction of the time.

Man of God, we are called to exploit the world’s tools for the Gospel, not the other way around. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, there’s no need to become an expert in every new tech that comes along. But we can learn the basics and figure out how the Lord might want to use technology to share Jesus’ love.

We adapt with the times—the Message doesn’t change, but our methods of reaching the lost most certainly need to.

Lord, show me ways I can better share Your love with a broken world, whether that’s through old methods or new technologies.