Technological edge

Back to School: Online learning could become a powerful tool for homeschoolers | Marvin Olasky

Associated Press/Photo by Pat Christman (Mankato Free Press)

While evangelicals generally have not imitated Luddites, the 19th-century smashers of new technology, many of us have tended to look at new inventions as curses rather than blessings. How many evangelicals have praised the internet for its quick information flow in comparison to those who have excoriated it for making pornography one or two clicks away?

In other eras Christians have been faster to praise God from whom many technological marvels flow. Martin Luther waxed rapturous about the printing press, calling it God's tool to spread Reformation ideas. Missionaries lauded transportation advances that brought them most of the way toward people previously unreached by the gospel.

Along those lines, let us now praise three new high-tech developments. The first two WORLD has covered before: ultrasound technology that has led many young parents to preserve the lives of their unborn children, and internet progress that allows Christians to get out messages and make books readily available to people around the world.