It’s easy to avoid tech extremes; it’s harder to practice wisdom.
Everyone knows not to be on your screen 24/7, and everyone knows we can’t reject all modern technology. Still, the practice of wisdom in our technological age, for most of us, is more aspiration than achievable.
It’s not a matter of simply “finding the right balance,” as if there is a sweet spot between endless scrolling and going off the grid. Rather, wisdom is an awareness of God’s truth demonstrated in virtue. Wisdom cherishes the goodness of technology, restricts its most cursed aspects, and most of all, imitates Jesus.
What Would Jesus Tech?
How should we navigate technology as Christians? The internet provides a lot of information, as do the Large Language Models built on the internet. This information comes with transformation, as we are adapted by what Samuel James calls digital liturgies. Jason Thacker goes so far as to say that technology disciples us. We need to counter this. Not mere information for counter-transformation, but wisdom and Christ-like imitation. Christians are called to mirror the model of Christ, in all of life – with every technology.
In basketball, information is knowing that three points are worth more than two. But wisdom is shooting a basketball like Steph Curry. As Jesus said, wisdom is justified by her deeds; our actions demonstrate our wisdom (or lack of it!). And how did Steph become one of the greatest 3-point shooters ever? We might say it was in his joy of the game, his diligence in practice, or his excellent coaches — all important. But his wisdom came through imagination as he tried to be like his father.
Ask yourself this with every piece of technology: is it helping me be more like Jesus? If it isn’t, delete it.
Steph Curry regularly watched his dad, Dell Curry, one of the few 3-point specialists in the 1990s, sink three after three. Steph dreamed of being like his dad. He would come to his dad’s practices and pre-game warmups and heave up 24-foot shots as a five-year-old. Steph once said in an interview, “My dad has been the standard for me.”
Over the last few years, I have spent hundreds of hours reading, thinking, and talking about technology. That does not make me an expert in technology. In fact, I don’t believe there are any experts in technology or experts in Artificial Intelligence. These fields are so broad and varied that, to me, it seems impossible to attain any kind of comprehensive knowledge.
What I’ve come back to is an underlying ideal; a model. Why? Because what we imagine most is what we image best. To grow in wisdom we must know the one we ought to be like. There is no greater model or tech mentor than Jesus. He is the perfect image of the invisible God. We must grow to be like him.
Living Like Jesus
In Jesus, we have the fulfilment of moral standards and a subjective display of God’s objective morality. I say that Jesus’ life is subjective because you can imitate the way of Jesus without washing Peter’s feet, flipping tables in Jerusalem, or dying on a cross. We should strive to be like Jesus’ embodied wisdom, modelling the principles he represented rather than mirroring his every literal action. You don’t need to move to Galilee but you should still be like Jesus.
Jesus isn’t just one subjective model amongst many, but the perfect model. When we ask, “What would Jesus do?” our imaginations are lifted to the highest degree of moral purity. To borrow Jay Y. Kim’s analysis of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-26), in Jesus we see:
- love over selfishness,
- joy over anxious comparison,
- peace over depression,
- patience over restlessness,
- kindness over loneliness,
- goodness over sexual immorality,
- faithfulness over fake news,
- gentleness over outrage, and
- self-control over distraction.
We will not know how to navigate tech until we first know Jesus. While our cultural context is different from his, the same Spirit that empowered him empowers us, and the same moral law that applied to him applies to us. Cornelis Bennema says that imitation in the early church was a “dynamic, participatory, creative, and cognitive process.”[1] In imitation, Christians must contemplate, not copy.
Should You Use That Technology?
To answer specific questions like whether you should download the latest TikTok or Gmail update (as each update should bring about fresh reflection), we must contemplate Jesus as our sin-free exemplar.
For me, I find TikTok and other short-form videos (Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc..) to be destructive to my soul. They train me in instant gratification, pull me into meaningless debates, and normalize attention-seeking. It’s not good for me, subjectively speaking.
But when I learn how others use TikTok and the thoughtful methods by which they guard themselves and pursue virtue, I admit it can be appropriate. For example, digital evangelists can do plenty of good in that world (but not of that world).
While swiping through TikTok, I imbibed the vices listed above and none of the virtues, so I deleted the app. It’s one example of how asking “What would Jesus do?” helps us with our technology. Ask yourself this with every piece of technology: is it helping me be more like Jesus? If it isn’t, delete it.
Would Jesus use TikTok if he were alive today? I think there are good reasons to say no. The Apostle Paul certainly took advantage of the writing technologies in his day. And Paul is a model for how we should imitate Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). The answers to our questions related to technology are never as clear as those in an algebra or geography class. Do you think Jesus would use technology, given all you know about his character and law?
In light of today’s moral challenges, we must not give way to a simplistic embrace of technology nor an all-out rejection. Rather, we must ask the right questions. And first among them is this: what would Jesus do?
[1] Imitation in Early Christianity: Mimesis and Religious-Ethical Formation by Cornelis Bennema. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025. Pg 24.
