Common Grace and pursuing technology

A book I’ve been reading recently is The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the legacy of Abraham Kuyper. While the book deals with a neo-Calvinstic viewpoint of how Christians should relate to the public sphere of ideas and political thought, it was also helpful in seeing how others in the past have agreed with some ideas I’ve had on theology for some time.

When I decided to go to Bible college, it was because I had been taught the mindset that if you are pastoring, that would be your only job, and I would be “giving up” a career. I met someone at my engineering internship at work that changed my perspective. He helped me understand that I could do both, and having two skills would be better than just leaving engineering altogether.

So for the last several years, I’ve tried to leverage both of my skills, and I’ve been pretty successful at doing both. One of the things I learned from the book I just read is that the thoughts on sphere sovereignty and reformed theology as being a “life system” really fit in with what I am trying to do with my life.

The main idea I learned from the book is that someone who is following this system of thought sees common grace as a means of recognizing God’s grace and goodness in all spheres of life, such as art, public thought, and yes, even engineering and scientific disciplines. As Christians, we should be salt and light within the spheres which we participate in.

I’ve learned over the last few years to have an appreciation for the things in the world that are not necessarily “Christian”, but are expressions of beauty that the human mind has graciously been allowed to develop.

So that is why I continue to both teach in church, and “do ministry”, and at the same time develop my skills in systems engineering. Having the “domain knowledge” in both allows the ability first to advance the Kingdom of God in the sphere in which I’m participating, but also to “blur the spheres”, and come up with some unique ideas across domains of knowledge. I believe that if we really would like to see an effective 21st-century Christianity, there will need to be people who are looking to apply Christian theology to all the spheres of life, and then somehow work across boundaries to come up with unique approaches.

I believe this is an important point, because traditional reformed theology might suggest that we just continue to do the same things, and let God work it all out, but as part of understanding common grace as a means of developing Creation, I believe we have a responsibility to continually work on new ways to express Christianity.