Old Testament
Ecclesiastes 9:10-11
10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work, nor plan, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol, where you are going.
11 I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.
New Testament
1 Corinthians 10:31
31 Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Ecclesiastes has the honesty to say what technologists and citizens alike forget: we do not command outcomes. We may work with all our might, and still time and chance meet us. Death waits for the wise and the foolish alike. That is not despair; it is creaturely truth, a cure for the delusion that progress can abolish vulnerability.
Paul's counsel in Corinth is similarly sobering and freeing: whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. In context it is about ordinary choices, rights, and the conscience of others. Technology belongs there, where love asks, Who might be harmed? Who might stumble? Who will be quietly excluded? The question is not whether we can build a system, but whether we should, and at what cost to the neighbour.
As heirs, we do not need tech to be our salvation. As subjects, we dare not treat people as data points. The glory of God is not an abstract label; it is a way of weighing real lives. If the person most affected by a system were sat beside us at Communion, would we still call the harm an acceptable trade-off? Lord, give us a public imagination shaped by worship: grateful for tools, alert to limits, and committed to the common good with steady, unshowy love.