“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

Psalm 19:1

Psalm 19:1 is one of the better known passages in Scripture. Like many other places in the Old Testament, it writes in grandiose terms how all of creation trumpets God’s immaculate handiwork, most spectacularly from the dazzling night sky. Indeed, when every star is out, it is difficult to find a scene more sublime.

Humans talk much about glory these days too, and I admit there appears much to glory in. Today our technological advancement has reached heights once relegated to the realm of science fiction. Through AI that promises transformative superintelligence, medical advancements that declare obesity a scourge of the past, and the steady march of other technologies into every crack and crevice of our lives, techno-optimists the world over laud how humanity will soon be able to glory all the more in its creations.

And yet, while “the heavens declare the glory of God,” I have been struck by how our glories–our technologies–consistently appear to obscure his. For in our most glorious cities, places filled to the brim with the state-of-the-art in human advancement…no one can see the stars.

Modern technology has all but obscured the night sky for most of the world. This has deeper philosophical intimations.

While God’s glory stems from his fullness of “grace and truth” (John 1:14), the chief advancements of modern man increasingly appear a steady march towards the hollow and futile–as legitimate distractions from the substantive and real.

Generative AI, for instance, is in the business of producing things that are inherently untrue. Our feeds have become saturated in fake photos and videos, some of such high quality as to be genuinely deceiving. Our devices, which direct our eyes to artificial screens and content, do so by turning them away from what is natural and real; our families, neighbors, and the outside world.

The most exemplary places of technological prowess, our cities, are wrapped in artificial asphalt, glass, and concrete, and are often the furthest from the natural in both distance and spirit. Their consolatory, man-made parks serve as a mere pittance of the real thing. The world’s most innovative technological pioneers, far from joining the sky above in religious piety, often spout the most blatant atheism.

Gone are the humble scientific discoveries of centuries ago, made predominantly by religious people who strived to better understand God’s creation. Today, most research is done arrogantly, as a means of twisting the natural world to our selfish ends. To a cynic, most development today is akin to a modern Tower of Babel; an attempt to use technology to catapult humanity towards a god-like earthly dominion.

By all appearances, it appears that human glory is mutually exclusive from God’s. Yet, God has imbued humanity with reason, so much so that it is undeniable that the use of those faculties for human advancement is undoubtedly part of God’s plan. How can the two be reconciled?

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To begin, it is undoubtedly true that man possesses glory of some kind. Psalm 8:5 clearly writes: “You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.” 

Here, glory is ascribed to God, which means “to regard a quality as belonging to.” Furthermore, the Latin etymology of the word “ascribe” means “to write.” And in Jewish theology, to write something means it is set in eternity (such as the law). The origin of God’s glory is thus the reverse of man’s: it is inherent and eternal. It is his because it is due him. Man, meanwhile, is crowned with glory. And crowning requires the action and forbearance of another–an outside, more powerful force that can place the crown on one’s head. The one who stands while the other kneels.

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Therefore, it is unsurprising that human glory and divine glory possess a degree of an inverse relationship–at least when humanity strives to be fully independent of God. It is as the authors of The Liturgy of the Land note: that the more the artificial crowds out the natural in human life, the more we are left with the only thing mankind has ever created solely by itself: sin.

Psalm 8 reveals that our glory, if it is truly to be glorious, must be a “co-glory” of sorts. For our glory is a gift to us, and this suggests our achievements will only share in the true marks of the glorious, “grace and truth,” when “co-created” with God. This is much like how the Church views faith and works: that we must work with the spirit. We cannot rely fully on it nor fully on ourselves to purge our lives of sin: “let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

Developing and marketing technologies in a spirit of genuine humility will also go a long way towards mitigating their negative effects. Never seeking to replace natural human functions or relations with technology, as certain tech executives infamously boast about doing, ought to be the minimum bar. For instance, gone must be the frequent sweeping dystopian predictions that “work will be optional.” Man was commanded to work while in the Garden, and there will be work for us in heaven (Revelation 7:15). Delegating all things to technology will therefore only further the hollowness and restlessness of this age. 

In the end, humility is the only thing that can once again ground our society. We must always remember that our creations cannot outshine his and are not something to glory in for their own sake. Instead we must glorify that he in his providence gave us both powerful reason and immutable natural limits, which we attempt to escape at our peril. And whenever the temptation of pride in our technologies or the utopian promises of their traffickers threaten to sweep you away, remember how those same victories obscured the stars you will never see.

By Evan Patrohay