8. Why Monks Created Technology - Truth Matters - Vishal Mangalwadi

“Why don’t English women haul water on

their heads, like many Indians and Africans?” I asked this in a class in London. An African student replied: "Because... English women are lazy." The answer actually, is more complicated. I asked because in Uganda I had seen hundreds of women and children hauling water on their heads right next to a hydroelectric plant at the source of the River Nile. The abundance of water and electricity

made me wonder why women were bringing water

on their heads, morning and evening, 365 days a year. That wasted millions of hours of labour. Worse, it meant eating inadequately washed food with poorly washed hands, dishes and it infected people with easily preventable diseases that drained their energy. By using their minds, a handful of people can supply more water to a million homes, than a million

people hauling it on their heads. My experience in Uganda refuted the proverb that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Every family needs water. If a wife cannot bring enough water, men forced their children to work, they take additional wives, or they buy slaves, instead of inventing technology They don't necessarily invent. Many scholars, such as Stanford’s Professor

Lynn White Jr., have documented that humanizing technology came out of biblical theology. Why did Christian monks develop technology? Buddhist and Christian monks shared

the same problem: they could not take wives to haul their water or grind their grain. Buddhism required monks to beg for their food. But the Bible said that a person who does not work, should not eat. To work was to be like God. He is a worker, not a dreamer, a dancer,

or a Mediator like in some other religions. But the monks had come to the monastery to pray, not to grind grain. The Bilbe resolved their tension by distinguishing “work”

from “toil.” To work was to be like God. But toil was a curse upon human sin. Toil is mindless, repetitive,

dehumanizing labor, that does not include creative imagination. This theological distinction between work as godliness and toil as curse enabled Christian monks to realize that human beings should not have to do what wind, water, or horses can do. Creative reason should be used to

liberate human beings from the curse of toil. “Gospel” means good news: sin brought

upon us the curse of toil. But the Savior took our sin, its curse, and punishment

upon himself. The Lord Jesus died upon the cross to save us from sin and its consequences, including the curse of toil. This is in marked contrast to every other worldview. For example Hinduism teaches that this world is Maya, not real; and Buddhism teaches that engaging

with this world is the CAUSE of suffering rather than a solution. Francis Bacon made this point

most strongly in his New Science, Novum Organum. “By the Fall, man fell from both his state of innocence and from his dominion over creation. But even in this life both of those losses can be made good; the former by religion and faith, the later by technical arts and

sciences.” The Bible birthed technology in monasteries. The Reformation took out the Bible and its theology from that closed environment and thaught it to everyone. That made available to the world God’s gracious gift of salvation, including salvation from the curse of toil through humanizing technology.