I don't blame these people at all, and to say that I'm not wary myself would be a lie, even as futurist as I am. The thing is, I see technological advancement as completely natural to humanity and a part of its natural order. Over the course of thousands of years, one of our chief occupations as a species was unlocking the secrets of the universe and bending them to our advantage. 

And I come to that conclusion because of my faith as a Christian, which puts me in a very awkward situation when it comes to others who get as excited about technological advancement as I do, as well as around many of my fellow Christians who don't. 

I want to talk about a technology I'm very excited about that, when it's brought up in discussion with many people (not just Christians) it tends to freak people out, and that's the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats technology or "CRISPR" for short. Moreover, I want to talk about how I believe this technology is something God put is in line to utilize. 

For those not familiar with it, CRISPR is a gene-editing tool that allows scientists to modify DNA with great precision. It allows us to effectively delete and replace genes in living things, correct disorders, and effectively engineer animals and vegetables to increase their survivability. One of those animals is, of course, us. 

A great explainer on how it works can be viewed in this short video. 

To sum the video up, CRISPR acts as a way to cut and/or replace troubling gene sequences causing issues within something, and in the future, we will use this to eliminate inherited diseases. This effectively takes the natural act of the natural culling out of the weak to leave the strong, and makes it a procedure where no one has to die to accomplish a stronger being. 

For many reading this, the Hollywood outcomes are already developing in your mind. Designer babies, superhumans, uncontrollable mutations, are probably all sounding off as warnings in your head. To be realistic, no technology is without its ethical or medical hazards, but rest assured that the Hollywood outcome is usually the least likely. 

But I bring up the CRISPR because many would look at is as disrupting the natural order. There are many Christians who might look at it as "playing God." 

I disagree with these ideas. There is a natural order, but it's my belief that God gave us authority over that order to subdue, bend, and repurpose it as we see fit. Humans are the stewards of creation. We were given dominion over it. 

Moreover, God gave us extreme intelligence. Some may disagree with the word "extreme," but relative to all the other creatures we know to exist, our abilities to think, problem solve, and conceptualize outpaces everything else by miles. This gift of knowledge comes directly from God (Daniel 2:21) and we're told in Proverbs 25:2 that "It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out."

God knew what He had created in us. He knew we'd seek understanding and knowledge. It's ingrained in us. We actually can't help it. As science has proved, the human mind abhors information gaps to appoint where we almost feel a physical need to close them. Science was a concept of discovery we created to fill these gaps. 

God didn't make a mistake when He programmed that into us. He knew that we as a species wouldn't stop with "because God made it that way," nor do I think He wanted us to, at least in many ways. Seeking knowledge and discovering what He made, down to the most minute detail, was something he programmed into us purposefully. It's not a choice we have. It's in our nature to be this way. 

Before we started looking to curb the issue, the way we've become stronger in nature is the weak died out. That is the "natural order," but humanity began disrupting the natural order thousands of years ago when we started coming up with ways to fix our issues, and we've only gotten better and better at it. The natural order is what humanity makes it. Right now, the natural order is that as many people survive as possible utilizing the knowledge we've gained and the technology we've developed. This even applies to our pets. 

This has introduced weakness into the human body, of course. You likely know someone with a condition that they have to get constant treatment for. Maybe you know someone allergic to peanuts or shellfish. Perhaps you can think back to some point in your life where, if you hadn't received medical attention for something, it would've killed you, or severely crippled you. 

Which brings me back to the CRISPR. We were always going to look into our physical bodies, and what makes us what we are. Moreover, we were always going to look into how the smallest details caused some of our biggest problems. Then, naturally, we'd begin trying to find ways to fix them. We do that, because He made us to do that. 

With CRISPR tech, we can look into our DNA and take out those weaknesses. Instead of countless lives being lost in order for the strongest to develop, we just take care of that weakness in an afternoon, eliminating these problems from the gene pool while saving the life. As a Christian, I believe life is precious, and if I can make that life stronger and resistant to disease, then it should be done. 

Some of my fellow Christians will say this is "playing God," but I don't see that at all. I see this as being a chip off the ol' block. This is utilizing the gifts He gave us to help. I don't see this as playing God any more than the manipulation of electricity. 

Look at it this way. In order for Jesus to eliminate disease and lameness from a person, he didn't use "magic." He used the will of His Father. If the will of His Father was for the sick to made healthy, then something had to have happened on a physical level, meaning God would have likely manipulated DNA strands and rebuilt parts of the body down to the smallest detail in the space of a blink. 

The point here is that there is nothing God didn't foresee when it came to our technological advancement. He knows where we're going. He's made no effort to stop us, and why would He? He built us to come stock with this drive. 

To be clear, we need to be wary of our hubris. We might have found the way God's creation works to the point where we can find ways to manipulate it to our benefit, but we are not God. Respect should be given to His creation, and we should be good stewards of not just it, but the knowledge He gifted us. 

That said, I don't see technological advancement as inherently evil. It brings complications, but complications are a feature of knowledge and change. 

It's something that fits well with humanity's ability to problem-solve. Almost like we were made for it.