Did Jesus Play with Building Blocks? Part 1

Part1: Introduction

If you are new to my blog, I thought I’d take a minute to introduce myself. I have been a professing Christian for most of my life, and I’m here sharing insights from God’s word. I’ve gained through my faith journey as someone who’s always been immersed in technology.

In college, I met my wife of 29 years and remember the thrill of email, a new and marvelous way to communicate over summer breaks. That love of technology and my wife’s support became an extensive career working in big tech as a systems engineer and architect.

As the years progressed, we had three children who we homeschooled. Whether it was early online homeschool Skype meetings with tutors in elementary school or coaching robotics during high school, my kids had similar deep interests in technology.

Whether coaching robotics, leading a homeschool theatre troupe or serving in children’s and youth ministry at church, I regularly encountered technically oriented children.

With that introduction out of the way, I want to return to when I was a technology-focused child. I grew up in a small country church. People often ask me what denomination I was. Well, I went to the Methodist Church every Sunday morning and the Baptist church every Sunday night, so I guess that made me a Methodist Baptist.

I have to say, as an inquisitive technical child, that was a pretty odd combination.  In the morning, we got a very academic sermon from a PhD theologian with a heart of gold, but I’m pretty sure he only really spoke ancient Greek and Hebrew. Then, on Sunday night, I could almost feel the fire and brimstone circling overhead, waiting to rain down at the slightest provocation.  So, as a child, I was a little confused about what this whole bible thing was all about.

Add to that confusion my deep interest in digital technology, and I was definitely out of place in the analog world I grew up in. Our farm was more about ensuring we did things the way we always had than looking into technological advancements.

But at school, they had this rare thing—an Apple computer… I was one of the few kids who got regular time with it, and I really enjoyed learning to program. I even did some computer art programming, each pixel one at a time.

So, while I connected with how I was wired at school, that wasn’t acknowledged at my church; if anything, I was just plain weird. The heroes of the faith were pastors and missionaries, and I couldn’t look to anyone in my church experience as a role model. I generally felt like an odd man out.  What I was good at didn’t seem to have a place in a 100-year-old country church.

I went to college for a degree in physics and started slipping away from the church. However, I was fortunate to have an academic advisor that was a believer.  He showed me that you could be technical and a Christian.  That was a real turning point.

Over time, I was introduced to the concept of spiritual gifts, specifically the gift of craftsmanship, and started to see myself in various places in the Bible. That insight has helped me train my technical children in the way they should go, and I’m here to pass that on to you.

So, let’s talk about these technical children.  What’s really on their minds…other than screen time?

The first thing to realize about the technical child is they are very concerned with “How does it work?” This makes doing things on “faith alone” very difficult for these children. They want to know how; if there isn’t a satisfactory answer, they will keep digging until they find one.

This brings up the next point: they want to master the skill or craft in front of them. It will not be enough for the technically oriented child to do an activity; they must do it well.

They are also far less interested in learning theory and want to get their hands on things.  They are often less verbal than their peers.

They often don’t communicate as easily with others and find it challenging to start a conversation unless it's about something they are very interested in.  These children are often kinesthetic learners and need to hold something and manipulate things with their hands to learn best. Just talking at them, and not engaging them in doing something can be exhausting for these kids.

You might be asking, what is a kinesthetic learner? Well, in the next blog post, we’ll explore the theory of learning styles and how it affects these children.