Issue #32
Published 4/13/26

The Unholy City

Part II

Epilogue

Much has already been lost: our inner life eroded, our telos weakened and obscured, our very ontology attacked and confused. Much more is likely to be lost as the City expands and extends its authority.

The City is inert, but it is activated by our weaknesses and sin. It is deployed by people who share our weaknesses and sin, and in a similar way they are captives of the City as well.

The City offers no light of its own. It projects only a powerful beam of darkness.

The domination and oppression of humanity by and through its machines might seem to be enough to satisfy the hegemonic impulses that drive the City. And if the City’s purposes were entirely of human origin, that might be true. But the spirits behind the City’s calculated and malignant design want more—the destruction and damnation of the individual. This has always been true, but the progress of technology has afforded a unique opportunity, and it is not just sin, though that abounds. It is a chance to advance the cosmic battle between Good and Evil, God and Satan, in a material way, to wound the Creator through wounding His creation.

It is not a particularly good idea for sinners like us to study demonic motivation very deeply. Those who have done so (and survived) have reported that the discovery of such knowledge was deeply unsettling. On the other hand, God’s people are called upon to be wise, and so a certain degree of familiarity with the patterns of demonic practice is in order.

Accordingly, in connection with the foregoing analyses of the City, we note the following patterns through which the spirits of the City oppose God:

the hidden motivation,
deceit,
the obscuration of the Gospel,
the enthronement of human wisdom,
the erection of an idol, and
the destruction of its servants.

What they have visibly prompted is a regime of

consent-based control,
enslavement through appetite,
quantification replacing personhood,
information overload preventing correction,
obedience trained by media,
exits eliminated by economic integration,
moral relativism as slavery, and, most of all,
a new source for moral authority.

These are completely consistent with hell’s strategies through history.

How should we understand technology’s role in all this? Technology is completely neutral morally. It conveys moral significance through its uses:

as a tool, it is a servant, extending human capability, serving clear limited good, beneficial, with manageable risks;
as a weapon, it is a danger, misapplied through folly or sin, amplifying evil;
as an idol, it is a rival, redefining good, reshaping human nature, roles, and telos, hijacking allegiance, with spiritual consequences; and,
as a demonic instrument, it is an asset of spiritual war, with scale, opacity, and psychological power that aligns with the adversary’s age-old strategy to separate humanity from God, neighbor, and self.

The leaders of the City are primarily concerned with level 1, trying to improve function while managing risks and still trumpeting technology’s benefits with quasi-religious language: “march of progress”, “unlimited promise”, “a new age”, etc. Government and civic leaders are stuck at level 2, trying to regulate it, apply or impose ethics, and advocate virtuous uses while suppressing bad actors. Many in the church are also stuck at level 2, seeing technology only in terms of “good or bad use”. Few in industry, government, or the church see level 3, and some of those actually applaud it. As to level 4, there is a lack of theological and philosophical categories and there is hardly any vocabulary with which to discuss it.

Very few writers have seen and written about the spiritual direction of the adaptations of technology. Language like “the hollowing out of personhood”, “enslavement to appetite”, or “tyrannical subjectivism”, are met with either blank stares or skeptical scorn. The injection of religious notions into the conversation (supposing that one can actually prompt a serious conversation about this subject) is ignored or viewed as impolite or non-inclusive. Such is the power of the City to normalize its activities, hide its pathologies, and visibly align itself with human well-being and flourishing while actively undermining it. For the City is a hall of mirrors with ultimate delusion at the end.

To say that the danger to humanity, the church, and civilization in general is both very great and urgent is to understate the case. The disaster of the City has already fallen on mankind. It is changing people, erasing inborn inhibitions and prohibitions while introducing and imposing new standards of its own. Its conquest is not complete, but one searches, so far in vain, for measures to impede its progress.

In the Olivet discourse, Jesus observed that in that time, “The love of many will grow cold.” I note that the weather has turned a bit chilly.

The accounting is not yet over. We have discussed the “what” in part I and the “how” in part II. But we must consider that while the City implements formidable new tools for the adversary for spiritual warfare and oppression, the City is not an end in itself. The City serves a purpose, and that purpose, that “why”, is addressed in part III.

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”—Genesis 3:4-5

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© Copyright, 2001, 2003, 2026, by Robert McAnally Adams.
The Unholy City is licensed in its entirety under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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