God’s Code: Translating Hospitality into Programming – On the Virtue of Welcoming in Computer Science

Document Type

Blog

Publication Title

God’s Code: Translating Hospitality into Programming – On the Virtue of Welcoming in Computer Science

Abstract

This article explores the theological virtue of hospitality—rooted in the Christian concept of philoxenia (love of strangers)—as a foundational principle for computer science education and programming practice. Drawing on Scripture and Christian tradition, the author argues that hospitable code prioritizes clarity, documentation, and care for the reader over technical cleverness, recognizing that programming is fundamentally communitarian work intended for human understanding. Through the lens of paired programming pedagogy, the article contends that teaching students to code hospitably cultivates virtues essential to both professional collaboration and spiritual formation: patience, humility, justice, and love for the neighbor. By recovering the monastic principle of ora et labora, the author demonstrates that coding with hospitality sanctifies technical work, revealing how ancient theological wisdom speaks directly to contemporary computer science and inviting students to understand their craft as participatory stewardship in God's creative ordering of the world.

Publication Date

Fall 11-19-2025

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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This is an article I wrote for the Kerux Blog at CTS.

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