How is mankind doing today when it comes to finding his/her way through life or even making it more tolerable? I know the majority of people would more than likely say that we have made many advancements. I wonder though when it comes to the things that matter?
Through science and technology many difficulties have been overcome. But along with the benefits we have also set in motion many negative things also. It just seems to me that we continue to create an even more tangled web. Actually, that is how I would answer the question of how our "so-called" advances have affected us.
Mankind attempting to save it self is a futile exercise. It is man/woman attempting to live out of their own resources that has set in motion this alternate story that has given us scientism and technism. Even with the benefits, it is a devastating story.
But we find ourselves smack dab in the midst of that story and there is no escaping it. But there is hope and always will be. That hope is constant....and that hope is God and his love for us. In giving us the freedom to choose.....we make our choices, and our choices create many complications. We humans, having been made in the likeness of God carry within our very selves a great power to create. When I look around me I see many wonderful, beautiful things that have been created with this power. But at the same time I see other things we have created that are so destructive also. Destructive to that which God created---men and women, animals, and everything else that makes up the natural world.
This alternate story opened eyes to shame and fear, and man and woman had to get busy to come up with a way to survive. We began to develop techniques to accomplish this. In turn, we began to rape and pillage that which God had created. We are still trapped in that cycle and what we think of as advancement is the on going process and developement of technique.
Freedom (God's freedom) is the only thing that breaks this cycle and yet even for those finding freedom they come to understand that they still have to deal with the reality of necessity. It will be this way until all things are set back to right. What I am finding these days that is so wonderful is that I am living freer even when it comes to necessity. My family and myself still have to eat, and we need clothing and shelter, but what I have to do to get these things just don't frustrate me like they used to. I'm seeing the purpose in it all and how Father even brings meaning to the process. I think one of the other things that I am noticing is that all the things that have been created through science and technology that my hands, mind, and heart, used to always be filled with are fading in value to me. They are extra, unnecessary baggage. I'm traveling lighter these days and the journey is becoming easier to bare and I am understanding much clear and finding it to be true...his yoke is easy and his burden is light. There is joy in the journey.
So, the next time you hear someone mention progress....it really is worth taking the time to step back from it to determine whether it really is progress or is it just tangling the already tangled web just a little bit more?
I find myself mostly interested in the progress brought about by Jesus gently untangling the mess in you and I.
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