Everything old is new...

If you are old like me you cannot say the words Three Mile Island without wincing.  The iconic cooling towers of the nuclear power generating plant were a symbol of what was gone wrong with the promise of cheap and safe power.  It was sort of like America's Chernobyl as a sign of what can go wrong.  By the time we got over it, we were over nuclear power as well.  Plants were shut down instead of maintained or modernized and we switched them out with coal and gas plants -- so much cheaper to build and keep in good working order.  But now the old is new again.  Nuclear power is needed not simply because it is cheap and relatively safe.  No, it is needed because our hunger for electricity is insatiable with AI on the heels of the new world and no number of solar panels or windmills could begin to meet the need as envisioned down the future.  So Three Mile Island is scheduled to come back online in 2028 -- 49 years after the accident!  It has been rebuilt and modernized at a cost of $1.6 billion so that it can help us meet the growing need for electricity once again.  This time it has a new name that reflects how we are beginning to view nuclear power as an option.  It is a "Clean Energy Center.”  Apparently Microsoft is buying ever amp of power it produces to fuel its AI future.  Everything old is new again.

Oddly enough, it is pretty much the same way with sin.  Everything old is new again.  There are no really new sins -- just sins that we recycle in and out of favor from time to time.  We think we are so smart and clever but we are victims of limitations.  There are few things that are really new and lots of things really old.  That is the nature of life after the fall.  We want to think of all things new but when we look into the mirror of history, the old is simply delivered to us in new ways.  It is the distributions system that changes but not the thing it self.  The new sex sins are old.  The new ways we deceive one another are old.  The new means to avoid doing the work ourselves are old.  The ways we mask our identity are old.  The cheating ways are old even if the way we cheat is new.  The ways we dishonor one another and those in authority are old.  The ways in which we live in jealousy and covetousness are old.  The delivery systems we use for our sins may change but the sins are the same.  There is only one new thing.  That is forgiveness.  It alone deals with the old that dogs us wherever we go and it alone unhooks the baggage of our past.  But even forgiveness can be abused.  When we use forgiveness as license to sin again or sin better or sin more, then even if this gift becomes a burden and a blessing.

I do not know what to think about Three Mile Island opening up again.  But our endless pursuit of things to entertain ourselves to death will need lots of electric power as the means of this entertainment becomes more sophisticated.  Imagine that.  We need more power to feed our habits -- even those less than salutary.  This thirst for more will lead us to resurrect even a tired old symbol of our failures.  The cost of sin increases, so to speak.  But it cannot be met simply with more power plants and more AI and more internet.  It needs a Savior whose grace is bigger than all our sin.  Thanks be to God we have just such a gift from a generous Lord.