Every day in every way better. . .

The beautiful image of progress is indeed alluring.  Every day in every way we are getting better.  No one would deny that this is what we wish, what we hope to believe, and what we expect.  But is it true?  Can anyone realistically say that we are getting better and better as individuals, as families, as neighborhoods, as communities, as nations, and as a world?  

It is true, of course, that there are different ills, different sins, different problems, and different vices in every age and time.  They are not exactly the same but they are not exactly unique either.  Modernity has always brought with it its own slant on the age old sins of the commandments.  They are more often only more complicated than before and with more problematic consequences than before.  Those consequences are usually the increased numbers of victims and casualties we face because of this thing call progress.

We are pitiful in our defense of progress.  We point out with glee to the terrible things of the past that were once acceptable or tolerable or even promoted.  Slavery and misogyny are the typical things we name as areas in which we have made progress.  And we have.  But with this progress has come with a host of other problems which were never envisioned when race and sex caused some to be unfairly oppressed.  Our own willingness to accept and promote the death of countless millions in the womb while contemplating how to make death simply a choice for those who want it, when they want it, and painless to boot.  What about the increasing numbers of people who have given up on marriage or children and those who enter marriage and exit with impunity?  What about the promise of social media and its end result of cyber bullying and the incredible portion of its capacity devoted solely to porn?  What about the hopes placed in artificial intelligence and our seeming inability to distinguish between what machines say and do and people say and do?  What about the progress of technology that has come at what kind of cost to us -- costs in relationship, loneliness, and depression.  What about the grand expectations of the UN and world arenas designed to prevent or stop wars and the state of war and conflict that is literally all over the globe?  What about the attention given to the environment and climate change and the way we seem to use more dangerous and toxic minerals and elements without a thought to what to do with them when we are finished with them?      

There is no promise of improvement to the future.  In fact, the whole perspective of the Scriptures is just the opposite.  Things are not getting better.  Things are not improving at all.  The world is in a death ward spiral down.  It is not in an upward movement toward a better world but a world marred by sin and death reaching down further and further into this abyss.  That does not mean every part of technology is bad or every part of life is crap but it certainly diffuses the idea that we should have hope in our ability to sort out the past in the future and make it better.  We are not here to simply warn the world of this regress but to speak hope to the hopeless.  That does not pin such hope on a date in the past but on the one who alone can redeem the future with a new heaven and a new earth, one raised up through death to a life death cannot overcome and one in which the terrible cycle of sin and failure are finally ended.