Life is like that. We live in an improvement era in which everything is being constantly remodeled. I can barely put my phone down between updates and every time I most need my computer, it is downloading and installing one more idiot updates. All to give me more emojis and security and bug fixes that do little to help -- at least as far as I can see. We face the same problem and the same failed solutions with our humanity. There is a profound utopian impulse common in modern culture which has decided that we can take what is old and make it new, improve upon what we deem to be bad, and fix what is wrong. While with a house it is merely a money pit with dubious results, with humanity there is the innate risk of improving out of us who we are and turning the things that we cannot change into the rabbit holes that distract us from what we can change.
We have decided that suffering, vulnerability, illness, aging, and the current in vogue human failures are simply problems to be solved. We have forgotten that sin has placed its mark upon our human condition and that this will not be a defect easily engineered or solved by medical options that kill. We have lost, at least in our communal mind, the need for and relevance of religion and so we bristle at the idea we need anyone's help. Of course, God is convenient to blame but not as redeemer or savior. We will not breed our way out of these things nor will we engineer our DNA to prevent them from staining our image of perfection. We will not self-improve ourselves out of suffering or frailty or moral dilemma. Such is the lot of a human condition since the Fall. We must begin by admitting this before anything else can help us. Repentance is not meant to satisfy a demanding God but to admit that God is our helper and His goodness is not optional for us but key to any hope we might have.
It amazes me how often in the home improvement shows we are told about smart switches or screens as if these are what will make a house into a home. It is typical of our penchant for technology to believe that every problem is a technical one and every solution is a technological one. Even for us. That is why artificial intelligence is so enticing for us. If we are having problems with the remodel, maybe we can make a technology which can do for us what we cannot -- an artificial humanity to fix our real one. How unsurprisingly the solution seems to be more leisure, more entertainment, and more pleasure. If you cannot live forever, live the time you have well until you decide to check out of Hotel California. But, if you will recall, you can check in; you just cannot check out, at least in the song.
A just social order is a lofty goal and a life without constraints of pain or disappointment is a common enough one but is that really what we need? Indeed, the Christian Gospel insists that there is something more that cannot be measured in earthly standards, except perhaps in guilt and shame, not exactly in great quantity today. Forgiveness and a clear conscience are not perfunctory steps toward a greater goal but the beating heart of Christian faith and life. Peace with God comes before we have peace within and can make peace with our brother. Rome keeps talking about human dignity, common good, and justice as a basis for social order. Protestants keep talking about individual conscience, self-government, and the limits of political authority. I wonder if both cases have pursued prosperity and, at least in comparison with the past, achieved that dream but at the cost of knowing who we are and why we are here and the divinely given orders of marriage, family, children, and home. Have we remodeled out of our modern lives the very things that gift us with purpose? That is what I fear.
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