God said to Adam] “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” [Genesis 3:17-19].

A friend of mine posted this Mark Zuckerberg observation on Facebook last week. Ironically the phrase is a fast way to say something that needs to slowly work its way into our hearts and minds: the importance of taking our time in our work, in our leisure, in our thinking, in all our daily actions, and in our interactions with God’s creation. Another way to put it is the old maxim: “Haste makes waste.” (which is opposed to one of our most destructive quotes: “Time is money.”)  [Crash painting source. Right click on all photos to see them larger.]

Also last week I came across another wise observation by slow-going farmer/philosopher Wendell Berry—on the difference between a path and a road found in his essay “A Native Hill”:

The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around. A road, on the other hand, even the most primitive road, embodies a resistance against the landscape. Its reason is not simply the necessity for movement, but haste. Its wish is to avoid contact with the landscape; it seeks so far as possible to go over the country, rather than through it; its aspiration, as we see clearly in the example of our modern freeways, is to be a bridge; its tendency is to translate place into space in order to traverse it with the least effort. It is destructive, seeking to remove or destroy all obstacles in its way.  [For an interesting comparison, if you have Google Earth on your computer, look first at the streets of San Francisco, CA and then at the roads and streets leading into Madaba, Jordan.  Which city layout do you think was formed by roads and which by paths?--DO]  [Path photo source]

When you think of the damage done to the earth’s life-giving and life-preserving processes especially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it’s fairly easy to see that most of the destruction is done because of humankind’s desire to go fast. Roads, railroads, aircraft sky lanes and the vehicles that travel on them have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and ten times more injuries. And they have expanded man’s destructive reach into all the wildernesses that God extolls in His address to Job about the wonders of His creation that most people previously could only imagine.

And as C. S. Lewis points out, the annihilation of time is partner to the annihilation of space. In his book Surprised By Joy, Lewis says this about his car-less youth:

The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distance by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed “infinite riches” in what would have been to motorists “a little room.” The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there. [Old Irish road photo source. Lewis spent his childhood in Ireland.]

An important part of God’s curse on the land to discipline Adam and his descendants—perhaps even for the purpose of keeping us from damage created by haste—was to impede our speed and capacity to wrest the earth to our selfish purposes: we would have to contend with “thorns and thistles” to obtain our food, shelter, and clothing. God no doubt knew that sinful, self-centered people with easy access to the fruit of the land—and access to the Tree of Life that would guarantee life unending—would rapidly damage His good creation. The earth has always had the capacity to feed, shelter, and clothe us all so long as we did not through haste. consumption, and “efficiency” spread waste all over the planet.

Has technology, one of mankind’s most revered and powerful gods, finally become little more than an in-Your-face defiance of the one true God: “we shall not do hard labor by the sweat of our brow!”? Evidence is growing that by our saving labor, we are spending our lives. As T. S. Eliot put it, we are “betrayed in the mazes of [our] ingenuities; sold by the proceeds of [our] proper inventions.” This was an echo of an earlier word from Henry David Thoreau: “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” [Old train photo source]

I think it’s time for us to go slow and preserve things.  Practice for the coming Kingdom—where speed will be mostly meaningless!

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money (Matthew 6:24).

After a few weeks of posts from the Pacific Northwest, I thought it would be good to return to some of the questions I’ve gotten from conservative evangelicals in reference to our care and keeping of God’s good creation.

Some Christians feel that it’s wrong to call the creation “good” because it is now fallen and unlike the way it was when first created.  However, the Bible does not call the altered natural creation “fallen.”  It is under the curse (Genesis 3); but the curse was placed on the earth to discipline humankind, not to make the creation bad or sinful.  In fact, under the curse it is doing exactly what the Creator wants it to do: keep mankind’s power in check until the great Restoration of all things (Revelation 22:3).  The curse was to limit man’s capacity to use it—and particularly to abuse it.  So many of our attempts to “save labor” and hence avoid the curse eventually turn around to bite us—a fact that relates to this question:

Question: Isn’t environmentalism largely an anti-technology reaction?

Answer: Technology by itself is neither good nor bad. Technology is primarily the process of people using God’s gift of creativity to do their work. While some people think that the need to work was a result of the Fall, the truth is that work is a primary activity of mankind assigned by God right along with the mandate to have dominion over and to cultivate and take care of the earth (Gen. 1-2). Work became much more difficult because of the Fall; so a great deal of mankind’s effort ever since has, through technology, been to make work easier and more efficient.

However, like anything else associated with mankind’s creative capacity, technology can be utilized in the cause of either good or evil—in keeping with God’s purposes or opposed to God’s purposes. One of the most telling Scripture references regarding technology is the prophecy about the restoration of peace and harmony (shalom) in the coming Messianic Kingdom when people will “beat their swords into plowshares.” Implements of war will become implements of peaceful work, which provides for our daily bread—in a sense, Paradise regained. This stands in stark contrast to past and present civilizations pursuing the advantages of technology in the process of opposing God’s will. Powerful and efficient technological devices and processes in the service of self-aggrandizement and personal pleasure by those who have no desire to worship and honor the Creator or His creation will ultimately result in great evil (such as sophisticated terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of wicked people).

Christians have a responsibility to consider how to use technology in their service to God—being careful to respect all of God’s creation. This calls for great wisdom and understanding as we utilize the best of scientific knowledge and investigation. When it is learned that our use of technology is doing more harm than good in reference to God’s purposes and God’s good earth, we need to have the will to change our ways. This often includes our ceasing to use certain technologies or altering them in such a way as to reverse their negative effects. Even seemingly harmless “high-tech” entertainment devices can negatively affect our lives as Christians. Below is a little “poem” I wrote a few years ago—which my kids felt was a bit over the top. But I believe it got them to think about their use of time a little more seriously:

Screwtape Gloats

Millions of creative hours spent, and
Millions of valuable dollars spent, and
Millions of tons of precious natural resources spent
—to develop a meaningless product.

Millions of people manipulated to spend
Millions more of their valuable dollars to enable
Millions of precious young people to spend
Millions of uncreative hours
—to accomplish nothing.

Computer games: Gift from the creative
Mind of Darkness
To the captive mind of man.
—God’s vice-regent dancing on the devil’s stick.

Few Christians consider all the far-reaching effects of technology and are therefore ignorant of the many negative effects of our modern culture’s mostly self-gratifying fascination with and use of God’s gifts. We utilize the material gift of the creation and the spiritual gift of creativity developing technologies to avoid labor, to save time, and to create wealth. If we then turn around and use our leisure hours and money mostly in the pursuit of entertainment, material gain, and physical pleasures, we squander the gifts of God.

We need to be exceedingly wise in our use of technology, being careful always to ask if we are using it in ways that advance the kingdom of God and accomplish His will on earth. A question we always must ask: Do we use technology more to serve Mammon or serve God?

For further and deeper analysis of the technology problem in modern society, look into the works of Jacques Ellul, a Christian philosopher who approached technology from a deterministic viewpoint, Ellul, professor at the University of Bordeaux, authored 58 books and more than a thousand articles over his lifetime, the dominant theme of which has been the threat to human freedom and Christian faith created by modern technology. His constant concern has been the emergence of a “technological tyranny” over humanity. As a philosopher and lay theologian, he further explored the religiosity of the technological society.  —DO

In my last post I stirred up a good debate on the issue of technology.  Although my primary intent was to recommend the use of wild places as a place of retreat from the pressures and distractions of modern life so heavily influenced by rapid technological change, I believe some felt that by my reference to Jacques Ellul’s writing I was condemning modern technology and was recommending a return to some idyllic, but fictitious, “good ole days.”

So let me reiterate what I mentioned in comments I posted last fall:

No doubt the value of wilderness is almost more in what is not found there than in what is.  Consider what we typically do not find in a true uninhabited wilderness (uninhabited by humans, that is!):

. . . personal multipliers of power (vehicles, electricity, et. al.)
. . . markets and marketers
. . . external temptations
. . . false values
. . . lying words
. . . too many voices to attend to
. . . too many people to relate to
. . . racial, ethnic, and gender tensions
. . . personal deception and pretense (masks)
. . . meaningless entertainment
. . . continuous distraction
. . . an overload of news (information)
. . . an overload of human technology
. . . an overload of noise
. . . the need to talk incessantly
. . . daily routines and responsibilities clamoring for attention
. . . constant time pressure
. . . the sense that I am in control

Is there any person who cannot benefit from being relieved of these stresses from time to time?

Many of those stresses relate to modern technology; so let me say a few more words about the thoughts of Elull, a French Christian and professor of sociology at the University of Bordeaux who died in 1994.  His magnum opus was the sociology tome The Technological Society (1964), which was not a Christian publication (though containing many Christian and theological implications).  His book The Technological Bluff was published in 1990 by Christian publisher Eerdmans.  His major point in that book was a sort of twist on Emerson who said that “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” and held that, “Technology is in the saddle and rides mankind.”

His belief was that those of us living in the technology society, for all its many benefits, are so enamored of technology and technology is so pervasive in its influence that we have simply lost control over it—and lost even the will to control it.  Without critical, moral, wise, and godly oversight and direction, technology has a life of its own that has in many ways become a powerful extension of human evil.

So we have atomic energy and the atomic bomb; we have microwave ovens to cook and expensive electronic toys and TV to divert our thoughts and steal our time from the things of first importance; we have chain saws to harvest timber and do landscaping; and we have massive machines that literally mow down old growth forests and threaten entire ecosystems; we have TVs and computers for instant access to important information and access to more information than one can possibly grasp, pornography one click away from our online Bibles, and endless diversion.

TVA coal ash spill 2008

And all the while, God’s good earth suffers and we suffer for our lack of valuing it, understanding it, being good stewards of it, and neglecting being outdoors in it enough to be reminded of the power and glory of our Creator and be refreshed and renewed by the experience.

So here I am in my high-tech office employed as a blog author and writing this post, which shortly you will be reading via the Internet on your high-tech device in your high-tech home.  With a hunger within me for the simple, agrarian ways (thinking Wendell Berry and the Amish), I do this with a nagging sense of both guilt and angst—wishing often that I was not here but out there.  A technology captive with self-applied shackles.  Sigh.

See you outdoors!

Dean

One of the values of the wild is that helps put technology in its place.  One way to understand this is to imagine yourself on a remote wooded ridge—say somewhere in the Ozarks.  You’re suddenly engulfed by a violent thunderstorm, and while rushing to find shelter and safety, you find yourself in the company of two others in the same pursuit.  Together you find a large overhanging rock ledge and crawl under it for cover.  Finally at rest, you seek to begin a conversation but quickly find that verbal communication is hopeless—for the other two, because of some warp in time, are a French explorer from the late 1600′s and an Osage Indian from the 1200′s.

Because your cell phone doesn’t work where you are, it’s a mere fascination to the other two, and your iPod, while it creates a sense of awe, soon goes the way of all battery-powered devices and your companions’ wonder ceases.  Your clothing, too, is a curiosity—as well as your eye-glasses.  But when the storm soon shows that it is but the precursor of a cold front bringing with it several inches of snow, other modern devices, like your classic Swiss Army “knifelet” becomes of little value, and the frustration of leaving that lighter in your car several miles away only adds to your distress.  What you discover is that the wild pretty much obliterates all the differences between the generations.  But you are also soon delighted that you are not caught in these circumstances with, say, “important people” like Oprah, Michael Jackson, or Donald Trump, who appear to have never have ventured more than a hundred yards away from a light switch and whose wilderness survival understanding could well be limited to the old joke that you start a fire by rubbing two boy scouts together.

I like to think that in the wilderness we meet our ancestors, because apart from our technology and heads full of technical knowledge, most of which is of little lasting significance, our common spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational needs have been the same since Adam left the Garden.  Further, the importance of the health and fruitfulness of the creation is as important now as it ever was.  They could not—and we cannot—remain healthy without good air, good water, good soil, adequate shelter, and health-giving foods—access to which modern technology may as much threaten as provide.

Dean and St. Francis

Having, as most of us do, a pride of the present, we find ourselves irrationally disconnected from the past—somehow thinking that no forebear would have much to offer us moderns.  Yet if we did find ourselves in a raging thunderstorm on a wilderness mountaintop, we’d quickly learn that we are fundamentally no different from any other person living today—or yesterday. The fears, desires, and temptations of the first human beings were at heart no different from ours.  The wild is one of the most important venues for compelling us to recognize what is most significant in life and what is common to all people of all ages.

In the same clothes, speaking the same language, I believe we’d find Saint Francis, William Penn, and John Muir certainly far wiser and astute companions on life’s journey than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.  Jacques Ellul reminds us of this in his book The Technological Bluff:

[Modern technology] causes us to live in a world of diversion and illusion. . . .  It finally sucks us into this world by banishing all our ancient reservations and fears.

So among its many other values, a walk in the wild links us in an unbroken chain with all who have gone before. Valuing and preserving our natural parks and wilderness areas will permit our descendants to do the same.

See you outdoors!

Dean