This is no where near to all that can be said about this topic. I am simply putting a few of my thoughts out there about it. I will write more about this in the future I hope.
There are I believe two great moral questions of our age. First, can man live without God? And second, will man live for humanity or will man live for the machine? I believe the moral decay and heartbreak of our society results from failing to answer these two questions correctly. In this age, and if not in ages past, how you answer the first question will dictate how you answer the second question. Simply put, without God humanity is solely limited to the things we create and the things we accomplish.
We live in an age where the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche more accurately represent the heart and spirit of the modern man than do the writings of the Bible. We proclaim God is dead and call ourselves Gods. We strive to extend our hand further and further into space in an effort to learn everything there is to learn about science and the way the Universe works and give no thought to the proposition that if we actually learn all there is to know then what will live for? We map out the workings of the human mind and proclaim that we know the sources of love and desire but give no thought to the mystery that is life and love. The rational mind has reduced music to sound and art to sight and in doing so missed the deepest expressions of the human soul. And in calling ourselves God while doing everything we can do to become him we have reached a state of such meaningless that we aren’t sure what we wanted in the first place. Simply put we have constructed a world view where God isn’t necessary and replaced ourselves with him without recognizing our own frailty and longing for something greater than ourselves.
But can man live without God? Maybe, but only for a while, and certainly not without destroying part of if not all of ourselves. I look around myself and see nothing but mass confusion in the world whether it be through the media or in the work place. Hundreds of self proclaimed “experts” tell us what we “need” to know and it seems that every one of them disagrees. The media, schools, work places, churches, our families and friends all tell us who we are, what we need to know, and who we need to be on a daily basis but we have failed to ask God who we are. We have decided to collectively live without God and are at the same time striving to become him yet we have become so confused as to who we actually are that we can’t even understand our neighbors and friends anymore. This reminds me of the Tower of Babel where man tried to reach God by building a tower and God struck down the tower and caused men to speak different languages where no one could understand each other. Except this time we aren’t trying to reach God, we are trying to become him.
So where does a world without God leave us? With our machines and accomplishments of course! We removed that which makes us human, God, so therefore we must live for that which we believe makes us God, our machines and accomplishments. Technology has become such a force in our society that to live without our machines and gadgets is seemingly impossible. I work at a bank, and even in offering this seemingly simple service of helping people keep their money and possessions safe I am only allowed to work as efficiently as my computer will allow me. Without a computer I can do very little to help a customer. I can’t communicate with friends and family without the little cell phone that I carry in my pocket. And even you are reading this blog on a computer or phone screen that I typed on my computer while listening to music that I have stored on my computer. And for the most part I am ok with this, as long as it allows us to express ourselves better and experience and love each other better, for technology is only a tool to help us life our lives. But where is the line? At what point will we start living for technology and not living for God and each other? I believe many of us have crossed that line, and most of us are flirting with crossing it.
We have created cameras that make images and video that looks better than real life. We have computers that make images and sounds that man hadn’t even thought of creating twenty years ago and beam them into our homes with radio waves that one hundred years ago few knew even existed. We can be virtually anywhere in the world and hear news from virtually anywhere else in the world mere minutes after it happens. It could be said that technology has so desensitized us from reality that some have began to avoid and fear real relationships and experiences. Teenagers are in increasing numbers not spending time with each other but instead relying on their cell phones and computers to interact. We have substituted the real and tangible things that we can experience in this life with artificial things simply because they are easier and more convenient for us. I just hope we haven’t lost a generation to mindless entertainment and kept them from experiencing and pursuing the thing that is the most important, genuine relationship with God and others.
Today the online porn industry can easily be called the largest entertainment entity there is. Anything and everything sexual one can possibly imagine can be found on the internet without having to leave the privacy of a bedroom. No longer is intimacy with each other something we have to work towards, we can simulate it on the machines that we create with barely even raising a finger. We have replaced that which is the most sacred and beautiful thing two humans can engage in with each other and reduced it to the mundane and common. And if selling our sexuality for cheap thrills and convenience isn’t scary enough futurists talk about redefining humanity and intelligence and merging ourselves with the machines and technology that we have created. Some have decided that how God has created us is not good enough and that we must change ourselves to something entirely different all together. In short we are beginning to remake ourselves in our own image and not the image that was given to us by the eternal and unchanging one. But this is nothing new, for years now doctors have been performing sex change procedures to turn men who are dissatisfied with being men into women and vice versa. But have we not already begun to do this with our obsessive use of technology and our near mindless worship of media?
Let’s be honest though, now that we have removed God and replaced him with ourselves we are proud, if not downright arrogant of what we have accomplished. And I’m not saying that no other society of people have been proud of what they have accomplished while diminishing what God has accomplished, but never before has this so infiltrated society that it has become almost impossible to escape and find God. A select group of men and women have found a way to project what they believe humanity should be on the whole of humanity, and for the most part they have gone unchallenged, but let’s hope and pray that this changes because I have seen where this road ends and honestly it terrifies me for our sake.
