The Great Shadow Will Yet Depart
Even (and perhaps especially) in the midst of evil God is making all things new and inviting us to participate in the work he is doing
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Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating [across all fields] a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.
NT Wright
I am sure I am not alone in feeling a deep and enduring sense of sadness at what has transpired over the past few days in our country. It has been a week of tragedy. But when we widen the aperture beyond this week, even a little bit, it quickly becomes clear that the pain, suffering, and evil that has been splashed across our screens and feeds this past week is nothing new. We have seen this story before. This story of the evil and brokenness having their way in our world seems to be the story that defines the story of our life together.
The question that we are faced with, once again, in a week like this one is "what now?". How do we pick ourselves up and keep moving forward in a world where evil seems to be winning and in ever more dramatic fashion?
Weeks like this stress test the ways we see and understand the world. Do we have categories and a lens that can situate the numbing amount of pain and brokenness of our world? Do we have any source of hope that things will change?
There is undoubtedly a connection between this reality of evil and the story of technology. Human history is a story of culture making, and there is no force more powerfully shaping our culture today than technology—both in the colloquial sense of our digital devices and the broader understanding of the ways we do things in the world. We are being formed and deformed by the tools we build.
There is a certain thread in our current cultural conversation, especially among builders, that sees evil as a problem that can be solved by new and improved technology. But a more honest understanding recognizes that our tools are really nothing more than extensions of our own brokenness. In whatever ways technology can create opportunities for humanity to flourish, there are at least as many examples where evil has been perpetuated and empowered by technology. They are embedded with our own flaws, and when they go out in the world, all too often magnify and accelerate the wickedness that marks our own hearts, minds, and souls.
This week is yet another reminder that technology cannot and will not solve the problem of evil. The problems run too deep. We have tried and tried to heal ourselves to no avail. What now?
Like many who have come before me, I am convinced that the only true answer to the problems that ail us is found in the person and work of Jesus. The narrative arc of the Bible is a story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It starts with a world that God creates and declares to be good, a world where God would live with us. It didn't take long for us to spit in God's face, rejecting his good rule to go our own way and make our own rules. Ever since, we've seen that tear propagate through the tapestry of human history, leaving brokenness and suffering in its wake. What we saw on our screens this week is nothing more than the latest example in a long chain.
But the story doesn't end with the fall. Even in the immediate aftermath of Adam and Eve's decision to choose their own way, we see God moving back toward us. He promises that although evil may have won this day, it has not won the day. That a promised one will come to crush the serpent's head.
The story of the rest of the Old Testament is one of waiting for a long-expected one. Eventually, Jesus arrives, seen in the pages of the gospels. Jesus, the word made flesh, the snake crusher. The one who comes not just to make a new way forward, but to make all things new. The one who comes to repair, redeem, and restore.
If this were the end of the story, that would be significant enough. But the crazy thing—the thing that is almost too good to believe—is that Jesus is not only making all things new, but he is inviting us into the process of renewal.
In the narrative arc of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, we sit in what theologians call the "already but not yet". We are downstream of Jesus's first coming and the finished work of atonement that created a way for us to enter into a restored relationship with God. And yet, we have not yet seen the restoration of all things.
It's days like these last few that make the heaviness of the "not yet" all too real. The brokenness of our world remains all too viscerally real to us. It touches us all, regardless of how close we are to the national and global headlines.
The only way I find my way forward is to wake up every day reminding myself of the reality that God is making all things new. That Jesus came, died, and rose again. That he is alive and the Spirit of God is active and moving in the world. And that his call on us, and on me, is to lay down my life and to take up my cross. To join God in the work of blessing others through sacrifice and working alongside him as he redeems our broken world.
You see, while God invites us to join him in his work, the invitation is on his terms. God is not joining us in our work; we are joining him in his. The invitation requires that we follow in the way of Jesus—the way of creative restoration through sacrifice. Jesus came to save the world, but not in the way that we would imagine him to come. The Jews of the first century were awaiting a King to deliver them from the oppression of Rome. What they get is a humble servant who ends up dead on a cross on the top of a trash heap outside of town.
To participate in the work that God is doing to renew all things requires that we die to ourselves. Jesus says that to follow him means to deny himself and take up a cross. The way of Jesus is to bless others by dying to ourselves. It is the way of restoration through sacrifice.
Many of you know that in addition to my work at Harvey Mudd, I've been increasingly engaged in the past few years with an organization called Praxis. During my sabbatical, I am spending the majority of my time participating in the work that they are doing to advance redemptive entrepreneurship.
What has drawn me to Praxis and to the people who are part of their community is their commitment to be part of God's work in redeeming our world. We are, as a community, committed to embracing the way of the cross, giving of ourselves, and using our resources to bless others.
But the most beautiful expression of this in the Praxis community, an expression that runs through the whole community, is that this pursuit of creative restoration is not in competition with our work in the world, but is integrally connected to it. There is no divide between the sacred and the secular; there is no two-pot system. As humans, we are made in God's image to give all of our lives to Jesus and to use the work that we do as an extension and response to God's generosity to us.
This work resonates with me at the deepest level because it gives us hope. It not only accurately frames the problems that we face in a broken and evil world, but situates that brokenness in the context of God's victory over sin and evil in the person and work of Jesus and his ongoing work of redeeming our world.
In a world where evil seems to be winning on all sides, the story of Scripture is my reminder that Jesus is my only source of hope. That the brokenness I see all around me is downstream of our choice to rebel against God's good reign and rule. But this story also reminds me that there is a living and active antidote. A hope that is situated in a person who is alive. That Jesus, in his death and resurrection, has already won. And that in his victory, he offers us an invitation to join him in the work of blessing others by embracing real sacrifice in our lives.
Near the end of The Return of the King, the final book in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is a scene where the earnest Samwise Gamgee, overwhelmed by exhaustion and the quest that he has gone on with Frodo, awakes from his sleep questioning whether the events that just transpired with the destruction of the One Ring of power were more than a dream.
With that Gandalf stood before him, robed in white, his beard now gleaming like pure snow in the twinkling of the leafy sunlight. ‘Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?’ he said.
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’
‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.
‘How do I feel?’ he cried. ‘Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel’ - he waved his arms in the air - ‘I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!’
The answer, not just for Sam, but for us as well, is that a great shadow will yet depart. That God is indeed making everything sad untrue. And that he is inviting us to join him in the restoration of all things as we die to ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus in all parts of our life and work.
Got a thought? Leave a comment below.
Reading Recommendations
A great piece this week from Mary Harrington asking good questions about the deep philosophical assertions that motivate our building of AI.
As a culture we’ve been lying to ourselves about what “reason” is, and what humans are, for so long I don’t blame anyone who accepts those truncated stories at face value - especially those trying as obviously and sincerely as the rationalists, to live well and do good within this framework. But I do hope that eventually those currently trying to make an externalised image of the contemporary cultural shadow “safe” through technological development realise how futile this project is, and return to the age-old, never-ending one of wrestling it in their own souls.
Fantastic exploration of the impact of our interactions in the world being increasingly mediated by algorithms from Harry Law writing for Cosmos Institute.
We might say that technology mediates our interactions according to a gradient of autonomy preserving (or autonomy degrading) forms:
Technology that augments us. Technologies that augment us operate by extending human faculties while leaving intact the basic work of judgment. They amplify what we can already do, stretching the reach of our bodies and minds beyond their natural limits.
Technology that configures us. Technologies that configure us arrange our field of action. They shape the choices available, the order in which they appear, and the ease with which one path can be taken over another.
Technology that simulates us. Technologies that simulate us begin to imitate the processes of judgment we once reserved for ourselves. They generate candidate answers, options, or arguments that resemble the products of human deliberation.
Technology that replaces us. Technologies that replace us close the distance between simulation and action. They no longer propose options for us to consider but execute decisions on our behalf, carrying out tasks in a way that sidelines human deliberation.
Finding comfort in the words of this song.
Christ our wisdom, be our gladness
When we fail to understand
You ordain all joy and sadness
To fulfill Your perfect plan
Help us know You rule with power
Over every raging flood
In our most uncertain hour
You are God and we are loved
The Book Nook
I am getting near the end of Shannon Vallor’s book The AI Mirror (making slow progress these days with many other competing priorities!). I have appreciated her analysis of the problem and am curious to finish reading her suggestions for how we ought to move forward in dealing with AI.
The Professor Is In
I had a great time last Wednesday sharing some ideas about creating convivial classrooms in the age of AI at an event hosted by the MIT Teaching + Learning Lab. I’ll share the blog post and recording when it’s posted, but in the meantime, here’s a link to the slides if you’re curious.
Leisure Line
Experimented with a 67% hydration dough last weekend and a new cheese strategy (slices vs. shredded cheese). Pretty happy with how it turned out (minus the one pie that I had to pitch because it got stuck to the peel—oops!).
Still Life
I first got turned onto these books by Erik Hoel. It took a little work, but I managed to find the set here. So far, #1 is enjoying them.
Hi, I'm sorry for such a late reply to your excellent post. This is what happens when I travel outside of my time zone by 16 hours and lose track of which way is up or north (currently in Japan). I just want to say that another way to understand the current circumstances and events is to acknowledge that we are in a war. Some would want to clarify it as a spiritual war, or that war is a fitting analogy. I would not disagree, but I would also not hesitate to say that calling it war is not merely a perspective or interpretation, but this is actually war. A national figure whom many respected highly was just shot and killed, and this marks an actual casualty, which is what we tally in actual wars. I know that many people are against even the idea of war, but this is not that kind of war. I see the highest end goal of this conflict not being that "we" inflict more casualties on "the other side" than "they" inflict on us, but rather a result I would describe by these words: redemption, reconciliation, restoration, restitution, revival, reeducation, or simply: healing deep wounds individually and nationally. My Christian worldview often has a hard time to find acceptance in today's open market of ideas, but I am convinced that we who are earnest followers of Jesus have something valuable to offer to the current troubled situation, and the end result ought to be such that our society as a whole turns out a winner.
I enjoy your posts, including your reading recommendations. Would be interested to see which NT Wright publication(s) you would recommend.