… and simultaneously make them all the more brutal, i.e., all the more removed from a human level.

On a related note, we recently viewed the HBO movie: “Taking Chance”. It is (a true story) about the care of “the remains” of a marine killed in action in Iraq. Just that. Simple, but made all the more profound because of it. One of the more anti-gnostic movies I’ve ever seen.

We really are surrounded by violence and death in this country but are removed from it as well. The removal seems to allow us to make it abstract and therefore meaningless.

We have delegated our sexuality to professionals on both sides of the pornographer’s lens. We have determined that our sexuality is a diversion to be pursued as and with whom our whim elects. We eschew the hard work of relating physically in real relationships of commitment and authentic intimacy.

Related to, but not coextensive with, our treatment of sexuality is the predominant strain of romantic love pedaled in our culture. In film and song, we find exalted a love seemingly not made for this earth. The love relationships ostensibly pursued by those who populate our movie and recording studios appear to be a round trip rocket blasts undertaken with little regard for those left behind or those on whom one’s rocket might crash upon re-entry. The ineffable emotion to which we have sloppily pinned to term love seems, in many regards, the occasion or portal for attempting to escape the physical realm.

We have delegated music and art and drama and storytelling (including in the context of worship) to another set of professionals, preferring to observe and to listen rather than participate.

We have delegated much of our striving for physical achievement to professional athletes.

These tendencies should not come as a surprise in the wider world. Within the church, among those called to be salt and light, it reflects quite poorly on our grasp of the reality of that scandal we know as the incarnation. That a member of the Godhead took on flesh, died, rose again for us, and eternally, in the flesh, intercedes for and reigns over His people doesn’t seem to impress us overly much.

1. It appears that our brains have a built-in facility for
religion, a section designed for talking to the gods. It’s
obvious that our “ordinary” speech facility is useful for
survival, and helps us to learn from other humans. By
analogy, the “spiritual” speech facility must be good for
survival, and must help us to learn from a different
source. If this source doesn’t exist, why do we have
a mechanism to deal with it?

2. Our brains definitely have specific facilities for
arithmetic and proportions, which may even include separate
neurons for each number and fraction up to some limit.
The Platonists can no longer maintain that mathematics
was a “god-like” set of concepts, out there waiting for
us to discover it by random accident. Instead, we were designed
to do math, designed to handle measurements and numerals,
designed to build things in a systematic way.

Thank you for your second installment. :)

“Too often we think of the ‘spiritual’ in us as pertaining only to what we amorphously regard as psychological, as if the incarnate condition were not our state of plenitude and fullness.”–J. Peters.

Often we ignore that “the flesh” is more than just our physical beings…it includes our human emotions and thoughts. The eternal “infinite” dimension of ourselves is wrapped within the perishable “finite” body required to live and thrive on this planet.

Well said, JD Salyer! I agree!
“Humans don’t beget “tissue.” They reproduce human beings!”~~EP

Unless, of course, your brain gets sucked out by a vacuum extractor prior to your birth.

If this be the case, no wonder we’re such narcissists. Telos as Supine Pornography.

Yikes, I think you may have inadvertently hit upon the leitmotif.

Anther of the trusty Mt. Aire vintage tourist trap plaques explains it nicely. I think it’s an old Pennsylvania Dutch truism: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get”

We are physical beings. Comfort and security are important to us. Work, and particularly physical labor, is not only not comfortable, but often dangerous to our long term well being. Our bodies do require work, and if you are honest, you know that for most of us some physical labor is required. Even now, in this most materialistic of times (at least in the sense of how much of a population can forgo most physical labor) few of us choose to escape labor altogether.

Destruction of our world. Feeding people is important, and feeding everybody is hard to do. The green revolution of the 60′s and 70′s fed more people than anyone could have imagined. Yet the very techniques that allow us to feed the masses, and the laboring masses at that, cause harm to the physical world. What do we do? Not feed them? Restrict populations? Or work to provide in ways that don’t harm the world and the people in it?

Spiritual consequences. There you’ve got me. I know what consequences are, and I think I understand what spiritual means, but the spiritual consequences of advanced gnosticism, that I don’t get.

Before our technological revolution, most people lived relatively short and often brutal lives. Now most people live longer and less brutal lives. This is a direct consequence of gnosticism, at least as I understand your use of the term. What would you have different?

Jake

Thank you for a very thoughtful piece on our current culture. I think you have done a very good job of linking the current aversion to material creation (Nature), with our obsession with technology. However, the question you ask is a simple one. The spiritual consequence of gnosticism, is turning away from God’s love by rejecting creation and ultimately failing in our vocation as stewards. I believe that Dante had a special place in Hell reserved for such believers.

What I find more difficult is the fact that man is gifted with talent beyond mere husbandry. The internet too is a “work of human hands”. It is not technology, anymore than material creation, that is evil. It is what we choose to do with it. Action, and intent are what defines good from evil. Using technology to remove ourselves from creation as you have argued is indeed sinful. But are there not also valid uses for machines, and technology that open us to God’s grace and do His work on earth?