At the same time that should hardly satisfy us. Near-perfect as we often seem when compared with the rest of sluggish humanity, even we Yanks can always do better. And so it occurs to me that this largely Yank-driven world would run a lot more considerately, honestly, transparently - in a word, a whole lot better - if certain new things were to happen to us. Or at least to our present way of thinking. Remember, we're Americans. We like the new, sometimes to the point of infatuation.
With that in mind, I'd like to offer the following suggestion: That, namely, this would be not just a new and a better world, but a literally more God-fearing one, if only we Americans took more seriously a certain curious notion we have. I mean this notion of the Divine origin of things we did not make. Including those creatures - you, me, other living things - that most of us believe did not evolve more or less by themselves, but were rather more directly and purposefully created by God. It would also be a better world if we Yanks lived a lot less seriously this other, often bizarre notion we have - of the Divine inspiration of things we do make. And in particular those purposeful things we call technological, and those things pertaining to what we call procedures, and systems, and organizations. And even ideas.
I understand that, like any clever, hardy and resourceful people, we can all too easily become enraptured with the works of our hands, and the products of our intelligence. But we also have an impressive body of sacred writings, in which most of us profess in some fashion to believe, which testify that there is much more to Life than either of those things. Indeed it's even suggested, in many divers places, that there are times when those two things can become rather marginal - if not positively detrimental - to something else we call Eternal Life. What I don't understand, then, is why we Americans of all people should be the last nation on earth to want to question the value, either of unbridled technological growth, or of the ideas that conduce to it. Still less do I understand why we should be the last country on earth to see the point of cherishing some portion of: (1) the created earth as it was given to us; or even of (2) our own natures as they were given to us.
In the first place, has "nature" in its given state really nothing of value to teach us, that we insist on teaching ourselves "better" by endlessly - and often thoughtlessly - reconstructing and reconfiguring it? It's true we humans are inestimably smarter than any other mode of life that presents itself to our attention here on earth. But hopefully we God-fearing Americans are also aware that our best smartness is as nothing compared to God's wisdom. Or even God's foolishness. And precisely because our best wisdom is as nothing compared to even God's worst foolishness, He is able to surprise us. He can do strange, paradoxical things, like calling forth sons of Abraham from stones, and releasing their pent-up energies in a chorus of praise. And He has been known to conceal, as it were, even in the lowliest things He makes - even in those creatures most brutely and grossly inferior to our august selves - subtle, yet stubborn, complexities, that may elude our best efforts to simplify them. Complexities that indeed may always elude us - or at least for so long as we continue to esteem our human wisdom and power more highly than our human createdness, and lowliness, and receptivity. Which is perhaps another way of saying if we want to become better - i.e., more God-empowered - masters of our earthly dominion, a good place to start might be to try becoming better servants. Or at the very least, more humble in the presence of those lowly strange things, and that strange lowly God, whom no amount of human superiority shall ever equip us to understand.
And that brings me to my second point: The exalted species we've fashioned out of what was once placed in the Garden merely to dress and to keep it. So what of it? What of the splendid job we've done on ourselves? Have we humans really so much to show for our endless self-reconstructions, that we should like nothing better than to "redouble the pace," so to speak, in our relentless overhaul of everything else?
Mind you, I've no doubt we Yanks will continue to love our gadgets and tinkering and systematizing. And no doubt the rest of the world will continue - with one degree or other of shame and hypocrisy - to love us for our love of those things. But haven't at least some of us been known to pride ourselves also on our love of God? My question, then, is how far it is possible to love anybody without taking seriously the things he has to say. And if you're going to take seriously the things he says, how much more those particular creatures - you and me, for instance - for the sake of whom, or perhaps even the salvation of whom, he says them? But if our Maker be such - no, if His words alone be such, that we can only receive them with the utmost seriousness, of what immeasurable value are those other words of His - His creatures - on whose behalf, and for whose blessing and strengthening, those same words were written down?
Suppose, then, that these works of God are also His words, and so also to be heeded. And not nearly so much for what we creatures think and say, as for what we are, and need. Why then do we treat these works as we so often do: as if they were nothing, and needed nothing? Why do we so often treat other human beings - including many of our fellow-Americans - almost as if they were works of our own, to be worked and slaved and lorded over, and then dispensed with, as we deem necessary? And not just the ones we lay off but the ones we keep on.
But please don't misunderstand me. I'm aware that any extensive rearrangement of these matters is likely to involve a certain degree of harm to the feelings of some highly - in a few cases even self-proclaimedly - productive people. People on whose entrepreneurial and managerial gifts we all depend. Nor am I entirely insensitive to the sensitivities of the more self-consciously self-made men and women among us. I can imagine what an abysmally
Yet here I thought at least some of us modern Americans were trying to be just about the realest, genuinest, sincerest Christians who've ever lived. Why should we of all people fear humiliation, or loss of dignity? With 200+ years of practice, why, you'd think we could have written the book on humility. Or is that - now I'm beginning to get nervous - is that just one more traditional virtue growing steadily more obsolete in the glowing light of that revolutionary New World our Paines and Jeffersons only glimpsed from the far side of the Potomac?
Again, I can understand the atheistic likes of a Richard Dawkins or a Peter Singer fully embracing that proud Jeffersonian vision: - the dream of a fabulous, everything-is-possible new world, that runs dazzling, dizzying circles round the old fallen earth of Scripture. Or rather I believe our Dawkinses and Singers would embrace that vision if they were logically consistent. Indeed I can see the logic of Thomas Huxley's modern heirs waxing poetic about this unbounded New World. I can imagine them composing entire odes to the pride of the naturally superior and enterprising, or whole dirges confessing the sad but necessary expendability of lesser human specimens - to say nothing of other whole species - in the face of the demands of Endless Progress. Or even the endless demands of Beijing. But us Christian Americans? What's all that socially Darwinian posturing got to do with us?
And that returns me to the second part of my original question: Why so often do we treat those other, lesser works of God as we do? Much less, I mean, as our Scriptural dominion, and much more as our own divine creation, to be milked and ravaged and disposed of as we see fit? (Imagine our God treating us like that.) And why, on the other hand, do we so revere the works of our hands and brains - even ideas, and systems, and organizations - so much so that one might suppose we thought they weren't our creations at all, but rather gifts of God? Again, I can understand certain other nations being susceptible to these kinds of idolatry. But us God-fearing Americans?
But let's suppose for the sake of argument that all the things God has given to us deserve only our most ruthless and heedless exploitation. Including our own most humanly-unfathomable inner workings, and each other's. Just find an unguarded opening somewhere and drill away, so to speak. How much more worthy of exploitation, then, are the things we not only give but impose on ourselves and each other? And not just our organizations, systems, ideas - but even our ideologies? Why can't we Yanks be as unremorsefully pragmatic, as willing to pry apart and reassemble, manipulate and discard, in our use of the things we think and devise, as in our use of what Somebody Else has devised? Why do we tremble in the presence of these former things - especially we pioneering Americans, who got where we are (so the legend goes) by fearing no one and nothing? What midnight revelation-in-a-dream has all of a sudden made both our handwork and our brainwork quasi-sacred? Worst of all, why do our politicians insist on falling all over themselves, not to mention stepping on and reviling each other, in an effort to vindicate their particular vision of the quasi-sanctity of human innovativeness - whether of gadgetry, of systems, or of ideas?
Take a long, close, even a tender and pitying look (assuming anyone has the time) at our modern Palins and Pelosis. Both these political types are known for espousing a certain bold, often loud, clamorous and morally indignant, and withal not terribly nuanced, vision of the American Future. That, at any rate, is mostly what I get when I look at the two of them politically. What I cannot see, when I look at either of them humanly, is why a Sarah Palin deserves to be stereotyped, caricatured, anathematized, or reduced to something less than human, simply for failing to subscribe to some well-intentioned but possibly misguided politician's peculiar notions of Freedom and Progress. Or why a Nancy Pelosi deserves to be stereotyped, caricatured, dehumanized, etc, simply for failing to subscribe to some well-intentioned but equally misguided politician's peculiar notions of Freedom and Growth. And I'm even less able to see why any of us should waste energy - or even much thought - on either of these good ladies' respective visions either of Progress or of Growth. Especially when there's good reason to believe both ladies' agendas are mere variations on a certain very popular contemporary theme. I mean our obsession with a certain kind of More: More exaltation of what is done at the expense of the doers, of what is made at the expense of the makers, of systems and organizations at the expense of the organized and systematized, of ideals at the expense of those less-than-ideal human creatures - ultimately all of us - who must at all costs measure up to them.
And now take, if you can, an even longer, closer look at each of these two human souls: past what you may see as the present vileness of their respective errors, past even the growing rigidities of their early wrong turns and poorly-guided choices - all the way back to the humanity of each. And perhaps even something of what that humanity might be worth in - or how it once may have delighted - the sight of their Maker. Is either of these good women worth sacrificing, or writing off, or throwing over, or giving up on - even by each other - simply because of some ideology one of them happens to believe in, and the other falls short of? Is what God made them both from the Beginning - and what He may yet remake them - really of so little consequence, when compared to the wonders they've made and mismade of themselves, and each other? And that brings me back to you and me. Is either of us worth sacrificing, or dehumanizing - or demonizing - simply because of my "truth," or your "falsehood"?
It's true that our "truths" have often enabled us Yanks to do some stupendous material things, and that these have sometimes deservedly commanded the world's awe, reverence and - most sincerely - imitation. But can we be sure in every instance that the world's valuations are those of God? Can we be certain God cares more for Microsoft than for a monkey? Or that He is more alive in us when we are upgrading the former than when we are uplifting the latter? At least in the monkey's case it is we who are the trainers. Nor am I in the least suggesting the two kinds of skill are mutually exclusive, or even inversely proportionate. Who's to say the patience required to train a monkey - not to mention the wisdom involved in gaining his trust and respect - will be of no use in running a company? Or that the (dare I print the vile four letters?) love needed to coax and nurse the decidedly tentative gifts of this lower grade of primate will be of no help in shepherding the rather more explosive talents of our own kind?
Just think how much more blessed we Americans might be with the mystery, the beauty, the complexity of God-made things - not just in our zoos or backyards, but in our own brains - if for a change we took our Godly rhetoric seriously. And how we wouldn't get our feet, or our ships and tankers, stuck in those God-made things quite so often. And just think how much less infatuated we'd be with our man-made things - even humble loans, and stocks and bonds! - and how we wouldn't get our hands and brains stuck in them quite so disastrously. Because really, if we have a hard time taking seriously the words the Lord God spoke - and those from the morning of Creation onwards - is it any wonder we have an even harder time reading correctly and clearly the words we speak? And that therefore neither our businesses nor our governments are anywhere near as honest or transparent - or even as humanly (as distinct from corporately) considerate - as we would like them to be?
Anyhow, the older I get, the more it seems to me that every thing God made is a kind of strange literature, begging to be decoded, explored, savored, by the sympathetic reader, as distinct from the critic who is hyper-critical. A sort of livingly unfolding story, if you will, begging to be read humbly, and heedfully, for what that creature is and needs - as distinct from what you and I in our arrogance think it is, or think we may need from it. By sympathetic, then, I mean the sort of reader who respects - indeed delights in - a thing for being what it is, and not just for its merely human usefulness. And yes, any thing: even a small child: and for reasons quite separate from that over-loaded creature's learning-potential, or its purchasing-power, or its future productivity. The kind of reader I envision is one who would no more criticize a lemur for not being a leopard, or a lion, than she would fault Friday for failing to be Robinson Crusoe, or belittle St Peter because he wasn't St Paul. Much less take issue with John Paul II for not choosing to be J P Morgan. She knows it takes all kinds to make a better world. But if we cannot teach ourselves to be more patient with, and loving of, the specific thingness of various things - even the oceans-deep things we ourselves are - then I don't see how we shall ever learn to respect the unique personhood of various people. Including those persons we Americans think, in our inestimable business wisdom, that we have no use, or time, or work for.
In short (if I may put the matter in terms of a classic literature course), we need readers who are skilled at reading and exploring, and not just skimming or Cliff-Noting, the world of God-made things: readers who can "lose themselves" in the various books of Nature for the pleasures of the books themselves, and of their Author - instead of just crimping what they need in order to pass some course in Natural Resource Management. Or Applied Geo-engineering. Readers, in a phrase, who have in them a little more of the author Washington Irving, and a lot less of his character Ichabod Crane. Because no matter how passionately Ichabod may have believed otherwise, the truth is that what we humans make of things, and what we can get out of them, is by no means always the most important thing about them. Or sometimes, by God's grace, even the most useful. A chicken is not always better for having been folded comfortably into a pie. And neither are we always better for having eaten it. Meanwhile, just think of the great many humans - let alone other creatures - we discard, and overlook, and fail to use and employ wisely, in this Crane-like process of focusing solely on our own narrow uses, and ignoring the rather broader, more imaginative, more compassionate uses of, once again, Somebody Else.
