Blow Up the Outside World

There was a time in this country when there was only one world – the planet Earth, and we lived in it. Seed was sown in the spring, the shoots were nurtured throughout the summer, the full-grown crops were harvested in the fall, and the canned goods derived from these crops helped families survive the winter, at the end of which they would do it all over again. Some people, of course, dealt more with livestock. Same basic scenario, though. All of it depended on getting the right weather – just enough rain, just enough sunshine, no drought, no bad frosts before the fall harvest, no severe or dragged-out winters that would kill animals and hold up spring planting.

The real kicker here, in case you hadn’t guessed it, is that you can’t depend on the weather. People knew that; they knew what they were up against, and they knew that they couldn’t conquer the situation on their own. But they also lived in a time – and this would probably be 75 years ago and earlier – when the largest number of people had a firm reliance on God. They knew that they were at the mercy of the world in which they lived, and that they couldn’t control that world – but they also knew that the world was at the mercy of the One who created it, so therefore they placed their trust in Him, and also gave the credit to Him.

Today, though, there exists another world, an outside world of our own invention. This world – we’ll simply call it “modern technology” – has a lot of plusses: time-saving devices and faster communication come to mind. But it also has a lot of negatives: we take the time saved and fill it with unnecessary busywork, thus not really saving any time, and the faster and easier communication hasn’t really brought us closer together or dispelled the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many people experience. Most significant, however, is that this outside world in which we largely now live has become a grand illusion for us, and a great drug as well. We retreat into our cyberworld of email, chat rooms, word processing programs and spreadsheets; we busy ourselves in the technoland of household gadgets and virtual-reality gimmicks. We think we are safe. Deep down, I believe, most of us know that we’re not, but it’s easier and more comfortable to go along with the ruse. We think that technology (nee science) will solve our every problem. We believe that it’s the answer to everything. It medicates our fears, makes us feel comfortably numb. It puts us in control of our world.

And that’s when the hurricane strikes. Or the earthquake, or the tornado. Or the monsoon, or the eruption, or the tsunami. And that’s when our technology shuts down, the outside world blows up, and we find out (or are roughly reminded) that we’re not in control, after all. We find ourselves thrust into the strange world of reality, needing to get the spring crops in the ground but having not the slightest idea how to do it. Or maybe we do know how, or have a hunch at least, but we’re afraid to do it. We’re scared to give up the control that we never had. We’re scared to let go of the illusion, our security blanket.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the office (I work at a newspaper) when something happened and we lost electricity. For 45 minutes we went without. Thankfully I had a magazine and some sunlight by which to read, but I looked around at the others in the newsroom a couple of times, and what I saw spoke volumes. Everything in our building was dependent on electricity, which meant that we could do no work for the time being. A few of my co-workers whiled away the minutes chatting, but several others sat unmoving in the dimness, uttering and doing little or nothing. Now, maybe some of them were taking advantage of the rare opportunity for quiet solitude, but judging by the time in which we live – a time when silence is as rare as gold, a time when society treats rest and reflection as something akin to a crime – my best educated guess (and an accurate one, I believe) is that most of these quiet ones, and maybe even some of the chatters, had no idea what to do with themselves during that time. “Rest? Quiet? Slow down or even (oh, horrors!) stop for a few minutes? What are you talking about? We don’t know how to do that!”

I’ve been reading the book of Job, and I came across a verse today that confused me at first: “He seals the hand of every man, that all men may know His work” (Job 37:7, New King James Version). “He” refers to God, and the passage including verse 7 deals with the mightiness of God – in particular, His control over nature and what He does with it. Anyway, my Bible has a footnote for this verse, and this is what it says: “Men cease their work in the face of God’s elements” (“elements” referring to rain, snow, etc.). When I read that, something clicked in my mind. I thought back to the times I’ve spent mowing lawns during the last decade – specifically, the times when I had to cease work because of rain. The memory of those times reminded me that no matter what I do, or what we humans do collectively, we can’t prevent the illusion from being shattered, we can’t keep our made-up, rickety technoworld from crumbling around us at some point. Which means, of course, that we can’t forever ignore God. We can’t keep pretending that He’s not there, or that He’s there but secondary to the world we’ve invented. We need to recognize that in spite of whatever advances we’ve made, we’ve also retreated – and in the most important of things, no less. We can’t control our world, and we can’t hide from God – nor does He want us to. He wants us to blow up that outside world and get a taste of the real thing: Him. And since that false world is going to collapse at some point anyway, why delay the inevitable? Blow up your outside world today, and start depending on the Dependable One.