Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of August 7, 2022
GOD IS UNCHANGING - Isaiah 1:19
If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured with the sword; for the Lords’s mouth has spoken it.”
It is practically the repetition of the Book of Deuteronomy, when Moses told the people with stern simplicity that "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed; " and it meant the God's commandments are clear like sunlight. If they keep them, they will do well. If they breach the law, the doom will be unavoidable, and even logical. The very nature of the eternal moral laws is very similar to the nature of the physical standards of the the universe, concerning that they are unchanging.
As God is unchanging, so are the divine moral laws, somewhat parallel as the speed of light is unchanging in space, or the gravitational acceleration is proportionally the same everywhere and so on. The minimized summary of the moral requirement is the “You shall do no harm” principle. If you do, the punishment will hunt you down sooner or later, according to the blessings and curses set in the book of Deuteronomy.
The set of the blessings are the rewards, the curses are the system of the punishments.
It may be already a great achievement if somebody obeys God out of fear of the punishment. We can see in the present wicked world that often even the obvious punishments are not repelling enough for the notorious law-breakers. Obeying because of the fear of the punishment therefore is a positive recurring action, even it is not good enough. It is way better when someone set his mind on the rewards, and obeying the commandments in order to receive the benefits and the blessings which are innumerable.
This is really good, but still not good enough. The sages had taught millennia ago, that the most godly conduct is when someone does do good for the goodness sake, that is to say that obeying the divine commandments merely for God's sake without hoping for or seeking any rewards.
These commandments have not changed a bit since the Creation, since the Flood retired and since the revelation on the Mount Sinai, as Jesus himself pointed out in the Gospel of Matthew, that "For most assuredly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law of Moses, until all things are accomplished. Matthew:(5:18)
The moral law does not change, as God is unmoved through the aeons and eras and billions of years.
Nonetheless, we should acknowledge, that it is easily perceivable that great changes are underway even as we speak in the world we live, and the growing speed of the changes are quite unnerving, and they have in their character so much oddly new, that not only we, ourselves, have not seen these changes ever before, but humanity as a whole have not seen anything like these since the pyramids had been built and the civilization of urban life had appeared in Mesopotamia some six thousand years ago.
Our Sunday school song says that Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. It is true, and it is also true, when we take a comprehensive look at the recent situation and the foreseeable immediate future, we can repeat it with some certain confidence that the Bible talks about this. It is a recurring cliche that we live in the end times, observing world wars, planet wide conflicts, calamities, plagues, hunger, natural catastrophes, global collapse of institutions and structures. However, it is usually forgotten that the Biblical prospective is not fully dark, but practically says, that before any light will be seen at the end of this fearsome tunnel of trials and tribulations, humanity must sink to the bottom before a new world may dawn and the visible Kingdom of God on Earth will be established.
Beside the hostile nations, bloodthirsty dictators and the boiling elements of the Earth, there is also around not only an industrial revolution, but a technological revolution, as well, which is transforming the world and society right now, as we know it, and possibly for ever.
Somebody of my friends, recently told me, aging 85-ish, that the big life-transforming changes will not happen during her lifetime. I told her that I hope that she will reach one-hundred and twenty, may God bless her with longevity, however the progress of this monumental transformation, step by step, has been already occurring, in the present.
Among them, reliable sources insist, that the very prototype of a really operating humanoid robot will be presented to the public by the Tesla in this September, and the mass production will begin next year. It is the very birth of the robotics in front of our eyes. Hopefully, it comes to free humans from back-breaking labor and for the demise of our species. At the end of this very decade they intend not only to man a mission to Mars, but to create permanent settlements built by robots and 3D printing of whole edifices on Mars. The SpaceX company says that they are planning around one thousand trips yearly to Mars, and with that rate there could be millions of human settlers on Mars by 2050.
Same time, with already existing technologies, they will begin terraforming Mars, and even Mercury and Venus in order to make them fitter for human life. Thus, very soon, by already advanced preparations, the colonization of the very Solar system is at arm's length. In brackets, new spaceship propulsion technologies are predicting the viability of interstellar travel, as well, and quite soon.
The digitization of our world is done but not finished in its development, our computation capacity is increasing exponentially by every year or rather by the month, and the consciousness of the Artificial Intelligence is dawning. It is not only like a brave new world, it is like a different universe. A couple of years, and the civilization will be hardly recognizable for 20th century sentiments.
The capability of genetic manipulations, bio-engeneering, nanotechnology, flying cars, the realization of the possibility of teleportation, worm wholes in the galaxy, space jumps, the usage of free and new and potentially infinite energy sources, these are all around the corner. This new and fully digital world is not very far from now, could easily empower humanity to eradicate poverty and hunger, to abolish menial work, open and hidden slavery altogether, practically by opening the skies.
All is possible, the limit only the starry sky, but only if we are able to get along with each other. This is the decisive human factor, and it has the most uncertainty elements regarding our fate as Galactical species. God is unchanging, the moral law that you shall not do any harm, is unchanging.
Nonetheless, if want to survive the odds rooted in our own malice, we have to change quite radically, because the wars are not fought anymore with stone hatchets, not even in the rudimentary WWI style, which had been already such a terrible nightmare, just as the whole human history is a very dark book soaked in blood.
The warning was given in the Bible, that life can be a curse, a chain of dark ages, bloody wars and calamities all around, all ending in extinction. It depends on our conduct.
However, Life can be a blessing, beauty, love, harmony, solidarity and care for all. The Bible warns us that we have to choose Life, according to the promise of Jesus, that “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” the Unchanging. May it be God’s will, AMEN.
