progress

This post has been a long time in the making and I thought now was the appropriate time to write about this subject. Over the past year I have been thinking more and more about living a simple life but I didn’t put much thought into the idea of progress. I can’t remember a time when anyone questioned the great idea of progress. Reading about the beginning of the United States you find that progress was the great motivation and has become the hallmark of our nation. Worshiping the, always elusive, idol “progress” has led to great innovations and even greater exploitations of people and our land.
I believe God wants us to progress in our thoughts and in technology. I believe he only wants that for us when it benefits our relationship to his creation. Creating new machines that put more people out of work for the sake of efficiency is not positive progress in my estimation. It seems as though progress has become completely interwoven with convenience.
A month ago I walked through three homes that were either built in the 1700’s or replicas thereof. For the first time in my life I did not think to myself, “How unfortunate they were not to have had (fill in the blank with any modern convenience)!” Rather I kept thinking how extravagant their homes were and that they had more space and possessions than anyone ever needed. Our idea of progress is not all it’s been made out to be. Our inventions, our machines have become our masters in so many instances. They tell us what we can eat and how we can entertain ourselves. Machines dictate our lives more than we realize.
How far will we allow progress to take us before we look back in horror at what we’ve lost?