Isaiah 30

Isaiah was an early warning system. God gave him glimpses of the future and told him to warn his people about what was coming. But they didn’t want to listen: 

For these are rebellions people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” 

-- Isaiah 30:9-11 

The problem was that shutting your eyes and closing your ears to a problem doesn’t make it go away. Asssyria was going to invade Judah, and there was nothing that could be done about it. It would be like a tiny Caribbean island going up against the U.S. Army. Isaiah wanted his people to admit their helplessness and turn to God. They turned to Egypt instead: 

“Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin; who go down to Egypt without consulting me; who look to help for Pharoah’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge.” 

-- Isaiah 30:1-2 

Modern people would agree that the people of Isaiah’s days were children, but for very different reasons. Isaiah is saying they are children in comparison to God. We think they were children in comparison to us.

That is certainly true in some respects. A Jewish peasant in 700 BC would have no idea what to make of modern technology. We have learned a lot in the last 3,000 years. The modern worldview looks at history as the story of progress and enlightenment. Life has never been better, and it will keep on getting better as long as we believe in science. We don’t need to worship an imaginary man in the sky. We have become masters of our own lives. Worshipping the same God as Stone Age people seems needlessly primitive, if not barbaric. 

Modern man is the Imperial general in the first Star Wars movie, thumbing our nose at the idea that there is any limitation to our power: 

General: Any attack by the rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it. 

Vader: Don’t be too proud of this technological terror that you have constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force. 

General: Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebel’s hidden fortress. 

Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing. 

The religious worldview says that modern man is still a child, no matter how advanced our technology. And that our notion of progress is a myth because there are certain aspects of the human condition that cannot be overcome. 

Has science and technology made us happier? Or do we struggle with the same things that plagued our ancestors thousands of years ago? One of the interesting things about reading ancient history like the Book of Isaiah is that it gives you a better appreciation for how similar life was back then. They weren’t all living in huts. There were massive cities filled with people from all over the world by 700 BC. Their societies had been around for thousands of years. There were people who thought society was progressing to a better place, and those who thought things were going the wrong way. There were plagues and viruses that emerged out of nowhere. People were born, they got old, got sick, and they died. They looked for meaning in their lives, and wondered why they were here. 

I’m in a Slack channel at work for parents of small children. Two weeks ago, as the results of the presidential election came in, one of them asked what people told their kids about all the problems in society. How do you explain the existence of racism and evil and injustice in the world? 

There are three possible answers to that question: Believe in Man, believe in God, or believe in nothing. Modern man chooses the first. We say that things have gotten better from the past and will keep getting better from here. To quote Barack Obama, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. 

The hardest part of 2020 for most people (and really the last four years) is that it has shaken their faith in progress. Maybe things won’t get better. Maybe people will be as ignorant and selfish a century from now as they were three thousand years ago. One meme that popped up a lot during the election was what we would tell our grandkids about how we voted in 2020. But the reality is that our grandkids probably won’t care. You think they won’t have problems of their own in 2080? 

The religious worldview says the hearts of men do not change. We will never figure things out on our own. Our societies will always be riven with strife and conflict. People have been oppressing and killing each other since the beginning of time, and will keep on doing it until the end of time. Jesus said the poor will always be with us. (Mark 14:7). God has provided more than enough resources in this world. But we are incapable of splitting them up evenly. Politics will never give us all the answers. It only replaces old problems with new ones: 

“A conservative is one enamored of existing evils; a liberal wants to replace them with new ones.” -- Ambrose Bierce 

The skeptic who sees the human condition for what it really is but refuses to accept God will end up embracing nihilism and despair. Religion is the only way to maintain hope in a world without any. 

There's no real reason to believe in mankind. We are mortal beings trapped in a cold and uncaring universe far bigger and older than we can ever imagine. 

The Bible calls us children because we don’t know what’s good for us. A child wants to eat candy all day because it tastes good in the moment. They don’t understand the long-term consequences of their decisions. Adults are no different. We have limited lifespans that prevent us from seeing the full consequences of our decisions. Go back through history and you can see that it often takes hundreds of years for that process to play out. 

We try to build statistical models to predict what will happen 50 years from now and we don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. The last two presidential elections have shown that scientific polling is no more reliable a guide than consulting oracles or gutting animals and looking at the shape of their intestines. It’s all guessing. The future is inherently unknowable. Who was talking about the coronavirus a year ago? 

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

-- James 4:13-14

There are only a couple of predictions that have stood the test of time. A society that turns its back on God will fall apart, and people that walk with God will be happier and more fulfilled. The stuff Isaiah was saying thousands of years ago still holds true today. So you can either listen to him or you can believe what you are told on TV and tell yourself that this time things will be different.