Zach

“Over time, the active verbs of the Shema-recite,
walk, talk, lie down, rise, bind, fix, write, all in the service of love-become too much for us to imagine, let alone perform.
Our search for superpowers has created many of the most pressing problems of our time.

The defining mental activity of our time is scrolling
Our capacities of attention, memory, and concentration are diminishing; to compensate, we toggle back and forth between infinite feeds of news, posts, images, episodes - taking shallow hits of trivia, humor, and outrage to make up for the depths of learning, joy, and genuine lament
that now feel beyond our reach.

The defining illness of our time is metabolic syndrome, the chronic combination of high weight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar that is the hallmark of an inactive life. Our strength is atrophying and our waistline expanding, and to compensate, we turn to the superpowers of the supermarket with the aisles of salt and fat convincing our bodies’ reward systems, one bite at a time, that we have never been better in our life.

The defining emotional challenge of our time is anxiety, the fear of what might be instead of the courageous pursuit of what could be. Once, we lived with allness of heart, with a boldness of quest that was too in love with the good to call off the pursuit when we encountered risk. Now we live as voyeurs, pursuing shadowy vestiges of what we desire from behind the one-way mirror of a screen, invulnerable but alone.

And, of course, the soul is the plane of human ex-
istence that our technological age neglects most of all. Jesus asked whether it was worth gaining the whole world at the cost of losing one's soul. But in the era of superpowers, we have not only lost a great deal of our souls-we have lost much of the world as well. We are rarely overwhelmed by wind or rain or snow. We rarely see, let alone name, the stars. We have lost the sense that we are both at home and on a pilgrimage in the vast, mysterious cosmos, anchored in a rich reality beyond ourselves. We have lost our souls without even gaining the world.

So it is no wonder that the defining condition of our time is a sense of loneliness and alienation.

For if human flourishing requires us to love with all
our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, what happens
When nothing in our lives develops those capacities? With what, exactly, will we love?”
― Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

“A sweeping aerial view of the Bible’s topography focused on Christ therefore would look something like this: Old Testament Anticipation, Gospels Manifestation, Acts Proclamation, Epistles Explanation, Revelation Consummation. From beginning to end the Bible is an epic story about Jesus.”
― Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel

“Story is a trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth past the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisted if they had come as mere declaration. Jesus relied on storytelling as his primary method of teaching for just this reason--to persuade Jews to empathize with Samaritans, wealthy people to care for the poor, and religious people to have compassion on society's fringe.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Not only are we drawn to beauty, we are the only creatures who engage in certain behaviors purely for the sake of encountering beauty. We use vacation days to drive to places where we can see the sun come up over the ocean. We visit art museums, theaters, and symphonies. We look at the moon and the stars. We climb to high mountain lakes to put our feet in the frigid water to feel the rush and see the reflection of the summit in the ripples we have made. No other creature stops to behold something beautiful for no other reason than that it has stirred something in their souls. When we do these things, are we not like Moses and David, hungering to see the glory of God?”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith