“Countercultural people on the Left and Right alike complain about "the problem of technology." The complaint usually centers on our alleged obsession with control, as though the problem were the objectification of everything by a subject who is intoxicated with power, leading to a triumph of "instrumental rationality." But what if we are inherently instrumental, or pragmatically oriented, all the way down, and the use of tools is really fundamental to the way human beings inhabit the world? The ancient philosopher Anaxagoras wrote, "It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals." For the early Heidegger, "handiness" is the mode in which the things in the world show up for us most originally: "the nearest kind of association is not mere perceptual cognition, but, rather, a handling, using, and taking care of things which has its own kind of 'knowledge.'"

If these thinkers are right, then the problem of technology is almost the opposite of how it is usually posed: the problem is not "instrumental rationality," it is rather that we have come to live in a world that precisely does not elicit our instrumentality, the embodied kind that is original to us. We have too few occasions to do anything, because of a certain predetermination of things from afar.”

Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

“Your non-searching of the scriptures, your weariness under gospel preaching, your want of care to understand the mind of God, is prima facie evidence that there is some enmity in your heart against the Most High.”

C. H. Spurgeon

With thanks to H. Fisher. Happy birthday.

“Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls —
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer's feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.

To the Chief Musician. With my stringed instruments.”

Habakkuk 3:17-19

“Oh Christian, if you have any faith, in the time of extremity think thus: this is the time that God calls for the exercise of faith. What can you do with your faith, if you cannot quiet your heart in discontent. There was a saying of one Dionysius, who had been a king, and afterwards was brought to such a low condition as to get his living by being a schoolmaster: someone comes and asks him, 'What have you got by your philosophy from Plato and others?' 'What have I got,' he says, 'I have got this, that though my condition is changed from so high a condition to low, yet I can be content.' So what do you get by being a believer, a Christian? What can you do by your faith? I can do this: I can in all states cast my care upon God, cast my burden upon God, I can commit my way to God in peace: faith can do this. Therefore, when reason can go no higher, let faith get on the shoulders of reason, and say, 'I see land though reason cannot see it, I see good that will come out of all this evil.'

Exercise faith by often resigning yourself to God, by giving yourself up to God and his ways. The more you in a believing way surrender up yourself to God, the more quiet and peace you will have.”

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

What would your life look like if you took God at His word? What would happen if you lived in constant anticipation of the promises He has made?

Wouldn't you know that your every need is already accounted for? Wouldn't you believe that as God gives food to the sparrow and clothes the grass of the field, He will provide for you? Wouldn't you lose any cause to worry, since He has promised that all things work together for good for those that love Him, who are called according to His purpose? Wouldn't your life be full of contentment if you cast all your cares on the very provider of life, knowing that before the foundation of the earth He knew you? Wouldn't you triumph over sin, since Christ took your sin on Himself? Wouldn't you confidently approach the throne of God, assured that because of Christ's atonement, you a believer are righteous before God? Wouldn't He, by fulfillment of His many promises, become so precious to you that nothing else would be of any worth, if that you get Christ?

If you're looking for meaning; if you're searching for significance; if you're desperate for identity: find it in Christ. When He says that He came that you may have life, and have it abundantly, take up your cross and take Him at His word.

Every man who walks with God, and finds Him a present Help in every time of need; who puts His promises to the practical proof and verifies them in actual experience; every believer who with the key of faith unlocks God's mysteries, and with the key of prayer unlocks God's treasures, thus furnishes to the race a demonstration and an illustration of the fact that 'He is, and is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.'

A.T. Pierson, George Müller of Bristol

What keeps you from desiring God?

What on earth do you treasure so greatly that you are willing to trade the limitless joy found in Christ for a brief moment's stolen pleasure?

Believer, your spiritual adoption into the family of God allows you to seek God and to find Him; to drink and never be thirsty again. Think about the wonder in that statement: to drink, and in so doing to forever satisfy your longing. You are granted this access, this satisfaction in God, by birthright; His grace to you has made you His own. You who were once far off have been brought near, and He who was your greatest enemy you are able to call Father, to dine at His table. If your heart of stone has been ripped out and replaced with a heart of flesh, why do you return to your old ways? How, if you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, can you even once more chose to believe that the spoiled meat which you feasted upon in your former life could fill you up?

The tragedy of the believer's life is that he chooses like a dog to return to his own vomit. Proverbs tells us that this is the mark of a fool: to repeat his folly. It is not enough to eat the spoiled meat of sin once, and being sickened by it, to be necessarily purged of it; the sinning believer willingly puts aside the remembrance of the surpassing greatness of the feast at God's table and goes sniffing back to gnaw at the very thing that Scripture and experience tell him he can not stomach.

The beauty in a believer's life is this: he has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and therefore what would have satisfied the dead heart inside the walking corpse of the old man can no longer taste the same to a regenerated soul. A believer cannot tarry in sin, to live by that poison. He must, by his new nature, eat the food that gives life, that is, the water and bread of life: Jesus Christ. Christ has transformed your soul from the dead to the alive, has taken your sin on Himself that you may have his righteousness, and has has changed your appetite from the damning to the glorifying. It is because of and through Christ that we are given the promise that we will not be tempted beyond what we are able, and it is by feasting on the life-giving Christ that we are able to deny the cravings of a body that were accustomed to eating filth. Oh set your mind on Him! Find your satisfaction in Christ!

Remember that we are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. I understand this to mean that I should be so fearful of harboring any sin against God, or valuing anything before Him, that I will not wait for the purifying fire to come to me, but that I will run to the altar of God, eager to burn away the old poison- and death-loving man; that in order to satisfy my God-breathed appetite for the life-giving, I will pursue Christ as the sole and greatest prize in a race that my life, joy, and eternity depend on.

Will you run with me?

It is an amazing perspective to look on the sin in your life through the lens of contentment in Christ. Whatever urgent lust had seemed so impossibly attractive is revealed in its true form: a lie, spoken by a dead heart, believed by a frail mind, and acted upon by a corrupted will. The lie is this; that anything can feign to be as immensely satisfying as God himself.

Examine yourself, Christian. Expose yourself to the light and let your faults be clearly visible, that you may give them over to God. Look inward, unbeliever. Search out for yourself why it is that your consumption fails to satisfy - why it is that you must continually seek contentment, but are perpetually short of arriving there.

It is only God that will satisfy you - He is your highest calling.

“...neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged