Perhaps, for more people today who have lost the attraction of faith, the promise of hard cash is much more alluring. But I ask the men and women of faith to go back to the certain past of the God-Man in the Manger, the Teacher of Galilee, the Dying Figure of Calvary, and the Immortal from the Empty Tomb, to steady their faith. Do not be beholden to the promise of man-made immortality, much less, divinity backed by hard cash.
The notable historian, Yuval Noah Harari, in his celebrated book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, has proposed the tantalizing prospect of humanity being transformed into deity through science. Even now, there are active scientific efforts to extend longevity, even to the point of immortality. He noted,
In 2012 Kurzweil was appointed a director of engineering at Google, and a year later Google launched a sub-company called Calico whose stated mission is ‘to solve death.’ In 2009 Google appointed another immortality true-believer, Bill Maris, to preside over the Google Ventures investment fund. In a January 2015 interview, Maris said, ‘if you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500, the answer is yes.’ Maris backs up his brave words with a lot of hard cash.[1]
In a later chapter, Harari makes this bold pronouncement:
The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world.[2]
This is a breath-taking vision of humans becoming gods to determine their own meaning in an existence that they have rendered meaningless with their death of god theology. This is an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche in his prospect of the emerging Superman in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. His vision of the Superman was also preceded by his pronouncement that god-is-dead.
Against this vision, all prospective and visionary, is a reality of history that millions remember in this season – the becoming-man of the Almighty God. CS Lewis calls this the miracle of all miracles: The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.[3]
CS Lewis points out further the grandness of this miracle, and its human inexplicability ultimately:
It is easier to argue, on historical grounds, that the incarnation actually occurred than to show, on philosophical grounds, the probability of its occurrence. This historical difficulty of giving for the life, sayings and influence, of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation, is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity and (let me add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind his theological teaching unless he is indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over.[4]
Perhaps, for more people today who have lost the attraction of faith, the promise of hard cash is much more alluring. But I ask the men and women of faith to go back to the certain past of the God-Man in the Manger, the Teacher of Galilee, the Dying Figure of Calvary, and the Immortal from the Empty Tomb, to steady their faith. Do not be beholden to the promise of man-made immortality, much less, divinity backed by hard cash.
What Jesus has done in history can reach out to every sinner. Because out of this gift of God, in the language of John Piper, “grace towards sinners is the freest of all God’s acts.”[5]
Jesus, my God-Man, Lord and Savior, is my Eternal Life.
[1] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harper): 24
[2] Ibid, p. 223
[3] CS Lewis, Miracles; cited in A Year with CS Lewis: Daily Reading from His Classic Works (HarperOne): 391
[4] Op. cit.
[5] John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God (Multnomah): 76
Treasure in Earthen Vessel 