For the last 4 centuries, Western culture has fallen into a narrow philosophical hole: progress. At some point after the reformation, westerners directed their eyes down from up, toward the world, and away from the heavens. The Enlightenment era was premised on hope in human endeavors to improve the world. Before Darwin, Its underlying theory was that mankind was always evolving and improving. It’s within this assumption that Darwin constructed his theory. Hegel and Marx seduced us into believing in the almost inevitable and universal journey of the universe’s progress. Today, progress is the religion of the West. There is no counterpoint.
Yet what have we witnessed? Societal changes and technological inventions confirm progress, but do they? Small movements do not mean the whole is moving at all. Rearranging the furniture in the house does not mean the home has grown larger or truly changed. Humanity is still abusing itself, still dying, still asking the same questions about meaning and purpose, and still stuck in its basic structures as it was 10,000 years ago. We are still very much confined by our tragic flaws of lies, murder, greed, and death.
We are not progressing. The last decade demonstrates that all our towers of Babel will fall just like before. So stop constructing them. Progress will never realize our hope because it’s a mirage. We are just going around in circles personally and universally.
If anything, ironically, the virtue of progress extolled by the West might be the greatest form of colonialism and Western imperialism. Like Cortes, we blindly assume and force this idea upon other cultures through our foreign aid, holding other societies hostage until they conform to our definition of progress. Worse, the most horrible mass atrocities in the last 200 years were accomplished in the name of progress! Watch out for people who ‘want to make the world better.’
This New Year, let go of progress. You have been brainwashed into one particular philosophy begun by men wearing wigs and invalidated hundreds of times. Stop organizing your life and mental health around the barometer of progress. Stop judging yourself on whether or not you are getting ‘better.’ Stop hoping for a universal system, technology, or philosophy to improve the world. The goal of life is not to go forward. It is just to be a human being, created and cared for by God. Enjoy it. The goal of good works isn’t to change the world but to love your neighbor for the sake of love, not progress. We are not pushing some large rock up a hill. There is a rock, but it’s not moving; you are. You are repeatedly beating your body against it.
But we do have hope. It lies in a manger, on a cross, in an empty tomb. The only one to improve humanity has come. A new world and heavens is coming. It will completely change at once without anyone’s help. The end of history has broken into our mess and brought you into a new reality. This is not just an opiate for the sufferer; it gives life now, meaning now, and richness. You are not a rat in a cage but a human being created and loved by the creator. Don’t worry about moving the rock up the hill. Christ has already removed it when came out of the tomb. God is above. Your neighbor is around. You have been freed from worrying about progress to love them both.
