Sequiturs

Here is a little freestyle poem I wrote. It springs partly from musings on communion, partly from an observation that between the order of this world and the order to come lies much unsightly chaos. We must shed the tattered gray robe of the pharisee and take up a bloody cross to obtain the white robe of salvation.

Luna lords the night in heaven,
cog and gear in consecution.
She honors nigh eternal pattern,
shedding old light, growing older.

Aesthetic graces call for order,
cog and gear in consecution,
shedding used light, groaning older,
waging life in tepid pallor.

A holy heart is under power,
like an engine, not like chattel.
It hearkens no established order,
shedding sins with youthful ardor

Saving grace connotes upheaval,
bold insurgence, no mere chattel,
soul and life in consecration,
molting death like molten lava.

Luna hoards her light in heaven,
meager lamp in gloaming skies,
entropic torpor now descendant,
nothing new, and all old dies.

A holy life is unencumbered,
for desecrating unclean shrines,
showers it in blood and water,
baptized in iridescent wine.

Aesthetic graces call for order,
murky mortal paradigm.
Saving grace erupts through torpor!
A star seen in the east will rise.

A holy call is wayward order,
ruddy brand in nitid sky,
blotting out the lunar hoarder,
washing red her palest blight.

Kingdom comes and wayward order,
gathers home her bloodied spawn,
red of gash throughout life former,
yet robed in white, break bread and dawn.

This survey says the technology gets much more favorable reception in Europe. The survey’s author believes religion is the predominant factor in the difference, with religious conservatives in America being skeptical of advances that “are viewed as ‘playing God.’” He also asserts that Americans who oppose nanotechnology were informed of what it is, so they’re not just scared of scary long words they don’t know.

Color me perplexed. I cannot think of anything in Scripture or Christian doctrine that lends even a sliver of support to the idea that building tiny machines is morally suspect. We “play God” all the time, if using technology to alter nature rises to such sonorous description. That’s what humans do. We build houses, develop medicines, and invent machines of all sorts to make life easier and better. Nanotechnology is just the application of the same approach a smaller–and often more useful–scale. So: does this survey reflect some perceived moral difference between large machines and small ones, or is it just wrong? Or, more ominously, does it reflect a general skepticism toward science on the part of Christians? Such a skepticism has no support, to my knowledge, in the Bible, but it wouldn’t be historically unprecedented.

This is an ok bit of satire I guess, but nothing to write home about. What’s really fun is reading it while listening to Romans 3 on CD. Here are some of the twisted sentences that might run through your head:

“You must accept my challenge, or be dishonored. I am using a human argument. Do not insult me by suggesting that we settle this matter with talk. If that were so, how could God judge the world?”

“Why not say, as we are being slanderously reported as saying, and as some claim that we say, ‘You may know little about knitting, but your knowledge of weapons is formidable.’ The katana has a history dating back to the Samurai. Their condemnation is deserved.”

“What will it be, then? Rapiers? Crossbows? Bo staffs? They have together become worthless. Their throats are open graves and their feet are swift to shed blood. Every time I fashion a scarf, I will imagine using it to hang you by the tallest tree in Harpville. As I wield the needle to fashion a new garment, so will I wield my blade to tear your flesh. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. I assure you, I will not give you the opportunity to die by your own hand. Rather, you will die by mine, while you are still uncircumcised.”

God, thank you for having a sense of humor. I don’t mean this to be disrespectful, but it made me laugh when I thought of it.