IS THE MEGAMACHINE THE ANTICHRIST?
There’s a new book out: “The End of the Megamachine”, written originally in German by Fabian Scheidler, now translated into English. In it Scheidler attempts to retrace the entire history of our civilization under the umbrella concept of the “megamachine.” He sees the Megamachine as a giant creature devouring the world, now on the verge of collapse, taking everything with it.
He paints the earth today as a fossil-fuel-fed monster, growing from a hesitant start in the late Middle Ages, then finding its footing with the unexpected source of nutritious, carbon-rich food causing it not just to grow, but to become fat, obnoxious and all-consuming, because the more it grows, the faster it can grow.
Now the natural resources enabling it to expand forever are dwindling and this awful automaton starts stumbling around in a frantic, fruitless search for more.
Where does this machine originate?
Here I deviate from the book. In my opinion, the Megamachine started with murder when Cain killed his brother. Jacques Ellul, in his The Meaning of the City, believes – and I agree – that the city, which Cain founded as an answer to Eden, symbolizes the supreme work of humanity, and as such represents humanity’s ultimate rejection of God: hence the start of the Megamachine.
Now, in these last days, our urbanized world has morphed into the Megamachine, embodying the Antichrist, which stands for everything evil; its power is fueled by 0101001 (the modern version of 666), the Almighty computer and its Artificial Intelligence (AI), and by fossil fuels, the ultimate destroyer: both city products, both contrary to divine wisdom.
Contrast this to wisdom.
I don’t have a lot of wisdom, but that doesn’t prevent me from trying to make sense of the world I live in. The book of Proverbs, that chapter in the Bible that follows the Psalms, gives me a lot of hints about wisdom. “The fear of the Lord,” it says, “Is the beginning of Wisdom”. I understand this to mean that, when we are awed by the greatness of creation, and love it dearly, we are on the first steps to wisdom. I try to do that because I wholeheartedly believe that God’s wisdom is evident in creation. Isn’t there a line where it says, “By wisdom you made it all?” Yes, Proverbs 3: 19: “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place”.
Genesis, the very beginning of the Bible, tells me that: “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”.
How do I visualize that? With the boldness of ignorance, I venture to fathom this scenario. It seems to suggest that there was a chaotic, turbulent mass of seething seas, an enormous ball of boiling brew, shapeless suds, piles of water purposelessly posturing, the entire scenery undeniably negative. And over and above all this cauldron of nothingness hovered God’s Spirit. “God is a Spirit”, Jesus told us, so, in essence, God was there surveying the scenes.
Then a miracle occurred; the wonder of wonders took place: “God spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm,” (Psalm 33: 9).
That line, “God spoke and it came to be”, reminds me of an article I read last week in the Aeon Magazine on GENIUS. In it, Craig Wright, professor of music at Yale and the author of The Hidden Habits of Genius (2020), wrote, “Over the course of 20 years, I went in search of Mozart in libraries in Berlin, Salzburg, Vienna, Krakow, Paris, New York and Washington, studying his autograph (or handwritten) music manuscripts. I found that Mozart could effortlessly conceive of great swaths of music entirely in his head, with almost no corrections. What Salieri said of Mozart in Amadeus no longer seems so fanciful: here ‘was the very voice of God’”.
Craig Wright again: “If Mozart could hear in his head how the music ought to go, Leonardo, judging from his sketches, could simply see them in his mind’s eye………Leonardo’s natural technical facility is manifest, as seen in the hand-eye coordination that results in correct proportions and the cross-hatching lines that suggest three-dimensional perception.”
These two men, genius, both, had something god-like about them. “God spoke, and it came to be.” Both Mozart and Leonardo in their minds envisioned totally complete works of art. For them it was simple to put it on paper. God went a step further: he spoke, and, pronto, it materialized in totality, not yet fully formed, still, in principle, but its potential has now been fully realized, has developed as we, the latter-day creatures experience them. God is a God of order.
Order and Disorder.
I try to be a man of order, perhaps too much so, but it makes life easier. I always get up at the same time, feed the wood stove, eat my oatmeal porridge ready in my slow cooker, add my blueberries, fruit in season, apple sauce – I am still working on the 2019 crop in my freezer – and so have a healthy start of the day. First thing, after breakfast, I copy the lectionary readings and select a passage for elaboration. That’s my routine. Every morning I prepare a hot lunch at noon, followed by an hour-long nap, a concession to my age. I diligently exercise every day without fail, either walk or use my treadmill, stationary bike and rowing machine.
In my reading of Proverbs, I have noticed that wisdom and discipline go hand in hand. My discipline extends to my reading which these past weeks has centered on Walter Brueggemann, and his Interpretation and Obedience. The book was written some 35 years ago, but certainly is not outdated. In it he writes a lot on ‘the land’, quoting Psalm 24: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” He is more direct there, emphasizing that “THE LAND” belongs to God. I have 50 acres of land, mostly woods, rocks and wetland, but I have a patch, surrounding my home, our guesthouse and my workshop, where there is also some 2,000 square feet of ‘land’ precious soil where I grow much of what I eat. Preserving and enhancing it is my divine duty.
Our environmental situation can be traced to the way we treat The Land: the right way spells ORDER, the current wrong way DISORDER, which will backfire on us dramatically. There is more ingenuity, harmony and coherence in a cubic inch of my soil than in the tallest condominium tower anywhere.
As the Bible tells us, the fall will be sudden and unpredictable. Disorder versus Order. The End of the Megamachine spells it out, completely in tune with the Scriptures.
In the final chapter of Interpretation and Obedience this well-known Old Testament scholar, writes, “That the world is dying before our eyes is no idle speculation, but a daily experience of change so massive, of alienation so powerful, of anxiety so unending: there no going home. It will never be the same again.”
And then there is foolishness.
This monster we have fashioned destroys God’s creation on purpose because it hates God, hates wisdom and loves foolishness: the result is the Disorder we see today.
That’s the Megamachine in operation, the Antichrist at work, trying to thwart God and his beloved work of art.
Brueggemann again, “Because world-ending is so scary and so painful, we do not want to face it. Patients, clients, or parishioners (even the clergy, I might add) do not want to face it. And in the end, neither do we.”
Is the Megamachine the Antichrist?
Yes. From the very inception of civilization God’s opponent lived only for revenge, aimed at destroying God’s wonderful creation. God allowed this to happen, as shown in Deuteronomy 31, “I will hide my face to see what the end would be.” Now we know the end. In the process we are learning how to live eternally.
Thank you, Lord.