I’ve been thinking some about progress.  It’s hard not to when you have a medical emergency and receive a highly technical surgery that likely sets you on a path toward full recovery.  It’s not hard to imagine a different life trajectory – or rapid decline – had the same physical ailment occurred several centuries, millennia, or even decades ago.  I think about the commandment to “love the Lord with all your mind” (cited by Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and all the medical advances resulting from dedicated minds.  Medical progress is a real thing, and thank God for that.

Progress is embedded in the word progressive, a label some of us have claimed.  Progressivism is a worldview born out of Enlightenment thinking.  It’s a belief that the human condition can improve through social reforms by appeal to self-evident reason.  Always-reasonable Wikipedia states “While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, all eras of the movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism and a call for a more active democratic government to safeguard human rights, promote cultural development, and serve as a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies.”    

Well…

Perhaps part of what is so disorienting about our current social reality is that it doesn’t just offend one’s moral sensibilities, but it is a challenge to an entire worldview.  We’re on a path of noble progress, right?  And we can see clear signs that we are (thank you neurosurgery and titanium discs).  But what if faith in universal progress, as we define it, turns out to be a delusion or an idolatry?  What if the institutions we thought preserved progress are just as easily manipulated to consolidate power and decimate natural and human communities – and have been doing so for decades, centuries, millennia?

Well…

At the very least this calls for something like worldview humility – accepting that human desire and historical trends aren’t easily captured under a single banner.  Beyond this, it calls for a rededication to the values that underlie our prayers and actions toward growing communities of healing and flourishing.  For Christians these are gospel values – recognizing the image of God in all people, protecting the vulnerable, an economics of mutual-uplift, and de-centering the self in order to re-center on the Divine Self, which permeates and sustains all of reality. We live and practice these convictions, recognizing they may not be convincing to everyone.  But hopeful that they appeal to a shared reality that ultimately none of us can deny.

Or something like that…

The wonderings of a guy in a neck brace thankful to be progressing toward good health and no longer surprised by what he reads on his news apps.

Joel