All I Want for Christmas

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

By Steven H. VanderLeest

Who is your favorite superhero?  A few years ago I reconnected with Carl, a childhood friend, who reminded me that as kids, one of our favorite role-playing games was to play superhero.  He needled me because I always wanted to be Superman.  Of course!  The Man of Steel was the champion of justice who was invulnerable, incredibly strong, and could fly.  For a scrawny first grader who sometimes got picked on by the playground bully, those were rather attractive attributes, even if only for daydreams. 

If I were to pick my favorite superhero today, it would be a different story.  You can’t grow up to be Superman—you must be born with it.  So these days I’m more attracted to the superhero who gets by on his wits, one who enhances his merely mortal senses and skills with instruments and technology.  His gadgets are always at the ready to get him out of a tight spot.  Sure, even with the technology, he still needs to work out to stay physically fit.  Even with the technology (including some impressive body armor),  he takes a lot of grueling punishment at the hand of some of the evil villains he fights.  But those limitations and struggles make him a bit more human:  a hero with whom I can empathize. Guess who yet?  That’s right—I’d pick Batman.  He is a prime candidate as the superhero for a technological society.

Technology is a tool, an instrument to enhance capability.  Much of the attraction of technology is because it amplifies our abilities, making us each a superhero of sorts.  We can extend our vision with telescopes to see farther, microscopes to see closer, MRI and X-Ray machines to see inside.  We can extend our limbs with tweezers to grab small slivers, hammers to pound harder, stilts to stand taller.  Technology not only makes individuals more powerful, but it also makes nations more formidable.  Military inventions have often provided the decisive factor in battle.  Think of the advantage of the crossbow over the older bow and arrow.  Think of the advantage of aircraft over exposed land troops.  Think of the ominous threat of thermonuclear warheads delivered by missile.

Technology is a tool, a means to an end.  Its primary worth is practical, instrumental, and utilitarian.  We value it because of what it can do.  A tool that does a job well is good; a tool that also does the job transparently, so that you hardly notice the tool itself, is exceptional.

Technology is a tool, part of what makes us human.  There are professionals that develop new gadgets, processes, and devices.  However, technology is too important to be left to the experts.  We all have a stake in it:  both the benefits and the potential harms accrue to all users.  Our culture and society is heavy on tech, intertwining government,music, literature, and more with technological aspects.  The technological devices and infrastructure—from tiny transistors to massive bridges—are themselves cultural artifacts.  While engineers might design tech products for a living, we all have an innate tool-making ability.  If you’ve ever used a piece of gum on a stick to retrieve a tiny item, you’ve invented your own tool.  If you’ve ever used a broom or rake to dislodge a toy that got caught in a tree limb, you’ve improvised your own tool.  We all have a little Batman in us.

Unlike technology, people ought never be our means to an end.  Treating people as tools to achieve our own objectives is to treat them with disrespect.  As God’s creatures and particularly as image-bearers of the Creator, people deserve dignity, deserve respect, deserve to be treated as ends and not means.  When we use someone, we make them an unwitting slave to our own desires.  Those of us working daily with technological devices and products are especially prone to seeing all the world as a tool.  We easily fall into the trap of assigning primary worth by what a person does.  For example, when you first meet someone, how quickly does the conversation turn to asking what your new acquaintance does for a living?  How often to we adulate athletes for their physical prowess or admire singers because of their melodic voices?  While appreciation of skills is natural and even respectful, if we only see the person for that skill or ability, we have done them an injustice.  We have not seen the whole person.

While we should take care to avoid treating people as tools, the turnabout is not only fair, it is a calling.  When we choose to serve the needs of others, we choose to make ourselves a tool, becoming the means to help another achieve their ends.  Our tendency to identify with our work is a healthy habit if we choose to be tools in God’s hands.  Such service, freely given, is admirable.  Such service is our calling as servants of the Lord most high. 

Mary chose to be God’s instrument.  When facing the angel Gabriel and learning of God’s will concerning a child that would be conceived within her by the Holy Spirit, she concluded: “I am the Lord’s servant.  May your word to me be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:38, NIV)  She chose to be a tool in God’s hands, achieving not her own will, but God’s. 

As kids we were always ready with an answer to “What do you want for Christmas?”  We had long lists of gift suggestions for our parents and grandparents, hoping for the latest toy or game.  The first Christmas certainly was a celebration and brought the ultimate gift to humankind, but to focus on gifts for ourselves this coming Christmas would be to miss the point of that gift.  God the Son became flesh.  Christ the King poured out his life as a sacrifice to accomplish God’s will.  We are God’s hands and feet, to do his will in this world.  We are his tools. This Christmas, instead of considering what you hope to receive, consider what you hope to be:  an instrument of God.

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(c) 2012, Steven H. VanderLeest