How clever are we?
It was a clever advertisement that I saw on the back of a bus – yes, really. There was a picture of, I think, a complicated robotic device. Next to it, the caption read, “If you think this is clever, meet its maker.” The advertisement was for a university (whose name I forget).
Isn’t it astonishing how ready we are to recognise the cleverness of human beings in making things – and some human beings are remarkably clever when it comes to designing and making things – and yet how slow we are to acknowledge that our world and we ourselves are manufactured things, and that we too have a maker? And, if we are clever in our making of things – and we are – then how clever does that make the one who made us?
In Romans 1, it is the mark of human waywardness that, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator” (verse 25). And what created things do human beings worship and serve more than any other, if not themselves? Part of “the truth of God” is that he is our maker. He made us, and he owns us, and so we are accountable to him. But, then, that is the very truth that we are most likely to want to bury if we want to be ‘free’ to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. But how clever is that?