Modern Machinery

WED., SEPT. 15, 1982, 5:20 AM
FARM, STUDY

Here is another theme, o son, that you just will not find in the Holy Scriptures. It is significant that the Scriptures are as relevant as they are, for they were written without any direct concept of the machinery and devices that are now an inherent part of your culture. But I naturally, have been overseeing this earth as all of this development has been taking place, and I have some reflections on this aspect of life for you, My creations.

In Biblical times work that was done with muscle power, human and animal, with the aid of simple technology. You pushed a small button, and your desk light went on. In those times you would have had an oil lamp, with not much light and a good deal of smoke. The equivalent of the machine was the slave, a human being forced to do the hardest work. You in Western culture certainly recognize slavery as an evil, but the Bible contains no such judgment. Work had to be done, then and now. Slaves were the means, as machines are today.

When the Jewish people were enslaved they awaited My deliverance, and the most dramatic, certainly, was that from Egypt, which is an essential part of the Jewish remembrance. The Bible suggests that sometimes slavery was a just judgment on a people… something they deserved… of a karmic nature. In like fashion it can be said that there are costs in having technology. The machines don’t feel and yearn for freedom, but there are results from their use which are not all positive.

In the time in which I lived as Jesus the message was that slaves were to serve their masters, and masters were to be humane to their slaves. Paul also asserted that slaves were free in Christ… that relationship with Me made them free, whatever their earthly masters required. The other side of that is the assertion that the masters could also be free in Me and were not condemned for owning slaves. But the slaves did not make the master free. That was, and is, a gift from Me.

The analog is that modern machinery, while making life easier, does not bring any true freedom. That still comes only in relationship with Me. Your dependence must be upon Me, the giver of freedom, rather than on machines, for, curiously, humans can now become slaves to machines, in the sense of being unable to function without them.

My message today about machines is simple: your freedom is in Me, not in these devices. Be not totally dependent upon them. Use them as God-given implements, not as something deserved nor as something without which life would be bleak and inferior. This is the challenge of life in a modern age.