MORAL
ROT; SIN: PREVALENCE OF; SCIENCE; PROGRESS

Years ago our teachers told us that the world was getting better …

But there was a fallacy in their proposition. They supposed that because we had become brilliant toy makers, we had also become morally good toy makers. It is true that we have invented and developed and discovered all kinds of brilliant new toys. We can reach up into the skies, pull down the jagged lightning and put it in a box or run it along wires. We have learned how to transmit the human voice over great distances, at first only along wires, now without wires. We can send the human voice anywhere—even out into space.

A few generations ago toys were plain and simple. A boy would take a wheel and put a spike through it, split a stick and run the spike through the split stick, and he had a toy. A girl would take an old sock that was no longer useful, stuff it with cotton, paint a face on it, and she had a rag doll for her younger sister to play with. Now, such simplicity is left far behind. We live in a day of startling electronic and technological marvels. Artificial daylight instead of candles, supersonic transportation instead of ox-cart. Instant communication worldwide instead of runner or pony express. And so our teachers have concluded that we must be better because we know so much more!

But one little thing has been overlooked in their preoccupation with our wonderful new ability to take the forces of nature and harness them. Our scientific and intellectual advances were not accompanied by similar moral strides.… Technology, instead of making us morally better, has been accompanied by a time of moral disintegration.

Jeremiah 10:12–15; John 1:20–23; Romans 1:20–23; 1 Corinthians 1:20–21

Faith Beyond Reason, 122, 123.