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As I write these words oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico from the site of the underwater well—the well is hemorrhaging uncontrollably and all attempts to stop it have failed to date. I pray a solution can be found soon, but I fear it will still be some time before the well can be “capped”.
As I watch the reports, I realize we are witnessing a disaster (both environmental and economic) unfold, the likes of which we have never seen before—this now surpasses the Exxon Valdez disaster. I heard a report yesterday that it could be several more months before this hemorrhaging can be stopped, and each day that goes by, thousands upon thousands more gallons of oil spew into the Gulf marring the water and the surrounding shorelines and spreading further and further on ocean currents. Make no mistake, everyone of us is impacted by what is happening in the Gulf. We can’t just ignore this because we don’t live next door to it. (That’s never really worked and it especially doesn’t work now.)
The human intellect is impressive. God has gifted us with intelligence and we use it to do and create many wonderful things that enhance the quality of our lives in countless ways. Even now I sit at a wireless laptop computer. There is no plug connected at the moment. I have a battery that provides enough power to run my computer for several hours and can be recharged as needed. I can store a large amount of information on a small memory stick that fits in my pocket. I also have a connection to something called the internet without using a single cable—isn’t science grand!
Likewise, the fact that we routinely draw oil from deep beneath the Earth’s surface both on land and, even more remarkably, from under the ocean’s surface is in itself remarkable. Technology in itself is not a bad thing. Human life can be made better by appropriate use of technology.
The problem begins when human hubris—which means excessive ambition and pride—begins to mix in. This is the darker side of our intellect because time and time again, we rather arrogantly place our faith in the things we have created. We convince ourselves that “nothing could possibly go wrong” and—as becomes painfully obvious in the case of the Gulf oil spill—don’t even bother to plan for a scenario in which our trustworthy technology fails us. Granted, there were supposed to be measures in place that would stop such a disaster from happening, but they failed. And once they failed, it seemed there was really no other plan of action in place for how to respond. So now BP (which I am told now means Beyond Petroleum) and the government scramble to find some means—and I think they would use any means at all at this point—to stop the oil from hemorrhaging from the well a mile beneath the surface. And in the meantime, some of the things they are using to “clean up” or “contain” their mess until a more permanent solution can be found may themselves may have harmful impact on the environment.
There’s also another ingredient that mixes with human hubris to create a volatile and dangerous combination. We human beings have an incredible capacity say and do dumb things at the worst possible time—let’s call it human error.
Human hubris + human error ? A recipe for disaster
In Chemistry, there is something called a catalyst. When you add a catalyst it makes a reaction between two or more things progress faster than it would otherwise progress. Thinking in those terms: I’d say that human hubris seems to be a catalyst for human error.
In this context, our hubris leads us to assume that our technology will always perform the way it is supposed to. We reach a point where we rather arrogantly believe that “nothing could possibly go wrong”, and thus we feel we don’t have to be quite as vigilant in following the rules and procedures to the letter. But then, all of a sudden, we make one dumb decision and something does go terribly wrong—as it did in the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t supposed to work that way… but it did, and now we face a disaster of unparalleled proportions.
The Gulf oil spill is by no means the first (nor will it be the last) disaster to highlight this volatile combination of human hubris and human error. The sinking of the HMS Titanic in 1912 is a classic example. As you learn the story of Titanic’s creation, you realize that human hubris was working overtime at White Star lines. The ship was billed as unsinkable; the designers (at least the ones who had the most influence on the decision-making) actually became so convinced it was true, that they were lured into making what was frankly a dumb decision. (We see it pretty clearly in retrospect, but it’s funny how hubris—which is a sin, by the way—clouds clear decision-making.) They decided there was no need to provide lifeboats for all the passengers—they would just add unnecessary weight and slow the ship down, and they would take away from the ascetic beauty of the ship. They were convinced that even if Titanic somehow did get into trouble, that she couldn’t possibly sink before the passengers would be rescued.
So human hubris led to the creation of a ship that was inaccurately dubbed “unsinkable” but hubris alone was not what led to the sinking of Titanic on its maiden voyage. If it had just been hubris, we might be able to visit Titanic in a museum rather than having to board a submersible and plunge miles beneath the ocean surface to visit the ship’s watery grave.
No, on that fateful night in 1912, human hubris combined with human error at just the right time—or the wrong time if you prefer—to create the perfect recipe for disaster. The captain, who falsely believed that he was in fact in command of an “unsinkable” ship, made an unwise (and uninformed) decision to sail at full steam into the iceberg-laden waters of the North Atlantic. And the rest, as they say, is history—it remains one of the great maritime tragedies of all time. It turned out Titanic was not quite as “unsinkable” as the engineers who designed her had thought; in fact she had a rather fatal flaw in her design that was exposed when the iceberg ripped a gaping hole in her side. The broken husk of the once proud ocean liner resting at the bottom of the ocean is a grim reminder of just how volatile and dangerous (and yes, tragic) the combination human hubris and human error can be.
Time and time again we humans devise technology we think is foolproof, only to discover that no technology is foolproof because fools are so ingenious. The tragic tale of Titanic is but one example of a story that has played out time and time again throughout human history. I could have described more recent “manmade” disasters, such as the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 or the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. Investigations into these accidents revealed that these were both cases where human hubris combined with human error with devastating results. And now, the same recipe for disaster seems to be playing out again in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tragedies such as these serve to remind us what can happen when human beings place their faith in the things they create over and above their Creator—consider the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. No matter how advanced and sophisticated our technology becomes, no matter how much the things we create improve the quality of our lives, we have to resist the temptation to worship our creations, to think that our creations will save us. When we place our trust in our creations, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, we come to a point where we say: "Yeah, um, God, we think we can take it from here ourselves, so we won’t be needing your services anymore."
The problem is that once we push the Creator out the picture, our human hubris gets free reign, and we begin to feel as if we can live without limits, and do whatever we want with no negative consequences for ourselves or anyone else. Our focus tends to become increasingly narrow and we don’t tend to consider what impact our decisions might have on others—with God out of the picture, now it’s truly all about my security, my prosperity, my success…
Of course, as we’ve seen when human hubris goes unchecked, it can be a dangerous thing. We develop a false sense of security and become convinced that we are invincible, and when that happens, the risk of human error increases dramatically. As we’re seeing in the Gulf, often those errors have tragic consequences that have an impact that extends far beyond the individual.
It is only by staying connected to God our Creator that our hubris can be restrained and the impact of the errors we will inevitably make as finite human beings can be minimized.
As we deepen our connection to God we realize that God not only cares about the salvation of individuals, but also cares deeply about the salvation of our world. The coming of Jesus was meant to be good news not just for a select group of human beings but for all of creation! God’s greatest desire is to see all of Creation (which includes you and me!) restored its original design, and God wants all of us to play a role in making that happen.
As we begin to see the world through God’s eyes we realize that we are all connected to one another on this planet—not through some impersonal force that “connects” all things, but through a living relationship with Jesus Christ who is in all. Jesus teaches us that in God’s eyes none of us truly prospers unless we all prosper; if one of us is hurting, we all hurt. Followers of Christ are thus called to make “business” decisions with an eye toward the common good of humanity—a rather radical departure from the way of this world where the bottom line is the bottom line. And as a caveat to that, when we design new technologies for our benefit, we will need to consider what impact they may have on others and on the environment—again requiring an adjustment to our “normal” way of thinking.
If the Christian faith is to remain viable in today’s world, then it has to do a better job responding to real-life situations that dramatically impact the lives of so many people around the globe—like what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico right now. I believe the message of Jesus and the Kingdom of God truly has much to offer… if we only have eyes to see, ears to hear, and courage to act decisively. Let us hope and pray that this message can truly make a difference in helping us to come up with a response to the current crisis… to others that are ongoing… and others that will inevitably follow.
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