Edgework

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

I have been struck recently by the number of people who make statements like, “I’ve seen that before,” or “It’s always been this way,” or as the teacher in Ecclesiastes has it, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

While there is much to learn from proverbial sayings in the wisdom literature of the Bible, one needs to be careful not to develop one’s world view on the basis of proverbs alone. The cyclical view of life often underlying biblical proverbs is countered, especially in the New Testament, by a more linear view of history. As a matter of fact, the view that history is going somewhere is a hallmark of a Christian worldview over against that of some other world religions.

And one must also be aware of the nature of “proverbs.” They are statements that carry an element of truth but do not always deliver the goods as promised in every circumstance. Take the proverb, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). The truth is that while proper training in childhood will have a major effect on choices our children make, often they make life choices that do not reflect their training during childhood. Too many parents have agonized too much over what they did wrong while raising their children when they see their grown children make choices they don’t approve of. The caveat to the proverb in question is that one’s children also have a free will.

All this to suggest that it can be irresponsible to simply throw around the proverb, “There is nothing new under the sun,” as an antidote to making informed and intelligent choices about life in an ever-changing world. I know that biblical proverbs often point to some enduring truths that do not change over time. Human nature still often tends toward folly, for example. One doesn’t have to look far to come to this conclusion. But one should be hesitant to say that absolutely nothing changes in life. All persons who are aware of what goes on around them know that changes are happening all the time that call for thoughtful and morally responsible responses.

The invention of gunpowder by the Chinese in the 9th century and it application to firearms in the 17th century changed the nature of warfare forever. Bows and arrows got relegated to sports shops, never to be resurrected again as serious weapons of war. The arrival of the atomic bomb and its first use in 1945 presented the world with a huge moral quandary. I grew up in an era where computers belonged to science fiction. My goodness, my home didn’t even have a telephone. But now I am writing this essay on a computer that is probably more intelligent than I am. Modern technology has brought many benefits to humankind as a whole, but at the same time created many ethical dilemmas that call for careful reflection and calculated responses.

One of the new realities we live with which King Solomon never dreamt of is the fact that we now have created more than 70,000 synthetic chemicals and more are being made every day. Some of them have been thoroughly tested and have served us well. But there are thousands of chemicals whose short and long term effects on the earth and its inhabitants are simply not known. Increasingly alarm bells are going off around the globe about this chemical soup which has inundated us all. While many independent studies have concluded that these chemicals lie behind many of the modern health plagues we all live with, I keep hearing that such talk is alarmist. Remember, “There is nothing new under the sun!” I am sorry to confound those living in a bubble, but our exposure to this daily chemical bath is likely to create the worst holocaust the world has ever seen.

When I spoke recently with someone about superbugs developing around the world that are increasingly resistant to our strongest antibiotics, I was told not to worry. It has always been this way and scientists will find a way around the problem. The fact is that in the United States alone, at least 23,000 people die annually of infections antibiotics cannot treat. Remember there was a time before we even had antibiotics and it seems we are moving toward a post-antibiotic world again. Does this not call for some serious reflection and possible changes in our overuse of antibiotics, especially in agriculture?

A few years ago, during a wet spring, an acquaintance said there is no need to be concerned. As long as he had lived farmers had always been able to seed their land, albeit sometimes late in the season. Now I hear that in some areas of Manitoba farmers have not been on their land for three years because of too much moisture. And the massive flood on the prairies of 2011, said to be a one-in-300-year event, now is happening again only three years later. How long will people keep denying that we are experiencing some major upsets in global weather patterns? And why is it so hard to imagine that human activity may be at least partly to blame?

I have come to the conclusion that most people who keep saying, “I’ve seen it all before – there is really nothing new under the sun,” do so to deflect the possibility that they might be called upon to make life changes. They are basically insecure and blindly hope that the dangers around them will go away on their own. From my perspective, the sensible thing to do in an ever-changing world is to reflect seriously on changes taking place and discern carefully how to respond to these changes in morally responsible ways.