When Is Progress Not Progressing?

I have an awful time coming up with titles. When I was editor of my high school newspaper, we would always struggle to come up with headlines that were informative, but not boring; clever, but not silly. Recently, I have read a terrific book with an even better title. It is called The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.[i]

Now that’s a great title. In fact, it is so good that you almost know what the book is about without reading a page or without me telling you anything about it. Can’t we all relate to the title? Almost everything about our lives is improved over what our grandparents dealt with: safer and more plentiful food, nearly instant worldwide communication, bigger houses, more educational opportunities, amazing health care, etc.

However, the average person in the Western world somehow does not feel like things have gotten better. The author describes this paradox and tries to shed some light on why.

Although he touches on spirituality briefly, I think that the author has not seen what the real cause of this malaise in the midst of plenty is perhaps: we don’t have peace with God. There is nothing inherently wrong with technological and societal progress, but if God is not in the center, it leaves us feeling empty.

This is not about our moral state; that’s too easy an answer and not entirely on the mark. The author argues that our societal mores have not declined as much as some of us might think. He is right in noting many positive trends (declining divorce rates, reduced teen pregnancy, among others). However, when we see the amount of sex and violence on television, in movies, and even in advertising; when we note the number of younger people living together without being married; when we look at the scourge of drugs that has moved beyond the inner city into the pastoral countryside, we have a difficult time agreeing.

Even here, though, declining morality is not the cause of our societal funk. These are only symptoms of the real problem: God does not occupy the proper place in the average person’s life that he should or possibly did at one time.

While this “progress paradox” is an interesting modern phenomenon, it is not truly new. The author of Ecclesiastes reflected the same malaise nearly three thousand years ago:

I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers, and a harem as well– the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:4-11, NIV)

Wow, how depressing. Today we would give him Prozac.

We live in a society that obsesses over gloom and nearly celebrates bad news. This is hardly surprising as our society lives without God. But what about you and me? Are we afflicted with the same gloomy assumption that our lives are harder than ever or that there is no meaning to everyday existence? If so, the cause is the same as for the world: God is not a big enough part of our lives.

Even within the gloomiest book of the Bible, the author has a few moments of clarity:

A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25, NIV) 

Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work– this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart. (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20)

Let us find our enjoyment, our pleasure, our satisfaction in God. If we do, he will keep us “occupied with gladness of heart.”