The news show 60 Minutes recently had an interesting piece entitled The Future Factory about a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hugh Herr, who heads the Biomechatronics group at MIT, stated, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
As a teenager, Hugh was gaining a reputation as one of the top rock climbers in the United States. In 1982 at age seventeen, he was caught in a storm with a fellow climber on Mount Washington in New Hampshire and endured four subzero days before being rescued. Due to frostbite, both his legs were amputated below the knee. Not being deterred by what others said, Hugh quickly invented prostheses that enabled him to climb again. After receiving graduate degrees from MIT, Dr. Herr has continued to advance the capabilities of technology for amputees.
I am also a beneficiary of research. My doctor at Emory is one of the world leaders in developing ways to defeat multiple myeloma. We are currently discussing options for me as the drug I’ve taken for almost two years has lost effectiveness. Susan and I appreciate your prayers.
Other pursuits highlighted in The Future Factory almost defy imagination, but one quote caught my attention on 60 Minutes. In describing the building where research is done and ‘impossibilities’ are pursued by 230 graduate students, the reporter said it was a “six-story tower of Babel.”
The story of Babel is the history of God’s judgment on humanity after the flood who were saying to one another, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves…” (Genesis 11:4) God confused their language… which stopped the completion of the city. “That is why it was called Babel [which sounds like the Hebrew word for confused] — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:9)
Why, I asked myself, did the reporter describe the MIT research building as a tower of Babel? God can judge motives and intentions, but it is important for us to remember lessons from Scripture so we will not misplace trust or allegiance. Regarding Babel, Michael Youssef writes, “It is not the height of the tower that is significant. It’s the purpose of the tower. The Babylonians were building the tower of Babel as a monument to their own brilliance and glory.”
It is an easy trap to fall into: “I want to be the best ever!” God asks, “Why? Do you want others to look at you and say, ‘Wow!’? Have you not realized My Son’s secret was becoming nothing so all could know Me?”
God alone knows the future. When Jesus returns, may He find a Church consumed with Him and nothing else.
“Now listen, all who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” James 4:13-15
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:5-8
(Quote from The Hidden Enemy by Michael Youssef, 2018, p 163)