Flight, invisibility, lasers. Have you ever imagined having a super power?

How about the power to make anything you can think of from any part of the world appear inside your house? That sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it?

If I had that power, I think I would call it “Amazon.com.”

Or the ability to access nearly endless food variety would be cool. This would be a power called “The Supermarket.”

Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian I’ve mentioned before, claims, ”No powers determine our lives more completely than those we think we have under our control.” (Naming the Silences: God Medicine and the Problem of Suffering, p. xi)

Hauerwas is saying, “the things you own, end up owning you.”

Wait. That was Tyler Durden in Fight Club.

But the idea is similar. Hauerwas is calling out the deception inherent in situations we think we control. When we believe we have some power or ability to manipulate our lives, we are actually being manipulated by that power.

The context of Hauerwas’ discussion is modern medicine as “a power.”

He is arguing that because we look to modern medicine to “save us” from what we can’t psychologically deal with, like childrens’ suffering, our values and perspectives are limited and controlled by that system of modern medicine.

When medicine prevails as our hope in sickness, we no longer feel the need to explain God’s goodness in the face of suffering – we only need put our trust in the idea that medicine will only get better and more advanced. Suffering will recede.

Modern medicine rearranges our values around it as our god.

I can hear the protests. “So, when we believe that we have attained control over some area of our lives, that area actually manipulates us? But, but, but…but, no…wait. These are good gifts for which we are to be thankful, sir!”

Isn’t that just it? The issue is the difference between a gift to receive with greatfulness and achievement that develops into an institution we depend on.

Take the example of two of the most hallowed initials in the western world: AC.

Air Conditioning, cool air jetting out of the magic vents on the ceiling and floor that makes you simultaneously content and murderous.

Once you step out of cool world into the 99 degree heat with humidity that makes you feel like a walrus is sitting on the back of your neck, you are glad that we’ve mastered that little part of the world.

The whole world can roast in hell-ish heat, but thanks to Twentieth Century engineering and chemistry, your house is representative of what should be most real.

AC is a power – the power to be comfortable in our oppressive environment. Comfort becomes what we consider normal and necessary.

But when the AC breaks, who is made the servant of whom?  Whose paradigm is shifted and brought to a standstill? Who is brought the gold offerings and entreaties?

I am guilty of loving the AC, too. This is a societal god that is so common that we have a hard time discerning it.

AC as a god? Modern medicine as a god? Amazon.com and supermarkets as gods?

This may sound extreme, but to use our lingo, our excessive esteem of good gifts becomes idolatry.

I think we tend to reduce idolatry to what we want too much. I agree, that is part of it . But what does ”wanting something too much” mean? It becomes more than an issue of desire.

To idolize something, like the AC, is to rearrange your priorities and values around it.

We wrap our lives around the power of this comfort.

In some ways the artificially cool environment has fostered the development of our Silicone Valley world. If there is no AC, then there is no large server computers, no Amazon.com and to deconstruct this post – no blogs.

I am not advocating that we should all live in utter simplicity, sweating our faces off. We should, however, re-evaluate what we can and can’t live without.

What is it that we think we control that is pulling our strings? What is the controlling power in our lives?

What does it mean to hold Jesus as Lord in a culture that tells you it is normal to be comfortable and buy whatever you want whether you can afford it or not?