In 1970 Johann Baptist Metz wrote that the risk to our future is that, with technological advances, humans shift from being subjects of civilisation’s technological process to being its product. The question is: development, progress, process – for whom? The problem is not technology – we have it, it is one of controlling economic-technological processes. We have the technological means but we lack appropriate goals, process and priorities. The question is political and social, not technical. I think it is also theological and missiological.
This seems to be devastatingly borne out in the destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 last week. The Pro-Russian rebels (probably) or the Russians themselves (less likely) or the Ukrainians (possible but unlikely) had the technical means for tragedy but not the moral decision-making capacity to avoid it. Against the technical capacity of the missile (and the airplane) they seem positively stone-aged.
We know where God is – in the airplane debris and on the refrigerated morgue-train. Where is the Church in these communities? Well, we are praying and lamenting, Rachel is weeping for her children. But unless we stand up and walk our our west-doors to transform these communities our prayers and tears are for very little except to comfort ourselves.