The Cross and the Machine
Excerpt from an essay by Paul Kingsnorth in the June/July 2021 issue.
Yet one night, I dreamed of Jesus. The image and the message reminded me of something strange that had happened a few months before: My wife and I were out to dinner when suddenly she said to me, “You’re going to become a Christian.”
O
ne day, walking in the mountains, philosopher John Moriarty had a mystical vision that broke his world apart. For years, he had been engaged in “a genuine search for the truth, not merely a speakable truth, but a truth I would surrender to.” With a terrible inevitability, he realized that there was only one story that could hold what he had seen, only “one prayer that was big enough.” Moriarty’s story shook me. I had been searching for years for a truth like that. “The story of Christianity,” wrote Moriarty, “is the story of humanity’s rebellion against God.” Having spent years as an environmental activist, I realized that the rebellion against God manifested itself in a rebellion against creation, against all nature. We would remake Earth, down to the last nanoparticle, to suit our desires, which we now called “needs.” We were building a machine
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FIRST THINGS
to replace God. I realized that a crisis of limits is a crisis of culture, and a crisis of culture is a crisis of spirit. Every culture that lasts understands that living within limits—limits set by natural law, by cultural tradition, by ecological boundaries—is a cultural necessity and a spiritual imperative. There seems to be only one culture in history that has held none of this to be true, and it happens to be the one we’re living in. On my fortieth birthday I treated myself to a weeklong Zen retreat in the mountains. The effect of seven days of disciplined meditation with no electricity was astonishing. Something in me flipped open. And yet, as the years went on, Zen was not enough. It lacked something vital: I wanted to worship. Something was calling me. So, I ended up a priest of the witch gods, a Wiccan. Yet one night, I dreamed of Jesus. The image and the message reminded me
