Diagnosis: Amplification
Forgotten God
Deuteronomy 8
Summary: Deuteronomy 8 warns Israel against forgetting the Lord through self-sufficiency — a form of forgetting that does not deny God outright but treats him as irrelevant once wealth and abundance arrive. Technology amplifies this tendency without adding new substance to it, intensifying both our capacities and the pressures Moses describes, so that intentional resistance to the world’s sacred-social order becomes more necessary, not less.
Deuteronomy 8 stands at the edge of the land as Moses prepares Israel to enter what the Lord has promised. The chapter warns against the dangers associated with settlement in rather than conquest of the land. Once the Israelites are in the land and have experienced abundance and wealth, they will be in danger of forgetting the Lord (Deut 8:12–14). Forgetting the Lord involves neglecting “his commandments and his rules and his statutes” (8:11).
Israel is to remember the Lord by keeping his law. Yet, the lifestyle Israel has been promised in the land will tempt them to focus on the gifts rather than the Giver. They will develop a sense of self-sufficiency, and their hope and trust will slowly shift away from the Lord and toward the accumulation of wealth.
Self-sufficiency is a particular way of forgetting. It doesn’t necessarily deny the Lord outright, but assumes that he is irrelevant or absent. Rather than recognizing him as the source of all good things and recognizing obedience as the logical outworking of this conviction, the mechanisms that produce food and wealth become the primary mode of interaction.
As such, the forgetting involves a shift away from one sacred-social order to another. This other order exaggerates our efforts and capacities so that God no longer seems necessary. As we read in Deuteronomy 8:17–18, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”
The Lord who brought Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand and provided manna in the wilderness is replaced by the supposed strength of the Israelites he rescued and cared for. Those who were previously in need of God get the impression that they can now do without him. Israel does not need to publicly declare that the Lord is no longer the source of the nation’s prosperity because Israel’s self-sufficiency will show up in more subtle ways. God’s law may continue to be used to govern society unless it becomes inconvenient for Israel to follow it.
Rather than recognizing that keeping God’s commands is the way to life (Deut 30:18–20), the people set aside God’s instruction and seek to live on their own terms. They can do so because they believe they no longer need God. He becomes an empty tradition, a relic of a bygone age that Israel no longer needs.
The dynamic of self-sufficiency occurred at a time when technology was relatively rudimentary. The sort of efficiency provided by modern forms of technology was simply unavailable to the Israelites. Life was, in many ways, slower, following the cadence of crop cycles, festivals, sabbaths, and sacrifices. Yet, even in that setting, Israel is warned to remain focused on the Lord by keeping his commands and rejecting foreign gods. They were still in danger of forgetting the Lord.
In today’s world, most of us don’t think much about agricultural cycles. We go to the grocery and find whatever we need regardless of season. Refrigeration technology, chemical processes for preserving and enhancing food, and a variety of other technologies make us less cognizant of agricultural cycles. Similarly, for many Christians, our time is no longer arranged according to a liturgical calendar. Our ability to travel combined with the expansions of opportunity for sports, retail, and entertainment have de-centered the church’s cadence.
While digital technologies like smart phones and the internet are crucial, we need to recognize the ways other technological innovations have distanced us from faith communities, reordering space and time so that the world’s sacred-social order becomes more plausible and seems more normative. The Christian sacred-social order has been eroded not simply because of misinformation online but because of the misformations that we have not chosen to overcome in our everyday lives.
This is the structural shape of amplification. Amplification involves the intensification of human capacities and tendencies, both good and bad. The pressures Moses describes haven’t changed. We still seek to live life on our own terms, mistakenly presuming we are more self-sufficient than we actually are. Technology does not add new substance to these pressures so much as it accelerates them. It amplifies our tendencies so that we need to be more intentional about resisting the world’s sacred-social order and embracing the ways of the kingdom.
For Further Study
Discussion Questions
- 01
The piece describes self-sufficiency as “a particular way of forgetting” — one that doesn’t deny the Lord outright but treats him as irrelevant or absent. Where do you see this pattern in your own life or congregation, in places where the Lord is still acknowledged but no longer perceived as the actual source of what you have?
- 02
Moses warned Israel before they entered the land because the warning is most useful before the conditions it describes have done their work. What conditions in your present life or congregation might be doing formational work you have not yet noticed, and what would it take to notice them before they have done their full work?
- 03
The piece describes amplification as the intensification of human capacities and tendencies, both good and bad. Identify a capacity in your own life that has been amplified by a technology you use regularly. What good has the amplification produced? What tendency has it intensified that you would not have chosen to intensify deliberately?
- 04
The contemporary corrective the piece names involves the deliberate maintenance of practices that operate at a pace slower than the pace at which the surrounding world is forming you. What practices in your life currently operate at that slower pace, and what practices have been pushed aside or sped up to the point that they no longer do the work they were meant to do?