It Was There All Along

I feel bad for Skype. Do you all remember Skype? You really ought to remember them, especially if you have a Windows computer. Microsoft bought out Skype in 2011, and it started coming standard on most of their computers. I never downloaded Skype on the device I’m writing this blog on, but I have it. You might not know that you have Skype, but you probably do. If we’re being honest, some of us might not even know what Skype is. Skype is a digital video-conferencing interface. It allows you to chat with people online using your device’s camera and microphone so you can see and hear the people you are meeting with. It also has text messaging chat functions. This was so popular for a while that “Skype” became its own verb describing the act of digital video-conferencing. If you wanted to chat with someone like this, you would “skype” them. Then in 2019, for no discernable reason that I can find, everybody decided to abandon Skype in favor of its competitor: Zoom.

There are a few things that Zoom can do better than Skype, but most of these functions are not particularly useful for personal use. One major result of this switch was that a bunch of older people who already felt uncomfortable on computers were forced to download and install a new app, while Skype was sitting there eager for some action in their list of existing programs. Sure, Zoom may have an advantage with massive meetings, but for chatting with the grandparents during lockdown, Skype would have been perfectly sufficient. So, why did people exchange the thing they already had for something new that essentially served the same purpose? I don’t know.

If you ask experts, they may say that Zoom is easier to use, contains less spam problems, and doesn’t have as many bugs. It might be a slightly cleaner program, but I didn’t hear anybody say that they were switching from Skype to Zoom because they had tried both and preferred Zoom. People just forgot about Skype. It was there all along, but something new and different was more interesting, and everyone migrated that direction without even knowing why for the most part.

Of course, in reality novelty preference is an observed psychological phenomenon in both children and adults. While sometimes we prefer the safety of the familiar, there are occasions in which we prefer the adventure and experience of something new. Depending on our goals or interests at the time, we may choose something different simply for the sake of having something different to experience, and this seems to be something that resulted in people treating God even worse than we’ve treated Skype.

In Deuteronomy 30, God encourages the Israelites with the accessibility of the Law. It isn’t in heaven or beyond the sea. They don’t need to ascend into the sky. They don’t need to make a pilgrimage beyond their means. They don’t need to dedicate so many hours to disciplined meditation that they are unable to carry out daily work. They don’t need to climb a freezing mountain to speak with the ancient seer living at the peak. The Law is there with them. God’s instructions rest on them and impact their daily lives. They don’t need to do any additional searching. It comes prepackaged with their national identity.

Unfortunately, just like our collective amnesia with regard to Skype, the Law being prepackaged and ready to use wasn’t enough for the ancient Israelites. When things were calm, they didn’t pay much attention to whom they should worship, but when things got bad they went searching. The slightest problem prompted letting go of the old and embracing whatever else they could find. Their novelty preference moved from being a slight favoring of the new to an insatiable obsession. They just needed to get away from the Law that was already there with them. If they followed that and still experienced trouble, then it must have been insufficiently potent to protect. Of course, Skype being on our computers didn’t actually have anything to do with the COVID pandemic, nor did our selection of Zoom impact global health outcomes. The Israelites would have faced troubles and hard times whether they followed the Law perfectly or not. Difficult situations happen to all of us. If you don’t believe me, just look at Job’s story.

The Law doesn’t prevent all suffering, nor does it cause suffering. Following the Law isn’t effective as an antidote to all the problems we may experience in the world. The Law is our way of ordering our lives around God. That doesn’t mean we won’t experience hardship, but it does give us stability to face that suffering. We aren’t living life without challenges, but we are living life with strong assurances that those challenges aren’t the full story. We don’t have to ultimately throw our hands in the air and bemoan the futility of everything, asking the universe why anything ever mattered. We can face the evils of this world and come out seeing that despite it all, God is in control, and goodness and hope worth shining a light upon exist in the midst of all the difficulties.

This sounds like a very good thing. So why did the ancient Israelites abandon God’s rules even when they were perfectly reachable? Why do we so often do the same today? Again, the unfortunate reality is that we crave novelty. A life consisting of eating bread and salted meat every day while attending to the exact same work sounds insufferable to most people. We want adventure and exploration, even if that means venturing off the safe, well-trodden path. This is especially true when the going gets tough and we are afraid that the former things no longer do the job properly. We are afraid that it is broken and needs fixing, even if we don’t know when, where, or how it broke, so we seek something new.

Of course, following God’s rules can seem boring to us. I suspect many very devout Christians have experienced a call to adventure that would disrupt their normal dedication from time to time, even if that adventure is simply the thrill of observing the strange angles of the sunlight that decorate our homes on Sunday mornings while everyone else is at church. Whatever the case may be, recognizing our natural novelty preference may help us to rededicate ourselves to following God’s Law. It doesn’t have to be boring, but it is safe. God gives us an accessible instruction manual in which to take refuge from the uncertainties of life, reassuring us that no matter what happens, we can still follow God. We don’t need to search for something new and different. God’s Word is enough, and God’s Word is already here.