Week 6: Being Human in the Digital Age

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Go ahead and get started. We'll let stragglers come in as they get here. So welcome back to Being human in the digital age. Jack and I are having a lot of fun teaching this course together and I hope you all are having fun as well and learning and growing. I was not able to be here last week, but I did listen to Jack's talk afterwards and it was great. And I really especially love the fact that he has now successfully reintroduced the word welter into our vocabulary. We're going to come back to that later. So last week Jack gave you a pretty straightforward but I think demanding homework assignment. And I just want to get some feedback. The homework assignment was to set aside a room in your house as digital free space. A space that kind of keeps the digital at bay and encourages you to be fully present where you are. I want to know, did you do this? If so, what did you notice? How did it change the way you inhabited your home or how you thought about life this week? Any experiences? Jonathan. Bedroom. Bedroom. [00:01:18] Speaker B: And the impact was that Julie and I actually talked to each other. [00:01:24] Speaker A: Your bedroom was a digital, digital free space. And you and your wife spoke to one another as a result. That is success. John, You had to walk across three rooms to answer the telephone. So it was like the old days. What else? Who had some digital free space and what did it do? Or maybe this is something that you have done for a while and you have some reflections on the impact it's had on your life or the way you inhabit your home. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Mine was the porch. [00:02:01] Speaker A: The porch. Nice. And did you spend more time on the porch as a result? [00:02:09] Speaker B: You watched the leaves change, heard the birds making nests, and you saw neighbors. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Yes. So, okay, so I want to just kind of double tap on this. Tina. So Tina said she made her porch her digital free space. And then she went on to describe what she noticed while she was on her porch undistracted by the digital world. And she noticed the world around her. She heard things, she saw things, and she interacted with her neighbors. One of the advantages of not having our digital assistants with us all the time is that we are actually able to focus on what's around us. We're able to be present in just a more genuine way. Any other experiences from the week of digital free spaces? Linda? [00:03:02] Speaker B: We agreed there was only one room in the house that we could think of to even do this in. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Uh huh. The downstairs bathroom. I don't think we can do that. [00:03:14] Speaker C: Okay. [00:03:16] Speaker B: And it's a place where we read and things. So it's not a place where we, I mean, we talk, but it's not a place where we talk a lot or even want to talk a lot. But what I discovered was that I did have to get up from time to time and do something with the technology. And so I was just surprised at just how connected I am. [00:03:43] Speaker A: That was kind of discouraging, but it's a super helpful observation. Having set aside space, a room where Bill and Linda typically read or do other things, what you experienced was you had to get up and go to your phone or your computer or your iPad, and which was this physical reminder of how connected you are. It kind of showed just how dependent we are on digital technologies. So that's helpful. It helps us wake up. So when we kicked off this class a few weeks ago, I explained that the purpose of the class was to invite you into reality. And the assumption baked into that statement is that we don't always live in reality. Far too often, I think we inhabit a world of our own making, in which we stand ignorant of or apart from the God who created us and the world that we actually inhabit. And as I said, this class is an attempt to invite you back into reality, to consider who God is, who we are as his creatures, and what to make of the world according to his design. And to do this, we have been looking at two meaning making stories that vie for our attention and for our loyalty. So, as we said pretty much every week, a meaning making story is an account, knowingly or tacitly believed, that tells us what reality is, why it matters, and how we relate to it. It defines what is good and true and beautiful, and it shapes the way we live with God, each other, and the world. So the opening chapters of Genesis are the meaning making story that shapes our lives as followers of Jesus. The other is the implicit and diffuse story being told by the emerging digital age in which we live. So each week, what we're doing here is we're trying to lay out the true story of Genesis over against the competing story of our digital age in an effort to bring us all back into reality. And we've done this by beginning with the basics, the very basics of life on Earth. We've talked about the nature of time, which orders the progression of our lives in God's creation. We've talked about the nature of space, which organizes and shapes how we inhabit the world. And today we're going to talk about the third orienting feature of God's creation, which is matter, the inescapably material aspect of which we are a part. Why are we talking about such fundamental but surprisingly hard to grasp concepts? Because at the heart of the meaning making story of the digital age is this ambition to transcend. To transcend the good limits of the world that God has made in the name of human independence and in search of human fulfillment. Now, that ambition, the ambition to transcend it, is woefully misguided and it is ultimately destructive. But it has been at the heart of human rebellion since Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden and the people of Babel built their tower. The digital age is in continuity with every age, but it simply presents us with new ways to pursue this age old ambition. And that's why it begs a closer look so that we can be faithful in following Christ in our digital age as we discover what reality is. All right, so with all of that in mind, there's our review, our recap. With all of that in mind, we're going to turn to today's topic, which is matter. And I can summarize everything I'm going to say in the memorable words of our own Jack Carson uttered earlier this week matters. I mean, the guy is so smart. This is my favorite part of preparing each week is to try to find some random thing Jack has said, as he does for me. So the material structure of creation is essential to who we are as embodied creatures. So one of the most iconic phrases from the original Star Trek television series is beam me up, Scotty, is Captain Kirk up there? Now? I realized I saw this image and I thought, that is the original smolder. It's a great, great photograph of good old Captain Kirk. So to beam someone up in Star Trek was to cause them to dematerialize in a vertical shaft of light and then rematerialize aboard the USS Enterprise, safe and sound. The phrase uttered with sort of unflappable confidence by Captain Kirk made it seem like the ability to de and rematerialize was going to just be normal, everyday fare in the future. I remember as a child imagining what it would be like to be able to get beamed anywhere in the universe at any time. And it was exciting. Fast forward though, from the 1970s to the 2000s, and we haven't figured out the technology that Captain Kirk found so pedestrian. We are nonetheless, we are nonetheless still avidly pursuing this dream of material transcendence. And so whether it's through noise canceling headphones and livestream video, or through virtual reality goggles, or through far more radical experiments and digitized transhumanist existence, this ambition to leave behind the fear, fixed limits of our materiality. It's enduring and it seems to be drawing ever more closely within our reach in this digital age. So why is this a problem? Does matter really matter? And if so, why does it matter? That's a lot of matter. So in order to address these questions, we're going to return to Genesis 1 and I want to make three affirmations about our material existence. So the first affirmation is that God creates out of nothing. God creates out of nothing. And this is often captured by that Latin phrase that most of us are familiar with, creatio ex nihilo. So Genesis begins in the following way. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So just notice those first four words. We've been here a lot over the last few weeks. In the beginning, God stop there and you realize that before God creates, there is nothing but God. He is all that is in the other meaning making stories of the ancient world that we reviewed some of these week one. In those other meaning making stories, the gods actually formed the earth. And out of pre existing matter they themselves don't fashion the building blocks, they find them and no explanation is given of their origins. In our meaning making story, however, God speaks everything into existence, even the basic material out of which he then fashions the world. So there's a theologian, a guy named Brian Brock makes this fascinating point, fascinating to me. This is a total Bible nerd aside. So he makes a fascinating point that the first letter of the Bible, the first letter of Genesis, is not the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, which one would expect given the nature and style of Hebrew writing. It's not the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, it's actually the second letter. The Bible begins with Beit, not alef. And I actually think there's something to this. And his point is that there is a pre story to the story of creation. And that pre story is God's own being. God is the Alef who exists before anything else. The initial material that God creates is first described as formless and void, which translates the Hebrew phrase tohu wabohu. And it's worth saying that out loud not just because you sound smart and it's cool, but it actually it helps you hear the poetic nature of that first chapter of the Bible. Last week Jack introduced an alternative translation by a modern translator of welter and waste and that too, captures this poetic feeling so well. So the first thing that God creates is matter without form, matter without form. And so heaven and earth in this context refers to the totality of all of material reality, rather than to any distinction between things. Because God has not yet separated the heavens from the earth. That comes later. So an alternative phrase might go like this. In the beginning, God made all the stuff. I'm not as smart as Jack. In the six days that follow, God speaks and the matter that he has created takes shape and it's given purpose. So why does it matter? Why does it matter that God creates out of nothing? Well, it matters because it means that there's nothing in. In all of the universe that exists. Nothing in the universe exists apart from the will of God or outside of the sovereign care of God. When we say God creates out of nothing, that's what we're affirming. Nothing exists apart from his will or outside of his care. It also means that every piece of matter matters because it's all made by God. There's no electron or quark, no black hole or galaxy that does not matter to God. And we draw this from this first affirmation that God creates out of nothing. Okay, that's the first one. The second affirmation is that creation is irreducibly material. How is that for a mouthful? Creation is irreducibly material. In other words, all the created things within the visible universe are made up of matter of some kind. Or to put it more simply, you can't have things without stuff. You can't have things without stuff. Creation is irreducibly material. Throughout history, however, it has been commonplace to think of humans in particular, as essentially spiritual beings who are temporarily constrained by physical bodies. The idea that flows from this is that true or ultimate existence is purely spiritual existence without physical embodiment or limitation of any kind. And that's what leads some people to think of heaven, which is our eternal home, as a purely spiritual realm where we will be bodyless, weightless, and unconstrained by physical reality of any kind. Scripture, however, shows us that we are material beings. We are not souls temporarily encased in bodies waiting to be set free. We are embodied souls. Our material existence, it's good. And the limits that we experience as material beings are actually given to us for our good. So think for a moment about the sequence of the days of creation and how much time God spends working with matter. So vegetable life doesn't appear until the third day. Animal life appears on the fifth day. Days 1, 2, and 4, half of creation is concerned solely with material things, with matter. So God loves making things and he loves building things. So he spent a good part of day four simply carving the coastlines and covering beaches with sand. Those of you who are beach people love the fourth day of creation. And on every day, when he was done with his work, God said that it was good. So creation is irreducibly material. That's our second affirmation. Our third affirmation is that creation is not merely material. So creation isn't just a what, a something. Creation also has a why and a how. God creates. That's the how of creation. And he does so with purpose. That's the why of creation. So matter is infused with meaning because God makes it so. There's this phrase that gets repeated on. On the third, fifth, and sixth days of creation. It's the phrase according to their kind. And these are the days when God makes living things from plants to human beings. And the phrase, it speaks to the purpose and to the function of different types of animals and organic material. Plants and animals are not blank slates. They have purpose, and it's given to them by God. So when it comes to human beings, we are not merely bodies. In Genesis 2:7, to skip to the next chapter, when God creates Adam, he forms him from dust of the ground matter, and then he infuses him with his very own breath or spirit. So we are material beings and we are spiritual beings, owing our existence to God's material craftsmanship and God's the gift of God's very own breath. So that's what it means to have a soul, to have the breath of God in a body. All right. So we begin with three affirmations. God creates out of nothing. Creation is irreducibly material. Creation is not merely material. And all of this is highly conceptual. I'm really. I'm. I. No one is asleep, which is really. I'm really pleased with. I was afraid. So let's put some flesh on the bones of this conceptual material for a minute. So when God creates the world, he sets human beings down in a garden where we are made to enjoy unbroken fellowship with Him. Somehow, the immaterial Creator communed with material creatures. And in doing so, he said that this is very good. But then came the fall. Our forebears rebelled against God. They were expelled from the garden. Death descends like a cloud, and all of creation is forever altered by sin. Immediately, though, God sets out a plan for our rescue. And that plan, it comes to a climax in Jesus Christ. And this is incredible. Instead of pulling us out of our material existence by releasing us into a purely spiritual world, God Himself takes on material existence by becoming a human being. Instead of abandoning material creation or destroying material creation, he redeems it. He doubles down on the very good thing that he's done here. Jesus became a man, and he suffered death on the cross for our sins. He then rose from the dead with a body that his disciples could touch. As a man who ate and drank and walked along the seashore. You wonder about those scenes after the resurrection. Seems like Jesus is eating all the time, like Brad Pitt. And all of the movies he ever does is always eating. It's there in the Gospels to show us he actually, really has a body here. He actually has a body here. But that body could also pass through walls and appear or disappear at will. So it's a little different, but it's still a body. After being among his disciples and appearing to 500 of them, he rose up into the sky at the ascension and. And out of sight. But before he did so, he promised that he would return as a man, as himself, in the way he had left in order to rule over us forever in a renewed creation. So at the end, we get all the way to the end of the Bible, the end of Revelation, and we have. We're given a picture of this renewed creation as the marriage of God's eternal habitation, heaven, and his material creation, earth. So God's plan to rescue us, it does not involve the absolute destruction of creation, but it's redemption. Somehow, some way, God will redeem and he will transform space and time and matter so that we will live with him forever in resurrected bodies. So how do we really know that matter matters? We know this because Jesus became a man. That's the core of it. So even though we're guided by these affirmations that emerge from Genesis 1 and that are confirmed in the story of redemption through Jesus, we human beings have been inclined to make one of two very different errors when it comes to how we think about material reality. And the first of these errors, we might call materialism. And the second, we might call dualism. Materialism says that matter is all that matters. There's no spiritual reality. There is only this bodily life and what we make of it. And in a world like this, everything around us is raw material to be harvested and manipulated for our good. So materialism, it recognizes the order of the universe, but not the purposes of creation. Materialism gasps at the complexity of the world and appreciates it, but it Chokes on the question of the meaning of life. So materialism gives way to what we might call hedonism or nihilism, at the heart of which is self gratification here and now. Dualism, by contrast, says that matter. It doesn't really matter. The only thing that's truly real is the spiritual realm, however you might choose to define that. And our goal in life should therefore be to escape material existence with all of its limitations and distractions, so that we can enjoy true existence without the constraints of having bodies. Dualism like this, it crops up in the ancient Christian heresy of Gnosticism, in which salvation is defined basically as leaving our bodies behind in order to become formless, angelic beings existing in some kind of union with God. But you also see dualism like this present in a religion like Buddhism, where physical existence is systematically denied and transcended through meditation. So the heart of dualism is escapism, not redemption. Can you see how both of these errors damage the sense of reality established in Genesis? Either by treating the material world as all that there is, or by treating the material world as a prison from which we're meant to escape. We know that we are spiritual creatures with physical bodies, and this spiritual, physical reality can't be undone. [00:24:45] Speaker C: All right? [00:24:45] Speaker A: All of this conceptual work, it sets us up to step back and to consider our digital age. So is the meaning making story of the digital age a materialist story, or is it a dualistic story? Does it embrace matter, or does it deny matter? You can see this coming because strangely, it actually does both. It embraces matter for the purpose of transcending it. So go back with me just for a moment to week one where we discussed scientific materialism. So I said that week that over the past 150 years, the most popular meaning making story in the western world has been the story of scientific materialism. And that story goes something like this. In the beginning, there was something very tiny, and then it exploded. Out of this explosion, the universe was born. And over the next 13 to 14 billion years, stars formed, planets took shape, and life emerged on earth. We can't see beyond that explosive beginning to know if there is anything prior. There may be a God, but probably not. And regardless, we can't be certain either way. There is no discernible purpose to life. The world is our playground. Life is what we make of it. And when we die, as far as we know, that's it. Now, those who believe the basics of this story might believe in a God of some kind. They may even believe that we Go somewhere after we die. But the dominant narrative stands that life is what you make of it. So that's the story that we have inhabited over the last 150 years. The problem is that living in this story is not very pleasant. When life is what you make of it, and the world is filled with seven plus billion individual human lives and limited raw materials, then every life is. Is in competition and living together becomes a war. But what if we could all escape? What if we could somehow transcend our material reality, Somehow sharing this physical world, but while actually really inhabiting another? I think that's what's happening in part. The digital age emerges from a materialist worldview, and it seeks to transcend it by creating its own immaterial reality. Digital creatures are materialists and dualists at the same time. And the guiding conviction of the digital age is that we can have it all here and now, but only if we leave it all behind. We can have it all here and now, but only if we leave it all behind. All right, that leads us to make three moves. I'm going to wrap up here and then bring Jack up. Three moves form part of the narrative of the meaning making story of the digital age. And we exploit matter, we avoid matter, and we ultimately seek to escape matter. So first, we exploit matter. In a world without a creator, matter is simply raw material waiting to be given purpose. As masters, apparent masters of this world, it's we human beings who are best positioned to give purpose to the raw material around us. But do you see how in this way, we replace the God of Genesis 1 who created matter and gave it purpose by intentionally forming creation and imbuing it with meaning. In a world like this, [00:28:35] Speaker C: where we [00:28:36] Speaker A: exploit matter, our primary function is to consume rather than to create, to consume rather than to steward. So. Excuse me. A few years ago, I noticed an interesting trend in the way that we talk about ourselves. You almost never hear someone refer to people as citizens. Instead, we talk about ourselves as consumers. So whenever I read or watch or listen to the news, I hear the phrase the American consumer. I never hear a phrase like the average American citizen. And that's because our primary purpose, it would seem, is to consume. That's part of the exploitation of matter. [00:29:25] Speaker B: But. [00:29:25] Speaker A: But matter is limited. We can only fly so fast. We can only live so long. And so we begin to look for ways to avoid the limits of our material existence so that we might inhabit a world without limits. And so we begin to avoid matter. One of the words for our times is the word frictionless. Frictionless it describes both a longing and a promise. We long to relieve our lives of friction. Friction. So friction is what happens when an object moves on or through another object, whether it's a planet moving through space, a car on the road, or a child on a park slide. Friction. It's this natural and necessary part of material creation. But speaking more broadly, friction is what we experience in relationships. Our relationships are full of friction, conflict, difference. Friction is what you feel when you're forced to wait in line or to sit in traffic. Friction is just having limited energy or physical exhaustion. Friction is what we experience as material beings. And as fallen material beings, we experience a discomforting, sometimes dehumanizing amount of friction. But our digital age promises us a frictionless existence by allowing us to escape the confines of matter. So you've probably seen the recent television ad for an AI product. I think it's Meta's AI product, in which a beautiful woman floats effortlessly on an inflatable lounge in a pool. And she's sipping a cocktail and she's reading a book, and as she floats, she's carrying on an intermittent conversation with her AI enabled phone that's resting poolside. And she tells it to order groceries to arrive when she gets back from her vacation. She asks it to arrange an appointment for her the next week, et cetera, et cetera. And the picture we're given is of a life with much of the friction just taken out of it. The mere image of floating on top of a pool implies the ease and comfort of a frictionless life. But notice, this woman's totally alone. So this is what we long for. This is what the digital age promises. By moving more and more of our lives online, we seek to escape the friction of material reality. While matter forces us to reckon with our limitations, our purpose, our constraints, the immaterial existence offered by our digital aids lures us into a supposedly limitless and frictionless future. We exploit matter, we avoid matter. We ultimately attempt to escape it altogether. All right, I want to give you one last concrete example of what these three moves look like by considering what our digital age is doing to sex. So, between 1991 and 2025, the number of teenagers who are sexually active dropped from 54% to 32%. Now, as a pastor, this makes me very happy. Makes me very happy. Sex outside of the covenant of marriage is counter to what God desires for us. And during one's formative teenage years, it can be especially damaging. There is, however, more to this story, and I don't think it's good News. While many factors have likely contributed to this decrease in sexual activity, I'm convinced that it's largely a result of the digital revolution that we've been living through. So as we moved online in the late 90s and early 2000s, pornography became accessible to anyone and to everyone. Our materialist instincts, which tell us that bodies are basically raw material for seeking pleasure, helped us to justify the creation, selling, and consuming of absurd amounts of pornography. Because real life intimate relationships are full of mental, emotional and physical friction, they're hard. Many people, especially young men, began to opt out of in person sexual relationships and to opt into virtual relationship sexual relationships. So this happens simply through viewing pornography, or through more complex pseudo relationships in which you could pay someone to have a no contact, but nonetheless entirely sexual relationship with you online. I've seen what this does to marriages and I've seen what this does to individuals, and it's tragic. Now, although this kind of behavior is far more prevalent among men, there are parallels among women as they turn to AI Chatbot boyfriends who have surprisingly more emotional intelligence than the real thing. Once again, the promise of immaterial, frictionless intimacy proves incredibly strong. So do you see the sequence I described? We exploit bodies, then we avoid bodies because of the friction of real relationships, and we ultimately attempt to escape the costliness of intimacy with another body by inhabiting a digital make believe. All right, that's a sobering and kind of uncomfortable example, but it makes a broader point. We live in a digital age, enticing us toward an increasingly immaterial existence. An age attempting to convince us that all of the most important features of human existence can be conveyed and experienced through ones and zeros, mediated through a screen. So part of what it will mean for us to inhabit the digital age faithfully is for us to consider those opening affirmations about creation and the lives that God has given us. That God created out of nothing, and therefore all things find meaning, purpose and value in him, including human sexuality, that that creation is irreducibly material. Try as we might, we can't escape the limits of bodily existence. Nor should we want to, because material is good, matter is good, and finally, that creation isn't merely material. We're a physical and spiritual beings inhabiting a world in which God came to dwell with us as one of us who through his life and death and resurrection, promised the redemption of our bodies in a renewed and perfect, perfected material world. I've not left as much time as I hoped to, but I want to bring Jack up one for two Reasons one to see if, if you want to offer anything else. As I was preparing this, I was like, Jack, this is like so conceptual and I can't think of any more practical tie ins or illustrations. If you've got one, share one because it'll help. That's the first reason. Then once Jack has shared, we'll open it up to questions. [00:36:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I was thinking about this concept of frictionlessness in a video I saw from Arthur Brooks, who's the author of From Strength to Strength. And he was talking about, particularly for teenagers today, the danger of. He did social media, Instagram, particularly for young women, and then video games for young men. And really this video games concept caught my eye because I was a resident assistant and in college and I had 74 guys on my hall and I got to watch all of them spend a significant amount, or most of them spend a significant amount of their free time on this game called Minecraft, which is fascinating because it's basically just a game that recreates matter in a digital way and then allows you to manipulate that matter. But one of the things Arthur talked about is how doing this removes risk. It makes it much easier to access and it makes the bar of dopamine hit for your mind just that much lower. So you step into this video game and you can experience success and advancement in a much quicker and easier way, which then robs you of sort of resiliency when the real world has friction and pushes back. And so resiliency, where matter presses back on us, the digital doesn't. And you can see this then in things like deep fakes. There's now this massive move towards deepfakes in the world around us because we want to remake the material world in our own image and take advantage of it. So those would be sort of two ways. I see people trying to sidestep material and how material pushes back on us and avoid that friction. [00:38:26] Speaker A: Questions? Comments Dave ultimate comment on digitalization. [00:38:36] Speaker B: I've heard talks at certain meetings. I've gone to digitalism. I'm probably mostly billionaires who are trying to advance everything. There's a movement. Download your soul. Yeah, this was a woman presenting to talk about it. She said, I always get this question from men. I never get it from women. Men ask me, will I still be able to experience sex. So that's the ultimate digitalization. [00:39:21] Speaker C: Yep. [00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So transhumanism is. It's limited to the elite at this point, but the promise is of download your brain, your mind, your soul to a hard drive and experience some kind of enduring Digital reality, where I'm gonna go, Dewey and then Nancy, [00:39:47] Speaker B: I have a question around creation and the fall. Recently, Romans 8, I realized that it says also creation is constrained by the fall, which I never. That's all of the universe. Do you agree with that? If you do, that means that Jesus coming and being resurrected was a physics event for the entirety of Luther. And so I look at it as coherence, the until the Fall, everything decohered. And now recoherence is possible over time. But it's for the whole universe, which, if you look at matter matters and these other things, it's a whole new perspective. So I want to say thank you for that, but I want to know if you agree that all of the universe is constrained, unfold. [00:40:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I think Paul would say all of the universe is groaning under the weight of sin. I think when Jesus died and rose again, we have this term inaugurated eschatology, where he begins the first fruits, the firstborn of then a new creation where matter matters will be retooled. So there's not thorns, there's not thistles. Our labor isn't hard, and the material world isn't breaking around us in the same way it is now because of sin. [00:40:59] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, I love that. I totally agree with you. I hope you could hear what he said. I won't try to repeat it. But the resurrection of Jesus and his eventual return, it's not just so individual human beings can be saved. It's so that the entire universe can be redeemed and renewed. And that's the story we're part of. It's a story where we are an important part of the center made in God's image, but it's so much bigger than we can imagine. So I'm like, I'm really excited to find out what a black hole is in the new heavens and the new earth. It's not real. That's a classic Dewey Weaver response. All right, I'm going to pray for us because it's ten tail and I've got to go to church. Let's pray. Lord God, we pray that we would live in reality, that we would ask hard questions of ourselves in the world we live in, that we would joyfully receive the good news of the gospel and experience the wonder of salvation in these frail and fallen bodies you've given us, that we might live in hope of eternal perfection with you in a renewed world and universe. Amen.