Maybe you have heard of something called a “technology tree,” or “tech tree” for short. It is a concept that is popular among some types of video games. The idea is that for any given technology we have there is at least one other technology that society had to have before it could be achieved. I find this very interesting and even fun to try this out. You can pick anything you want really and then see how many things you can think of that had to be in place as a prerequisite. For example, suppose you picked a toaster. That comes across as a fairly simple bit of technology that we have been using for quite a while now. But just pause for a little while and try to think of all the things we had to have developed in order to invent it. We had to have discovered electricity, and we had to have invented electric circuits. In particular we had to know about resistors and how they can get very hot when a current flows through them. We also would need to know about metallurgy to some extent, and how to make the shell of the toaster out of metals and other materials. We would need to have knowledge of manufacturing. And what is a toaster without something to toast? We would never have invented it without having bread. That opens up a lot of other nodes on the tech tree, with all of the things going into how we make and distribute bread to our homes.
It is an interesting exercise, and you can do it for just about anything we use today or have invented in the past. But here is another question: what if you did this for everything we have invented? Just how far back would this go? What would be the first things that everything else came from, technology-wise?
People have pondered this. Darwin thought of this too, and his answer to this makes a lot of sense. He said that every invention that humans have ever come up with can be traced back to one of two things: language (or an alphabet), and fire.
I’d like to focus on fire for this lesson. The bible has a lot to say about it. But before we get there, what list can you come up with for what fire means for us? Once we are able to master fire, what does that give us? Here are some of those things:
Warmth
Cooking
Protection
Light
Social interaction
That last one I think is very important. How many times have you sat around a campfire alone? I would wager not very many. Fire (at least in that way) brings people together. And when people come together, ideas are shared, stories are swapped, and life has more meaning.
Fire, for good or for ill, transforms things. It can make something pure. If you found a piece of old gold jewelry and you wanted to know how much of it was actually gold, what would you do? A small sample is taken and then melted in the fire. The gold separates out from the other alloys and we can see what percentage of the whole is made out of the good stuff. This process is called refinement, and the bible speaks of it often.
Zechariah 13:7-9
The Shepherd Struck, the Sheep Scattered
7 “Awake, sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is close to me!”
declares the Lord Almighty.
“Strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered,
and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
8 In the whole land,” declares the Lord,
“two-thirds will be struck down and perish;
yet one-third will be left in it.
9 This third I will put into the fire;
I will refine them like silver
and test them like gold.
They will call on my name
and I will answer them;
I will say, ‘They are my people,’
and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’”
The symbolism of God purifying us is hard to miss. Maybe that is why God is revealed to us a lot as some type of fire in the scriptures. Moses’ encounter with the burning bush is a big example. Notice that the bible goes out of its way to tell us that the bush was not being consumed. Why is that? Why should it matter that the bush wasn’t burning up? Aside from that being yet another miracle I think it has to do with the symbolism of fire as purification. God’s fire transforms us and makes us pure. The bush was already “pure,” and therefore the fire didn’t affect it. The same thing is true of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were thrown into a fire as punishment for not worshipping the Babylonian King’s idol. What did the fire do to them? Nothing. They were already pure.
Let’s revisit the small list of things that fire provides. Doesn’t God do all of those things? God provides warmth and light. God provides food and protection. And Christianity itself is built on the foundation of social interaction. This is God’s fire in action through the church. Is it no wonder that John the Baptist proclaimed a baptism by fire?
May the fire of God burn brightly in all of us.
God Bless