The Religion of Progress
Examining the faith we never knew we had
We live in the first civilization in human history that believes the future will inevitably be better than the past. This belief is so pervasive we don’t even recognize it as a belief. It’s simply the air we breathe.
The Myth of Progress
Progress seems self-evident. We have antibiotics, the internet, and rockets to space. Our ancestors had plague, ignorance, and horse-drawn carts. Case closed.
But the doctrine of progress makes a much larger claim than “technology improves.” It assumes that:
- History has a direction (upward)
- Newer is generally better
- The future will solve today’s problems
- Human nature itself is improving
These are faith claims, not empirical observations. And increasingly, they’re looking shaky.
Where Progress Came From
The idea of progress is a Christian heresy. It takes the biblical narrative of creation-fall-redemption-consummation and removes God from the story. History still has a direction and a destination, but we’re the ones driving.
It replaces divine providence with human innovation. It replaces heaven with utopia. It replaces salvation with technology. It replaces transformation by grace with transformation by education and social engineering.
The Evidence Against
But is human nature actually improving?
The 20th century—the most “progressive” in history—was also the bloodiest. We gained the internet but lost attention spans. We gained medical advances but created opioid epidemics. We gained unprecedented wealth but face unprecedented anxiety, depression, and suicide.
Every technological solution creates new problems. Every increase in power is an increase in the capacity for destruction. Progress in one dimension often means regress in another.
The Biblical Alternative
Scripture offers a different vision of history. It acknowledges that God is working toward an end—but that end is His doing, not ours. It teaches that human nature is constant: capable of great good and great evil in every age.
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
This isn’t pessimism—it’s realism that makes room for hope. Our hope isn’t in the arc of history or the march of technology. Our hope is in the One who holds history and will one day make all things new.
Until then, we receive new technologies with gratitude and caution, knowing they are tools that can be used for good or ill—never saviors that can fix what is broken in the human heart.