Factory Life, pt. 2: On Being Ungrateful

It was pouring rain as I walked out the door, tip-toed across a flooding parking lot, climbed into my car, and began the long journey home from work today. I don't usually like the rain, especially driving in it, but today it felt appropriate somehow, like a well-needed cleansing. I mused over the day, exhausted, remembering with fondness the various illegal activities I'd been required to engage in. Well, only one actually. I was asked by my supervisor to pull small stickers off of boxes containing filters, stickers that said "made in Canada", and replace them with stickers that said "Made in the USA". Yes, it was illegal. Yes, I'm sorry to say I realized it halfway through my job. No, I didn't stop. *sigh* My thoughts wandered to the post I wrote yesterday.

As I thought through it, I found myself somewhat mortified at what I'd written. My only consolation was the "good lord, the arrogance" comment, about myself, somewhere towards the end. What I failed to mention yesterday, something that went through my head and never made it to the page, and something that should have been first, was something about the very people I kind of humiliated when I wrote.

While they are exactly as I so brutally describe them, they are also kind people. They accepted me unconditionally, as one of them, without question or reproach (though they did ask me what a guy with a university education was doing "in a place like this"). C, a guy who on the one hand has a daughter, no wife, and two girlfriends, was the first to welcome me, and the first to offer conversation (despite the continued invitations to discuss the various kinds of pornography he and D, ah, enjoy), his gentle running monologue enough to keep me awake on my first day there. S, a cultural Mormon (I didn't know they existed till I met her) and a girl who married her husband after three weeks in Vegas and who seemed to want nothing but to make her life easy by winning the lottery, asks me every day how my lunch break was, and was the person who asked me all about being a missionary on the first day I was there, an opportunity which hasn't really resurfaced since then. Not to mention she's read both the Bible and the book of Mormon all the way through. I can't claim that.

The pinnacle of this is what happened today. As I was pulling "made in Canada" stickers off of the boxes and replacing them with their USA counterparts, I began to talk with my partner in crime, Gene. Gene is an older gentleman, someone who has worked in factories most of his life. He says that Graver is a good place to work, mostly because it's very lenient on the rules (a bad in my book, since we had to use xylene with our bare hands, but no matter) and with policies for the employees. Usually he's a painter, spray-painting the massive filter housings that the welding department gives him. So here we are, pulling off stickers;

"Shit," he said.

"What?" I asked. His reply was to pull, with some exaduration, a sticker off of the box in his other hand.

"So you're a musician, huh," he asked, then paused. "You in a band or something?"

"Yes, well, sort of. I'm a worship leader at my church."

"A what?"

"A worship leader. I play guitar."

"Oh. Shit. Oh my, sorry. I shouldn't cuss around a worship leader."

As our little conversation progressed, I found out that he sincerely wished his life - the decisions that he'd made - had been different. He wished he'd gone to college, majored in some computer science or something of that nature, so he could work on things more interesting than painting, to do something more worthwhile with his life. I felt terrible as I thought about this, thinking that I HAD gone to college and yet, here I was, making gross generalizations about the people of this little world of a factory, people who I thought didn't care about their educations.

All this to say that I found my comments yesterday to be somewhat one-sided and harsh, not offering the humanity of these people who have been forced into working at a factory. I don't particularly regret my comments regarding the factory itself, nor about the church - the only good thing about a factory is its ability to give lots of people jobs, but a church that looks like a factory hasn't fully realized its own potential. I'm just sad to have made myself a part of the church factory with some of my judgmental comments. So, to those people (who haven't actually read this) of Graver Technologies NY, I'm sorry.

Factory Life

Nobody was meant to wake up at 4:15 in the morning. End of story. Not for work. Not for vacations. Not for Babies. Not even for Christmas presents. Well, maybe for Christmas presents and maybe for Babies, and I suppose if the vacation were really good, then maybe for that too.

But not for work. Work is something you go to because you have to; at least, it has been (thus far) for me. And when you're not really a morning person, like me, it means that you go to work solely because your survival depends upon it. But how far are you willing to go to survive? Lately, in my case, it has meant giving up the two things I love most dearly next to my wife: my sleep, and my hands. Now, obviously sleep – going to bed at 8pm to get up at 4 is not my idea of acceptable – but why the hands?

My hands are, according to my grandmother, the two most valuable things I have. And today, while at work, her vague warning of "don't mess them up" was wandering through my head as I scraped and gouged them up on chicken wire, burned them on liquid urethane and on xylene alcohol, and glued them together with industrial strength super-glue. My hands are in serious pain right now, cut and bruised in a lot of places.

And I can't help but wonder why I'm there. I mean, I know it's because the temp agency offered me a job there, and silly me, thinking it to be a science lab (with a name like "Graver Technologies," what else could it be?) and told I'd be doing some "small assembly work" (direct quote from the temp agency), I accepted. But having been there for a week, I find nothing small about the work we do (we build industrial filters), and I find myself – daily – almost in tears as I wake up, begging God not to make me go again.

This is the problem with prayer – sometimes it gets answered, but not really the way you wanted, or weirder, you get what you asked for, but there's a catch you forgot to mention when you prayed. I prayed for work. And God gave it to me. I just forgot to mention that I'd rather use my four-year college degree with something I can do, not something that ruins my body.

Not that I find the work beneath me, it can be challenging occasionally. Though I do often find myself wondering why someone "of my talents" (good lord am I arrogant) isn't being used "somewhere more productively" or something like that. During the day, trapped in my plastic prison of protective eyewear, I find myself contemplating just walking out of the factory, away from the pain in my hands and from the junk that goes on around me. I find that the people there are often shallow, their conversation centered around employee gossip and make-believe sexual relationships with one another. Few are married, yet nearly all have children, and none of them see a problem with that. They seem content to go from day to day, looking forward to little else than a break from the tedium to drink and sleep. They don't aspire to anything. They don't feel like working harder than they do, which is, honestly, not that hard, at a leisurely pace.

And yet I've learned something here. I worry that this factory can be more than a tragic part of a fallen world, but a symbol of a problem. The church has become like this factory, its workers blinded by their own desires or lack of direction. The church's purpose has become little else than to intake materials and produce identical products as fast as possible, yet the workers slack off and put out their half-assed work to just get by. I find this disturbing. I'm sickened by it. I see myself often enough as a solution to this problem, yet nothing changes – I’ve become part of the system, and I'm disturbed by that too. Evangelicals, not to mention the rest of Christendom, have corrupted the gospel into a political agenda, into a means to their own profit, the church into a factory meant to produce endless copies of the same product – the self-centered half-hearted mindless drone of a filter that goes on to be used up by the world around it and dumped into heaven, exhausted. We've made the gospel about ourselves, not about everyone else.

I will be returning to the factory twice more, for two more days of work. Unfortunately, the other part of factory life is that they have no respect for the schedule I gave them when I was hired. Since I made other commitments for two weekends (some nearly six months old), ones I can't drop, they said they'd rather me just not come anymore. Which is fine, my hands are already happy about this.

I keep wondering if there's more to be learned there, if I'm giving up on something that was placed in my hands (busted up as they are) for a reason, or if I've already learned all I can, and if I've already been all I can be for them. Should I be sticking it out, for their sakes? There aren't really any other Christians there – have I made it all about my own comfort, all about myself? After all, the sacrifice Jesus made for me - for them - was far greater than just his hands. What are my hands compared to his?

The Evolution of the Pot

I shall begin at the beginning, or rather, at the end: it was the year 5023, and scientists were sorting through the grime of the past ages when they uncovered a unique find: a small piece of hard clay. After analysis it was concluded that the clay was a remnant of a larger creature that they deemed “pottus firmus.”

Around the world, paleontologists continued to discover fragments and sometimes complete skeletons of various devices that appeared to be related to the first fragment. Other full skeletons of newer creatures were discovered buried in various strata of rock, dirt, and sometimes, in fields of ice. Genus and Species were assigned. One bold paleontologist posited that not only were these pots related, they were links in a chain, one creature leading to the next.

Pottus Firmus, he said, was in fact the original, a creature formed from the dust of the earth itself. Firmus evolved, over time, into Pottus Bulbus, with its larger bottom and smaller top that better contained water. As evolution progressed, Bulbus’ outer shell became more ornamented, and, unable to mate with like creatures, became Pottus Decorum. Over time, it gave way to Pottus Amphorai, a larger and better adapted creature to the harsh Mediterranean environment where it was found.

It is here that his theory lost some credibility, because he could find no link between Amphorai and the next most recent skeleton in the ground, Pottus Tremendum, a smaller but fearsomely sturdier creature suited to the harsher environment of a warring world. Finally, Pottus Moderna was the final link in the chain, but after which the race went extinct after the large thermonuclear disaster of 2158.

Eventually it was discovered that they were not creatures at all, but kitchen pots. The study was abandoned, and the paleontologist gave up his study of population biology in favor of basket weaving.

I know I should leave well enough alone, but for those of you who know me, you know that I can’t resist talking about two things, both of them former thesis projects: postmodernism and the evolution/intelligent design debate.

First we must separate a problem: evolution isn’t a single unified theory, rather it is a conglomeration of a lot of different ideas, and like creationism, no two scientists hold the exact same view of it (though I will admit that lots more scientists come much closer to holding identical beliefs than religious proponents of Intelligent design). The most easily distinguished categories are micro- and macro-evolution. The two do not depend on one another to exist, or rather, macroevolution depends upon microevolution, but not vice-versa. Microevolution, then, can be an independent theory in and of itself (sui generis, you might say), the driving force to the more controversial theory of macroevolution.

No matter how hard scientists try, they can’t seem to get away with the one major problem with their theory of macroevolution: probability. It seems to keep throwing a wrench in the works, because while they can often show that evolution is technically possible, it’s never been shown that it’s any more probable than any other theory of origins (partly because evolution makes no claim to know how it all started, just that it did at some point). Simply because a bunch of things look the same doesn’t mean that they evolved of … what force? What is the driving force of evolution? It’s not the laws of thermodynamics, they prove that evolution shouldn’t happen, but they also show that life shouldn’t happen either. Yet it does.

For example, the probabilities involved with the evolution of the first protein are astronomical. To get from a random batch of primordial chemicals to one protein, fully formed, are so high it’s not really worth talking about. The number of chemical reactions required, the forces working against those reactions happening, and then for the protein to not denature within moments of its formation in a hostile environment makes its un-guided evolution next to impossible. The cell (of any organism) has so many chemical stabilizers (mRNA and rRNA, transcription proteins, etc.) for creating proteins because proteins, especially the complicated proteins required for complex life, do not naturally form – they are created. It is against the laws of nature (especially thermodynamics) for proteins to form (for example, the shape of a protein is dependent upon the interaction of various parts of the protein, which are easily disrupted by the presence of other chemicals, ions, etc, and the chances of this happening in a primordial environment are slim).

Another example: let’s grant that nature defied the odds (for what other driving force can we give evolution but the sort of ethereal “nature”?), and somehow a little critter evolved from the primordial goo. It’s single-celled, and eventually multiplies into a plethora of different single-celled organisms, and eventually into multi-cellular yet mitotically-replicating organisms (organisms that divide themselves into two identical pieces). Yet as soon as an organism evolves that requires mitosis to divide (sexual reproduction, meaning it needs two of that organism), the species would have died immediately. First, there’s only one of this thing (let’s say it’s a fish or something) around because it’s so improbable in the first place that it evolved. Second, even if another did evolve, the odds of it being at the same time and the same place as the first one are huge!

Ok. So if macroevolution doesn’t work, yet microevolution does, it still doesn’t explain where it started. This is, in fact, what distinguishes intelligent design theorists from creationists: microevolution is acknowledged (as well as all scientific evidence) as a valid source of data. And alternately, what distinguishes ID theorists from Evolutionists is twofold: denial of macroevolution and acceptance of a higher power / deity / god as the source and explanation of a created universe. In most instances, this is really just political cover for a Christian who would rather not mention the title “God” in scientific circles, for fear of retribution by his or her unbelieving colleagues.

As it turns out, most scientists would rather shoot themselves than commit the scientific heresy of admitting the existence of a God who might have things figured out better than they do, and they’d rather get angry and upset and violent than admit that they might – might – be wrong. I guess my point in writing this post was not to say that I hate all evolutionists, but to say that I think it’s time that evolutionists gave up their self-righteousness and listened with an unbiased mind for a change. After all, I bought their evidence. I’m a proponent of Intelligent Design; I used to be a scientist, and can’t deny the evidence for microevolution, and frankly I can easily buy the insubstantial evidence for macroevolution – but only the evidence. I can, like many, offer an alternative explanation for it that is really just as probable and just as valid. It does require that I admit the existence of an all-powerful God, but that’s ok with me. I’m a Christian too, so it works as a worldview. I mean, evolutionists are going on a lot of faith too, why is God so hard to admit?