Repairability

I watched a video this week about Apple’s iPhone testing labs. It was interesting to me for two reasons. The first had to do with the way Apple simulates environments to test the iPhone’s performance under many different extreme conditions, considering temperature, submersion, drops, and surface abrasion. It was really amazing. But what interested me even more had to do with something that was said about Apple’s dilemma.

After the tour of the lab, one of Apple’s developers was asked whether making the iPhone more durable was also making it harder to repair. It was put to him, “It seems to me that the downside of being really hard to repair comes from the iPhone’s being almost infinitely durable.” He admitted that there is some truth to that, and that this has been a dilemma for Apple: Durability comes at the expense of repairability.

What struck me was how this dilemma is not all that different from the one in which we find ourselves as human beings. The more we focus on durability, on maintaining a hard exterior and rigid interior, the harder we are to repair. Durability comes at the expense of repairability. And yet, repairability is necessary for Christianity.

Christ has been sent from the Father to repair our hearts, to repair our relationships, to repair our wounds. We call it conversion, sometimes healing, and, more formally, salvation. But all of these are simply different ways of describing the reparation (the repairing) that Christ is trying to accomplish in our souls.

But as with the iPhone, so with the modern approach to life: repair-work is out; durability is in. We boast of our hardness of heart in our most popular music, promote the use of drugs and alcohol to numb our sensitivity to positive influence, and wear the mask of social media to present a version of ourselves that appears impenetrable and untroubled.

How very different are those things from what Christ calls “blessed.” He calls His disciples to mourn, to be meek, and to be poor in spirit. This means vulnerability, not durability. And it means assuming a posture of receptivity, which can be uncomfortable, but is also the posture of repairability, and repairability means openness to the love of God as He comes to us through others who will help us in our need.

But will we allow ourselves even to be aware of our need? Or will we spend all our energy on making ourselves more durable? We’re like marathon runners who exhaust ourselves, not by training harder, but by trying to change the length of the marathon.

There will come a time when God will create a new heavens and a new earth, when every tear will be wiped away and all will be strong with the durability of Christ Himself. And on that Day we will cry out, “Behold our God to Whom we looked to save us!” But that Day has not yet come. And until then, the marathon must be run, the work must be done. But not the work of making ourselves more durable. Rather, the much harder - much more heroic - work of allowing ourselves to be more repairable. +