If love was all make-believe.

1. If emotions were brought about in us by evolution then emotions have a purely biochemical and physiological basis.
2. If emotions have a purely biochemical and physiological basis then love is not real in the Christian sense (as a transcendent principle) because it was brought about randomly by natural forces in the material world.
3. If love is not real and God is love then God is not real.

This argument relies on the following principles:

• Darwinist evolution (natural selection) is the process by which all life on this earth was created.
• God did not interfere with this natural process or, rather, God does not exist. (This distinction is necessary because there are some Christian scientists who claim that God set the process of natural selection into motion but has not in any way interfered with it since that single moment of genesis).
• Love is an emotion.
• All emotions can be reduced to electrical impulses and chemical reactions (where the whole is equal to the sum of its parts).

I don’t really think that I have somehow proven God does not exist. I am just exploring the ways that evolution interacts with Christian theology. Many Christians are afraid of evolution and many scientists are disdainful of spirituality of any sort. I want to know why, because I feel like there is useful truth in this somewhere if I could just get under the surface of all these cosmological battles and touch on the hidden reality driving it all.

The Anti-Life Formula

1. If evolution really did take place the way that scientists say then that means the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, and all the rest of the Creation Narrative are all myths.
2. Further, if Adam and Even did not really exist as specific individuals then that means there is no original sin, at least not as we know it, as a single event involving a snake and a fruit tree.
3. If that original sin does not exist then that changes the very essence of human sin nature. Can we really say that sin is something solid, something communicated from generation to generation like genes? Augustine talks about his utter depravity even as an infant because of this idea that sin is a fundamental corruption inherited from Adam through all the generations of humanity.
4. If the nature of sin changes then that necessarily means the nature of salvation changes. It brings up the old question; why did Jesus have to die? If there is no original sin and sin is not something concrete (as something created by Adam and mystically passed down from generation to generation) then why did Jesus have to die? If the original sin event in the Garden of Eden did not occur then we cannot say Jesus died to undo that event.

Of course there are allot of ‘ifs’ in this formula and allot of controversial ideas are taken for granted. But my purpose here is not to get muddled in all those controversies. Instead I only want to point out that there is another way of understanding sin and salvation, at least if we confine those two concepts to our temporal lives (leaving all theories on the afterlife and the spiritual life alone for now). Here are some of those implications as I see them:

• The way sin enters our lives is no longer a mystical process. Instead we can understand it as a virus that we infect each other with. Let us say (to use a quick and dirty example) that I beat my son. I sinned against my son and that sin warps him so that he becomes an alcoholic and beats his son. And so my grandson becomes a sinner because of what I did fifty years before. Sin is then communicated by touch, so to speak.
• Salvation then becomes a way to escape this sin cycle. To receive salvation we must first take personal responsibility for our own decisions (regardless of what other people have done to hurt us). This is the essence of humility and remorse. Then, so prepared, salvation becomes a process in us of breaking that pervasive cycle of sin in our lives.
• God is involved in every part of this process. He is the one who enables us to even attempt to break this cycle. We cannot break the cycle through a sheer act of will (go ahead and try it for yourself and see if I am right). We need something more, and actually we need allot more. God enables us to transcend our weakness and actually engage in this process which is, basically, continual discipleship in his Family.

Have you noticed what is left out? I still do not understand how the death and resurrection of Jesus would have any direct bearing on any of this. I have begun to read the works of the Church Fathers and other such material, but I still have not found any answer. If anyone has any ideas please feel free to let me know them.

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Of course all of this could be easily undone if I were a Creationist. But, to be perfectly frank, there is far too much real evidence to prove that some form of evolution and natural selection took place. I love the Creation Narrative and cherish it as a wonderful source from which we can understand God’s relationship with us and our own sin nature. I just don’t believe it is a literal historical account. If you would like to discuss this with me further I am very open to talk…

Of God and Glands

Evolution is a beautiful system, both poetically and scientifically. But as a Christian concerned not only with science but with the meaning of scientific discoveries I am worried about a certain side effect of evolution in our culture. It is a problem I have come to call ‘devolution’ or ‘devolutionary thinking’.

The best place to start is with an actual example of what I am talking about. In the current issue of Psychology Today there is an article that talks about beauty. The overall goal of the article is to explain how our perceptions of physical beauty (how attractive a woman is, to be precise) is a result of human evolution over thousands of years. A man seeing a woman as attractive or unattractive is interpreted in evolutionary language, making it something specifically related to sex and successful mating. Therefore the article encourages us to try and develop a more mature understanding of beauty. Specifically this means embracing physical beauty as an inescapable aspect of humanity, and not being so unconcerned with physical beauty or hard on those who work to make themselves beautiful.

As something of an artist myself I agree with this article on many levels. I believe that aesthetics, not only when it comes to human features but in every aspect of human life (such as architecture, fiction writing, and even product packaging design) is ignored or shunned as being ‘shallow’ or unnecessary. Even on the most basic and pragmatic level we cannot deny that what we see directly effects how we feel.

But there is a dangerous edge to this sort of thinking. It is very interesting to link characteristics of human behavior, that previously seemed totally random and unexplainable, directly to human evolution. It gives meaning to what seemed totally meaningless before. But as we explore these connections it seems to give people permission to indulge in whatever activity they feel like doing, without much forethought and regardless of right and wrong, especially when it comes to sex and socializing. Men should have multiple sex partners because that is how they are ‘wired’. Evolution has made it so that a man wants to spread his genes out as much as possible. Monogamy becomes anti-human. Likewise men are encouraged to be aggressive and dominant in society. These are specifically male traits that are overtly linked to evolutionary development, and so engaging in these vaguely sociopathic behaviors is what all good men should do if they want to be more manly. Going back to the article mentioned earlier women are encouraged to work to make those aspects of their anatomy that are pleasing to men more noticeable. This will result in more dates, more sex, and more opportunities of every kind.

In short, by exploring the ways that we are animals we give ourselves permission to act more like the animals we descended from. This is devolution. I see it as a continuum with God on one side and apes on the other. With every choice we make we move either towards God, becoming more like him, or we move closer towards the ape, becoming more like an animal. All but the most hardened evolutionists agree that humans are a combination of animal and spirit (spirit being here a general term that attempts to describe how we are something more then the other animals). So as we live our lives and make our choices we encourage one kind of nature or the other to grow up inside our souls. This in some ways explains social evolution which causes us as a whole race to develop in ways contrary to biological evolution.

Devolutionary thinking though is gaining influence in our culture. Morality, reasoning, and emotional exploration become irrelevant. Because science is explaining (and therefore legitimating) our baser animalistic instincts many people feel justified in acting on them. The distance that separates us from the apes begins to close.

Now even if evolution was still unknown or did not exist people would still have vices. People would still find ways to validate those vices. That is not what I am talking about here. I am simply setting down in more solid terms one fear the Church has when it comes to evolution, a fear that has been vague and badly articulated over the last few decades. One thing as humans we have the no other species on this earth has ever had is the ability to control our own evolution. By shaping our environments, our internal environments (our hearts and minds) as well as our external environments, we can guide the way humanity will develop as a whole. This means that in some ways it is good and useful to understand our animal natures and to harness those inescapable forces. But this also means that we can choose against our glands. Evolution, if we held to it in the strictest most religious sense, would turn us all against each other. Individual against individual, clan against clan, country against country. We are all competing for resources and evolution is all about surviving and dominating, which means controlling those resources. Yet the world is moving towards something totally different then that scheme. We are becoming interconnected. We are learning to share. And even more then that, we see these things as good! We applaud examples of cooperation that we see, and we condemn greed and selfishness. We might support the Darwinism of capitalism, but most of us would not condone the destruction of a country for the fattening of a corporation’s bank account, even if that is a good and proper example of ‘survival of the fittest’. What does this mean for us as humans? What does this say about the meaning of life?

You and me baby we ain’t nothin’ but mammals,
so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel…

The Law of Averages

Working my way through the fire and brimstone passages of Isiah (which are also oddly emotionally sensitive too at times) I came across a ‘woe‘ directed towards Assyria. In this passage God states that he will use Assyria to punish Israel but then Assyria will in turn be punished by God. Lately I have been really thinking about how (if) God actively works in the world. I grew up in a tradition where every little thing that happened was a miracle sent by God. Every penny found on the sidewalk, every traffic light that turned green just at the right time, every set of car keys finally found were all examples of God’s divine powers shinning through into our everyday lives. To be honest I find this sort of thinking to not only be naive but also dangerous to a real Christian faith. So I have been trying to cut through that crap and really discover God’s active work in the world, if it is to be found. This passage on Assyria actually fits in with my quest.

Isaiah prophesies against Assyria in the name of God and it is a fact that Assyria was spectacularly defeated and supplanted by another empire some time later. Now I could say that God directly and obviously caused Assyria’s collapse, substantiating that promise of punishment. Assyria was known for being a very brutal nation, torturing and killing as a rule whenever they conquered any city or nation. So I could also say that Assyria’s slash-and-burn war policies made it some pretty powerful enemies and that this rotten social philosophy weakened the entire nation from top to bottom. Its moral bankruptcy made it destined to collapse in on itself. Now, which of my two statements are right?

I will make this even more personal. America is quickly loosing its place as the top nation in the world. Despite all the political rhetoric to the contrary our slipping position is obvious. Also America is suffering economically (which is causing suffering literally). I could say that all this trouble could be understood as direct and obvious punishment from God. Conservative Christians will be quick to point out how our nation has ‘gotten away from God.’ It goes even deeper then that in my opinion, with the collapse of ethics and good solid purpose spreading to every corner of this country. God could be punishing us for our arrogance, for our hedonism, for the way it is culturally acceptable here to grind up human lives for profit. But, on the other hand, I could also say that America’s rotten social philosophy is bringing all this suffering and calamity on us quite naturally. God doesn’t have to punish us. It could be said we are punishing ourselves. Again I ask; which statement is right?

One possibility that has crossed my mind when looking over this issue is that maybe both statements are organically interconnected. Maybe they are both right. I imagine it playing out this way: Maybe God established natural laws which always, eventually at least, brought punishment to the corrupt. At the same time these natural laws would eventually bring reward to those who did good^*. I am talking here in very general terms, rather then focusing on individual human lives. There will always be good people getting what bad people deserve and bad people getting what good people deserve. But on a national level, on a cultural level, perhaps what I am proposing here is possible. Then God would be working in the world, though it would not be as obvious as balls of fire falling down from the sky to punish the wicked nations.

Even if I am wrong, and that is very possible here, it still makes me wonder about how God works in the world. It used to be that people worshiped the sun as a god. Now we know allot more about the sun, about how it works and how it burns. But if we loosen our scientific and mental limits for a minute and really think about the sun it is possible, in a poetical way at least, to understand the sun as a miracle. We are so used to this world, to the fact that the sun shines and trees grow and bunnies make more and more bunnies, that we can loose touch with the fact that all of these ‘naturally’ occurring things do not have to exist just because they do. This natural world of ours could be totally different, or totally nonexistent. God could bend and shape everything, making his power super obvious, suspending what we believe to be immutable natural laws, or he could work in a more modest way, hiding his power in what would eventually become the banality of the natural world. Anything is possible here.

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^*I know all the postmoderns out there might waggle their eyebrows at my using the word ‘good’. “What does good actually mean anyway?” you might say. “What is good?” “What is good for one person might not be good for another person!” Blah blah blah. If you would like to pretend that concepts like good and evil are infinitely regressive and deconstructable (which somehow invalidates them) that is your own affair. Here in reality, where shooting someone in the head with a shotgun is still considered a ‘bad’ thing, is where I am writing my entry.

No really, thank you!

Praise the Lord, I have the full use of my limbs!
I woke up this morning!
I have a job in this uncertain time!

Thankfulness is a tricky thing. Sometimes thanksgiving actually comes from gratitude, a real heartfelt response for some gift not looked for or not deserved. Other times people use it as a way to hold back other less savory emotions. “You don’t like that? Well just shut up and be thankful because kids in Ethiopia right now would kill to have it.” Sometimes thankfulness is also used as a way to comfort ourselves. When we are in a situation that we do not like we tell ourselves that if we are thankful for what is actually good in our lives then maybe life is not so bad, and the difficult situation we are in will eventually blow over, so lets just be thankful for all the little things.

I am not really here to debate any of those ways of being thankful, though there is some intriguing content there. Instead I want to focus on one possible hidden danger in thankfulness. Thankfulness can paralyze. Thankfulness that does not come from real gratitude, but instead is a mindset we consciously take on, could lead to a loss of ambition. Let me break it down a little further. Lets say you are living in a small dirty house with a bedmate that you really do not get along with and you work at a job that grinds your soul down a little more every time you punch in. Some Christians might insist that in this terrible situation you should go sleuthing around for something to be thankful for. And if you can’t really find anything too readily then you really need to pull out the magnifying glass. You are still breathing. You have a full head of hair. You have all your fingers and toes. Basically you can be thankful for anything that separates you from a disabled war veteran. But it is in a state of dissatisfaction that most personal change actually begins. If you are thankful that you have a job in these uncertain economic times it is very easy to slip into a faithless mindset where you do not go where God is telling you to go because you are, deep down, afraid of letting go of a job when there are no jobs. Thankfulness becomes a smokescreen for the fear a little deeper in. If I had a bad relationship with my wife, but I insisted on being thankful that I had a wife when there are so many lonely people, I might never gain the gumption to take her and get some martial counseling.

I am not saying that thankfulness is a bad thing. I am simply calling for some emotional integrity. So many churches deal emotions like drugs, trying to stamp into Christians how a Christian is ‘supposed to feel’ in any given situation. But how we feel is how we feel. God would rather work with the truth of our hearts then have to wade through all the feelings we project and erect in our hearts. Thankfulness can be a layered emotion. I can hate my job and yet be thankful that I have a job at all, all at the same time, and still be a good Christian. The bottom line is that we need proper humility, and all humility really is is an honest understanding of who we really are.

Sacrifice

What is the purpose of sacrifice really? Growing up Christian I can say that we are all encouraged to make sacrifices, to sacrifice our time to help the elderly, to sacrifice our money to help the needy, to sacrifice at least some of our personal aspirations to make time for our kids, and the list goes on. But after so many sermons about sacrifice, and so much rummaging around in the Bible for good examples of sacrifice (beyond the obvious Example of course), I have lately realized that we Christians don’t really pop open the hood and really examine the mechanics of sacrifice. We just use the word so that now it has almost an emotional meaning so that it represents the pinch in our hearts as we give something away, but also the feeling of that private joy because we know that we did something good.

What is sacrifice then? Is sacrifice really what we think the meaning is (or feel the meaning is with our hearts)? Is it such a selfless thing? In reality when we give something in a sacrificial gesture we actually expect to get something back. Maybe we expect to refine our character, to receive that rush of joy in giving, to receive that nod of approval from the Christian community, to ‘store up treasures in heaven’. Even God and his ultimate sacrifice was not done for nothing. It was, to make it almost perversely simple, something of a cosmic investment. I am uncomfortable myself writing about this idea in these terms because part of me feels like this talk cheapens the meaning of sacrifice. By talking about the fact that we expect something in return for what we gave up seems to turn a selfless act into something selfish and consumerist.

But what does sacrifice become without that return? I think it becomes waste. People do not fast for no reason. We do not give up chocolate or put 10% of our income in a tithe envelope for no reason. So does this ruin the reputation of sacrifice? Maybe not. When I think about it in this way, as a mystical trade, my mind wanders to the idea of faith. I give of myself because I believe God will reward me somehow, in some way, even if that reward is very private and hard to quantify.

So in the end I want Christians to think more about why they do what they do. Its easy to just ‘sacrifice’ because our pastor tells us to, or because the Bible tells us to, or even because we just think its right for some reason. That may be enough to slide along through life, but that’s just not enough to live the full Christian life God wants us to live.

Frenemies

A man (who might have some wisdom in him despite the hype) once said:

“The discipline of suffering, great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline alone has created all human greatness to date? The tension of the soul in unhappiness, which cultivates its strength; its horror at the sight of the great destruction; its inventiveness and bravery in bearing, enduring, interpreting, exploiting unhappiness, and whatever in the way of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cleverness, greatness the heart has been granted – has it not bee granted them through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”

And the Bible says this:

“It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.
Frustration is better than laughter,
because a sad face is good for the heart.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of        pleasure.
It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person
than to listen to the song of fools.
Like the crackling of thorns under the pot,
so is the laughter of fools.

This too is meaningless. “

Ecclesiastes 7:2-6 (TNIV)

These two sentiments are very similar. It makes me wonder if it is really sensible to write off entire philosophical systems, entire human lives, because “that person is an atheist” or “that person is an agnostic”.

When you read these two passages and compare them, where do you find your mind focusing? Where does your mind trip and stop? Do you create a hierarchy, placing one over another? Do you feel you have judged these passages fairly? Do you think these should be judged at all?

Consider those questions and read the passages again.
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Passage Credit – Click Here