Finding company on the journey

As any reader of this blog knows, over the past year I have come to believe in evolution, and in a way that fits quite comfortably with belief in God and in the Bible as divine revelation. To my surprise and relief, a fog of questions that for years had seemed impenetrable has been clearing before the bright rays of the sun. And I can say that the end result is no watering down of vital faith, but a new unleashing of passion for the kingdom of God. I documented the main points of this journey in a post of Dec. 20, 2008 (re-posted to this blog earlier today).

By way of update, let me heartily recommend a book that I have read since then, and mentioned in another post today--Understanding Genesis, by Nahum M. Sarna. Sarna makes me feel like I've got my Bible back, finally, after it had been long held hostage to forced interpretations motivated by extraneous agenda arising out of Darwinian controversy of the last century and a half. This feeling of "getting my Bible back" is similar to what I felt years ago when the "biblical-theological" tradition of Westminster Theological Seminary and related Dutch Reformed currents liberated my understanding of the Bible from the extraneous agenda and assumptions that the dispensationalism in which I had been raised had imposed upon the text, and which had turned biblical faith into a private, other-worldly affair that had little direct impact on the suffering and injustice of our world. I believe that both these developments constitute advances toward reading the Bible on its own terms.

Sarna, a Jewish scholar who wrote in the 1970s, strongly confirms what I had long suspected (from at least the time I read I Believe in the Creator, by James Houston, who evidently also benefitted from the stream of biblical and ANE research to which Sarna contributed), namely, that Genesis is best understood as using a shared regional literary idiom (that is not literal history in any sense in which we moderns understand that) to deliver a pointed polemic against debased views of humanity and society and the gods held to by the Babylonian imperial ideology and other prevailing belief systems of the region, and to school the people of Israel in divine call to reverse the state of corruption that had come to dominate the world. Combined with a spate of readings of N.T. Wright on early Christian origins and the mission of Christ, all this makes for, not a weak and vitiated faith, but a vital, passionate, fighting vision of the meaning of our lives and the glorious end to which God is bringing us in Christ.

Also, shortly after reading Sarna, I stumbled onto an excellent resource, which I highly recommend for those who wish to discuss and reflect on these matters, together with others who have been seeking to make sense of things. It is the Jesus Creed blog of Scot McKnight. Anybody interested in these issues can visit the site and search for posts by "RJS," who is a working scientist who I think has read Sarna and, together with readers who contribute responses to his posts, is processing the work of authors like Kenton Sparks, John Walton, and a number of others who get to the heart of these matters. Finding others who have come to nearly identical conclusions in light of the same sorts of evidence reassures me that it is not some rare form of insanity that has not gripped me to make me believe that evolution and biblical faith actually go quite well together! Finding this blog was like finding "home."

Peter Enns and his website is another valuable resource. I think it was via Internet searches prompted by book reviews on Enns' site that I came across the Jesus Creed blog, which also links back to Enns. I came to know of Enns by virtue of the fact that I graduated from a sister seminary to Westminster Theological Seminary, the institution that fired him. I am not surprised at the firing, but I do think Enns' thinking is in many ways a natural development of conversation that had long been in the making in such WTS scholars as the late Ray Dillard and the late Harvie Conn. Nor am I surprised that the OT professor Tremper Longman, formerly of WTS, recommends reading Enns' book Incarnation and Inspiration. Perhaps if these scholars were still at WTS, Enns would not have been fired. Not at all to suggest that these scholars' views are the same as Enns', but they all make for productive dialog in the community of faith. As I read Enns and interaction with other scholars, something gnaws at me making me wonder if he has really got discussion off onto quite the right foot on a number of things. But I think he is to be commended for prodding more explicit discussion of the issues he addresses among evangelical biblical scholars.

All these developments in the intellectual realm of faith have paved the way for clearer, more urgent yearnings in the realm of practical application. Years ago my exposure to the "biblical theology" movement of biblical scholars like M.G. Kline, G. Vos, Edmund P. Clowney, and Graeme Goldsworthy led me to see that the whole Bible points us to Jesus Christ. (See Goldsworthy's According to Plan for the most accessible eye-opener along these lines that I have read.) A more recent but complementary sea change in my understanding--to which the whole evolutionary question contributed in odd and unexpected ways but which does not depend on any particular stance in evolutionary debates, and to which reading N.T. Wright contributed very substantially--has led me to see that everything about Jesus is aimed at motivating and empowering us to seek justice and mercy and harmony and universal well-being in this world. Of course I've always really known that, and the theology of WTS circles (esp., e.g., Harvie Conn) certainly pointed toward it and affirmed it, but the tendency of elements of my religious background to cast the Christian religion in terms of getting people onto a ship that will someday take us to a place that is out of and unrelated to this world obscured that knowledge and sent it off into a corner. Some forms of evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity seem like those pyramid schemes where everybody is busy signing everybody up to sell the product but precious little time is spent actually selling the product. The only "product" moved was a bit of personal cleaning up in private morals without paying attention to the wider and pervasive social implications of the Bible. The result is that compassionate practical ministry among the poor and excluded took a perpetual back seat to this recruitment game--which suits the interests of religious empire-builders rather than the priorities of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus and his friends. The great need I see is to put justice, mercy, and practical love back in the very center of our lives.

The question of doing that, practically speaking, is claiming the bulk of my prayers and energies these days. I'm still wanting for face-to-face company on that path--it's anything but the kind of path one can walk alone. Some new acquaintances and I hope budding friendships seem promising in that regard.

Finding company on the journey

On the Evolutionary "Chisel," the Divinely Intended "Sculpture," and the Glorious Meaning and Destiny of our Lives in Christ

In this post I'd like to expand upon some matters that were at least implicitly touched upon in my post of Dec. 20, 2008 (re-posted to this blog earlier today), in regard to the matter of justifying normative ethics in the light of evolutionary orgins. This is an area that has not received much close attention in the popular theistic evolutionary works that I have come across so far, yet I think it lies at the heart of much that troubles many non-Christians about Christianity, even on a theistic evolutionary understanding of it, and that troubles many Christians about evolution.

The question is this: If we have been evolved by processes concerned with increasing the chances of survival and reproduction, does human life have anything like the significance that the Bible, and indeed our own hearts as we perceive them, tell us it has? Do our actions have ultimate moral significance? Do the feelings and concerns and aspirations we experience in our lives have "meaning" whose content is not defined by, and whose validity does not depend on, the nature of the evolutionary means that contributed to bringing these about?

I think that one of the most important things that needs to be said in addressing that question is to insist that we must refrain from reading "meaning" into behavior and evolutionary processes that apparently occurred in pre-humans based on conceptions of meaning that are derived from our existential experience in the present, and from assuming that the evolutionary means which brought about the circumstances of our present experience necessarily determine the "meaning" or "purpose," or lack thereof, of that present experience. The use of a chisel and the size and shape of the orginal block out of which a sculpture is made does not determine the "meaning" of the sculpture. Likewise, there is compelling evolutionary logic that seems to account for HOW such things as the temptation to adultery, the phenomenon of jealousy, and many other things arose in the first place, but which has no ultimate bearing on the moral significance we should ascribe to those behaviors today.

For example, in species of birds that until recently were considered more "monogamous" than they really are, scientists have observed females engaging in remarkably sly rendezvous with other males, even as males have developed mate-guarding instincts. Both tendencies appear to have co-evolved in a kind of arms race. Selection pressures have favored developments in females that make them adept at seeking covert inseminations by more sexually attractive and fit males (which helps ensure that her progeny will have heightened chances of surviving and reproducing), while still availing themselves of the resources provided by the cuckolded male. Selection pressures favor changes in the males that make them more adept at guarding their mates. Whether such understandings in exactly their current form will survive ongoing investigation I cannot say, but they certainly seem coherent and highly plausible, and I see no warrant for rejecting them on any biblical or theological grounds. But what does this say about the morality of human behavior?

One might be tempted, for example, to conclude from such observations that adultery in humans is a matter of no moral significance. Or that jealousy and mate-guarding tendencies are pointless in any ultimate sense, because these all evolved as part of a pointless game with no meaningful direction. But all of this would be a huge philosophical leap that is not at all warranted by the facts. The scientific observations in themselves cannot speak one way or the other concerning the current moral significance, or lack thereof, or of the "meaning," of human behaviors. What I think can be said, with which I think most evolutionary biologists could agree, is that the vast bulk of human genes and traits have been spreading and co-evolving in the human species for so long that a degree of equilibrium has been reached. This is not to say that there is not ongoing variation in these traits. Some are more tempted to adultery than others. Some are more jealous than others. And insofar as there are genetic factors contributing to that, there is indeed a measure of variation on that level. But this variation is not so great as to rule out universal or near universal statements about what makes current human beings happy and well, and concerning the range of behaviors of which most people are capable. Women want their progeny to be provided for. They want their husbands to value their fidelity because a complete abandonment of "mate guarding" would in fact make them very unhappy and unloved. And they do not want their husbands to take their loyalty so for granted that they slack off on the job of providing for the family.

Likewise, the spread and co-evolution of genes and traits and culture is such that no human being HAS to behave, as did Genghis Khan, killing and conquering and mating as many women as possible, because a) multiple strategies of sufficient "evolutionary advantage," generally speaking, are available to virtually every human being, and b) we are capable of consciously choosing behaviors even when they conform to the goal of human happiness over against the dictates of the maximization of genetic legacy. Genghis Khan, in other words, COULD have been a saint, given other influences and choices, because there is that degree of flexibility and range of possibility in humans. And if God guided the development of our ancestors into this current configuration (and science cannot really speak to that question) and purposes that we experience harmony and fellowship with one another, then there is a basis for morality to which the facts of the current configuration are more relevant than the evolutionary processes that led to it.

Or take another example of an evolutionary observation that might tempt us into unwarranted moral conclusions. Men on average are bigger and stronger than women. And there is little doubt that this is because males among our biological ancestors fought over mates. But this does not mean that it is OK for males today to fight and kill each other over mates. There is a tendency for all evolved features to take on different functions, or even a multiplicity of possible functions, once they are brought into being. And in the current configuration that evolution has produced in humans, the passions and muscles of men are susceptible of different applications and "meanings." We are now CAPABLE of opting for cooperative rather than competitive behaviors. We are capable of channeling our passions and strengths and abilities in ways that love God and others, just as we are capable of employing these in ways that may in many cases more closely resemble the behavior of our very distant ancestors who did not share the "meaning" complex in which we live. Nor does this fact of sexual dimorphism and its origins mean that the feelings a woman may have when she thinks of her husband have no meaning apart from the evolutionary processes that shaped these features as well as feelings. For example, if a woman feels that her husband, who is taller and stronger than she is, is her "knight in shining armor," we cannot debunk the "validity" of these feelings on account of evolutionary origins. A very complex series of interactions between genetics and culture and individual circumstances can lead to such feelings, and they take on a "life of meaning" of their own the validity of which is not at all affected by the fact that the fighting of distant male ancestors was part of the series of events that led to their development. Nor, of course, can we force-fit all women's feelings into a stereotype, though sometimes our cultures want to do that, because there is diversity within that which is shared by all humans.

It is this "life of meaning" that is the end of creation, the purpose with which we are concerned, at any rate; the long business of selection pressures which tend toward survival and reproduction belong to the mere mechanics and means of creation.

To take another example, scientist of cognition Justin Barrett, in his book Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, has much to say about how the tendency of most humans in most environments to "naturally" believe in a god or gods may have come about. But Barrett, a Christian, goes on to argue that if we deny the validity of belief in God based on the evolutionary nature of the processes that developed our capacity to believe in God, then on the same grounds we might as well also reject our perception of the passage of time, our belief in the existence of other minds, and other things we take for granted. None of this is really warranted if there really is a God who has guided the development of the universe with purpose. And, again, science, in itself, can only be silent on that question, while the resurrection and the testimony of the Spirit in our hearts speak very clearly and gloriously on the matter.

And what of the common human perception that death is "unnatural"? I would contend that, just as selection pressures concerned with survival and reproduction led to cognitive faculties that are now capable of being employed in perceiving the God who truly exists, similar processes may have produced an entirely valid perception that death is not our intended or ultimate destiny. Once again, the question hinges entirely on whether there is divine intent underlying the creation, a question science cannot answer, but which other evidence abundantly speaks to.

It is necessary, then, to distinguish between the chisel of evolutionary processes, and the sculpture of humans created in the image of God and having the capacity to live a rich life of fellowship with God and with one another. Somewhere in the development of our highly advanced brains and of our capacity for culture, there arose the capacity for choice (a highly debated topic, but I don't think science can ever conclusively rule against the existence of all meaningful choice, even if it encourages a healthy awareness, which I think the Bible also acknowledges, of the relative and limited nature of this capacity), for love, for fellowship with God, and for all sorts of things that have taken on a "life of meaning" of their own. Again, the meaning is determined by the purpose of God and not by the evolutionary processes and selection pressures that were used to bring about the current complex and glorious configuration.

It is also a mistake to read the "meaningful time" derived from the complex of meaning that belongs to our experience in this sliver of evolutionary time that we inhabit--this sliver which is in fact the end and purpose of creation, at least the end and purpose of creation with which we need be concerned--back into the long stretches of evolutionary time, and thus conclude that our lives are insignificant. That is a category mistake. Because in the context of our lives, we attribute significance to "long time" as having been the context in which wisdom has been shaped, hard but important lessons have been learned, relationships have been deepened, enmities have become entrenched, etc. And in the context of the roll of centuries, we attribute significance to the "long time" over which civilizations have developed, and cultural wisdom has been shared, and the leaven of the gospel has transformed the world and clarified the possibilities open to us, etc. These meanings of "long time" that derive from our life experience and from a shared cultural conversation over a number of centuries cannot justly be transferred and applied to the long stretches of evolutionary eons that preceded us. To do so is to make the same kind of error as to conclude that we are insignificant, that God cannot be interested in us or in the choices we make, because we occupy an infinitesimal part of the universe in terms of space. The sliver of space we inhabit is meaningful to us, and is made so by virtue of the fact that the very Creator of all things has honored us with the privilege of relating to him in that time and space.

When we correct the above kind of error, when we make the proper distinctions, and keep the "meaning" of time back in the realm of "human-scale" time where it belongs, we are in a better position to understand the resurrection and the life of the eternal kingdom to come. The continuity that bears with our present existence pertains to the purposed end result of meaning that God intended, even it is radically discontinuous, in ways we cannot imagine or comprehend, with the mechanics of how the world and our bodies as we know them came to be what they presently are. The future kingdom will indeed be "here" in "this world" from the point of view of our existential experience; the question of future "mechanics" is irrelevant. God and his purposes are what is ultimate in all of this. Perhaps our having providentially discovered the evolutionary mechanics of our origins will only serve to heighten the glory of it all when the resurrection of the saints and renewal of the world (that is, the world as we experience it) prove that the meaning which God declares indeed was the real point of it all.

It is also a mistake, I would contend, to read the meaning of human pain and injustice into what we observe in other creatures, and then conclude that human pain and injustice are of no moral significance, or that there is therefore no such thing as moral significance. We may be disturbed when we observe certain behaviors of other creatures, such as the male of a primate species killing the small offspring of a female that was sired by a rival male, the evolutionary logic of which may be to prepare the female to be fertile to mate with him, and to ensure greater resources for his own rather than his rival male's offspring. But such creatures are acting within the limited range of possibilities open to their species, whose capacities and options are untold times more restricted than our own. Disturbing as these things may be, we do not ascribe moral significance to these behaviors or call them "evil." But the fact that seeing these things in other species tends to jar us is evidence of the very different behavior of which we are capable. Hence the Hebrew prophet speaks of a time when "the lion will lie down with the lamb," which in the context I think is best read as not speaking literally of animals, but of a day when ruthless empires like Assyria and Babylon will give way to a peaceful and cooperative human social order. We are capable of a cooperative approach that can bring happiness and prosperity to all. And not only are we capable of it, something deep within us tells us, however much we may at times try to deny it, that this is really what we are meant for, that this is the way of true peace and happiness. Because of this, the way we live becomes a genuinely moral issue.

Now let me briefly turn to a related question that a number of Christians have concerning Romans 5, which constitutes the greatest hindrance that many Christians to accepting our evolutionary origins. (I hope to address these concerns in light of a more detailed examination of the text in a separate post, or in a revised and expanded version of this post. What follows can be considered prolegomena to that discussion.) It has been contended that Adam must be literal and a single individual for what Paul says in Romans 5 to make sense. In a previous essay I mentioned the views of Henri Blocher, who believes a pre-human evolutionary history is possible, but who shares this belief that Adam, who acted as our covenant representative, plunging the human race into sin and ruin, must be literally one single individual, the first male of our species. Yet apparently the best current scientific thinking is that the human race is not descended from a single human pair. Is the Bible irreconcilably opposed to that conclusion? I don't think so. The important thing on which Paul's argument hinges is that we are in a predicament that we have inherited and that we perpetuate. And while Paul may have had no reason to imagine that Adam was anything other than a single individual, he is not concerned to address that issue--indeed, the issue would not have occurred to him. It is not the point he is making, and the point he IS making does not hinge on that.

In light of ancient Near Eastern parallels, I think there is strong reason to believe that Genesis is something other than what people today define as "literal history." A detailed and I think convincing account of this matter is found in Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis. Sarna makes a strong case that Genesis is using a shared literary idiom of the ancient Near East to deliver a pointed polemic against debased views of God and human beings and human societies that were held to by the Babylonian imperial ideology and other cultures of the region. Further, with Henri Blocher, I believe that the narratives of Genesis tell our story truly and effectively, albeit nonliterally, for the purpose of schooling the people of Israel in their divine call to reverse the corruption into which the world had fallen. The very name "Adam" means "humanity," so I think it is entirely possible that Adam and other figures in the early chapters of Genesis tell us the origins of the human predicament in a condensed and archetypical, rather than a literal manner.

How, then, might we conceive how this inherited predicament came about, if we do not take Genesis as literal history? I would submit that at some point in the development of our species, even though the "chisel" was made up of selection pressures driven by the logic of survival and reproduction, we developed as the "end" (divinely purposed) result the capacity to sense the reality of the God who had made us and all things, and to relate to him, and to sense our calling into cooperative and harmonious ways of living which, when lived out by enough of us, creates a bigger pie for all to share, and in which we find the truest sense of meaning to our existence. There was developed in us, in other words, the capacity to consciously choose the way of "win-win," in contrast to the way of "I win, you lose," which dominates in many other species who lack the capacity to choose any other way, and that fights over the slivers of a very small pie while making nobody truly happy. But at some point, deep in our pre-history, this genuine capacity to opt for "win-win" strategies was not acted upon; intead, people suppressed their innate sense that we are special creatures under God, meant to relate harmoniously and cooperatively with one another, and opted instead to seize immediate privilege and advantage at the expense of the long-term good of all. We do not necessarily have to conceive of this as having occurred in a decisive once-for-all fashion, much less in a one-time decision by a single person.

Indeed, the "genuine capacity" to choose the way of cooperation surely did not arrive in us suddenly, so it is conceivable that the actions of pre-humans, with pre-fully-developed versions of our capacities which may mark out both these pre-human species and us from all other living primates, may have contributed tributaries to the stream of our inherited corruption. Jesus affirmed the principle of varying degrees of culpability for human actions. (Luke 12:47-48 is so important to thinking about these issues of ethics and moral responsibility, let's review it in full: "That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.") Who is to say, then, that there cannot have been varying degrees or qualities of moral responsibility among pre-human species? God knows.

In any case it may be supposed that over a period of unknown length the net effect of the bulk of choices by our ancestors created a kind of watershed in human culture and history. Though the sense of God and our truest calling as human beings was still somewhere deep within us, the organization of societies and dominant expressions of human behavior came to reflect the contrary approach to living which emphasized immediate perceived advantage over against trust in God who calls us to work harmoniously with one another for the common good. And indeed the weight of precedents and the pressures of societies built upon corrupt principles militated fiercely against any given individual breaking out and living according to the call that was sensed deeper within. Is such a construction of affairs as I have outlined contrived? I don't believe it is. In fact, I think that even the most skeptical atheist knows deep down that somehow or another we have arrived at a point where we are capable of realizing a destiny that is contrary to the "way of the world" around us but that fulfills our deepest aspirations.

Certainly by the time Genesis was written this state of corruption had dominated human societies for longer than the collective human memory could know. The story of Adam and Eve tells the story of this watershed, and the fact that it is told in condensed, mythological idiom does not make the story any less true or effective for preparing a people that is called to reverse this state of affairs in the world. Nor does its non-literal form make it any less suited to prepare us for Christ, who delivers us from the obvious mess we have inherited.

To reverse the corrupt state of the world requires sacrifice. The first honest cop will be subject to the constant threats of death at the hands of those who are on the take. The first to refrain from littering will be going to trouble while seeing no visible difference in the landscape. The first to take steps toward just human cooperation does so at great immediate cost. It is like walking into a meatgrinder. But Christ walked into that meatgrinder for us, and before us, and came out the other end unscathed. United with him by faith in his resurrection, our hearts are thus freed from the false lures and threats of the prevailing corrupt system to reconnect with the fundamental truth of our existence that in varying degrees we have been suppressing, namely, that we are meant to live lives of love toward God and toward others. And so with truly joyful hearts, powerless in ourselves yet invincible in the Spirit (who, in ancient Near Eastern idiom, is hovering over the waters to bring order out of chaos), we follow Jesus, and share in his sufferings, that we may share in his glory. As the Hebrew prophet foretold, "he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth" (Isaiah 42:4).

To fully treat the perceived problems of reconciling this understanding of "Adam" and the origin of the human predicament with the text and mindset of the apostle Paul in Romans 5 will require further attention. In my opinion this matter is not nearly as difficult as we imagine, but to arrive at that conclusion requires backing up and retracing our interpretive steps in a detailed fashion. I believe we will find, as we have in the case of Genesis, that the biblical text is apt in making a point of profound significance, which we best understand as we understand the context of the original author and his readers. My thoughts on that are in draft text that I hope to finish and publish soon (that is to say, sometime within the next 10 years--a mere blip on the screen of worldview-shaping time :-).

On the Evolutionary "Chisel," the Divinely Intended "Sculpture," and the Glorious Meaning and Destiny of our Lives in Christ

Coming to Peace with Science

I am re-posting here thoughts I originally posted elsewhere on Dec. 20, 2008, concerning theistic evolution and the book Coming to Peace with Science, by Darrell R. Falk, a book that got a huge ball rolling in my thinking about faith and science and life.

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Falk's book did three things for me.

1) It disabused me of the notion that the typical biologist's acceptance of evolution is based on either blindly following tradition in their field or a desire to escape God. On the contrary, biologists believe in evolution because the more deeply they engage in their pursuits, the more the explanatory power of evolution shines through and the more it appears inescapably the only credible explanation.

2) It removed for me the objections I previously had that evolution, in spite of its great explanatory power concerning the things we observe, is "impossible," e.g. at the level of species change or the development of something so complex as the human eye.

3) It showed that a more tranquil path is possible in dealing with matters of faith and science than my own turbulent experience has been. My faith was severely challenged when I left a Christian school and landed in a public school in 10th grade, and was hit by the double whammy of the biology class and the discovery that people weren't nearly as evil and prejudiced against truth as the Christian school had indoctrinated me to believe. Francis Schaeffer's work helped me recover a sense of the intellectual basis for Christianity, and yet I'm afraid there were aspects of his teaching which helped set me up for hard falls whenever I would come into contact again with evolutionary biology. His very insistence on a literal understanding of Genesis, as well as his casting of the whole history of Western intellectual discussion as a tendentious revolt against the authority of the Bible at the cost of despair, I think, led me to follow a kind of "script" when confrontation with evolution seemed to force me to make drastic choices. At times in my life it has appeared that I was completely given over to agnosticism and despair. At somewhat less severe times I could one day be basking in the warm presence of God, meditating on a sweet truth from Scripture, and the next day, while taking my kids to the zoo, feel all that dissipate and wonder whether any of it was really real. Falk's narrative of his own pilgrimage shows that another outcome is possible besides either being a head-stuck-in-sand fundamentalist or a spiritually and morally unhinged skeptic suffering suicidal despair. Thanks to Falk, I am no longer afraid of taking a trip to the zoo! If you ever read Falk, let me know whether you found it as convincing as I did.

Another book I found very helpful, and a good preliminary to deeper reading, was Evolution for Everyone, by David Sloan Wilson. In reading Wilson, one has to make allowance for the fact that this secular-minded writer is less adept at dealing with the religious side of these questions than he is at explaining biology. The irony is that to read his reflections and observations and heartfelt care for the created world is to witness an exuberant demonstration of what the Bible means when it says we are made in the image of God.

I think there are a number of factors that have conspired to prevent productive dialog about this issue in our society, especially among Christians. First, evolution really is counterintuitive initially, before one gets immersed in some fairly complex and detailed observations of the biological world. This opens the door for people to suspect that belief in evolution may be the result of people trying really, really hard to escape God. Second, the Enlightenment era set a genuine precedent of people who truly were about throwing off divine authority. So when Darwin came along, there were people who had long since been reveling in what they thought was a newfound freedom from God via Enlightenment philosophies, who found what they thought was scientific vindication in Darwin's theories. Christians reacted against this, rightly seeing the matter in terms of spiritual conflict, but mistakenly identifying the Darwinian biological conversation as the enemy. Many Christians retreated from intellectual engagement in general, and have even come to see faith as demanding that they close themselves off to honest exploration of these issues. Evolutionary writers, for their part, respond with curt dismissals and ridicule, failing to take adequate account of the counterintuitivity of evolution for people who have not pursued their own areas of specialized study. In all this folks on both sides of the biological knowledge divide have proven all too human slaves to the categories and patterns of reaction that have been set, not by the facts themselves, but by the unfortunate history and sequence of past intellectual and cultural conversation.

[It seems the effects of such all too human factors may be observed even in the biological conversation among convinced evolutionists. As we know, to leave a genetic legacy one must both stay alive and find a mate to successfully reproduce with. Evolution thus speaks about two kinds of "selection": selection for survival, and sexual selection. Yet for over a century after Darwin, the great bulk of attention was devoted to survival selection, even though Darwin himself made sexual selection his primary research interest, and was reviled on that account by his contemporaries. Geoffrey Miller, in his book The Mating Mind, argues that the relative neglect of sexual selection research until the revival of interest in Darwin's favorite topic exploded in very recent decades was due to an antipathy in the Victorian mindset against the notion that sexual selection is driven primarily by the woman's sexual choices in most species.]

We fear exploring evolution because we feel that something vital is at stake. But if our faith is built upon what really turns out to be very creaturely "props," don't be surprised if God in his providence allows those props to be knocked out from under you. Should you find yourself in that position (as I suspect most people will as they dig deeper into evolutionary biology), my advice would be: 1) don't panic; 2) explore freely and honestly, acknowledging that a fear of doing so cannot possibly be the fruit of faith that comes from God; and 3) trust that a sovereign God will catch you and establish you on more solid footing, even if some of your current understandings are changed.

There really aren't many options when confronted with the evidence for evolution: You can ignore it, in which case you will have little of any use to say to others who don't take this path. You can live with tension, maintaining apparently contradictory beliefs. Or you can seek to resolve the tension from the scientific and/or biblical ends. I am finding that the scientific end doesn't really budge, rumors to the contrary from the creation science and ID camps notwithstanding. Reading Falk and Wilson will show you why I've come to that conclusion. But I think there is a lot more room to move on the biblical end than either liberals or conservatives have acknowledged, and one can explore this without doing injustice to Scripture and without having to surrender a very high view of its divine origin and authority. (I'm afraid there are people on both sides who have a vested interest in maintaining the notion that this is not possible, such as the atheist Richard Dawkins who presumes to batter faith out of people with the cudgel of evolution, and certain Christians whose careers have built around calling an increasingly marginalized Christian community to hold the fort against the conspiratorial forces of godless evolutionary science.)

The two main issues that arise are the historical intent of biblical texts, and the theological question of the origin and nature of human sin and culpability. On the question of the historical intent of biblical narratives, I think the first thing that needs to be said about understanding biblical literature, especially the Old Testament, is that ANY pronouncements about genre and intent are to be entertained with a grain of salt, as coming from competent scholars who disagree with one another and who are all separated from the texts by a great deal of temporal and cultural distance. To stand against the solid consensus of the overwhelming majority of scientists concerning evolution just seems to me to be hanging an awful lot on one minority opinion (the literalist reading of Genesis) among scholars in a field where tentative conclusions are the norm and there is relatively little consensus.

Further, I think it is far from obvious that literal readings of biblical narratives are always the most in accord with the authors' original intent. In regard to the "days" of Genesis, the writings of the late Meredith Kline, Henri Blocher, and Rowland Ward long ago convinced me that the literal 24-7 view is not the most defensible interpretation on exegetical grounds. Kline, however, was a literalist concerning Genesis 2:4 and thereafter. He believed that details such as the instantaneous special creation of Adam from the dust of the earth, the fashioning of Eve from Adam's rib, a literal forbidden fruit, and temptation by Satan taking the form of a serpent, were all intended as literal history. I must say, I've read Kline, Longman, Dillard, Waltke, etc., and while they all admirably defend the point that highly stylized and even lately written texts can conceivably be historical in intent and result, they seem to assume that literal historical intent is the default position in reading biblical narratives, an assumption I think they fail to establish. The parallels with ancient Middle Eastern creation and flood stories demands some kind of accounting, and the answer that Kline, Longman, etc. give is that the non-biblical stories are pagan corruptions of a true history that was faithfully preserved in the biblical accounts. Again, I agree this is possible, but is it established? To my mind (and apparently to that of innumerable scholars) it seems at least equally likely that all these cultures used a shared mythological idiom to express (and debate) such matters as the meaning of life, the basis for a king's rule, and the basis for the social order (Genesis's contribution being that Yahweh alone is the rightful king, and so we had therefore better respect one another as his fellow subjects). Such a nonliteral understanding, if it accords with the original author's intent, in no way impinges on divine inspiration and authority--God is free to use any genre he pleases, and he generally uses those which are common currency in the cultural milieu of the audiences he is addressing. So what keeps conservative scholars, who are intimately acquainted with all the surviving ancient Near Eastern literature, from affirming the general consensus of their colleagues? From what I can gather, they insist that a nonhistorical interpretation cannot be squared with the divine inspiration of NT authors who seem, in those scholars' minds, to be referring to the events of Genesis as historical. To that I would respond that it is far from obvious that Jesus or Paul or any of the NT writers even care about the question of literal historical intent of the older narratives they have in mind. The most that I think can be established with certainty is that they believed the Old Testament speaks truly and reliably (whether literally or metaphorically) to the human predicament, and that the literally crucified, buried, and risen Christ is the solution to that very real predicament.

But even though I affirm the strong likelihood of nonhistorical intent in regard to SOME biblical narratives, I am not convinced of the view of the most extreme critics that practically EVERY narrative in the Bible, including those about the death and resurrection of Christ, are nonhistorical. Now I have to admit that all of these scholars, liberal and conservative, are way, way out of my league. I simply lack their expertise. Yet when I read stories in the Bible, I cannot avoid the fact that one alarmingly simple criterion seems to handle this whole question of historicity quite nicely--the criterion of whether the events being written about are contemporary with the human author, or not. That is to say, when a biblical author is writing about the distant and mysterious past, or the distant and mysterious future, metaphor or myth or something other than literal history is reasonably to be expected. When a biblical author is writing about events that have occurred in his own lifetime, it is reasonable to expect literal history. Applying this criterion to a variety of texts, the conclusions I draw are confirmed by the overall feel and particular characteristics of the texts themselves. For example, when I read John's post-resurrection narratives, with Jesus's threefold restoration of Peter, the count of 153 fish, and the clearing up of what Jesus really said about how long John might live, it has the feel of matter-of-fact stories based on eyewitness testimony, shared among a community of dearly loved friends who were very close to the original events. But when I read of a tree of life, whether in Genesis, Ezekiel, or Revelation, I get the sense that something very important and real is being discussed by means of metaphor.

To sum up this matter, there are those who, like Bultmann, deny ANY historical moorings to the Christian faith, and there are the conservative evangelical scholars like Waltke, Pratt, etc. who see virtually all biblical narratives as literal history. Finally, there are those like C.S. Lewis who discern varied genres with varying degrees of historical intent in the biblical narratives, and who see the incarnation, death, and resurrection as the historical linchpin of the Christian faith. Not that my amateur opinion counts for much, but just to report where I am personally, my gut sense very strongly inclines to the latter. And it must be insisted that all the reasons for this point of view--the ancient Near Eastern parallels, the evident differences of genre among various biblical texts--were no creation of Charles Darwin; it may just be that many have been moved to pay more attention to these realities in the wake of the Darwinian controversy.

Now let me share a few thoughts about the second major issue that exposure to the evidence for evolution raises for Christians: the origin of human sin and the validity of ascribing culpability to it. If we have come to be what we are by means of a process of physical evolution, how can we be blamed for moral failings? Indeed, what is the basis for believing in the reality of "right" and "wrong"? Now I have to say that atheistic evolutionists have a lot harder problem speaking of "ought" than theistic evolutionists. But one thing that kept me from finding theistic evolution a satisfying solution for many years was my difficulty in reconciling, e.g., how murder or adultery could be "wrong" given the abundant behavioral analogs in other species and our supposed ancestors.

For some time the best solution that I could come up with was to posit a fall with retroactive consequences. That is to say, I proposed that while Adam and Eve may have been biologically descended from nonhuman ancestors, the special environment in which they were placed and/or the strength of their relationship with God prevented whatever force inherited traits exerted upon Adam and Eve from being experienced by them as temptation to violate God's standards. When they chose to disobey, the whole history of death and pain and suffering became their past, as a fitting consequence of their sin. The fall, on this understanding, had retroactive consequences for all creation, just as the work of Christ had retroactive saving consequences for the saints who came before his advent. So now, ejected from the garden of Eden, and with their relationship with God severed, the tempting force of biologically inherited traits became operative, confirming them in the sad direction they had freely chosen. Some years ago I wrote up this thesis in a few pieces that I sent out to a handful of professors and cyber contacts who regularly discuss faith and science issues. Years later, I found that none other than William Dembski of ID fame is espousing the same view in his article at http://www.designinference.com/documents/2006.05.christian_theodicy.pdf. An Orthodox priest also seems to be arguing the same or a similar thesis in his article at http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/kalormiros-on-the-6-days-of-creation-part-1-and-part-2.

But despite such credentialed and venerable confirmation, I've come to reject my former hypothesis as nearly hopelessly convoluted. Even when I first wrote it up, I put it forth as a possible though admittedly awkward solution. Of course it would never have satisfied a literalist concerning Genesis 2 and 3. But it was intended to address the concerns of those who, like Henri Blocher, interpret Genesis 2 and 3 nonliterally but as nevertheless describing a real historical break with God on the part of the first human pair. (Blocher believes Paul's discussion of the sin of the first and last Adam in Romans 5 necessitates attributing a decisive historical fall from grace to the first male human, but he believes the narrative in Genesis 2 and 3 is not a strictly literal genre.)

I now very tentatively favor what to my mind is a much simpler solution. Simply put, culpable moral failure represents the discrepancy between the ethical behavior of which we are capable, and the behavior which we actually do. The origins and nature of this culpable moral failure, of this break with God and man, may be shrouded in mystery, but they are adequately described in accommodated mythological language for our benefit. Christ is the answer, the basis for our pardon for real culpability, and the means by which we come into greater conformity with God's will for our lives.

On this understanding, somewhere in the evolution of humanity it became possible to act for the common good, and God has declared that such behavior befits a species that reflects his own character. For example, rather than kill the infant offspring of a rival sire, which the males in some primate species do because it gives his own progeny with the same female a greater share of maternal attention and resources, and thus increases the likelihood of leaving a genetic legacy through that lineage, it is possible and desirable and now mandatory for humans to organize themselves and cooperate to mutual advantage. The happiness of God's creatures assumes greater importance than the maximization of genetic legacy at any cost. The last 6 of the Ten Commandments each address this matter, and enjoin win-win rather than I-win-you-lose behaviors among all humans. But our failures in that area are due to a broken relationship with God, which the first 4 of the Ten Commandments address. When we put ourselves and our own interests above God and the stipulations of our creator for how we should relate to our fellow creatures, we tend to be blind servants of the principle of the maximization of genetic legacy at any cost. We raid neighboring tribes so that our progeny will flourish and multiply, rather than theirs. We kill, lie, commit adultery, etc., and all of these things have rationales and cross-species analogs in regard to "evolutionary strategy." The females of many species (including in many species of birds which until recently were thought to be monogamous) pretend to be "faithful," as it were, to the male that is providing resources, but seek covert insemination by stronger or more attractive males, so as to procure resources and ensure traits in their progeny that will best equip them to survive and successfully mate and reproduce. (Now none of this is "consciously" motivated, though the whole concept of "consciousness" is a very complex and debated topic among evolutionary biologists.) But men and women are called to the more cooperative relationships that are summed up in biblical ethics, which, if practiced consistently, would provide plenty enough resources for everybody, and which maximize human happiness rather than the pointless unconscious "goal" of leaving the largest possible genetic legacy.

An exhaustive accounting of the evolutionary means by which God created us, and the reasons for his choosing those means, may be forever inaccessible to us, even though the reality of those means has become accessible to scientific investigation. But the MEANING of our lives is made clear to us both by the innate sense of God that he has somehow instilled in us, and by the special revelation he has given concerning his Son that comprises the entire Bible. It is perhaps no surprise that God would refrain from including a complex and detailed discussion of our evolutionary origins, but would instead adopt the mythological idiom of the cultural milieu of the people through whom he chose to bring forth the Messiah, to communicate what we need to know about our predicament, and to prepare us to receive the revelation of the answer to that predicament in Christ. It is certainly God's prerrogative to choose the languages and cultural idioms though which to reveal himself, and, if evolution is true, it is hard to imagine a clearer or more effective communication to achieve the ends for which Genesis was intended than what we in fact read in Genesis.

It is God, rather than our biological history, that defines the purpose and meaning of our lives. And who is to say that our lives are not so meaningful that audiences of spiritual creatures, angels and demons, cannot be anxiously following the story? Certainly science cannot say this cannot be so. Science cannot make any comment whatsoever on the meaning or ultimate significance of anything. Nor can it be expected to be of much help in understanding spiritual beings whose actions are closely wrapped up in matters of human meaning. And who can say that miracles, that is, marked departures from the way things usually work, cannot occur? Certainly scientists cannot say such things cannot occur. But historical investigation coupled with literary sensitivity can discern credible eyewitness reports that such things have indeed occurred.

Some evolutionary thinkers, and some opponents of the theory of evolution, may object that universal moral standards cannot be validated given the VARIATION in human genes and circumstances. But practically all evolutionary biologists, to my knowledge, are agreed that a number of very signicant traits are universally shared among all individuals in our species, in spite of variation in the degree to which those traits are present and in spite of uncertainty as to the long-term future of those traits' incidence in our distant progeny. And it must be kept in mind that the Bible was written to people occupying only a minute fraction of history. I don't believe there is sufficient reason to doubt that all human beings over the past few thousand years are sufficiently like one another, in constitution, in cultural circumstances, etc. for certain ethical norms to be able to be universally applied. There is certainly a pattern to be discerned in the ethical norms of the Bible--they all favor win-win as opposed to I-win-you-lose strategies of life. As to exceptions, or variations in individual culpability due to varitions in genetic or cultural or other circumstances, the Bible itself gives sufficient scope to that, simply by informing us that it is God alone who knows our hearts and is able to judge, and that judgment will vary according to circumstances that an all-knowing God knows completely.

The Bible gives God's pronouncement concerning the meaning of our lifes for us right now. The last few thousand years may be only a sliver of time out of all the time that has occurred, but it is the sliver that matters to us, and it is a sliver that matters to our angelic observers and to God himself. Science is incapable of saying this cannot be so, and, again, I believe our innate awareness of God and the revelation of Scripture tell us clearly that it IS so. And if our lives have a meaning that God has declared to us, and that our biological history cannot really make much comment on, who is to say that we are not destined for a future physical reality that has some sort of inscrutable continuity with our present lives but which is also radically different and beyond our ability to conceive, a window to which has been given us in the resurrection of Christ? Science cannot say it cannot be so, yet Christ, as proclaimed by his apostles, and foretold by the prophets who prepared the way for him, has declared and demonstrated that it IS so.

Perhaps the tentative solutions I have arrived at satisfy you, or intrigue you, or leave you scratching your head, or disappoint you. (Sherry, I'm particularly interested in what you might have to say, given that you actually have a background in the scientific end of the subject matter.) I suspect that in any case these matters that have exercised us so greatly over the past century and a half will sooner or later become the subject of a settled consensus, and our agonized wrestlings will become a distant memory to future generations, just as we find it difficult to relate to the agonies of those who quarreled and groped for answers in the time of Copernicus.

In the meantime, I'm afraid our generation of Christians will be judged as among the lowest and most decadent in the history of the church, on account of our having broken faith with God and our fellow human beings in the intellectual as well as social realms. We have not faced up to the evidence that has been presented us, choosing instead to take refuge in an obstinate intellectual ghetto. How can we prove them wrong if we do not even read? David N. Stamos, in his book Evolution and the Big Questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters writes: "Ask [anyone who thinks evolution is just a theory] what books by evolutionary biologists they have read.... Invariably the answers are lame." I think it's way past time that we rise to Stamos's challenge. All the while we have thought people believed evolution because they wanted to escape God's authority, we have just ignored the evidence presented in God's book of nature, showing that we are among the most close-minded and tendentious people currently inhabiting the planet. And we have turned a blind eye to the pressing needs of our fellow human beings in an age of pervasive injustice, economic dislocation, and environmental peril.

Steve

Coming to Peace with Science

As we approach the Nov 2008 elections....

"The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it's right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to try to understand each other's point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue."
—Bono Vox of the band U2

Blogs often take on the tone of radio talk shows. It seems their purpose is to showcase how witty one is, and just how awfully good he or she is at being right. If my blog ever takes on that tone, please take a bucket of ice water and pour it over my head, so I'll come back to my senses and remember what it is I'm really after here. The reason I write about the things I do is not because I have all the answers, but because I'm convinced of the importance of the questions, and in expressing views I hope to provoke conversation that might help shed further light. The blog is named "Thinking Aloud" to underscore its provisional, exploratory nature.

Perhaps there is no area more provisional in my thinking than politics. But as we prepare for November and I listen to the opinions of friends and loved ones and others, I thought I'd share a few comments of my own that I hope will serve as food for thought.

First I will discuss what I feel is a highly distorted and harmful way in which religion and politics are interacting in our society. Then I will propose what I feel is the vital contribution religion can and should make. Then, as a test case to see whether people of widely varying opinions can really listen to one another, I will reveal some of the specific thoughts about presidential candidates that are weighing on my mind as I prepare to go the polls this November, and ask you, the readers of this post, to send me your thoughts. Finally, I'll suggest one thing each of us can do to bring about real positive change in America and in the world.

Politics is undeniably important, and politics in the U.S. is especially important, because the actions our government takes affect everyone on the planet.

That said, I wonder if some of us don't tend to greatly exaggerate that importance….

I have to remind myself not to make an idol of politics perhaps more often than most people, due to the peculiar circumstances in which I was raised. Politics was considered extremely important in the family I grew up in. It was the measure of what you stood for ultimately, of which side you were on in the great cosmic battle of good and evil.

At least that is the message that got instilled in me as a child when, six to nine years younger than my older adolescent siblings, I had to take cover night after night amid the heated dinner table crossfire of warring family members of Left and Right. There was my oldest brother, in the thick of the 60s and the new values of a rising generation. And there were my parents who were stalwart Goldwater conservatives. Actually my dad was more moderate than he sometimes sounded. To be sure, in a given moment in the fall of '68 I could hear him making a favorable comment or two about George Wallace, but I'm almost certain he voted for Nixon. There I was, just seven years old, taking all that in. How many other families do you know where the atmosphere would lead a small child to pick up so much on the importance of politics? It seems every family has its share of weirdnesses, and this was one of our many! Forty years later, though we all love each other, whenever the political discussion gets going, to some extent it still seems like our family is a microcosm of the fierce culture wars that are ravaging our land.

Religion also got enlisted in this role of determining which side you are on, but, as I recall it, it came second both in time and in importance to politics. To my recollection, religion only came to the fore in my family's culture war after my parents left their mainline church because of its membership in the National Council of Churches which was supporting Marxist UCLA professor Angela Davis, and after my mom found herself at home in a fundamentalist church that also happened to espouse her conservative politics. Now people today sometimes forget such a time existed, but the bulk of fundamentalist Christians in America at this time were remarkably apolitical—Baptists, it was said, were potentially the most powerful political block in our state, but they only actually went to the polls to vote against legalized gambling and liquor by the drink. Some years later the Christian Right would emerge, awakened by the alarm of Roe v. Wade and finding expression in the Reagan Revolution, with my mom in the thick of it all. Much as I loved my late mom, in retrospect I think this kind of tagalong adjunct role of religion in bolstering a set of political convictions is hugely distortive of religion, and makes it hard for people on either side of the ideological wars of our cultural moment to really consider religious matters in their own right. Christians of most times and places would recognize the idiosyncracy of this moment in American Christianity much more readily than either believers or skeptics who are stuck in the middle of it all.

But does voting Democratic or Republican in the U.S. really merit being elevated to such a level of ultimate, almost religious importance? It's amazing, as I reflect on it, just how much Democrats and Republicans really agree on fundamental matters. Practically all of us favor, whether we admit it or not, some combination of socialism and free market capitalism. On the one side you have Republicans who emphasize the importance of keeping the engines of wealth creation greased. Raise taxes too much, and you'll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, they say. Democrats respond asking who benefits from the golden eggs? Are they getting shared around enough to keep people warm and fed? Few if any Republicans or Democrats take these emphases to the possible extremes, whether libertarian laissez faire on the one hand, or Marxist-Leninist state control of the means of production on the other. I think all but the likes of Ron Paul realize that such positions, though they may seem more airtight philosophically, produce the horrible results of having either a whole lot of golden eggs for too few, or hardly any golden eggs for anybody. Republicans sometimes wax libertarian in their rhetoric, arguing it is morally wrong to rob the industrious haves to help the lazy have nots, but few would argue for abolishing, say, public schools, without which the middle classes would never have emerged from grinding poverty. And even "tax and spend" Democrats are concerned to see industry flourish; they hardly take Cuban socialism as their model.

Now religion is, by its very nature, about matters of ultimate good and evil. And that makes it all the more a colossal and dangerous error to elevate political stances, generally speaking, to this kind of plane. Politics too often and easily boils down to advocating whatever policies favor the interest of one's class or interest group, rationalized by highly tendentious appeals to "principle." To elevate such "principles" to a religious level of ultimate good and evil is not only extremely dangerous, it impedes religion from doing the kind of healing work in the heart for which it is most properly intended.

It is important to understand that the battle between good and evil takes place primarily in the human heart; religion at its best speaks prophetically to the motivations of our hearts. It challenges, often painfully, the false idols (e.g. money, others' approval, power, and innumerable other addictions) on which we are depending for our sense of wellbeing, and places us on more solid ground. It does not, I believe, speak in any comprehensive way to the content of our policy positions, at least not with respect to the relatively moderate positions that generally prevail in our democratic society.

It is interesting to note along these lines that the apostle Paul, faced with the reality of a long-entrenched system of slavery in the Greco-Roman world of his time, did not advocate its violent overthrow. The thought probably never even occurred to his mind, because it would have been obviously foolish and doomed the fledgling Christian movement to extinction. [It perhaps helps to remember that, in spite of occasional brutality, many slaves in the context to which he wrote enjoyed high social prestige, in some cases rivaling that of high level managers today. Today's CEOs have the freedom to retire, but considering the high percentage of them who die shortly after they retire, after losing the thing they lived for, can it really be said that they are less enslaved?] Instead, Paul did something far more powerful and subversive. He told slave-owning Philemon to welcome back the runaway slave Onesimus as "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother." This is how what Jesus calls the "yeast" of his kingdom works to "leaven the lump of dough." It works on this level of our deepest attitudes, prying our hearts loose from slavish dependence on the things of this world that give us temporal advantage and comforts, and redirecting our deepest trust to God for our well-being, and thereby redefining our relationships. Not violence, but undermining their very basis, is the way God works to overthrow the dark powers of this world. Cf. the unstable "feet of iron mixed with clay" in the statue of the world's kingdoms in the book of Daniel, chapter two.

And on this level I think religion can legitimately suggest some worthwhile questions we should ask of ourselves as we go to the polls. To those on the Right it can ask: Are you truly concerned about your poor neighbors in the world, or are you just voting your pocketbook? To those on the Left it can ask: Are you truly concerned about what will keep the system running for everybody in the long run, or just what will benefit your class in the short run?

Some of you may think I'm being trite in talking about examining the motives of the heart. You may think you have much more important things to do than engage in this sort of reflection, maybe things like going out and getting more votes for your candidate. But this kind of reflection really is the important matter! This kind of "heart work" really is the hard work, and the work that matters the most. It requires regular investments of time, over a lifetime. Political action is easy by comparison. It is more important than political action because our natural selfishness is the creeping rot that brings any political-economic order to ruin, however socialistic or market-oriented it may be in its approaches. A rich capitalist can be compassionate or brutal in the use of wealth and power, just as a government worker can serve the public or be a lazy and self-serving apparatchik that drains the system of its effectiveness. If more people challenged their own sure sense of rightness long enough to took an honest look inside with the help of God, we might eventually see more balance and harmony in our society that has been ideologically ripped down the middle. I can't speak for other religions, but Christian religion, at its healthiest and truest to itself, has never been so much about doing the right thing as becoming the kind of person who does the right thing.

Of course our natural tendency is to say, yeah, those folks on "the other side" really need to look within! Let me just ask you this right now: Are you willing to let God really get to you? No matter how you understand God—whether you believe you have some idea of who and what God is, or whether you're not even sure "he" exists, are you willing to let him ask you questions that could challenge and reorient the deepest assumptions and attachments of your heart? Not to suggest I'm doing any better in this department than you, but Jesus clearly said to worry more about the log in our own eyes than the speck in our neighbor's. How many people, Christians or others, really take that seriously? Too often, I'm afraid, squabbling over things like politics (and religion!) is just one of the many smokescreens we use to convince ourselves we are healthy and better than others, and avoid lying down on God's operating table.

Certainly I think there are some issues in politics that cross into a clearly moral realm and invite a direct response from religion. Religion certainly can and must speak to the moral tragedy of the genocide that took place in Rwanda, for example, even if it does not spell out exactly how other nations should go about resolving such problems. Personally I feel that it also speaks to the moral failings of the Republican Party as it was taken over a couple of years or so ago by people with extreme positions on immigration. In my home state ideology and fear trumped human compassion when they passed a law in the fall of 2007 making it a crime to rent housing or otherwise "assist" illegal immigrants. My home city went one up on that, training police officers to do the work of border patrol agents. Literally thousands of families, including many who for years had been stably employed and whose children had graduated from or were close to graduating from public schools, made the decision to leave the state. There are a variety of positions on this issue that I think are morally acceptable, and there are genuinely difficult issues posed by the reality of illegal immigration such as its impact on schools and hospitals. But I believe this wave of furor that has taken ahold of Republicans in my home state and elsewhere imbibes the spirit of ethnic cleansing, and my religion, as I understand it, speaks directly and forcefully to that.

If you ask me to "weigh in" on the current candidates on the ballots, I must confess, I don't have the strongest of opinions this time round. But it might be informative for some of you who find yourselves lined up clearly on one side or the other to hear some of the things that trouble one who is less committed—for the sake of understanding one another, at the very least. Maybe you can share some perspectives that will inform my thinking as well.

But before I go there, I'd just like to warn that if we venture to share our specific opinions with one another like this, we will be taking an important test, a test which too many in our hotly divided nation are failing. The test is whether we can listen to another's point of view, striving (because it takes concerted effort to do this) to put oneself in the other's shoes, and not fly off the handle or write off the other person everytime something he or she says violates our entrenched opinions. Are you ready to take that test? If so, here are my current opinions, and feel free to email me yours….

Honestly, the choices being served up are not making this decision easy for me. Neither an inexperienced yet highly intelligent Barak Obama, nor a highly capable yet aging John McCain, would be my preferred choice for president. Sarah Palin's soccer mom cheer may be winsome to many, and her capabilities may have been underestimated by some in the media, but at the end of the day, I'd rather see a more experienced driver in the driver's seat should McCain die in office.

Now here is where the test could get especially difficult for some, because I have to talk about a very controversial issue that impacts how I feel about the candidates. That issue is abortion. Now we know going into this that whether I'm "pro-life" or "pro-choice," I'm going to offend the strong feelings of roughly one half or the other of the population. Those who share my views may tend to accept what I say more or less uncritically, and include me in the category of "correct-thinking" people they like to surround themselves with. Those who take a view contrary to mine will be tempted to write me off and shy away from ever discussing anything with me again. But, you see, this is the very problem we have in America right now. We are divided into two huge camps, each of which only talks with its own members, usually with the purpose of confirming their existing opinions and prejudices and assuring one another that they are wiser and more with it than all those people in the other camp who are crazy or evil or otherwise not worth listening to. Over time, the walls get thicker and thicker, and we do less and less listening, and so we become extremely and bitterly divided without even gaining a true understanding of the other side's point of view. If you agree that we need to get beyond that, and you're willing to try to listen empathetically to views you have strong feelings about, then, congratulations, you are already doing well in this test! Brace yourself, and read on….

No...wait a minute.... What I have just said does not really do justice to the difficult thing I am asking you to do. Because some of you, when you hear my views on this issue that so divides our country, will be greatly pained. You will feel aghast. You will cry. You will feel a disheartened sinking feeling. You will be sincerely troubled as to how anybody could think the way I do and still be human, unless I am just atrociously ignorant of essential facts of the matter or of the incredible hurt or injustice my views, if carried out, would inflict on so many human beings. You will feel that the dearest principles you stand for are being trampled. All this will be the case to one group or another, no matter which position on this issue I take. I want you to know, that in mentioning my views on this issue, I am not asking those of you who disagree with me to weaken your moral will, to give in out of weakness, to care any less than you do. I am asking you to do something far more costly, far more sacrificial. I am asking you to remain strong in your moral resolve, and yet willingly and humbly submit to this painful process of mutual listening that all of us on both sides of the cultural divide of our day will have to go through if there is to be healing in our land. To listen with genuine empathy to views that run counter to core values involves pain. Bono mentioned the cross of Christ, and that is very much to the point. The easy thing would have been for Christ to go to the cross in anger, in bitterness, in violent resistance. Another easy approach would have been to cower in moral weakness, to surrender to the Romans' base values, to accept and tolerate and legitimize the abuse of the oppressor. But such a response to abuse is not the costly and sacrificial way of love. What Christ did was infinitely more painful and loving. And what I am asking you to do, simply by listening to views that seem to trample what you hold dear, also requires sacrifice, also requires a willing taking on of pain, out of love. And yet, even knowing the pain this is going to cause one group or the other of you, I still ask you to do it, because it is the very thing we all are going to have to learn to do if we are to break down the walls of division in this country. Of course it is my hope that, as we listen to one another, even on topics on which we are hotly divided, that one or the other or both of us will change our minds in regard to some practical policy issues, not by giving up core values, but by discovering that there is another approach to the matter that upholds all the essential values that all sides are seeking to uphold. But even if that does not happen, and we fail to find common ground on a given issue--like the issue of abortion I am about to discuss--the pain of mutual listening is still the way to mutual love and respect. There is no real love if we do not go to the cross for one another. And without that there will be no resurrection, no healing and new life in our land. Are you convinced that is so? If so, and if you are willing and ready, let us proceed....

I believe unborn babies have a greater claim to legal protection than the pro-choice view of the Democratic Party recognizes. Just to say this is to offend many people's strong feelings. Yet, again, if I expressed any other opinion on this, it would offend others' strong feelings, and the honest truth is, I respect and love you all! Just for the record, my position would call for legal sanctions far, far short of what we apply to those who kill adults, because I don't think abortion is premeditated intentional murder, and I don't think the rights and nature of the fetus at a given stage can be established one way or another beyond all reasonable doubt, though the case for their rights is plenty strong enough at the point of conception, and harder to deny with every passing day of development. Precisely due to this uncertainty, I think abortion constitutes a reckless endangerment of human life, so that abortionists should be sanctioned sufficiently to move them to seek alternatives means of making a living. I also think legalized abortion, far from elevating the rights of women, ultimately sends a cheapening and dehumanizing message to the distressed women who are often pressured by boyfriends and parents and oppressive social and family systems into seeking this desperate "solution." There are many women who have had or contemplated abortions in the past who agree with me, even as there are many others who do not. By the way, literally millions of Catholics and others of otherwise Democratic leanings would agree with my policy position, even if they are more dogmatic than I am about the status of the fetus, but these people are given no real voice on the matter in the Democratic Party. There is much more to be said than I can say in this article in defending my position, in exploring how appropriate or effective legal sanctions may be, in exploring what other actions on the part of government and civil society are necessary to really tackle the problem effectively, etc. But in regard to the current candidates, suffice it to say that I found Obama's comments that the Supreme Court's upholding of a law banning "partial birth" abortion was a setback to women's rights to be no less than chilling. What other voiceless constituencies will have their rights trampled on by an Obama administration? Newborn infants? To be sure, cultural circumstances won't let that happen anytime in the foreseeable future, but I'm left wondering what there is in Obama's philosophy that would otherwise prevent it. By being more extreme and intolerant of diversity on the abortion issue than Republicans ever have been, Democrats make it very hard for millions of people to vote for them with a clear conscience. They have that in very large part to thank for their not being in the White House for the last 8 years.

Though abortion is one important issue bearing on my thinking about the current candidates, there are many other important matters weighing on my mind, most of which will occasion less heated controversy. Most readers, I think, will be able to breathe at least a little bit easier in what follows....

Earlier I referred to "voiceless constituencies." But I have to wonder, for all the Republicans' talk about the rights of the unborn, if they really are paying attention to millions of other human beings on the planet whose voices are not being heard. Which Republicans, for example, are lobbying hard to permanently remove all punitive trade barriers against Central American exports, and to pressure the E.U. to lift similar barriers against manufactured goods in Africa, so as to enable producing economies in those countries to get off the ground? Never mind that such policies that stifle development in those countries could lead to future terrorist threats closer to home (and in fact already are fueling illegal immigration and the spread of violent criminal gangs all over the continent)—keeping domestic producers sufficiently appeased is what wins elections now. And who is pushing a concept of "free trade" that recognizes that it can only work for the benefit of all concerned if there is relatively free (albeit screened and regulated) movement of labor as well as goods?

Add to all this the sheer complexity of the issue of the war in Iraq and the world situation, and the difficulty I have personally in keeping up with enough information to be able to form solid opinions of which candidate's proposed policies make the most sense. I know all this may be crystal clear in the minds of some of you, great military and geopolitical strategists that you may be. I see enormous downsides to every conceivable possible option. Push come to shove, though I'm not the least bit competent to make this kind of decision myself, I'd place my bets on doing whatever can be safely done to free up military resources for areas other than where they are currently deployed. Sadly, it's not really a question of avoiding all disasters, it's a matter of deciding which disasters are most important and possible to prevent or contain. For all the rhetoric of the candidates concerning the war, I'm not even entirely sure either of them would really act that much differently in office, once the votes are cast and they are free to adjust their positions to changing circumstances. The question then becomes who has the most sober head. Again, I might have preferred a younger John McCain or an older Barak Obama at the helm….

In sum, there is much I admire, and much I am concerned about, in both major candidates. For the moment, count me undecided…. I could go on, but I think I will stop there in regard to my views of the candidates.

The more I ponder these candidates, the more I'm drawn back to the observation that candidates are only as good as the state of awareness and discussion in the general public concerning policy issues. As we engage in the work of thinking and talking important issues through, we will have even better McCains and Obamas to choose among. And listening empathetically to one another, keeping dialog open, are the habits a society needs to make democracy work.

I would urge that learning to listen empathetically to others, especially those with whom we disagree, is the singlemost important thing we can do to bring about positive change in our country and world. And it all starts with you and me, one interaction at a time….

There are three specific challenges I think we need to overcome if we are to improve our listening skills and raise political dialog in our country to a more civil and productive plane. First, we need to work hard at truly listening even when it offends our strong feelings, without instinctively dismissing the other person as stupid or ignorant or evil. Abortion is a case in point, and if people of pro-choice conviction email me their views, I will face the same challenge of truly listening that I gave them in the discussion above.

Second, I think we need to develop a stomach for greater complexity and nuance in discussions, in what we're willing to read, in the kinds of conversations we're willing to have. Are you frustrated that the media only give us sound bites without substance? Why complain? All they are doing is giving people what they want. Simplistic thinking is really what works best if the goal is to massage one another's prejudices in our own group while putting down and deriding all the "wrong-thinking" people in the other group. Meanwhile, certain media pundits see their ratings and personal incomes soar by catering to the prejudices of one group or the other, being sure to keep things as simplistic and heated as possible. But reaching across the divide with meaningful discussion will require contemplating more complex models of reality. Embracing greater complexity will also reduce the power of special interests, by making it more difficult to manipulate the public with slogans and rallying cries.

To give an example of this need to embrace greater complexity, often the disagreements I have with people on the "Left" boil down to differences in our understandings of how the economy works. The frustrating thing is that most such people I talk to don't have any interest in contemplating policy outcomes in the light of economic theories. The truth is, my understanding of economics may be way off base, but policies will obviously fail to achieve their intended outcomes if they run afoul of economic reality, and the only way anybody is going to be able to lead me to a more realistic understanding of economics is if they are willing to enter the discussion at some level of complexity and show how their understanding better accounts for things. As another example, often the disagreements I have with people on the "Right" concern the environment. And the frustrating thing is that most such people I talk to do not seem to have any interest in really engaging with what people in the mainstream scientific community are saying. They arrive at their foregone conclusions, bolstered by secondhand accounts of minority view scientific studies funded by organizations with a vested interest.

It may be objected that it is impossible for everybody to gain an understanding of such complex matters. But this brings us to the crucial dilemma of democracy, does it not? There is no denying that the amount and kinds of knowledge required by voters to make intelligent decisions is formidable. Yet the alternative of ceding all power to an elite intelligentsia is not an acceptable one. Though their decisions may be better informed, they will not serve the interests of the society at large, they will serve the interests of their own elite! There is no perfect solution to this, only a relative one—the better informed the public is, the better government we will get, and the more power the people truly will have.

We all see through a glass darkly, and can only do the best we can in this regard. We all have limited time and mental space for pursuing the knowledge we need for our careers, for our relationships, for our roles as citizens in a democracy. But if we at least remain open to having our current thinking challenged by the insights and perspectives of others, we can at least grow and arrive at much more balanced approaches than if we remain locked inside entrenched opposing camps that do not even seek to understand one another. And we may then become more willing to engage with others' concerns at the same level of complexity with which we routinely tackle the concerns that are closest to our hearts (e.g. re our careers, or the particular angles of policy issues we're naturally most prone to dwell on).

Third, if we find that the only voices we routinely hear are those within "our camp" which merely confirm our current thinking, we need to proactively seek opportunities to listen to people whose thinking is different from ours. Five steps: 1. Let's each have a conversation with ourself and challenge our own tendency to be "wise in our own eyes" (Proverbs 26:12). What factors may be contributing to my own biases, such as socioeconomic status, personal history, my self-centered focus, etc.? In what ways have my life circumstances and prejudices narrowed the field of voices that can speak meaningfully to me? 2. Let's read some articles from a point of view very different from ours, and ask ourselves, What are the valid driving concerns that are important to the author and others who share his or her views? Why have those concerns never been as important to me as they are to them? Is there any good reason I should not consider those concerns important? Third, find one or two people who typically hold a different viewpoint to have a conversation with, and resolve to do nothing more than listen. At some point be sure to ask the person, "You know, in the past I have not thought the way you do on these matters, and I'm just wondering if there are some blind spots, some things about my circumstances or background that I'm not consciously aware of, that have been influencing me and causing me to be biased. What do you think some of those things might be?" 5. If and only if the other person asks to hear your opinions, schedule a time to meet again. But tell the person, "I would really like at least a day or two to process what you have just told me before I share my views. Thanks for helping me think things through from angles I had not considered." If you can, do this before November 4, 2008. More importantly, keep doing it, as a regular habit, over the next four years! Can you think of anything more powerful that we can do to make our society healthier and happier?

Back to the role of religion, I can't help but wonder.... Might our ability to humbly listen to others be an "acid test" of how well religion is functioning in our lives? On the other hand, if our religion makes us proud and arrogant and stuck in our prejudices, might we be missing the whole point? God help us!

As we prepare to go to the polls, I'd just like to leave all my loved ones and fellow citizens on each side of the great divide with one final thought: If you vote differently than I do, you will still have my respect. I will not conclude that you are ignorant or an idiot, just because you think differently from me. You are all in "my group." Nor will I suspect you of being in league with the dark forces of the universe. I hope you will treat me the same way. In the end I hope we can all try to better understand and extend a bit of charity to one another.

When the elections are over, we should all give each other a tearful hug and spend some time on the lighter side of life. Rumor has it that George W. Bush has taken up dancing. (See http://www.miniclip.com/games/dancing-bush/en.) Maybe we should do the same.

[Now listening to: "Hands," by Jewel.]

As we approach the Nov 2008 elections....

Sound science and sound biblical interpretation are the means and the end

I am refreshed, as I reflect on these matters, by a growing sense that answers to these questions of biological origins in relation to understanding the Bible and its teachings concerning moral culpability and redemption are not only solvable, the solutions are likely right under our nose, even if we have not consciously clarified them in our own minds or agreed upon them! Of course I can't prove this to the satisfaction of skeptics, short of actually arriving at solutions and clearly articulating them. But my intuition that solutions will be found is nevertheless compelling to me personally in the light of historical precedent and the pattern of my experience with God. I suspect a later generation of Christians will see the solutions with such greater clarity that they will have to struggle to put themselves in our shoes in our moment of history to even understand what the fuss was all about, just as we puzzle over the difficulties Christians had in an earlier era in seeing that the Bible is completely compatible with a Copernican understanding of the universe. No doubt the role of extra-biblical assumptions, smuggled in from a relatively recent intellectual milieu that is very foreign to that of the biblical writers, will be identified as the culprit, just as we see very clearly today how the entrenched dominance of Ptolemaic astronomy clouded people's understanding of biblical texts that we see today as obviously poetic.

But even if I have high hopes that a day of greater clarity will surely come, this does not mean there is no reason to strive to hasten that day by means of serious inquiry and reflection. What drives me in this regard is my growing awareness that the Bible has something rich and essential to say to people right now, and this perceived disconnect between the Bible and science, based largely on misconceptions that Christains themselves have been perpetuating, is preventing many people from exploring that.

Genuine clarity will only come as a result of greater sensitivity to the biblical text; genuine solutions must help us read the Bible more on its own terms. And skeptics and Christians alike would do well to note that this is exactly what happened in the case of the Copernican controversy. At that time some people were hung up on Psalm 93:1b ("The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved"), a verse that people today understand as poetic imagery that cannot reasonably be pressed into the service of defending a geocentric universe. But the metaphorical interpretation is not accepted today merely because it is more compatible with science; it is accepted in the light of the nature of the text itself. The whole psalm is saturated with metaphor, as is obvious from phrases before and after such as "the LORD is robed in majesty" and "holiness adorns yours house...." "The world...cannot be moved" is no more to be taken literally than we are to understand the LORD as wearing literal clothes or living in a literal house. Employing such a text to support a particular view of astronomy actually detracts from the intended force of the text in inspiring a sense of awe and wonder concerning the God of the universe! If we had grown up hearing constant appeals to this verse to support Ptolemaic astronomy, we might have more difficulty seeing this. But once the metaphorical reading has had a chance to grip us, there's no turning back, it speaks more authentically and with greater power, and it becomes easy for us to see how the concerns to defend a geocentric universe were imposed agenda alien to the concerns of the biblical writer.

Skeptics should note that the Bible was exonerated in that case. Certain interpretations of the Bible were laid aside, but the Bible itself came through unscathed. Science prompted a revisiting of the biblical text, and that reflection led to a more natural and sensitive reading of the biblical text. There may be much about commmunities of biblical faith that turn skeptics off; but does not the Copernican episode at least raise the possibility that the real problem is not the Bible itself? And if the problem is not the Bible itself, might a more sensitive reading of it tell us something very much worth hearing today?

Christians should note the rabbit trails that Christians of an earlier era spent enormous energy in pursuing. The more invested they were in defending long-reigning Ptolemaic astronomy against Copernicus, the longer their misreading of the holy text was allowed to persist. But lest we proudly upbraid them for not seeing the obvious, might not a future generation reprove us for extrabiblical assumptions and agenda that have muddled our own reading of other biblical texts? And might there be people--whom we deem the "enemy," from whom we are mutually alienated on account of the battle over Darwinism and other issues in our current cultural divide-- who we really NEED to interact with in order to arrive at sounder understandings of the Bible?

Sound science and sound biblical interpretation are the means and the end

What about a "retroactive fall"?

I can bask in vain self-congratulation now that one as noteworthy (or notorious, depending on your point of view) as William Dembski has articulated the same understanding of humanity's fall into sin as I once conceived and tentatively put forth in a short paper some years ago, to wit, the idea of a first sin that had retroactive consequences on the creation. See http://www.designinference.com/documents/2006.05.christian_theodicy.pdf. (An Orthodox priest advocates essentially the same view, if I understand him correctly, at http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/kalormiros-on-the-6-days-of-creation-part-1-and-part-2.) Thanks go to Kirk Jordan and his web page http://startledbyexistence.squarespace.com/beyond-nature for the trail of links that led me to Dembski's article. 

Dembski's paper and mine both posited a special environment in which no temptation could be felt, thus allowing a free decision of the first humans to sin or not sin. Since God is beyond time and knows the future, it is possible that the world of death and cruelty that we live in could have flowed causally from the first humans' sin, even though its emergence preceded that event in time. Dembski argues that such a preemptive action of God is an appropriate response to human sin, in order to demonstrate sin's gravity so that we might come to our senses and seek salvation from it.

But is the idea of a retroactive fall really satisfying? To my limited mind, I find it plausible, and see no insuperable difficulties in establishing its consonance with biblical exegesis and science. (And it does NOT require acceptance of other ideas that Demski has advanced elsewhere concerning design and irreducible complexity; the solution works with theistic evolutionary understandings that do not require special interventions of divine creative energy other than that which underlies and sustains the entire process.) And, even though it's just one possible solution, the very existence of "one possible solution" has enormous implications. By disarming the common casual assumption that science has "ruled out" the Bible and its ability to speak healing truth into our modern context, people may perhaps consider the Bible and its claims with less negative bias. Still, I can't help but wonder if there may be simpler and more compelling solutions than this one that Dembski and others and I have proposed, and that is something I hope to explore in future posts, if God lets me live long enough and grants me sufficient clarity to articulate them. 

Dembski's article is in any case well worth reading, because in surveying options he considers inadequate and in articulating his own views, he puts the reader in touch with what the important questions really are concerning science and the Bible, whether or not one is happy with his answer. The real issue that needs attention is not the question of the "days" of the creation narrative in Genesis, which no more require a literal interpretation than the "throne" on which God "sits" in similar passages portraying the declaration and execution of the divine will upon the earth. A matter that needs more attention, and that not only has bearing on the Bible's reception in the world today, but also has sweeping watershed implications for the future of ethics and law and self-understanding and culture in the decades to come, is the question of accounting for moral culpability, and the need to be delivered from it, given an evolutionary understanding of our biological history.

One very wonderful thing that I take away from reading Dembski's article is the sweet REALIZATION that life in this world of sin and death and disease as we now experience it is not our ultimate destiny or purpose. I experience this realization as a wave of divine refreshment sweeping over me, as the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead works through even Scriptures that we do not fully understand.

What about a "retroactive fall"?