I received and email from The Clergy Letter Project this week asking me to sign their letter affirming that science (evolution) and theology can get along. They have also published an op ed in the Huffington Post which may give readers a bit more background. My first reaction was, “Why should it even be necessary for us to have to do this? Of course the two are compatible, even complementary. Why would it be necessary to write a letter stating the obvious?” As such, my first inclination for a title here was, “Evolution, Christianity, and Stupidity” but that would not go over very well, me being an ordained Episcopal Deacon…
But these are times that try men’s souls and the slaughter of one of the jewels our western heritage and the centuries of biblical scholarship that Christians have labored over and loved for centuries by mindless “literal interpretation” does indeed try my soul. I have read the Bible cover to cover multiple times and the designated bits of it to the congregation every Sunday for over three decades. My favorite books are Job and Ruth (the source of my wife and my wedding vows). I have also read everything I could find about it over more than those 30 years of ministry. The only book I have re-read more often is The Lord of the Rings but then, I had young sons to read to every night and fighting Orcs is much more fun than Pharisees.
We all should be familiar with the literalist interpretation by now. God created the world in six days, and took Saturday off. The literalists may fumble about the length of days, including the lame fabrication that maybe a day is really an “eon” or an “age”. Atheists love to hold this view up to (justified) ridicule but they also miss the point. Both creation stories (yes, there are two) in Genesis have nothing to do with biology, documentable history, or paleontology. So let’s try a different “translation” to make the point.
Genesis 1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.
God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light. God saw that the light was good and said, “Now I can see what I am doing.” God had done this before and remembered how much work it was the first time as He had labored for six whole days making stuff by hand. He also remembered how the earth had evolved last time to produce a lot of good things like Ikea so He said to Himself, “I’ll make it easier this time.” And he reached for his Ikea catalog. He got online and ordered up everything he needed for next day delivery. Evening came and morning came: the first day.
Everything arrived on the second day and God saw all the boxes he had ordered and saw they were in good condition and delivered early enough in the day for him to get started right away. This was going to be easier.
...
Five days later, God had finally assembled everything. He was sweaty and his thumbs were really sore. He looked out and saw his creation and could see that it was of good quality. He also had a huge pile of the first (but fully recyclable) packaging. And He had a couple of coffee cans full of angle wrenches, funny looking screw things, and lots of extra wooden dowels. Evening came and morning came: the sixth day.
His creation was indeed good so God rested from his labors (and sore wrists). On the seventh day he had Swedish meatballs and gravy for dinner and enjoyed all that he had made.
This may not be how you remember it in Sunday School but it is correct and faithful to interpretations of the original in spite of my taking liberties with the translation. The original (Jewish) authors wanted to make two important points in writing this first chapter. The rest is extra although very familiar to their ancient audience. But what about all the things He made that I truncate away in those five days? What about kangaroos and fish? That is all common Mesopotamian creation myth. I could get the same list and order from my grandson when he was five years old who would be a perfect candidate because he is very bright, outrageously creative, and has a strong affinity for the “magical”. In other words, the best science in 900 BCE was equivalent to a smart 21st century five year old. I could sit down with him and ask questions like, “What came first?” and “What came next?” and get the same result as the Babylonian myth or its adaptation by the Jewish authors in exile.
So let’s get to the core of this “adaptation”. The authors added two important things. First, as I retain in my “translation”, over and over again, “And God said it was good.” This is an important distinction because the prevailing dualistic (Manichaeist, Gnostic) view of the physical world at that time was that it was imperfect and evil. Not that we don’t have that attitude today. Their important point was and still is that “creation”, i.e. the world we live in is good. It is beautiful and benevolent.
We still have that problem today. The prevalent attitude seems to be creation, the earth, is of little use beyond digging it up for a few bits of wealth and for dumping our rubbish; that our economy and social world will always be dog-eat-dog and made up of good (us) and evil (them). The Jewish and long held Christian point of the story is that the creation in which we live is good and should be a valued gift from God, not turned into a dump or feared and fought.
The second point is in the enumeration of seven (a “perfect” number since ancient times) days. In particular, there are six days of work and one day of rest. If you are a slave, you don’t get a day of rest, even if it is you yourself who makes yourself a seven day a week slave. The life of a slave is one long monotony followed by death. Take a day off and enjoy and appreciate your life and the world you live in. Otherwise, what is the point of living? A significant part of being human is to have the time to reflect on and study to understand the life we have been blessed with. All Genesis asks is that we devote 14% of that time away from striving toil and be in spirit regenerating time.
This is a far cry from the literalist rubbish that passes itself off as the absolute word of God. These may sound like harsh words from a supposed man of God but I confess that there is so much good insight about our beautiful world and the lives we could live in the Christian tradition that gets lost in ridiculous arguments based on ignorance. We could get into a whole series of articles on how and why literalism came about (in the mid-1800s in the U.S.A.) but we can do that at another time. The sad thing is these ideas are not only bad science, they are also incredibly bad theology.
This first creation story is great literature, not the The History Channel. Its passages, my favorite image being, “… and God’s spirit hovered over the water.” (New Jerusalem) have inspired (in-spirited) countless creations of art and literature and have provided centuries of spiritual insight and sustenance ever since — only to be cheapened by hacks. Yes, it is myth. But the true purpose of myth is to reach the deep truth inaccessible through factual data. It may sound like history just like The Lord of the Rings may sound like history but both are really about the timeless human condition, that in which we live today.
There is another creation story (Gn 2:5-3:24) about Adam (Hebrew for “man” as in humanity or “everyman”) and Eve (Hebrew for “mother”). This is even better when we can get past the political nonsense and the wildly out of control doctrines about “Original Sin” which, by the way, was St. Augustine of Hippo’s (cir 430 CE) idea, a radical change to church doctrine prior to his time. This creation story is also myth but it is a tightly crafted one, wasting few words, about the human condition and what coming of age as a human being is all about. What follows is my own interpretation from many years of reflection and study. In other words, it is but one path, my path to understanding and you may see things I don’t. I will leave most of the detail as an exercise for the reader and only sketch a few things from what I’ve learned.
We introduced Adam and Eve, not individuals with Social Security cards but generic, primeval man and woman. But there are more characters (besides God going on walk-about in the garden). The serpent is a interesting character. As Joseph Campbell points out, the serpent is Life with its power over both life and death. It sheds its skin which has been understood to be renewal or rebirth. It also takes life with its venom (remember this was the ancient middle east and toxicology was at a mystery filled five year old level too).
The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, or as my Dad used to say, “Soup to nuts”, i.e. all of knowledge, is the center of the garden (orbus mundi) for a reason. If mankind wants to stay in the Garden of Eden… The observation that “Ignorance is bliss” says it all. Note that life teaches the mother who then teaches the man. Yea, and he blames her… Where have we heard that before?
Well, they start to learn about the wider world. And what is the first thing they do? They hide and “cover their nakedness”. Anyone who remembers their puberty years (sorry to bring that up) or has raised children through those years knows enough about growing up to get the point. Girls who used to run around the house and yard in their buck nakedness are now obsessing over their looks, covering up, and locking themselves in the bathroom for hours. The same applies to boys. I have five sisters and we had one bathroom. I also lived in military barracks with no privacy in the latrines so I have a deep understanding of at least this topic.
Puberty is also the age at which we start to learn about the wider world and the consequences of our actions. We are also old enough to be confronted with death. Most of my six paternal uncles died during the time I was in eighth grade through high school. I was a sophomore when my cousin, who was two years ahead of me, was called to the Principals office and it was announced over the school PA that he was sent home and we were to take time out from class for prayer because his Dad, my uncle had died. We leave the innocent garden of our childhood and we know we can’t go back. As Adam and Eve (we) leave, off in the distance, we can see the Tree of Eternal Life, knowing that like everyone before us, that is not going to happen. We all die.
The purpose of myth is to make sense of living by way of a story, frequently from a no longer accessible time. I find this particular one moving. It has helped me make sense of the turmoil of my growing up an awkward, skinny kid. These are stories that were written by older adults who had the perspective of age, something I’m just starting to glimpse.
What winds my clock is is the tawdry cheapness and shallowness of theological understanding that is so prevalent in the teachings of certain vocal “Christian” leaders. I fully realize that church attendance is declining and has been since almost before I was born. Those of us who have signed the letter have been very aware of the diminishing role of church in American life for a long time. Speaking in my own tradition (denomination), the Episcopal Church has made great effort to renew that which had gone stale and rediscover that which has been neglected for far too long. Many other traditions have also entered the struggle to re-examine what it means to live a religious and spiritually centered life in these changing times. This is hard work but we, as humans, are evolving, maybe slowly in a physical and biological sense, but we are evolving quite fast rate at a social, psychological, and spiritual level. Those of us invested in the tradition that brought us this far need to evolve the tradition so that it continues to contribute to a way forward rather than be a just a signpost in the rear view mirror.
Unfortunately, some of my colleagues cannot or will not adapt. The Scopes trial in 1925 was a severe blow to the “literalism” at the base of American Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity, something that many Evangelicals still fuss over as shown by the continued indirect and veiled promotions of “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”. As these groups sense at some level that their influence and credibility in American life is slipping away, they have become more strident, somewhat intellectually compromised, and politically assertive. Please note that I am critical of my colleagues, not the folks in the pews. Leadership has its price in responsibility. Many of the people who come through the door to our churches are vulnerable, seeking sanctuary, and we have a responsibility to not only assist them but to do no harm. They are not pawns and numbers to inflate our own power and control.
This, in my view, is more than just unfortunate. Our American culture is richer and blessed by the diversity of the all world’s cultures that have migrated here, bringing their unique religious and spiritual traditions with them. I rejoice that this blending has created things like the Vietnamese Pho, burger, and biker bar near my home, a combination that still staggers my mind. A Taco truck on every corner is not something to be feared but something to rejoice in.
Those of us from a European heritage can also rejoice in our western cultural tradition, not in a dominant-over-everything-else-way, but as a significant contribution we can offer to the mix. As one of my English professors wisely told us: “If you want to understand the language of modern American and English literature, read Shakespeare. If you want to understand Shakespeare, read the Bible.” The very language we use everyday is steeped in those linked works. The same linkage applies to the literature of the other European cultures. They may not the only and best value but they are valuable beyond measure none the less.
This is why we have to write and sign such a letter. It is a shame that we have to but those of us who have taken the time and effort to study and understand our western Christian contribution to that marvelous blend called America need to speak up for that ancient tradition. Otherwise, a valuable part of our culture and spiritual center as a country and people will be lost, debased and drowned out in the clamor and noise of just one flailing and increasingly shallow and compromised portion of that heritage. I’m sorry to be blunt but as it expresses itself today, American Evangelicalism is just a less than 200 year old, in many parts stunted, offshoot of a richer 3000 year old tradition. I have signed the letter and have spoken up here because it would be a tragic loss if that ancient tradition, so devalued by the ranting currently going on under the guise of “religion”, is lost to our diverse culture. So many of our people wisely reject those who are doing the ranting and I agree with a lot of what #emptythepews critiques. I cannot argue with much of their advocated action. In many respects, it is long overdue. But at the same time, hacking down the whole tree because some of the branches are diseased only leaves us out in the hot sun with no cool and refreshing shade. Cutting us off completely from our past cuts us off from our future.
Hence, I have signed.
Peace.
In full disclosure:
Although I was not a very good student in my youth, I was fortunate to have a good Jesuit education in high school in spite of myself. When I grew up (after 4 years in the Air Force), the Jesuits had another crack at me at the university level and this time it took. Regardless what one may say about the Catholic Church, the Jesuits, in my experience, are very good and rigorous in their calling to be educators. They have been doing it for 500 years. They demand intellectual rigor and did not suffer fools (like me) lightly. I also have a degree in Computer Science (UCSC 1974) and worked over 40 years in the Internet and systems engineering field. If I had been born 25 years later, I may have studied Computational Biology which didn’t exist at the time, hence I messed around with TCP/IP and UNIX/Linux instead. I think working on the code and genetics for DNA sequencing would be really cool. I also have a Bachelors in Theological Studies from the School for Deacons, Berkeley, CA. I will readily admit that my knowledge of C and GO is better than my Hebrew or Greek… Yes, it has been an interesting mix.
So I come to this topic from both ends and it is frustrating to read/hear the silliness that comes from the authority figures of American Evangelical Christianity. Note that their literalism is uniquely American. Nowhere else do their ideas about “creationism”, or “the rapture” appear unless their missionaries traveled there to preach it.