No Monkey's Uncle
It is true that funerals bring families together, and my mother's memorial was no exception. I saw family members and friends of... that I hadn't seen for years, maybe decades. One of these was my Uncle Jack, who is actually my cousin, but who questions family nomenclature, anyway?
My Uncle Jack and I have started an e-correspondence. He sent me the following the other day:
Man's inhumanity to man throughout history is: A) the result of evolution; or B) the product of intelligent design?
I wanted to share my response in this space. I replied:
Yes, where does Evil originate? There is a tension about this in the Bible, too. In Genesis, there are at least three factors that go into the Fall: 1) human behavior, that is, Adam and Eve did eat; 2) God's Creation itself: the Garden had both the Tree with the Forbidden Fruit and the Snake-- thus temptation and the tempter were part of it; and 3) everyone was "allowed" to play their roles, which is to say, God did not step in to keep the eating from happening, nor to keep the Snake from tempting!
Of this I have (at least!) two thoughts: a) when we pray the prayer Jesus taught us, we pray, "lead us not into temptation;" evidently there is some quality in God which does! and b) although there may be arguments for either of your options, Jack, for the origin of Evil [on the one hand, the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" has led to its own "man's inhumanity to man," while on the other hand, if we believe as many of our Founding Fathers believed (they were Deists, not really Christians per se), that God got the world going then kept "hands off" so that we are responsible for our own behavior], I happen to believe that we can affirm at least one "blessing" in Evil: it is at least the background and maybe the raison d'etre of what we've come to know as "God's Redeeming Love!"
I take this to mean that, regardless of the ills we suffer from and visit upon one another (and even ourselves), in the End, we are understood in some divine fashion, and thus even our worst actions bring about some Good-- thanks be to God!
I'd be interested in what you, the Reader, thinks, too. How would you have answered my Uncle Jack?
Blessings...
My Uncle Jack and I have started an e-correspondence. He sent me the following the other day:
Man's inhumanity to man throughout history is: A) the result of evolution; or B) the product of intelligent design?
I wanted to share my response in this space. I replied:
Yes, where does Evil originate? There is a tension about this in the Bible, too. In Genesis, there are at least three factors that go into the Fall: 1) human behavior, that is, Adam and Eve did eat; 2) God's Creation itself: the Garden had both the Tree with the Forbidden Fruit and the Snake-- thus temptation and the tempter were part of it; and 3) everyone was "allowed" to play their roles, which is to say, God did not step in to keep the eating from happening, nor to keep the Snake from tempting!
Of this I have (at least!) two thoughts: a) when we pray the prayer Jesus taught us, we pray, "lead us not into temptation;" evidently there is some quality in God which does! and b) although there may be arguments for either of your options, Jack, for the origin of Evil [on the one hand, the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" has led to its own "man's inhumanity to man," while on the other hand, if we believe as many of our Founding Fathers believed (they were Deists, not really Christians per se), that God got the world going then kept "hands off" so that we are responsible for our own behavior], I happen to believe that we can affirm at least one "blessing" in Evil: it is at least the background and maybe the raison d'etre of what we've come to know as "God's Redeeming Love!"
I take this to mean that, regardless of the ills we suffer from and visit upon one another (and even ourselves), in the End, we are understood in some divine fashion, and thus even our worst actions bring about some Good-- thanks be to God!
I'd be interested in what you, the Reader, thinks, too. How would you have answered my Uncle Jack?
Blessings...
posted by TRXTR | 8:14 AM
3 Comments:
I'm not a theologian and I don't have the answer, but I like to ask questions.
Does evil exist as the antithesis of God? Does it have opportunity because we are created with free will? Does the freedom to choose open the door to evil choices - those being in direct contrast to the nature, and commands, of God?
God freely chose to create beings with freedom of choice. The angels had freedom and Lucifer chose to rebel, seeking to set himself up higher than God. He acted in direct opposition to God. The result was the entrance of Satan into the world. Did he bring evil with him? Or is the opposite of God - choosing against Him - the door to evil?
Is it God "leading us into temptation" or is it our desire for things which it "appears" He is withholding from us? James writes that no one can say they are tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself tempts no one. It is the lust within us that tempts us and the choice to pursue our lust that leads to sin and death, as it did for Adam & Eve.
Eve looked and saw that the tree was ..."desirable to make one wise." It appears she chose to eat hoping to attain the wisdom of God that she desired and had been tempted to believe was being withheld from her. Her "lust" was for the knowledge God possessed and was not sharing with her. Adam was there with her and he also chose to eat. God "allowed" both Adam and Eve to freely choose their course of action. I don't think it's as much about the tree as it is about God and their decision whether or not to trust and obey Him. They chose not to.
It seems with both Lucifer and Adam & Eve that when they chose in opposition to God, evil entered. Is man's inhumanity to man the result of man choosing contrary to God, who is Love?
I appreciate your redemptive view of what happens to us in a fallen world as being the backdrop for God's redeeming love and for some "good" coming as a result. Gain out of loss holds hope for the future.
Well, FT, no theologian, huh? You are wrestling with some very significant issues-- in quite a coherent way, theologically! Your questions are good, solid questions. And your reasoning equal to your questions.
Let me say, humans have been thinking about why the world works the way it does, and thus the origin of Evil, and the meanings of good and evil, for as long as they could look at themselves in the mirror-- even before there were actual mirrors to look in! I have looked at Evil (or simply in my uncle's terms, "man's inhumanity to man") in a number of different ways in the course of my life. And since this is a "blog" and not a book, I'm only wrestling publicly with those questions again. I pretend no definitive answers-- for myself and others. So I am glad to read how you come at this, for you.
What I've found has been true for me is that my answers to the core questions about God and the human condition change. At one point in my life, one answer works for me. At another point, I come to another conclusion.
What transcends and endure are the questions.
And you ask some very good ones, especially in your first paragraph. So what I would wonder is: What do your answers mean to you? How do they explain you to yourself? How do they help you understand God and other people, better?
I am grateful for the conversation!
Blessings...
Ah, you make me think to ask the questions again and this time for personal reflection. It’s often
easier to ponder my questions as they pertain to an external view than to identify their
significance to the internal workings of my relationship with God, myself and others. That will
take a little more time.
I appreciate that you wrestle with questions "again" and that as your life changes, so do the answers. I think life brings experiences that require we ask the questions more than once and thus creates opportunity for growth and learning without losing or giving up the qualities our previous answers gave us. (Unless we choose to let them go!) I think many hold tightly to the first answer they receive and thereby limit their lives to the accompanying results. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time and season for every purpose under heaven. The seasons change and so do we. And God is the God of new beginnings. Sometimes, the new beginning is the result of painful endings, but other times I think it can simply be a new answer to an old question.
As you said, ‘what transcends and endure are the questions.’ God asks questions and many (all?)
require looking inward for answers -- “Adam, where are you?,” “Hagar, where have you come
from and where are you going?" “Elijah, what are you doing here?” I will reframe my original questions with a view to gaining personal insight from them.
Thank you for the dialog ... and for the questions.
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