A year and a half ago my father died of cancer. I got the news at 7am in the morning and quickly dressed and made my way home. As I drove up I-45 to my parent's house where my family was, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful the day was. The sky was a clear bue with a few whispy clouds, the sun was rising brilliantly over the horizon, my favorite on-air KUHF personalities were chatting about the day's news-everything seemed the same and yet for my father this day did not come. It was a weird feeling to recognize that something monumental had occurred in my life, and that my own father's life had been extinguished, yet the world didn't even bat an eye. It carried on as usual.
When "important" people die the world takes notice, like when Heath Ledger died last year-the world noticed, yet because my father was just an average person who spent his whole life working behind a cubicle, a few people miss him but for most the world seemed absolutely the same. My father mattered to few people, but in the grand scheme of things his life really didn't matter all that much. It harsh to say that, but in a world of 6 billion people it's just grim reality. But that's not the point of this blog, the point is that sometimes I wonder if the world doesn't feel the same way about Christianity. Do we matter?
The more I seek to understand my faith and how it fits into the world I feel compelled to look at it through the lens of story. I have found no better or more comprehensive way of understanding the differences between a Christian and a non-Christian than by looking at their differences through story. Stories have origins and those origins dictate the meaning of the rest of the story. Stories have characters whose personalities, traits, roles, relationships, abilities, and motives drive the story. Stories have plot development, significant points in the story where different strands come together. Stories have meaning. We implicitly derive values, understanding, wisdom, truth, warnings, etc. from the stories we hear. Stories have conflict. No story moves forward without some conflict or challenge to overcome. Stories have heroes and villains. Stories have endings. There is some point towards which all of the plot is driving. What the characters themselves believe that point to be is what drives the plot. Stories inform values and beliefs. That last one is probably the most import aspect of story as it relates to knowing God. The way to understand different cultures and even on a smaller scale, individual people is to understand the story that they are living in.
Every person is different and every culture is different, but for a second I want to talk about the two stories most important to me: the story of God believed by Christians and the story of the world believed by many in my culture.
Origins
For Christians
For Christians the origin of their story begins with God creating the heavens and the earth, filling the earth with all manner of life, and creating Adam and Eve in his image. This part of the story is found in the Christian Bible, in the first three chapters of Genesis and is fundamental to everything else the Christian believes. Like in the lives of those who believe the story of the world, the beginning of the story for Christians affects everything they do and believe on a daily basis.
Plot
The Bible begins with God. It makes no attempt to explain God's existence or God's reasons for creating the world. It merely says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." From there the story goes on to describe 6 days of creation. God creates the land by pushing back the waters of the earth, he creates the stars, the moon, the sun, all vegetation, all animals, all birds, all insects, everything we know and see in the world is created by God. On the final day, the sixth day, God creates man. The Bible says "male and female, He created them, in His image." We were created by God in His image. That's the only creature described in the entire story as being made in God's image. After creating them God puts the man, Adam, and the woman, Eve, in the Garden named Eden. The garden was meant to be their home. God gave Adam and Eve on command, one rule, so to speak. They were not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
This is just the very beginning of the whole story, yet the entire rest of the story is born out of this first three chapters of Genesis.
Meaning
In terms of meaning, this story of origin for the Christian is jam packed. First of all the story tells us that the physical world has been created by someone, by someone the Bible calls, "God." Just as we know in our own lives, things that are created are created for a purpose. The origin story in the Bible tells Christians, "Your world has meaning. The things you see and touch and feel and smell are loaded with purpose, with meaning, with intent." The person who wrote down God's story of creation really wanted us to get this which is why, over and over after each day of God making stuff, God declares, "It is good." God was satisfied in what He had created. It has value, meaning, purpose.
It also tells us that human beings have a unique part to play in this story. Unlike the rest of creation we are made in God's image. We alone are instructed by God to rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air and over all animals and vegetation. We are meant to manage God's created world and just as images reflect back the original, we were created to reflect God's goodness and majesty and love and godliness and nature. This give great value to being a person. Any person. I mentioned earlier how when my dad died the world kept going. The sun rose, people went to work, hardly anyone knew or cared. Yet the Christian story that orginates here in Genesis tells us that because human beings are made in God's image, all of us have value, all of us are significant. Think of it this way. Prince Harry and Prince William, the sons of Prince Charles and Diana, are significant because of whose image they bear. The bear the British image of royalty. They are descended from a line kings and queens for over 600 years. They are flesh and blood just like you and me. Nothing is particularly special or unique about them in relation to me, except for the fact that they belong to the British royal family. They were born into nobility, into royalty, and because of that their lives are seen to be of great value and signfigance. In the same way understanding that all humans are made in the image of God gives each and every human being diginity, nobility, value, worth, infinitely more than that which is derived by being born into a royal family. So that the poor Christian farmer born in Cambodia who lives their life barely surviving in a world that is way more advanced than them, because they were born into a certain poor, peasant family with no money, no political ties, no claim to fame, they are largely overlooked and ignored, nontheless is of equal value to even the kings and queens of royalty because the greatest value we all possess is being made in God's image.
The story of the beginning within Christianity also has meaning in that it depicts God and man in relationship to one another. According to this story man is able to know God and according to this story God bears the characteristics of a person. Somone, not "something." He thinks, He feels, He talks, He creates. This is not an impersonal force or unknowable principle. This God is knowable and understandable to our brains.
For the non-Christians believing in the story of the world
Origins
This is where you see an unbridgeable chasm develop between the two worlds. Right from the very beginning there are major differences. This story is different now, ever since the Modern Age and the Enlightenment began, than it was previously in Western culture at large, but has been wholeheartedly adopted by our culture and it was the basis for tow world wars in the last century.
This story really begins wit the Scientific revolution in the 1500 and 1600's. The misconception taught in history books is that prior to the scientific revolution everyone was a Christian and held to the Christian story of the world. That's actually very misleading. The vast majority of folks in Europe in the middle ages were quite ignorant of the Christian story and instead lived in a world that was pseudo-superstitious and pseudo-Christian. It was the Protestan Reformation that really brought the Christian story into clearer light in Europe.
The story many people in our culture believe in begins with the Big Bang. Most folks don't sit around and think about the Big Bang but that is where the story begins. Rather than a personal God that drives the story along, our heroine in this story is Evolution. Evolution drives things forward. After the Big Bang occurred the universe expanded rapidly and as it did so it cooled. Over time the cooling matter released in the Big Bang collected together to form mega galaxy clusters, stars, and eventually planets which formed from the dust and ashes of previous stars that exploded. Over millions of years our galaxy formed and within it, our solar system, swirling about Sol (the name of our star), and after some time our own planet form. At first it was nothing but sulfurous gases and volcanoes, etc. But somewhere along the way some amino acids got together and formed the first building blocks of life. After millenia upon millenia had gone by these building blocks slowly involved into more and more advanced lifeforms, and the earth itself evolved to be more hospitable to life. There was a major crisis when all of the life on earth died out just about because the source of their energy had been one kind of gas, not ozygen, but as oxygen became more prevalent those life forms died or adapted to the new atmosphere. The seas developed over time as gases cooled, the atmosphere formed, etc. and millions upon millions of different lifeforms exploded beneath the surface of the oceans.
Sometime, probably due to the waves crashing upon the sea shores, the life under the sea figured out how to survive on land. That lead to further diversity, further evolution, further advancement. Over millenia upon millenia life forms became more and more complex, leading into the age of the great lizards, the dinasaurs, which ruled the earth, skies and seas but were eventually all but extinct, most likely as a result of a meteor disrupting life on earth and destroying their food sources. We're not sure how but some of them did survive and evolved into modern day birds, and some of them just survived, like Alligators.
After the age of the dinasaurs was the rise of Mammals. As the earth thawed out mammalian specias began spreading all over the earth and diversifying through evolutionary processes. This eventually lead to primates which then, after a few kicks and starts, led to homo sapiens, us! We arrived on the scene about 60 million years ago (I think), starting in the African grasslands and migrating out from there. We were hunters and gatherers for a while before figuring our how to grow crops. That caused an explosion of culture and civilizations, as we know them, started forming around major water ways in Africa (the Nile), China (the Yangtze), India (the Ganges), South America, though some time later (Amazon), and the mother of them all, and first in order, Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates).
Meaning
This was a really long explanation but I didn't want to leave anything out. From this there are some very important things we draw that are vital for the rest of the story and the value of our own lives.
Evolution is the key in this story. There is a force at work, it is not supernatural but explicitly natural, not personal but impersonal, nevertheless it is a force that has been at work since the very beginning. Things beginning in a primitive state advancing to a more and more complex and orderly state. The meaning drawn out of this is that it is inherent in the world we live in that things gradually get better and better, that the gradually improve. This is how we see the physical world, the existential world, the scientific world, the world of knowledge and understanding, the moral world, the philosophical world----etc., etc., etc.---everything is influenced by a good process of evolution and those things which are outdated, wrong, inefficient or unuseful are going to be purged by the force of evolution.
It also means that primacy is placed upon the physical world. In this story there's no evidence of God working to do anything, and if God exist he is definitely not the jey figure causing all things to come into being but rather is on the sidelines or in the background just kind of helping nature and evolution to their jobs right.
It means that we do not occupy any special place in the world. The universe is huge, to put that as an understatement, and there's no evidence that we are important in it or that we are unique in any way. The implications for a person's life are ambiguous on this point I think.
It means that any problems in the world or in civilization, or any lack of understanding about something can be solved if given enough time.
These two stories are radically different, as can be seen simply by looking at just the origins of each story. Next post I'll look at a few other things.
In Christ,
jonathan
