Some Thoughts on a Different Kind of Evolution

It appears to me that we Christians have had it all wrong for some period of time.

Let's talk about God, first and foremost.

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) starts us off with two stories of creation.  God speaks all  things into existence.

It's time for us to grow up and recognize the Bible for what it is and isn't.

Implicit in Genesis is a common acceptance that some things are wrong:

1. Murder -- Cain and Abel.
2. Deceit -- Jacob "stealing" his birthright.
3. Theft -- see #2.
4. More deceipt -- Joseph's brothers and their treatment of him.  Selling a brother into slavery.  Envy.  Lying to Jacob about what happened.

On the flip side, some things are "right":

1. Mercy -- God does not exact retribution on Cain.
2. Forgiveness -- the reconciliation of the two brothers Esau and Jacob and the reception Joseph gives his brothers in Egypt.

As we move into Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers, the law is laid out.  First the ten commandments, broken into two sections:  how the people treat God and the people should treat each other.  These are followed by the six hundred elements of the laws of the Hebrew Testament.

What is their intent?  I believe they were primarily meant to help people live together.  Seems obvious, doesn't it?  Don't murder each other, don't lie, don't want what your neighbor has, don't steal, don't take your neighbor's spouse.  In hindsight, it is obvious; in fact, it's the basic bedrock of any society, large or small.

Now, let's take a brief detour from the Bible and into science.  Darwin's theory of evolution is a theory, it can't be proven.  But you would be hard pressed to cite instances of where it has been disproven.  So, let's assume it describes the way life came to be on planet earth.

From one-celled creatures in the swirling waters of the seas to fish to reptiles that crawled upon the land, then birds, dinosaurs (they are gone, thank goodness), mammals, primates.  At some point, one of these creatures became aware of its own existence.  It congregated into communities of similar beings.  Eventually, one of these self-aware creatures realized, for the tribe/family/community to survive, there needed to be some rules for living together.  The earliest of these rules were no doubt passed around verbally or orally, writing not having been invented.  Later, in the cradle of civilization in what we now call the Mideast, laws were written down.  Several have been discovered, the oldest and best known being the Code of Hammurabi.  

Later, the Hebrews came along and committed to writing the stories of their history and the laws that had been formulated.  If you declare that they came from God, they have a certain amount of weight!

Now the other idea that early humankind shared is a need to explain how everything came to be.  And, to make a very long story short, that explanation is given a name:  in English, God; in Arabic, Allah; in Hebrew Yahweh or Jehovah; in Hindu India, the gods have many names and many purposes.

So, you can believe that some being created everything including the rules to live by or you can believe that the rules came about naturally, as a means for community survival.