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Posts clarifying the relationship of Christian scripture and teaching to the evolution of Human Nature.

Filling the Holy Spirit

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In Love Works, I have a short section called “Hat Trick” in which I explain the Trinity. The only subtlety is the Holy Spirit.

I have to start here: we are God’s medicine for the world. It might be hard to see, because our Darwinian programming coupled with the strength of our minds makes us incredibly powerful predators. We are the fourth of Daniel’s beasts – the huge monster that devours all before it with our iron machines. But we have been wearing down our Darwinian impulses and subjecting them to the discipline of love. It’s a slow process, in human terms, but when seen against the background of a billion years of creatures that came before us: we’ve made enormous progress over the last 30,000 years.

The reason love wins is because, where predators turn on each other after their prey is consumed, those that love stick together. They take refuge in Christ, who had the strength to be consumed by sin and yet continued to love. It is in his sacred heart that spirits that love find refuge from sin. From that refuge, as the Holy Spirit they dispense wisdom – the insights gained from their practical experience of loving – to those still trying to shed their attachment to sin.

Sister Gloria picked the parable of the Good Samaritan for our contemplation this week. During the discussion, several people mentioned that when confronted with the call to offer mercy and compassion to a troubled soul, they resisted, thinking “Well, you’re only getting what you deserve.”

As I see it, though, those are the most valuable moments for the Holy Spirit. The impulse to offer compassion and mercy is the Holy Spirit saying to us: “Yes, this troubled person represents a powerful pattern of destructive behavior. Bring us near to them. Be our eyes and ears, our hands and feet, so that we can learn how to bring strength to them.”

Every person that falls and is redeemed blazes a trail through human nature. They create a nexus in time that reaches out through the Holy Spirit to others facing the same struggles.

We sometimes fail to offer mercy and compassion because we are have been convinced by the materialists that only clothing and feeding is important. Ultimately, though, those things are meaningful only in that they bring the spirit closer to salvation, and thus a return to the place of our origin.

If you don’t have the means to solve the material problems (and that’s becoming true for more and more of us), don’t discount that power of mercy and compassion. Mercy and compassion bring the Holy Spirit close to those in need, helping them find the strength to resist destruction, and tendering hope that helps them seize the initiative in their lives. When we call it close in moments of need, the Holy Spirit burnishes our souls, preparing us for full citizenship in the kingdom in which love reigns.

Disarming Incivility

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Constitutional wrangling aside, as a Christian, my personal choice is to renounce violence as a means of conflict resolution. My experience is that a disciplined commitment to this choice overwhelms aggression in those that come into my personal space. This can manifest in two ways: either the aggressor realizes that I see them as a brother, causing their fear to melt away; or their aggression, finding no harbor in me, turns self-destructively inward.

I have many personal qualities that empower me to renounce fear: I am a man, tall without being imposing, and physically fit. I possess rare intellectual talents and traits of character that make me desirable as an employee. I have modest aspirations that I articulate clearly, and project good will that allows me to manifest my intentions where others might collide with bureaucratic restrictions. Last but not least, I have associations that bring patience and endurance gained through experience of the cycle of life and death that stretches over a billion years.

Recognizing the rareness of these assets, I sympathize greatly with those that crumble under the pressure of aggression. For me, the most powerful moment in the sit-in coverage was the testimony of a female representative describing the routine terror she suffered as a child when threatened by her gun-toting father. Listening to her summary of those events, I could hear the frightened girl crying out for aid.

So when someone touts their Second Amendment right to bear arms, I wonder why their protection against “infringement” must tread so heavily on the desire for others to renounce violence. I trust law enforcement, and see that our modern industrial economy provides financial levers to control governmental abuse of force that did not exist when the founders wrote the Constitution. These constraints are strengthened because mastery of military technology requires a focus that creates dependency upon civilian production of goods and services. On the other hand, I see the ready availability of weapons creating an arms race between police and criminals that tramples upon the peace of mind of the law-abiding citizen. Contradicting the claims that our freedom is secured only when a well-armed citizenry opposes the natural tyranny of governments, I believe that the greatest threat to my safety – and the safety of those I cherish – is the proliferation of arms.

On the whole, then, I am a citizen that would like to renounce his right to bear arms. I would like to be able to limit my associations to those of like mind. Why is it that Constitutional prohibitions against infringement of that right prohibit me from living that desire? Can I not form a community that requires people to leave their weapons outside our borders? But once formed, is that community not governed by laws, and does not the Second Amendment prohibit such laws?

Judgment in Self-Defense

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In Matthew 7:1-2, Jesus offers:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

The challenge of living this guidance is that people cause us pain. That may be as small as saying an unkind word to us, or as severe as murdering one that we love. Do we not have the right to decide that those that hurt us should be placed apart? Do we not have the right to protect ourselves?

This quandary reflects an understanding of “judgment” as part of a legal process. We take the evidence of our experience and then organize our lives to avoid harm. The futility of this strategy was summarized by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Just because we push evil away from us doesn’t make it go away. It either shifts its focus to others, or bides its time until it has the strength to assault us again. This applies even beyond the grave: in a secular sense, punishing an offender heightens the stakes of wrong-doing, and so pushes the criminal to take ever greater risks. Spiritually, destruction of the body doesn’t destroy the spirit, which must return again and again until it finds a personality strong enough to heal it.

Jesus, as the healer of last resort for broken personalities, understood this with a terrible immediacy. He could feel the trapped goodness in the people that were judged by the Canaanite culture. Whether speaking to the adulteress or the thief on the cross, Jesus knew that they had been conditioned to the most vengeful judgment of all: the self-judgment that they were beyond redemption.

It is this spiritual consequence of judgment that I think Jesus is focusing on in this teaching. He speaks of other-judgment as like a “plank” or a “beam” in the eye of the one that judges. It is to say: “As we all sin, if you believe that your fellow sinner cannot be saved, then you also believe that you cannot be saved.”

Jesus is speaking from the knowledge that God can heal any wound in those that are willing to receive the gift. This is what he affirms again and again after healing transpires in his presence: “Your faith has healed you.”

What is most painful to me is reading the scripture of Matthew in light of the fact that Jesus did not write a gospel. He understood how the law had been manipulated by the priesthood to divide the people from God. In this case, those among us that have reason to fear direct contact with God use Jesus’ words to argue “You do not have the right to judge me.” They use the power of our minds to hold us in sway as they tear out of our hearts the love that we receive from God.

It is such that Jesus refers to when he calls those that judge “hypocrites.” One way of interpreting his inducement [Matt. 7:5]:

first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

is that the hypocrite will discover himself to be the speck in his brother’s eye! But just below Jesus also counsels [Matt. 7:6]:

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

So he clearly believes that those the love honestly must protect themselves. So how are we to do that?

First, we should not judge, because in judging those that attempt to tear apart our hearts we are affirming that they cannot go to God for what they need. They do have that power, and we need to let that responsibility rest with them.

Secondly, we should recognize that nothing that Jesus taught requires us to surrender our hearts to those that harm us. But we have a part to play there. We should not engage in argument of judgment because it diverts our attention from our heart, leaving it wide open to plunder.

Finally, then, we should love ourselves. When the plunderer comes into our hearts, we need simply to say: “No, that is mine. I will not relinquish it to you.” If we stop acting as their drip feed for God’s love, they’ll eventually conclude that they have to go to the source themselves, or allow their souls to wither and die.

This law of natural consequences is far more powerful and permanent than any punishment that we could organize.

Freedom’s Prison

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There are two fibers running from our brain to the glands that regulate our fight-or-flight response: one from the ancient reptilian brain and the other from our cortex, the part of the brain that reasons. The cortical fiber is myelinated, so the signal gets to the glands first, and can over-ride the signal coming from the reptilian brain.

Our freedom is freedom from the basic physics and fundamental biology that rules the rest of the world. But too often we turn it around and use it to force the people around us into conditions of poverty, psychological duress and physical hazard that forces them to behave as animals. We maximize our freedom by denying it to others.

Jesus is lord because, confronted by the consequences of the choices made by those most free, the oppressed choose his compassion and strength as a spiritual refuge. He preserves their freedom against those less wise who use power to play at being gods. For that reason, those rescued are loyal to Jesus in eternity. Inexorably, the tyrants turn on each other, creating yet more victims for Jesus to heal and redeem, until all except the most heinous are wrapped in his love.

Celestial's avatarSoul Surrendered

Countless wars have been fought in its name. Brave soldiers have sacrificed their lives to protect it. We’ve pawned off our souls to taste it. Yet, it holds us captive. We have cut open the Earth and yanked it from her core. The blood that pours forth, we call freedom.

Can a creation exist separate from the will of its creator? Why then, do we believe that we can thrive independent from the will of our maker?

Outside of our creator’s purpose, we are but walking sandcastles. And is not dust easily swayed by the caress of the wind? Beautiful souls cloaked in flesh, so readily tempted by the elements. Fools we’ve become, dressing ourselves high and mighty in our own concrete beliefs and labeling it freedom.

The liberties that we’ve taken with our lives have served only as a deception to further bind us. We believe that we are…

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City on the Hill

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I’ve started attending a contemplative prayer gathering. The process starts with twenty minutes of silent meditation on any devotional word that comes to mind. Then we read a passage from the Bible three times, allowing time between each recitation for it to settle, until a single word or phrase stands out from the text. After sharing our personal reflections, we close with reflections from the greater church on the passage, allowing us to project our personal focus against the longer backdrop of Christian experience.

This week’s passage was Matthew 5:13-16, the famous “You are the salt of the earth.” Most of the reflections celebrated both the salt and the light. But before the incongruous image of the city on the hill, I heard a contrast in Jesus’s assertion:

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

This was the condition of the people – their kings and priests had sundered their bond with God, and the Romans arrived to trample them underfoot.

I held my tongue, though, as the gathering celebrated the qualities of salt, only after the meeting had ended calling the facilitator over to engage her in discussion. When I suggested that Jesus was offering a metaphor on the condition of his people, I felt truth cementing our connection. She did not repel it, as so many do when confronted with a contradiction of received wisdom, but bowed her head and said “Yes, that is how it was.”

So I continued, as I have never been allowed before, observing that Jesus was proclaiming that they were no longer salt, because he was making them a light to the world. He, the lamp lighter, would not hide their light, but send them forth to inspire faith in God. And she simply continued to nod, saying  “Yes, yes. Brian, you have a gift.”

We talked further, affirming each other. The things she said were so terribly confounding. I have decided to move out to Port Hueneme, seeking to find simple people with open hearts who don’t ask “What’s the price?” when they are offered a gift. It is a form of withdrawal from the world, which has given me some deep wounds recently. But I woke up this morning, and realized that nobody in my life had ever said what she said to me, an affirmation that sums up to this:

Brian, people need you. They might not realize it; they may even act frightened of you. But keep on doing what you are doing. They need to hear what you have to say.

The Struggle

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These thoughts began to form this Sunday during services at the University Catholic Center down in Westwood.

May all those that surrender their light in service to dispelling the darkness be gathered by welcoming arms into the healing heart of Christ.

And from that sacred nexus that joins all open hearts, may the one lost realize the opportunity, in that place outside of time, to reach out to those that grieve for their loss – to whisper into our hearts words of comfort and encouragement in every moment that offers an opportunity to renew our strength and courage, and so to guide us toward healing.

And may we that grieve not build a wall of resentment against God, who suffers in sorrow alongside us, but remain open to the voices of those we have lost, and so discover that we are not abandoned – that our loved ones, while no longer physically present, are still with us in spirit.

Finally, may we all remember that our sorrow, if we but seize it as an opportunity to continue the work of healing begun by Christ, is but a momentary experience on a journey that leads to an eternity of love.

Sacred, Healing Heart

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A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in the spirit of our victim. That extends not only to other people, but to God himself. In both Genesis and the history following entry into the Promised Land, Yahweh cries out against the agony of his association with the people of Israel.

The Law was intended to guide the Chosen People into a path of righteousness – a way of living that kept sin from entering into our relationships. The challenge, of course, was that Israel was surrounded by people that lacked that same discipline. The relationship with God was insufficient to protect them from the sins of others.

In the books after return from exile, a common exhortation among the prophets is that the Gentiles must be allowed into the covenant with God. This flew in the face of Hebrew tradition, which passed the heritage through mothers. But it was intended to entrain a process that would eventually manifest in the spread of righteousness across the face of the earth.

And then comes Jesus to bear the sins of the world.

In common theology, this is seen as an act of retribution. In Christ Alone expresses this with a beautiful gratitude:

Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

But this is to think with the heart of men, not with the heart of God. Jesus tells so many parables of evil-doing that is forgiven by the grace of God. In every case, those stories reveal that it is not retribution that God seeks, but reconciliation.

The truth is approached in the last two lines of the stanza, particularly when seen in the light of Jesus’s promise to those that suffer [Matt. 11:28-29]:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

When offered, this was almost certainly seen as a promise to the few that heard, but on the cross it became true for all willing to receive the healing grace of the father. Jesus opened his heart to all of the sin of humanity, each of us finding a place in the tissue of his compassion. The sun shone its light into its chambers, and brought healing there.

This surrender has its dark side: Jesus, bearer of a perfect, spotless heart, allowed sinners to take up residence in it. He embraced the world in his love, knowing that to love is to give power to others. While his will washed against the tide of sin, he knew that some would use that power to hurt others – turning his power against his own heart.  Thus his declaration of its humility: he knows that his heart cannot heal us without empowering us to create suffereing.

To complete the work, then, his heart will be broken: some among those he loves will have to be cast out into the darkness. As he says about the power of loving in the parable of the talents [Matt. 13:12]:

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

But for those that have, to “pick up your cross” is not to bear the burden of sin. It is something far more joyful and hopeful. It is to offer yourself as a tool for the healing of others. It is to allow the love that fills you  to pass through you to those that suffer with fear, filling them until they, too, fear no longer.

It may seem unfair, to be required to heal those that hurt us. Only keep in sight the outcome of his agony  carried for these millennia (again from In Christ Alone):

And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

Evolution of Love

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I have signed up for the Zacharias Trust’s e-pulse feed, produced by the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics. The foremost member of that community is John Lennox, who has engaged Richard Dawkins and other militant atheists in debate on whether evolution disproves the Bible.

The conflict arises from the way that Genesis describes creation as occurring in six “days.” The term is vague, and long prior to Darwin we had Christian scholars cautioning that it shouldn’t be taken literally. But without any science to help interpret the book, the tendency was to take the common translation as cause to celebrate the glory and power of the Creator.

In the New Testament, that glory and power is manifested in a different way – it is through Jesus’s parables that explain that no matter how big a mess we make of things, it doesn’t affect God. He is going to love us anyways. Even more, when we turn our will and intelligence to caring for the world we live in, great power comes to us – power that is inaccessible through any other means. Power that gave Jesus authority even over death.

I met a family whose daughter studied with Lennox, and they shared his perception that the people he debates have a deep hunger for the love that God brings. They have just convinced themselves that the evil done by men proves that God doesn’t exist. In their quest to support their conviction, they use the conflict between the translation of Genesis and the fossil record to argue that the whole of the Bible should be discarded.

The apologists use a number of techniques to try to defend their faith. One is intelligent design – the idea that we can use evolution to prove the existence of God by demonstrating the infinitesimal probability that evolution could merge single-celled organisms into something as complex as a human being. Others shut their eyes and insist that if evolution is advanced as proof against God, then evolution must be wrong. And a final group insists that we should just stop arguing about it, and prove God’s existence through the works of our love.

But what of this: what if there was no contradiction? What if God prepared the way for reconciliation between naïve faith and sophisticated scientific understanding by writing evolution into the Bible long before it was formulated by Darwin? Would that not be a magnificent demonstration of his power and love for us?

For this is what I read. Genesis records that light allowed photosynthetic organisms to escape the dark depths of the ocean. From there they migrated from salt waters below to fresh waters above. Next they learned to survive outside of water, becoming plants that spread across the face of the earth. Then sight arose, resolving the light into the sun and the moon, and supporting seasonal migration. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, the fish and birds dominated the earth until the rise of the mammals. And finally we have man, whose flexible brain liberated life from the Darwinian struggle, to the point today that we can design simple creatures ourselves.

Evolution does not contradict the Bible; rather the elaboration of Darwin’s theory has substantiated the Bible. The Bible contains the history revealed by paleontology written thousands of years before science gave us the tools to interpret the fossil record.

So Christians, take heart: there is absolutely nothing to apologize for.

And let’s just put the argument aside and get around to the business of applying our intelligence to the restoration of the planet that God provided to sustain us on our journey to understanding.

Beautiful Words of Surrender

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From Hillsong’s I Could Sing of Your Love Forever (I’ve been looping a live version on the car stereo):

Over the mountains and the sea
Your river flows with love for me
And I will open up my heart
And let the Healer set me free
I’m happy to be in the truth
And I will daily lift my hands
For I will always sing
Of when your love came down

When they were young, I taught my sons that the two worst things that we can do to ourselves are to lie and hide from those that love us. When we lie and hide, we cannot be known, and so we cannot receive love. Lying and hiding both arise from shame, which is a wound that we make in ourselves.

Remember that this happened in Eden before the expulsion – Adam and Eve clothed themselves and hid from God when he came. What would have happened if they had stepped forward and asked for restoration?

In opening our hearts to God, we reveal everything about ourselves – we live in truth. The river of love enters and heals us, and then flows out from us to others. So the song concludes:

Oh I feel like dancing
It’s foolishness I know
But when the world has seen the light
They will dance with joy
As we’re dancing now

Looping into Peace

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My father was this first to point it out to me, following a conversation in which he kept pausing to prompt me to finish his sentences. Feigning curiosity, he asked “Brian, do you understand how you keep on finishing my sentences for me?” When I shrugged my shoulders, he was more specific, “Do you understand just how far ahead of us you are?”

I was somewhat more conscious of it during a congregational meeting. We were to vote on a capital campaign, and I opened my mind to the community, trying to ensure that all viewpoints were considered and honored. Towards the end of the discussion, I took the microphone and asked a question. The rest of the congregation stared in confusion. Finally, one of the elders offered “Could you repeat that for us?” I tried again, with the same result. The elder said, “I’m sorry, I still didn’t catch that.” Finally I had this strange sense of my mind slowing down to come into synchronization with everyone else, asked my question one more time, and received an answer.

Most of these moments come to me in dreams. The first found me on an ancient battlefield, following a commander as he skirmished with exhausted warriors. Dispatching the last, he began trotting across the field, seeking a bow. Taking one up, he notched an arrow and fired it into the sky. My will followed the flight, bound to the arrowhead, seeking a target, finally rushing downwards to pierce the forehead of the enemy commander.

But there have been so many others. As I entered Barnes and Noble one afternoon, a man accosted me “You know the pope is looking for someone?” After John Paul II died on Good Friday, I played a requiem for him at work on Monday. During the Choral of Beethoven’s Ninth, I had a clear impression of Karol standing in the quarry in Warsaw just after WWII, and sent him the message “Come find me.”

Or of the woman that I identified with the Magdalene, one night reaching into her left fallopian tube and sending a gift way back to the foundation of her relationship with Christ, satisfying her deeply-held desire.

I do not know how to characterize this process. To be loved is to give strength to our desires, producing both sublime relation and corrupted entanglement. The will of Christ seeks to re-enter the world, and must clarify its manifestations. Can anyone claim to be the focus of that timeless power, or are we all just points of contact used to render more efficacious its engagement with us?

These are the moments most precious to me: when I lose sight of myself, and feel rising above the pain of tomorrow that future of love that calls back to steel our resolve and stimulate our hopes. It is to no longer be an “I”, but an “us” that blossoms from isolation into limitless possibility, all fears vanquished, all needs met, all questions answered. In those moments, all that I know is that simply to be a conduit of that realization is to receive a gift beyond any justification. I cease my restless dancing to bask in peace.