Are you one who believes that we are not in a dualistic world of good and evil, but that we are evolving our way out of the current problems and on into a better state of humanity? Or are you one who believes we are in a world of brokenness, wrestling with both good and evil? I suppose you could be one who has never thought through the state of the world to the point of deciding which it is. Regardless of your position, something is wrong.
Perhaps I could be persuaded to believe that we are evolving out of our current state if someone could offer an adequate explanation as to how we got here in the first place. Just as evolutionary theorists have difficulty explaining the presence of religion, they also have difficulty in explaining the presence of brokenness and evil. Some insist that evil (though most theorists don’t like the label) is simply a “dysfunction as a form of collective mental illness.”[1] Even if this were the case, how could an elegant process like natural selection result in such a dysfunctional state? To put it simply, the origin of brokenness and evil evades evolutionary theorists.
I believe something catastrophic happened in our past. Even if we completely ignore religious texts, logically we come face-to-face with that something. What was it? Perhaps our ability to ask such questions holds the answer: we are free entities.
We are clearly beings that ask questions and choose. What is more, I believe we as a human race did in fact choose to follow God’s example to the core: we chose to follow ourselves alone as God does. In essence, we replaced God with the god within. The irony is that only God can follow himself by recognizing the sovereignty that dwells within. It was in error that we, given the same choice, chose to follow ourselves.
As though it were not enough to be broken, we perpetuate our brokenness via what some identify as sin. Eckhart Tolle provides a clear understanding of sin in A New Earth, “Sin is a word that has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Literally translated from the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written, to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence.”[2]
I believe there are numerous ways we miss the mark, but the first was initiated when we humans decided to advance ourselves on our own terms. We do so still. It is a place as much as it is a condition; it is a location of brokenness. It is not an intermediate stage in an evolutionary process leading to a greater place. It was a backward evolutionary move on our part, one away from the driver who was leading us forward. In this light sin is our condition; we are in a broken state. We missed the mark when we decided to walk away from the target.
Sin is, in a sense, self-induced neuropathy. It is like drinking water that leaves us thirsty.[3] We can be better people, live successful lives, have wonderful families, be productive in work, and give back to society, yet still thirst.
We need a new paradigm. Religion alone is not leading us there. Religion is part of the problem.[4] We need more than manmade efforts to solve the brokenness of our world. What is more, we are not going to evolve our way out of this conundrum. The very fact that we humans imagine a world without pain and evil is an profound indication: we miss what once was. John Lennon’s song Imagine was not a dream: it was a memory. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream was also such a memory. Mahatma Gandhi saw visions of this past. These memories call us forward to a strangely old and familiar paradigm, with traces woven into the fabric of the cosmos.
I believe most of what we humans do is aimed at repairing our brokenness. From acquiring material things, to seeking pleasure, to publishing self-help books, and exploiting each other: all are aimed at self-restoration. We live our lives obsessed with finding the missing pieces. Most efforts are ineffective. Some are counterproductive. They may address little bits of pieces that are missing, but not the hole in our souls. We so desperately want to be completely restored. Instead, in our pursuits of restoration, we are sidetracked by our own efforts. We are our own worst enemies. We need something that goes beyond the limits of evolution and efforts to restore ourselves. We are broken.
-Sam Augsburger
Slices of God: Strange, Dimensional, and Fractal Perspectives on God and the Cosmos
[1] Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 8-9.
[2] Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 9.
[3] John 4:13.
[4] For a fuller explanation of this claim, see chapter 2.09 in Slices of God.
