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What if God Was One of Us? The Reverend Mark Edmiston-Lange, April 3, 2005 This sermon is dedicated to Alan Minter, one time undisputed world middleweight boxing champion, who once said, “Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious.” Have you ever wondered if human beings are still evolving? Most people associate human evolution with the distant past, such as when we climbed down out of trees and starting walking around upright (leading to, by the way, great potential for chronic back pain and droopy tummies because our skeletal structure is not ideal for upright locomotion.) But what about right now, even as we are sitting in this room? Could our basic identity as a creature be undergoing change? Such a thinking is usually reserved for science fiction which might portray the human race, thousands of years from now as essentially hairless with massive craniums and big creepy eyes, no upper body trength, etc. And some people find the idea of evolution working away upon us as kind of creepy anyway. We do not like to think that human beings could be the subject of such unblinking natural forces. Of course, our cycle of gestation is so extended that, unlike bacteria, advantageous mutations take a long time to unfold among us. The process is so slow that none of us live long enough to personally see the effects over the period of time that would be required to document evolutionary changes. And perhaps the most unsettling thing is that do we do not have conscious control over the direction that evolution is taking or might take. Evolution is large, pervasive, unavoidable, unstoppable. Many people are more comfortable thinking about evolution as something that happened in the past. And, of course, the record of history and archeology does provide us with evidence that evolution is real. For instance, some have theorized that our ape predecessors stopped literally hanging around in trees because a dramatic climate shift changed a good portion of African forest into savannah grassland that have few trees. For creatures accustomed to spending a lot of time in trees, and depending upon trees for an escape from predators, this was quite a dramatic shift. Only those who could adapt to the grassland existence would survive. Those who could walk even just a little more erect had an advantage over their brothers and sisters who could not see the lion over the tall grass. I suspect however that even as the grassland replaced the trees - for the longest time some of the apes would say, upon seeing a lion, “Who- haw- hee- hee- who!” which roughly translates as “Back up into the trees!” This would quickly be followed by, “Uh-uh-uh-uh!” which translates as “Dang, I forgot - no trees!” Another evolutionary effect of life on the savannah is an anatomical feature unique to homo sapiens. We are the only species whose diaphragm is disconnected from the rest of our abdominal musculature. In fact, our diaphragms, unlike any other animal, are hard wired into the voluntary decision making of the brain. Why? Human beings, suddenly trying to survive on the savannah did not possess a good set of survival tools. Several millennia of finding safety by artfully escaping through the trees works only when there are lots of trees. No sharp claws, not particularly fast, not particularly strong, not great eyesight, not a great sense of smell. There’s a world of hurt here. But over evolutionary time our ancestors developed a feature that is unique in the animal kingdom. And we today still possess this skill. We can run for days, weeks, actually non-stop, as long as we are able to get water and food while running. There is no real limit to the length of time we can run. This capacity distinguishes us from every other creature none of whom can run for such extended periods. Why? They cannot control their breathing while they are running. The diaphragms of every other animal move involuntarily, keeping time with the rest of their musculature, and at some point they literally run out of breath. Those early homo sapiens who had through evolution developed the voluntary diaphragm could control their breathing and thus would run after a gazelle, most often for days, until the gazelle simply could not run one more step. Researchers have tested the hypothesis and have proven that human beings running for days will always win the race. Those Homo sapiens who possessed such control over their breathing got to eat while those Homo sapiens who did not possess a detached diaphragm did not eat. That’s how evolution works - by the survival value of small changes. Such changes in human reality are easiest to see over the long stretch of history. But are we still undergoing changes as radical as diaphragm rewiring? At first you might think that we are not changing. After all, if the environment is the driver for accepting or rejecting mutations, isn’t it the case that we have, short of large scale natural disasters, more control over the environment than it has control of us? We don’t have to adapt in the typical manner that evolution demands because we change our environment faster than it can change us. Our forms of providing food, shelter, and transportation have allowed our species to infest the entire globe - and it seems in time - other astronomical bodies. Our capacity for altering our environment to suit our needs might lead one to wonder, have we trumped evolution, as far as homo sapiens goes? Probably not. When we think of the environment that continues to exert evolutionary pressure on us we first think of the natural world of weather, water, air, minerals, plants and other animals. What we might neglect in our catalog is the most important part of our environment - us, the entire range of human behaviors and capabilities that we possess. That is, a very large part of the natural environment that shapes our evolutionary path is comprised of the human environment upon which we have a systematic and sustained impact that then has a systematic and sustained impact upon us. It could almost be said that we are evolving ourselves except for the very substantial fact that we do not consciously shape the direction our own evolution takes. We may propose, but it disposes even if the disposition is greatly shaped by our proposition. The effect of consciousness on evolution could change if we decided to really take matters into our own hands and routinely interfered with our own genetic code. So far we are loath to do so and at this point it seems absolutely wise to avoid having that much impact on our identity. After all, no single one of us is nearly as biologically wise as the entire environment. We are notoriously, and necessarily, short sighted. It probably never would have occurred to us to develop a detached diaphragm to cope with the life on the savannah problem. We do not possess anything even closely resembling the entire world’s capacity to understand all the ramifications of any of our decisions. Of course, not everyone is content with the increasingly common task of, say, inserting animal genes into corn DNA. Some really do want to go beyond human genetic repair and into manipulation of the human genetic structure. Pretty scary stuff. Most often such desires are described as human beings trying to play God. None among us really thinks anybody should play God. Right? Just checking. Yet interestingly enough, and in a very real way - we all do. But I am not in this case referring to the typical condemnation of individuals who vastly over-estimate their authority or talents and hear, “Who died and named you God?” Rather, the way that we have evolved to “play” God is much more subtle than the image of us becoming some kind of super being. The description of evolution which I outlined earlier, of us evolving to the point where we substantially shape our evolution, is very much like what I imagine how God is actually a part of what goes on with us. I am not here talking about the God that theologians describe - you know - omniscient, omnipresent, omni, omni, omni everything - kind of like Walmart only more interesting and perhaps less useful in the short term. No, I think the God that the theologians so thoroughly describe hasn’t existed for some time. God is no longer the super mahuff kind of reality that has absolute and arbitrary authority over everything we do just as the non-human part of the environment no longer arbitrarily exerts evolutionary pressure on us. And just as we have become probably the single most important element of that evolutionary environment exerting pressure back upon ourselves, so too have we become a very important element of God’s reality that has any impact upon us. And I am not referring to the notion that God is entirely a creation of human consciousness, or as is sometimes negatively expressed, purely a figment of our imagination. The existentialists such as Friedrich Nietzsche and John Paul Sarte made a very big splash during the previous century by claiming that God had died. This was a startling announcement but means something quite different than is often imagined. As to whether God in fact died, or not died, that was something that we did not or could not know. It is very hard to prove anything about something of which we cannot have any knowledge. Rather, what had died was a commonly shared undeniable sense that human beings had of God’s existence. What the existentialists described as a “death” was something that had happened to us, to our thinking about God and not something that had happened to God. The easiest way to describe this change was that God’s existence was no longer thought of as inevitable - but had to be asserted. Proofs of God’s existence had long been a theological past time, but such proofs were meant only to provide a philosophical or theological underpinning of what was widely and unblinkingly accepted. No medieval or even Renaissance theologian ever imagined that if the proof of God’s existence failed, they would have to stop believing in God. Unsuccessful proofs never led to the conclusion that God didn’t exist but only to the feeling that they simply had to keep trying until they got it right. The existentialists claim that our situation is the exact reverse. It is not unusual for people to imagine that God might not exist at all. The possibility is worrisome and the reaction of more than a few is sharp insistence, robust assertion, a form of, “if I shout loud enough I won’t hear my fears or doubts, or, if I shout loud enough I wont’ be able to hear your doubts or fears. And indeed, over the past few decades a lot of religious practice has devolved into a bald, take no prisoners kind of assertion. It’s “My way or take the highway!” theology all over the place. There is another possibility. Let us suppose that it is not really God who has died, but the traditional God of our thinking has died, and in its place can rise, instead of no thought, but another form of thinking about God. Because this new way of thinking about God is not like the old way, people are naturally suspicious. They keep trying to more sternly repeat the old God consciousness because they, quite naturally, resist the possibility that our God consciousness has really changed. But I think we have come to the spot where no matter how hard we slap the steering wheel, no matter how loud we yell “Giddyup!” the theological car won’t move. We really are evolving, perhaps faster than we like, but having changed, the way we experience God must change as well. How we have changed is that I believe we experience God all the time. I don’t mean in every waking moment. Joan Osbourne’s song makes a very important distinction, “If you met God would you then have to believe in Jesus and the saints?” would you have to believe in all the official stuff about religion? Because many of us find it hard to believe those sorts of things, we then choose to believe that we have not met God. But Joan answers her own question with another question, “What if God was one of us?” Not a saint, but a “slob like one of us?” What if the incarnation of God is not a single event, but ordinary as rain? The television drama Joan of Arcadia takes Osbourne’s question and fashions a very persuasive e xample of what it might be like if, indeed, God was one of us. God shows up in all manner of guises, from a little girl, to a Goth kid, to a librarian, a garbage man or woman. The point is that God could be anyone and show up anytime. There’s some absolutely delightful dialogue between Joan and God. One typical exchange is between Joan trying to avoid God as a cute boy and his commentary: Joan: “I can't hear you.” Cute Boy God: “But you can see me.” Joan: “I'm ignoring you.” Cute Boy God: “I'm used to that.” Or between Joan and God as a Rock and roll musician: Joan: “Oh, I can't watch (a friend Brian get beat up). It's too horrible.” Rocker Dude God: “Multiply that by six billion and you'll know what I go through every day.” Or between God as a loner loser kid who tells Joan, “It's like, uh, everybody has something better to do. Until they're on a plane, and then they're all over me.” Or consider another exchange between Joan and the Cute boy God. Cute Boy God: “Crazy is destructive. It tears down. I'm all about building up.” Joan: “Then I suggest you take up carpentry.” There is humor and there is great sadness. Joan’s great love betrays her and the librarian God then talks about free will and just how hard a burden that sometimes can be. In all of these exchanges there seems to me to be something fundamentally real and persuasive about whom God really is, a loner loser kid, a librarian, a garbage man - or at least, I think, that’s how I’ve really experienced God. You think about the times that you have really been moved, or come to a deeper understanding or appreciation of something. Maybe it wasn’t a garbage man, but it might have been a neighbor, or a friend, a stranger, a teacher, - people. Or perhaps it wasn’t even someone in person - but a piece of poetry - some bit of text or perhaps a song that helped you break through something that was perplexing. The point is, as Annie Dillard once wrote, God burgeons up in some of the shabbiest of occasions. Those who suspect that God may have died might be expecting that God should be like what Michelangelo painted on the Sistine Chapel and therefore miss the fact that God showed up as the guy sweeping the floor. What difference, really, does it make to think that God may really be like this - not separate from but intimately and universally a part of everything? Some of you might recall another portrayal of God in Bruce Almighty starring Morgan Freeman as God and Drew Carrey as Bruce who takes over for God as Morgan goes on a bit of a sabbatical. At first Bruce is absolutely delighted with his astonishing power but then becomes overwhelmed by the traffic on Gods prayer line, yahweh.com. He becomes aware of the oceans of sadness and desperation and first thinks that all he has to do is grant everyone’s prayer. But chaos soon develops because the prayers sometimes contradict each other and often lead to unforeseen consequences. Bruce suddenly realizes that being God is actually a very difficult piece of business. And so it indeed is. But much of our problems regarding God, I think, result from thinking that God gives us permission to act, like Bruce, arbitrarily and often badly in the name of religion. Passing judgment upon others, becoming wooden and rigid in belief or practice, causing harm, even death to others as a so-called self-appointed instrument of God - can anyone really imagine that’s what God really wants, what any of us really, really want? The only way I can really understand such a patent contradiction is by concluding that the God they imagine does not in fact exist. Consider this: Michael Schiavo is considered by a few zealots to be a murderer who deserves to be murdered himself. Don’t you think that if the God in whom they believe really existed such a God would stop them from trying to take Michael’s life? Don’t you think that if the God in whom they believe really existed such a God would lead them to imagine that they just might not know enough to pass such a harsh judgment upon Michael? Don’t you think that if the God in whom they believe really existed such a God would lead them to seriously question their own motivation, their own anger? The sad situation in Florida can be compared to a schoolyard in which there are a few bullies at play. As long as the principal is around the bullies have to mind their behavior. Only when they imagine the principal is gone does all hell break lose. The situation is even worse in Florida because the bullies claim that God has given them permission to act very badly. What they don’t realize is that they are each the principal. They each do not have conscious control of that reality of being the principal any more than we have conscious control of our evolution - but they still are each the principal and at least ought to be, need to be, a little more careful, a little more thoughtful about what they say and do. What I know we really want is as Emerson said, “a good deal more kindness that is ever spoken.” And yet, he said, it is there all along, the “heart knoweth.” He counseled us to read the wandering eye beams of love that surround us. I would add, make sure you too are giving out those wandering eye-beams. If you want God to love, then love. And more, if you want god to be just, be just, if you want god to be forgiving, be forgiving. Do not wait for some God in some heaven to ride down in a chariot and make all these good things come to life. Instead, do your work as god’s work itself - do what you can, as hard as it can be, to make our best dreams come alive now. |
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