On Fingernails, Nipples and Who Cares

There are matters that we carry through life without ever questioning them, like, for instance, why do we have fingernails? Despite their questionable usefulness, they live on untouched by logic, experience or argument. They just are. It just doesn’t matter enough to urge us to contemplate them... existentially, that is.

When, if ever, was the last time you looked at those strange, almost bone-like tips to your fingers and wondered, “Why are they there?” Some of us may assume them to be simply an odd consequence of millions of years of evolution that somehow determined that land creatures survived best if their appendages had protective tips: hooves, claws, pads, toenails.

Fingernails are not critical for survival since we ceased to be hunters/gatherers when our defenses rested on the capability in our brains, limbs, torsos and appendages. Uses for fingernails have been devised of course, as in playing the harp or guitar, or nose-picking, but more generally they’re vestigial nuisances, like appendixes (appendices?) or men’s nipples. Dirt depositories.

Many of us grew up assuming that fingernails were simply a part of the essential human body, intelligently designed by an omniscient creator. Perhaps the design included fingernails because the creator foresaw the harp and the guitar. This reasoning (if we ever actually considered it) doesn’t really help to explain men’s nipples.

Others of us who went to school long enough to be challenged to think about such matters settled for a compromise: God created the life we’re living, and Darwin explained how he did it. (Note the “he” pronoun for God; shouldn’t it be he/she or… they?? I’m so confused!)

It’s snowing today, at least where I am. I know how snow develops from moisture in the atmosphere and that gravity causes it to fall to earth. Meteorologists know both that and weather phenomena to the point where they can predict when and where it will fall. John Doe has lived through 60 Saskatchewan winters and knows that a shovel is needed, and roads can be icy, and really, does he need to know much more?

The why and the how of things is that with which scientists, historians, philosophers, agronomists, etc., etc., grapple. But each in our own way, we do plenty of that as well. “Why is my left foot so itchy every night?” Or “What did I do to contract this itch in my left foot?” Quite possibly, the hypochondriacs among us may wonder, “What if it’s cancer and I lose my foot; what kind of future would that leave me?” Mostly we just scratch it, yawn and go to sleep.

Two things: 1) You can’t relive, can’t even revisit the past and 2) you can’t “test pilot” the future to see if you’ll like it. You can, however, find well-being, even happiness to the extent that your health and means allow it, even if you’re flummoxed by the meaning of your life or why your sweater is chafing the nipples you absolutely never needed.

For now, some of us choose to wonder less about the whys and the hows of the big questions. Instead, we clip our nails regularly and clean them as necessary, neither evolutionists nor creationists exempted.

               Some of us paint them.

NAICA  gg.epp41@gmail.com

 

 

Creation or Evolution?

Oh Rock, tell me how old you are!

The basic choice set up by the meeting I attended last night was: Creation or Evolution. In a discussion with some of the other attendees in the church foyer after, I suggested that it should have been called “young-earth vs. ancient-world,” with which the bulk of the presenter’s points dealt.

               Let me say at the outset that I personally interpret much of the Old Testament and considerable parts of the New as being best understood (and in many cases intended to be understood) as allegory, parable or metaphor, illustrative of the human condition as understood at the time of writing. And so, watching for 1 ½ hours the painful shoe-horning of the history of the universe into 6,000 years by a representative of Creation Ministries Canada found me to be one of numerous skeptics in the room.

               The thesis is this: if the Genesis account of creation is not understood as a factual history, then the rest of the Bible with its primary sequence (creation, the fall, Christ and redemption, eternal bliss or exile) falls apart because it all hinges on the entire human race inheriting Adam’s sin (Eve was not mentioned). Without that, there is no need for Christ and the gospels become redundant.

               A secondary thesis presented (among others) was that the loss of youth to the church is caused primarily by their inability to navigate the conundrum presented by apparent conflicts between higher education and their childhood faith and to counter this, we need to give them clear guidelines to reinforce that evolution/ancient-worlds interpretation of history is just one view and that the historical/ Biblical is a different and just-as-valid interpretation.

               The event was housed in a Mennonite Church, hosted by a member of that church and, quite unfortunately, did not offer any disclaimer so that an audience member could easily have deduced that the congregation endorsed the views presented. This was not the case; the congregation is as diverse on this issue as is the rest of the Christian world and the venue was granted for use to the organizers as an expression of grace, not as an endorsement, or so I was led to believe.

Another unfortunate part of the package was a 15-minute sales pitch from the pulpit for magazines, books and videos supporting the young-earth argument. I maintain that being approached with a Bible in one hand and a merchandise catalogue in the other is reasonable occasion for skepticism.

A third cause for puzzlement was the structure of the question period: 20 or so questions were posted on a screen and the audience had only to call out a number to solicit an answer. One question was, “Who was Cain’s wife?” (Number 14?), and the answer, “Simple! Cain married his sister, which was OK because there were no genetic mutations yet, so marrying a relative was no cause for concern.” I had questions, but they weren’t necessarily those on the screen.

There will always be conflicting interpretations of what is read, let alone what is heard and seen. That’s the way humans are. The useful question is probably not, “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” it’s probably “What is instructive and edifying and what is not.” It’s my feeling that Creation Ministries Canada and other causes that proof-text their ways through scriptures have often allowed themselves to be diverted down paths that neither edify nor instruct. Had the principals (in Creation Ministries Canada) been educated in the literary arts and the history and workings of language through the ages, this particular diversion need never have existed to muddy the theological water in a time when the commitment to be Christ’s  influence for peace, joy and justice in the 21^st Century is in such great demand.  

As for ordinary folk in the pews who feel torn this way and that by such questions and the voices of conviction on both sides, take heart that Christ’s wish for you is not that you should be ripped apart by what you can and cannot convince yourself to believe, but by trusting the message of the one who came to set us free, not  bind us with better chains. 
Commit to the two condensations of the law given by Christ, namely to Love the Lord your God as much as you are able and to love your neighbour as you long to be loved.

A less controversial path to the essence of the Gospel..

Creation is now

encordat

There’s evidence that humankind as we now see it—on the streets, in the stands at football games, in the pews on a Sunday morning—is an evolving life form. Imagine trying to explain the workings of an Ipod to a Neanderthal or early Homo Sapien, watching him scratch his head with a hairy finger. Our average size and our brain capacity have been increasing gradually over the nearly 200,000 years of our [Homo Sapien] presence on earth.

Normally—when you can see where a phenomenon began and how it has progressed—you can make a tentative prediction on where it is headed. If we begin with a man in a cave with a club and spear, cowering against the cold under animal hides, and track the progression in sophistication to the moon landing of Neil Armstrong, what is the potential in humankind given another 100,000 years of evolution? (This assumes, of course, that there won’t be an extinction event meanwhile.) Will the moon rocket and the Ipod appear as primitive to future humans as club and spear do to us?

Whatever the nature and physical structure of humans in the future, it’s not a big leap to the assertion that he/she is currently being created. Obviously, then, we represent a stage in that creation, and not an end-point. We are, we would hope, co-creators of a better human, one who can finally grasp the futility of material accumulation and warfare, who lives the codependence of all of the Creator’s creatures, and with the skills necessary to manage the earth’s resources so that all are beneficiaries of her largesse. One who possesses a Creator consciousness, is imbued with the “Holy Spirit.”

We are either co-creators with The Creator, consumers simply feeding on what’s been provided, or vandals wrecking and wasting what has been achieved so far. And if we can’t grasp the big picture yet, we ought at least to recognize the creative role we play vis-à-vis our children . . . and their futures.