Darwin's Midrash on Creation

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 1:20-22

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, once wisely observed that the Bible is a Midrash (commentary and reflection) on creation.

Heschel’s wisdom came back to me as I read in the paper this morning that today marks the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

The book was upsetting to those who held a literal understanding of the Bible. There were immediate objections to Darwin’s theory from Christians who saw it as a contradiction of the Genesis account of creation, which they held to be literal and scientific.

Actually, Darwin really only contradicts the second creation story.

On that point, we should give a shout out to the people who put together the Priestly narrative in Genesis one, that has the basic evolutionary order correct a few thousand years before Darwin.

Like the first creation story, Darwin has human beings arriving last, rather than appearing first as they do in the second narrative.  Oddly, the folks who are upset by Darwin are untroubled by the contradictions between the first and second accounts, which come from the Priestly and Yahweh narratives, respectively.

Among the non-literalist Christian theologians and biblical scholars, the reaction was largely positive from the beginning. When they heard Darwin’s theory, their reaction was, “We knew that God created the world. Now we know how.” And the on-going nature of evolutionary change reminded them that God was still at work.

In the “Origin of Species,” Darwin offered his own opinion. “I see no good reason,” he wrote, “why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.”

When the theologians of Darwin’s time saw his understanding of an evolving biological world, it reminded them that social relationships also needed to evolve. They came to believe that the progress seen in nature must be replicated in society.

For the Social Gospel preachers, theologians, and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, progress was not just natural, it was divine. This did not mean it was inevitable; it meant that working toward a more just and humane world was what God was calling them to do.

Technically, Midrash is commentary on the Hebrew Bible. It has two parts: Midrash Halachah, which deals with interpreting the legal portions of the Torah, and Midrash Aggadah, which deals with the non-legal aspects and is filled with morals, legends, parables, and stories. When most people refer to Midrash, they are referring to the parables and the stories.

When Heschel speaks of the Bible as a Midrash on creation, he is not referring to the technical meaning, but to a broader understanding of commentary.

And if we wind our way down that road, then we could see Darwin’s theory of evolution as another layer of Midrash. It is both discovery and revelation.

And the evolutionary process, with all of its amazing and miraculous complexity, is the subject of more Midrash.

Pope Francis and Evolution

The heavens are telling the glory of God; 

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4

In an editorial today, The Providence Journal notes that “Pope Francis, unlike many of his predecessors, is more than willing to share his personal opinions on a wide variety of controversial issues.” According to the Journal, the most recent example of his willingness to speak out on controversial issues came at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City, where he spoke out a few days ago on “the evolution-versus-creation debate.”

Essentially, what he said was that there was no inherent conflict between evolution and Christian faith.

One assumes this must have come as a great relief to the biology professors teaching evolution at Catholic Universities around the world, as well as to the thousands of teachers in Catholic high schools.

This is not news.

To be fair, the editorial acknowledges that Pope Francis is not the first pope to positively about evolution. The Journal quotes Josephine McKenna of Religion News Service as observing that “In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed there was no opposition between evolution and Catholic doctrine. [And] In 1996, St. John Paul II endorsed Pius’ statement.”

According to the Journal, “it was the direct and remarkably straightforward manner of the pope’s response that caught more than a few observers off guard. He strongly defended the long-held position of the Roman Catholic Church and, most importantly, established a modern link between evolution and creation.”

The only reason anyone could have been caught off guard is because over the last several decades the news media have focused on the most anti-scientific members of the Christian community and made it seem like they spoke for everyone. Over the last five hundred years, faith and science have had few quarrels until these last few decades. And even now, the conflict does not exist for mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics. And it does not exist for many evangelicals.

I appreciate the willingness of Pope Francis to say things that need to be said. “When we read about Creation in Genesis,” he said, “we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”

True enough. The book of Genesis is not a scientific treatise. And it is not a history book. It is symbolic language. It is about meaning and relationships. It is about who we are and whose we are.

Dr. Koop: Like the Wise Man Who Built His House on Rock

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.” 
Matthew 7:24-25

In an opinion piece written earlier this week for the Washington Post, Michael Gerson wrote about the connection between a child in Mississippi, born with an HIV infection, who was apparently cured by early and aggressive treatment, and former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, who recently died at the age of 96. The old doctor would have been “as pleased as anyone,” he wrote, by “the news about a blessed child in Mississippi.

Dr. Koop was one of the first and most effective forces in the struggle to combat the AIDS epidemic that began in the early 1980’s. That battle will be Koop’s lasting legacy, but his endeavors came as a surprise to both the supporters and the opponents of his nomination as the nation’s physician.

His supporters were thrilled that President Reagan had nominated a deeply faithful pro-life Christian. And his detractors were, for the most part, opposed for the very same reasons.

In one of several editorials questioning the appointment, the New York Times stated flatly, “The nomination is a disservice not only to the Public Health Service and the public itself, but also to Dr. Koop. He is being honored for the most cynical of reasons–not for his medical skills but for his political compatibility.”

Gerson writes, “I was in high school when I first saw Koop, who was delivering a pro-life lecture. A combination of impressive facial hair and thundering moral certainty gave him the aspect of a Hebrew prophet. He was actually a committed evangelical Christian. His appointment by President Ronald Reagan occasioned a serious case of the vapors among liberals. Koop was attacked as scary, intolerant and unqualified.”

In the 1950s, Dr. Koop had been a pioneer in pediatric surgery. He specialized in the correction of congenital birth defects. And it was his dedicated commitment to the most fragile newborn infants that led him to take up the cause of the unborn. He was dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable and helpless.

Shortly after becoming the surgeon general, he launched public health campaigns against smoking, domestic violence and preventable violence. In the days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when others in the Reagan administration were proposing mandatory testing, tattooing, and even internment camps, Dr. Koop became a voice of compassion and concern. In the “Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” Koop provided a comprehensive and explicit description of exactly how the disease could be transmitted. He stated the case with moral and scientific clarity. In direct response to those who wanted to demonize the gay community, he declared, “We are fighting a disease, not people.”

Gerson notes that, when the document was distributed, “with its precise anatomical details and recommendations of condom use and early sex education — it was the turn of conservatives for the vapors. But Koop further conspired to have a brochure containing similar information distributed to the entire IRS mailing list of 107 million households.”

Those who believe that Dr. Koop’s moral views underwent a dramatic change after he took office, or that he chose the path he did in spite of his faith, are missing the central point of his life. It was all one piece. As he observed, “My whole career had been dedicated to prolonging lives, especially the lives of people who were weak and powerless, the disenfranchised who needed an advocate: newborns who needed surgery, handicapped children, unborn children . . .people with AIDS.”

Dr. Koop was one of those surprisingly wonderful people who heard Jesus’ teachings and internalized them and actually lived them out.

Climate Change and Hurricane Sandy

The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; ²⁰the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

Genesis 7:19-20

Roger Boisjoly died suddenly last winter in his sleep. He had been diagnosed with cancer a few weeks before that, but his death was unexpected. In 1986 he was an engineer working for Morton Thiokol, a major contractor for the Space Shuttle Challenger. He had argued vociferously against the launch in January of 1986 because his research showed that the seals at the joints of the multi-stage booster rockets were subject to failure in cold temperatures. With launch temperatures predicted to be around thirty degrees Fahrenheit, Boisjoly believed it was not safe to launch. Tragically, he was right. Boisjoly spent the last decades of his life addressing engineering students on ethical decision-making.

Dan Miller, an engineer and climate change expert has compared climate change to the Challenger disaster. In their eagerness to keep the launch on schedule, NASA managers asked Boisjoly and a small number of other engineers at Thiokol to prove that the shuttle would blow up before they would be willing to cancel the launch. Miller points out that they were asking the wrong question. “They should have asked for assurance that the flight would be safe in order to launch.”

Similarly, the climate change skeptics argue that the vast body of data showing evidence of manmade climate change is not conclusive “proof.”

The computer models produced by climate change scientists have predicted an increase in extreme weather events as a result of global warming. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy is consistent with this pattern. That doesn’t “prove” that the largest storm in recorded history was caused by climate change, but it does make one wonder.

In an exchange with Andrew Revkin in the New York Times on line, Miller writes:

“Extremely Hot Summers (“3-sigma” events) have increased 50X (5000%) in the past 50 years. There is 4% more water vapor in the atmosphere than 50 years ago. Average ocean temperatures have increased (90% of global warming energy goes into the ocean). The Arctic sea ice just reached its lowest level in thousands of years and in a few years you will be able to sail a boat to the North Pole for the first time in human history.

“These documented impacts all affected the strength, scale, and direction of Hurricane Sandy. No one is saying that a Hurricane Sandy would not have happened if not for climate change. But I believe there is little doubt that the record-breaking scale and potential destructiveness of Sandy is due in large part to the amplifying effects of warmer ocean temperatures, higher atmospheric moisture content, and unusual Arctic weather patterns.

“Like the Space Shuttle Challenger’s NASA managers, waiting for scientific “proof” of disaster, rather than taking prudent (and economically beneficial) steps to avert disaster, only guarantees that our children will face catastrophic consequences.”

Climate change was one of many topics ignored in the presidential debates. But it is something we cannot ignore. One of the meteorologists predicting the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy reported on a conversation he had with a coastal resident as the storm was approaching. The man complained that the meteorologists were always hyping the next big storm and he saw no need to evacuate his home. The meteorologist said his response was approximately, “Do what the emergency management people are telling you to do, and if they are wrong you can call up and yell at me on Tuesday.”

We only have one planet. We don’t have a place to go if this one becomes uninhabitable. Maybe the 99% of scientists who believe that global warming is real are mistaken. Maybe the effects of global warming have been exaggerated. But their predictions have been accurate up to this point, and it is long past time for us to do something about it.

After the Flood

²⁰Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. ²²As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Genesis 8:20-22

After the flood, when the dry land appeared again and Noah gave thanks for a second chance for the world, God spoke to Noah and promised that he would never again bring such destruction.

In this summer of heat and drought, we would not wish for a flood, but a few days of rain would be welcome. In the United States, we experienced the hottest July on record, breaking the mark set in 1936, in the midst of the dustbowl. It also marked the warmest 12 month period on record. Sixty-three percent of the country is experiencing drought conditions. Unless something changes radically in the next two weeks, at the end of August we will have experienced 330 consecutive months in which the average global temperature exceeded the average for the twentieth century.

The numbers are scary.

The good news, if you can call it good news, is that more people are convinced that global warming is a reality. The bad news, apart from the drought itself, is that no one seems to be seriously proposing that we should try to do something about it.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Mark Bittman writes: “Here’s what American exceptionalism means now: on a per-capita basis, we either lead or come close to leading the world in consumption of resources, production of pollutants and a profound unwillingness to do anything about it.” We remain the only industrialized nation that has not signed the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gases.

Global warming is not a "natural disaster" and it certainly is not an "act of God." On the contrary, this is the result of an act of humanity. The writers of Genesis recorded God's promise not to destroy the world, but they could hardly have imagined that we would do it to ourselves. 

For Christians, our failure to act in the face of global warming should be profoundly troubling in at least three different ways.

First, if we understand ourselves as stewards of the gifts that God has given us, then caring for creation must be a priority. If we believe that it all belongs to God, then we have a responsibility to take care of it.

Second, we need to trust the science. That may sound to some people like the very opposite of faith, but it grows directly out of our understanding of creation as a gift. We are supposed to think and search and experiment and understand the world. Science is a gift. We should embrace it. We will seldom find unanimity, but we need to look for the broad consensus.

Third, the consequences of global warming will fall most heavily on those who have the least and are the most vulnerable. Global ecology and global justice are directly related. As the effects of global warming increase, those who have the least will lose the most. 

What Do You See?

Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;

you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

⁹You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain,

for so you have prepared it.

¹⁰You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges,

softening it with showers, and blessing its growth.

¹¹You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

¹²The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

¹³the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy.

Psalm 65:8-13

Every once in a while I receive an email that ends with the instruction, “Forward if you believe in GOD!” Sometimes there are several exclamation points. Occasionally, there is a note warning me that “this is a test.” A few promise rewards for forwarding and penalties for failing to forward.

I never forward any of them. But they often provide occasions for reflection.

One of those emails tells the unlikely story of a teacher preparing to teach a classroom of six year-olds about evolution. The implicit assumption is that believing in God and evolution are mutually exclusive, which is nonsense, but that’s really not relevant to the story.

The teacher asks a little boy if he can see the grass outside and then asks him to go outside and look up at the sky and then come back and tell the class what he saw. (I know, you’re thinking that if you send a 6 year-old boy outside on a nice day there is no way he’s going to just look up at the sky and then run right back to the classroom. But I already said that it’s an unlikely story. You’ll just have to pretend that he would come right back.) When he gets back, she asks if he saw the sky, which he did. Then she asks if he saw God in the sky, and he says that he didn’t. “Well,” says the teacher, “maybe the reason you didn’t see God is because he isn’t there. Maybe he doesn’t exist.”

At this point a little girl raises her hand and asks if she can ask the little boy some questions. First, she asks him if he can see the teacher, and he says that he can. Then she asks him if he can see the teacher’s brain, and he says that he can’t. “Then,” says the little girl, “according to what we were just taught, maybe that’s because she doesn’t have one!”

The story is smug and offensive on several different levels. And the point, of course, is that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But my reflections took me in the opposite direction.

For some of us, when we look at the sky, we do see God. We don’t see God “in the sky,” and we don’t believe that the sky is God, but when we look at the sky we see God. When I was growing up on Cape Cod, I would look at the ocean, vast and mysterious, serene and powerful, and I wondered if I could ever have the same spiritual experience away from the shore. Later I was surprised to hear that other people felt that way about the mountains, or the forest. When I went to Israel with a group of rabbis I marveled that they felt the same way about the desert wilderness that I did about the ocean. And then I went to the wilderness and I understood. On a clear summer night in those places where there is not too much light pollution, I am amazed to see the Milky Way stretching out almost beyond imagination.

Thomas Altizer said that God is present “in every human hand and face.” I don’t know whether this looking and seeing comes naturally to some people and not to others. Some of my more spiritually gifted friends speak of the practice of “mindfulness,” an active open attention to the present moment and an intentional awakening to that experience.

What do you see when you look at the world around you?