Christianity + Evolution = ?????, Part 2

(Continued from last week) Thankfully, God is not a Darwinist. This may seem like common sense. Of course God is not a Darwinist, or a Creationist for that matter, because God transcends human understanding and philosophy and our limited perspectives. I intend to demonstrate, though, that God is specifically not a proponent of the “survival of the fittest” philosophy when it comes to dealing with His chosen people in the Old and New Testaments. Natural selection has no place in the economy of the Kingdom.

We’ll begin our journey through scripture with Abraham and Sarah, the first patriarch and matriarch of Israel. The couple, well beyond the fit time of child bearing at 100 and 90 years of age, respectively, are blessed by God with a child in Isaac. According to Darwin, God’s singling out of Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of a great nation doesn’t make sense – they’re way too old. Yet in an act of grace, God chooses the weak of the world to be the strong of the Kingdom. The divine story continues with the birth of Ishmael and Isaac, the latter and younger son being the child of promise, covenant, and favor. With Isaac’s own son, Jacob, the covenant line is propagated through the presumably punier twin to Esau, and God’s choice is with the weaker fellow once again. Perhaps the most famous of Jacob’s sons is the second-to-youngest Joseph, who through the work of Providence saves Egypt and his father’s family from famine. Sold into slavery and thrown into prison time and time again, Joseph’s testimony is a reflection of the good God that he serves. He doesn’t survive because he is strong, like Darwin might suggest, but because the God of Israel is strong for him.

We’re only to the patriarchs, and we already have enough examples of God’s anti-natural selectionism to fill volumes of expository teaching. God’s redemption of Israel in the Exodus story continues to confirm His choice of the vulnerable. The oppressed Hebrews are freed from the burden of Egyptian slavery and in a magnificent demonstration of power “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he(God) cast into the sea.” Moses, the s-s-stuttering prophet of promise, is the incapable man chosen to lead the way. And what more shall I say of the Old Testament witness? In the time of the Judges, God raises up the youngest sibling Gideon from the least tribe Manasseh and uses him to lead a frail force of only 300 men against Midianite hordes. Samson, blinded and weak after his fatal meeting with Delilah, encounters strength one last time to bring the Philistine temple crashing down. Samuel, dedicated to the Lord from his birth, is given to a barren and depressed woman. “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.”

In the time of the kings the Almighty continues to make fit for service those who are otherwise socially hopeless. Saul, chosen from the humblest clan Benjamin, becomes Israel’s first monarch. The next surprising candidate for king is David, of whom his father, Jesse, skeptically speaks, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” The point is that “the Lord sees not as man (including Darwin, I suppose) sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Darwin be darned, it is God who “trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

God’s persistent encounter with humanity is inaugurated anew in the New Testament with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Had Darwin or his philosophical counterparts had their way, Jesus may have been born into a very fit and influential family. Instead, a humble virgin Mary is honored by God to become theotokos, the God-bearer. She proclaims in the Magnificat, “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.” The savior’s birth is itself characterized by social weakness and helplessness when Jesus enters the world in a barn stable. In his earthly ministry, our Lord’s teaching is filled not with a survival-of-the-fittest mentality, but a perspective that speaks of blessing and promise for the poor in spirit, the meek, and the hungry. In an ethic that turns Darwin and this world on its head, Christ says, “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” Jesus’ humiliating death is the must stunning example of this. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The apostle Paul writes in accord with Christ’s example when he admits, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”

And so, whatever Darwin or biology teachers or Christian theologians might tell us about survival of the fittest and natural selection in this world, we can trust that the game will be much different in the world to come. It’s not the wise man’s wisdom nor the strong man’s strength nor the rich man’s riches that will be of any use in the age breaking upon us. Instead, our wisdom, strength, and wealth – our divine exaltation (Heb. 4:10) – will come from a right relationship with God in which we recognize our own weakness, acknowledge our fallenness, and truly humble ourselves before the Lord.