Perspectives: De Culpis - Part 2

In part one, I tried to draw the connection between influence and responsibility. Because our choices affect others, we also share in the responsibility of their choices. Likewise, since we are affected by the choices that others have made, they share in responsibility for our actions. When we will be called to account, we will be called to explain not only the things that we have done, but also every little repercussion that a word of advice or warning has the the decisions of others. However, the one who weighs all the influences on your heart, and comes to that final decision to abide or divide with God is still going to be you.

Let me now address another aspect of responsibility. Surely then, the skeptic says, God is ultimately responsible for all the disasters of this world. Isn't it a bit of a farce to say that God experienced all this emotion and bother when He was the one who made it all and knew it was going to happen in advance? This falls back into the line of reasoning that we are incapable of doing anything about our lives because God has somehow 'pre-determined' everything. We blame God for the evil in our lives, and the evil in our world.

It's not a new tendency at all. When Adam makes his excuses, he does more than blame the woman. In his words: 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I ate.' [Emphasis added]. Sadly, we're all about as spineless as Adam when we confront our sins most of the time. Was it God's fault? I do not think so at all. When He finished His creation, He saw that it was all 'very good'. There was no flaw from God's end, and that principle continues till today.

In the book of James he writes:

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James 1: 12-15

We are the ones, we created wills, who chose and choose and will choose to rebel against the designs of God and in doing so, invite destruction from the consequences of our sins.

After Adam we soon see the generational effects of sin. I don't think Adam and Eve had any idea what they were unleashing when they ate of their tree, but for some reason or another, Cain murders Abel, but he still feels shame about it. In a few more generations, Lamech boasts about his murders and twists God's words to Cain irreverently and beyond all recognition. Hearts got harder and harder. 

Our parents are two people who have enormous influence over us, whether they are present or absent, involved or detached, righteous or debauched. I think with each generation, there is a tendency for the sins of our parents in their own imperfection to impact their children in harsh ways. These effects distort the child's understanding of parenthood, family, God and him or herself. In the middle of this confusion, information about good and evil, our picture of what relationships should look like, is twisted and sometimes even lost completely. They become like mutations in precancerous cells, passing from one generation to the next, each successive family inheriting the relational damage of the family that preceded it temporally, and adding to the mix its own cocktail of carcinogens. Finally the whole dynasty crumbles down from the original design and breaks away selfishly in a mad rebellion and rush to destruction. Every society had acquired different mutations, different deviations from the original design. All of us have gone astray.

Why did God destroy the antediluvian society? They were already set to destroy themselves. They would do so far in advance of the arrival of Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer. I think that if there was even a chance that that society would have produced one faithful and righteous person, who would respond to the message of the Gospel, then God would have preserved it. In fact, what God chose to do, to rescue Noah and his family, and wipe the rest of mankind out was a mercy. As I described previously, that society must have become so depraved that any new children born into it would find themselves so assaulted by lies and the consequences of sin as to have no chance of coming into their own redemption and relationship with God.

The societies that God allows to persist, He does so for the sake of the individuals that He sees who will emerge from those societies to the fullness of a walk with Him. The societies that are terminally ill, well, those are ripe for His judgement and He then acts to contain the consequences of sin.

Christ came into this world for about 33 years. In that time, He broke the power of sin by a reliance on God that helped Him to overcome the powers of darkness that dominated the society of His day. He saw the mutations that had come into the social fabric of His age and spoke out against them. he spoke the truth. He has been doing that ever since. The truth of God is the spiritual equivalent of that holy grail in cancer research, targeted gene therapy. He digs deep into our very constitutions and confronts the lie within, then reveals to us the truth. Then we begin to produce the right mRNA, the right proteins, and proper function is restored. How much we ought to love His word and His law! For those are the means by which we receive the truth and are restored. The generational power of sin is broken, individuals, then families then whole societies are set free from its destructive effects.

The power of Christ is so great that all these societies that one would deem broken beyond all repair are still within His saving grace. But right from the outset, forces have pushed back against the good news. We have devised up with ever more deceptive and convincing ways to discredit the work and even the existence of the Son, going beyond that to deny the very existence of God. There will come a day where we are insensitive to even the greatest love and sacrifice of all, when we collectively, as a new Babel, a new global society, become so numb to the higher and more transcendent poetry of life that we are beyond even the grace of God because all His efforts, which are not insignificant, avail not upon the hardness of the hearts of men.

It has come to that point before and it will come to that point again. Jesus Himself was aware of this even as He ministered to the people of Jerusalem when He said:

'Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man' 

Luke 17:26

and later with the words about Sodom and Gomorrah in the rest of Luke 17.

To end this train of thought, I would like to see what it means for that perennial problem of predestination. Has God chosen us or have we chosen Him?

In a post from quite awhile back, I discuss the nature of 'sinful nature'. I believe there is now another aspect of it that I have to incorporate into my understanding. Sinful nature is not only the state of broken fellowship with God, but it is also the state of bearing the consequences of the sins of the generations before us. The sins of others around us dramatically increase the likelihood that we will give in to sin ourselves. That is what we have inherited. It is not some fluffy spiritualised condition, it is the burden of generational brokenness that is all too manifest. I stand by the original post's stand however, in that no matter what our background, we still have that ultimate choice of whether we want to obey or disobey, submit or subvert. But the power to break free from the grip of sin comes only in Jesus Christ. I do not find it in contradiction with my understanding of a perverse society that is little more than a factory for doomed souls. As I have said, we are responsible for more than ourselves and others are also responsible for us, that concept clarifies this apparent contradiction for me.

But you argue. How can God be sure that there will not be a single child, caught in the midst of the darkness of sin of the society, who will miraculously come to know Him personally before He wipes that society off the map? You mention in your previous post that no matter what kind of background we come from, God is able to redeem. Are you saying that His power is too limited? Let me posit a counter-argument. What if a society is so far gone that there are no children in the first place?

Child sacrifice has been with the human race of a long time. We see it in the worship of Molech way back in Canaanite times. How disastrous. The lies of the enemy became so powerful that people burnt their babies alive. What do we make of such a society? Every society is only a few generations away from extinction. If we have so twisted the design of reproduction that a society overall would rather not reproduce than reproduce, then it has ended. There are no more uncertainties about it, and no more potential righteous souls. Do we see this happening now? I don't need to tell you what I mean by this. You already know where it is headed.

Already in many developed nations, abortion rates hover at around a quarter of all recorded pregnancies. Is it so inconceivable that those numbers will continue to rise? Is it too difficult to accept that a society that does not care for children, parenting and family should implode on itself by sheer biological limitation? As more and more people fall to the lies of deception in this world, those numbers will rise chillingly.

Say that there is a spring of water that has for many years been active and productive, but the water can end up in very different places. It may end up on a farm somewhere to be used for crops, or meander down to a delta and reach the open ocean. It may end up in packed in a can of a sweet carbonated drink for all I know. Let us say that the kingdom of heaven is that vast open ocean. How might we be sure that no more water is going to flow into the ocean? The spring dries up. What happens then? The wrath of God can descend without question because there is no more uncertainty about where the water from the spring is going to go because there is simply no more water to observe. The font is damaged beyond repair. When Jesus spoke of letting the little children come to Him, I suspect this was the deeper chord He was trying to pluck. A society that hates its children is in the final stages of its self-destruction.

Let me return to that point I was making. If you've persisted this long I thank you for your patience. In a relationship, who is responsible for its health and vitality? I've touched on this already in part one, but as the adage says, you need two hands to clap. 

'We love because He first loved us.'

1 John 4:19

We have a God who has already done all that He can to make it possible for us to come to Him. He has laid out he red carpet, He has come to dwell among us. He has covered our imperfections with a sacrifice that He provided. I know no other God who so desires so strongly such a connection with humanity. But He also knows that some will respond, and others will not. Not because we have no choice in the matter, but He has seen. Because He has seen, He works, and to us in our limited perspectives, it seems like He has decided things for us. If the relationship does not work out, it is through no fault of God. The fault is entirely on us and our rebellious wills.

God says the words:

'I will be gracious on whom I will be gracious and 

I will have compassion on whom I will show compassion.'

Exodus 33:19

He is not saying these words as a dictator. He is saying them as the Lord of lords, who is omniscient about the past, present and future. He is telling us that what looks like injustice from our limited perspective is not injustice at all from His perspective. He is telling us not to challenge, or be stumbled up by His judgements because He considers and sees factors that we cannot ever hope to fully comprehend. He knows better, not because He thinks He does, but because He does. The astonishing degree of connectivity that the human race has is something only God can tackle in His judgements. Only He can see how the ideas of false prophets have enslaved the thinking of subsequent generations and call them to trial. Only He can peer into the depths of the human heart and tell us whether we have walked by the Spirit or by the flesh for each small decision. Only He has the accurate picture of responsibility and influence that comprises societies we are only dimly aware of and cannot hope to fully document. Never you mind Big Data and an invasion of privacy by governments. Even if they had all the information God had, we would not be close to making the right judgements afterwards.

Will we trust His justice? The justice of an omniscient God?

Perspectives: De Culpis - Part 1

Like many of the ideas I have had recently, this thread is not something that I have derived very explicitly from didactic instruction. To be quite frank, my mind has been so abuzz with all sorts of themes that I should like to take a whole week out and pen them all down before they are lost to the murky waters of memory. In summary:

1. The nature of the political left and right, in relation to chesed ve'emet, and the lyrics of Wicked.

2. A crazy link between the ideas of Strauss Howe generational theory and the eschatological views of what Skye Jethani calls evolution and evacation theology.

3. The church's loss or surrender of the faculty and power of reason and academia to deceptive powers that has become a major source of misconception.

Today though, I would like to deal with the issue of responsibility. I know the title somewhat implies the responsibility of sin, but I'm going to move a little beyond that in the later half of this text.

I think we can all admit this: We like it when blame can be pinned down. It gives us a sense of clarity, and in some cases, an uneasy absolution. We see this from the very beginning, in Genesis 3, when, as it is popularly thought, the man pointed to the woman and the woman, in turn, highlights the serpent. With the passing of culpability, or the accusative fixation of fault on certain individuals or even communities, the narrative is neat and tidy. It goes like this: 

'Something is wrong, we're not always too sure what, but we know things are not right. There is someone at fault, and that someone is surely not us. It must be them! We must do something to rid them from our presence. Once we do that, we'll be all better again.'

This narrative gives us unity. It provides our societies with a common enemy to focus on and work towards eradicating. Many of you see where I'm going with this surely. At times, 'them' has been the lazy aristocrats, the greedy bankers, the communists, the Jews, the Lutherans or the iconolaters. Now there are those who would put blame of radical Muslims, on immigrants, on desperate refugees. A framework of us against them is created. Its very dualist in its approach, in the Zoroastrian sense of the word. There are good guys, whom we are, and bad guys, who are beyond redemption. 'Heaven forbid that someone I should know finds him or herself on the wrong side of the fence that we are constructing here.' 

By imbibing this narrative, we side step the words to the Ephesians:

'For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, 

against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, 

against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.'

Sure, one can say that this passage simply moves the culpability onto the spiritual evil forces around us, and guilty of the same blame game, but there is a distinction to be made at this juncture. When we pin the blame on people, we do so at the expense of creatures of whom God tells us He can redeem. Unlike humans, there is no known provision for redemption for the rebellion of the host of angels who turned away. For now, let us move on to the antithesis.

There is another common narrative, increasingly acceptable because of the inherent meaninglessness that popular ideologies of the age promote. That narrative generally follows this vein:

'I'm not responsible. In fact, no one is responsible for anything. Everything has been determined already, and things are the way they are because that's just what has been mechanically dictated since the inception of this universe.'

Like the first narrative, this manifests in many forms. In the secular world, it is determinism. Volition is an illusion it tell us. Everything that I have done is a result of mechanistic or probabilistic collisions and interactions of particles within me. Morality is irrelevant, for how can I be held responsible for the simple mathematical outworking of the fundamental laws of nature that none may disobey?

In the religious world, the dictator may manifest in many guises. In some belief structures, it is fate. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos reign supreme. If even the ruler of Olympus finds it hard to appeal against their decisions, what influence do mere mortals have? In others, it is karma. Strangely enough, in some strains, God is the grandest dictator of them all. The uber-Calvinists whom Calvin would probably have found a little strange also chime with the sentiment that free will is non-existent within the framework of the sovereignty of God. That view seems quite contradictory to me, because if God was going to make us automata in the first place, why the whole effort to woo us back to Him, to tolerate the disasters of the scarlet sins of this world in order to save an elect? I understand that there are many passages that can be interpreted both on the side of free will and predestination to fruitless argument. I am not here to address those today. 

I will merely state that in my opinion, the dramatic story that is told in the Word, and is still unfolding before us, seems more consistent with the gentle coaxing of the rebellious independent will of man. After all, do we see computer engineers try to encourage poorly written programme to turn into what it was meant to be, or do we see them intervene dramatically and alter the very composition of its code? We are more complex than the most sophisticated software in existence.

What then is my synthesis? To use some Hegelian concepts for clarity:

Thesis - Responsibility is placed on an individual, preferably not ourselves.

Antithesis - Responsibility is diffused beyond any meaningful source.

Synthesis - Responsibility is both individual and societal.

This will take awhile to explain.

In Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell writes this through the words of Somni-451:

'Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, 

past and present, and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future.'

While I do not subscribe fully to every line in her speech, I believe this one captures something of an understanding of human nature that we have lost sight of in the developed world. We are individuals but we are not isolated.

Over and over in the stories of the bible we see that effects that one person's choices have on the lives of others. King David's affair with Bathsheba, at first clandestine, is exposed, and the consequences ripple out in uncontrolled waves to taint the rest of his household. On the other hand, the obedience of a prince of Egypt leads a people from slavery into freedom. This principle does not just apply with the great heads of state however. The love of a Moabite woman for her mother in law results in her eventually becoming an ancestor of King David himself, and in his life he runs to Moab for refuge. The slave Onesimus, in his service to Paul and Philemon, teaches the community about respect for servants. The willing heart of a young Jewess allows for the incarnation of the greatest history changer the world has ever known.

It is glaringly obvious once we look at the lives of those around us, at our own lives. We are shaped by uncounted influences, connected in ways profound to others, whether overt or covert. Family, friends, colleagues, fellow citizens, the global community, we affect one another with words and deeds as part of the intricate tapestry of the human epic.

So why do we live as though the individual is all there is? We seek our own self-promotion, and when when we choose to destroy ourselves in addictive behaviour and self-pity we act as though no one else will be affected. We live as though we are isolated, that no one cares about you except yourself. Do we not sense the subtler harms and influences that our behaviour has?

In the modern liberal democracy, we cherish our rights. Simultaneously, we dread our responsibilities, even when those responsibilities have to do with maintaining the rights our forbears have fought so hard for. We like to behave as though we are responsible for no one but ourselves, and live in denial of the disastrous effects that our wanton pursuits have on our dislocated relationships.

I suppose the point that I'm trying to get at is this: Our choices do not just affect ourselves. It seems like rather an inane observation to make, but let me carry on with its implications.

Sin often compounds sin. Let us consider a relationship gone sour. Very rarely can one say that it was entirely one or the other person's fault. Little things build up over time into raging and furious storms within us that nigh impossible to reconcile over. When one side sins, it often makes it easier for the other side to follow suit, not necessarily in a sin of the same kind, but in a reciprocal sort of way. Left uncontrolled, they feed on each other in some sort of mutual parasitism, exhausting the vibrancy and health of that relationship. To borrow Paul's language: A husband who waits for his wife to respect him before he loves her, and a wife who is resolved that she cannot respect her husband until he loves her properly, will likely find themselves waiting for quite some time.

One person's sin makes it easier for another to do so. Sin becomes easier to justify. How many times do we comfort ourselves with the thought that something can't be that bad since so many people engage in it? We shut ourselves into communities of people who are just as deluded as we are so that we can ignore the emotional alarms that blare by filling our heads with so-called supportive and encouraging words from the false prophets of our age.

As our failures and their consequences metastasise like a cancer in our societies, the power of sin grows and it becomes harder and harder for the righteous to maintain their convictions. The children who find themselves in such societies are torn left and right by powers malevolent that distort and destroy their understanding of God and of themselves. They grow up and perpetuate, or even augment the brokenness of this world, and each generation becomes more lost than the one before.

When God judges an annihilates society, such as that of Sodom and Gomorrah, I would suggest it is because they have gone so far astray that every new birth in that society is another lost soul. They have forgotten so much of His truth that every conception is doomed to destruction, not by God, but by the sheer depravity of the environment in which that soul will mature. Fatherhood and motherhood become meaningless words, moral education is non-existent. In His mercy on those who would be unborn, He amputates the diseased tissues of the collective body of humanity. We see this in the days of Noah, and we observe the same trends today.

Who is to blame for this destruction? Society? Society is fundamentally composed of individuals, all influencing and connected with each other. In every decision, we impact the future of our nation on scales that are too far reaching to realise in the moment, and in this globalised context, we shape the global society.

In this day and age we have a society that tolerates a lot of sin and in some cases even endorses it. We have a society that answers economic questions of what to produce and how much to produce without any moral compunctions. We fail to ask the question of ought: We know what we can make, but we do not ask if it is right to make it. We have a society where pornography and violence are produced, accessible and not questioned. Increasingly they are not kept in private, but broadcast to massive audiences, a la the recent Marvel movie of a superhero whose name bears the tone of what he represents chillingly accurately. We have a society that has more functions at its fingertips than ever before, but we do not ask if it is right to send an emotionally manipulative message at any time of the night, or if it is right to produce platforms that drive our egomania with likes and comments.

Where then is hope? Does God leave us to our destructive tendencies, not merely on an individual level, but on a societal level? Thankfully He has not abandoned us. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that spread through a batch of dough. By a slow influence, whole nations and cultures have changed to adopt the principles of the kingdom order. One individual, then another, chooses rightly, and their righteous choices also tug on the lives of those around them, influencing, impacting, transforming and redeeming.

When God sees us, it is true that He values us as individuals. He values the uniqueness, the gifts, the aspects of you that He gave you that make you the marvellous creation that you are. But He looks beyond you. In you He sees the potential you have to impact the lives of others. Each smile that you give a cashier, every glare that you cast on rival, each word of life or death spoken intentionally or carelessly that digs deep and roots itself in the soul of its recipient.

We are confronted with choices, and the methods by which we make those choices are shaped by the cultural milieu we find ourselves in. When God judges our actions, I doubt He will judge us individually either. If I may use a literary example, when George Wilson pulls that trigger on Gatsby, the outside world sees a madman shooting a tycoon out of revenge and spite. But the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg, the symbol of the eyes of God, see more than that. They see an adulterous man having an affair with a married woman, a deceptive Tom Buchanan feeding George the wrong information, a careless Daisy moving on and leaving a disaster in her wake, a society where the rich get off free and the poor are oppressed, a materialistic and selfish ambition that justifies the horrid actions of the characters, the hypocrisy of moral bankruptcy under a glossy sheen.

So much has gone into shaping every tiny decision, but the Lord knows it all. No human judge could do this. I suspect that this potent combination of omniscience and justice will be one of the deciding factors that causes each person to leave the judgement at the Great White Throne thoroughly satisfied with the verdict, no matter what that verdict will be.

To return to the original question: Our decisions are a balance between our own wills and the forces that impose themselves on our wills. Yes there may be powerful societal forces at work, but those forces do not have final authority over the decision I make in the end. When I choose to sin in this day and age, I still make that choice and I am still responsible, but in many cases, I am not the only one responsible. Because we are influenced by others, the responsibility of my choice falls not only on me, but on those around me who have influenced me. It is not a case of me being solely to blame, or of me being helpless in the face of overwhelming powers.

This explains another observation to me as well. Since the coming of Christ, every man and every society has the potential to be redeemed. The powerful bondage of sin over societies has been overcome, is being overcome and is still to be overcome through the gradual permeative influence of the gospel. No longer do we see a society wiped off the face of the earth in the manner of Sodom because now there is hope!

Yet we also see the final coup in action. As I wrote about in the post 'Insufficient Grace', we see that the world is increasingly rejecting the hope that is in Christ. There will come a day when what is left of humanity is so caught up in its own pride and delusions that the gospel ceases to have any effect, for hearts would have become so hard. In that day, Dies Irae, we will see the final judgement come, and it will come upon all men because at that point, all men will be part of one terminally diseased society.

This post is getting too long, and new ideas keep flooding my mind. I shall break it off here and write a second part to this.

Perspectives : The Mechanics of Evolution

It saddens me to see the degree of polarity that has emerged in recent decades over any number of issues, and the debate over our origin is one of them. I wish to put down in writing my current position on the matter. Whether or not it offends one side or the other is not really my concern. Rather, I want to have a record of my own beliefs, that in future I may return and either refine or dispense with them entirely.

Quite commonly, those who do not believe in evolution as the primary driving force for the diversity and complexity of life are quickly lambasted as dunces who do not wish to face up to the evidence. The fossil record, phylogenetics, molecular biology on and on it goes. The conservative Christian is left feeling as though he or she has to grasp at ever more unrealistic straws to say that God created the world in seven days.

That 'alternative' camp is not entirely satisfactory either. To bottle oneself up in a shell and refuse to face the facts rings of a blind faith, divorced from reality and not at all consistent with the degree of reality that God encourages us to pursue.

O veritas, why are you so elusive?

I encourage you not to be tainted by a sense of motivational fallacy as you read what follows. I am not here to address every argument and angle that has been thrown up on the issue, though I have ideas on them nonetheless. My position might best be described as something like theistic microevolution. God gave us these mechanics that species would be able to adapt to various environmental changes.

I have learnt on a superficial level what goes into the complexity of life. An organism made of interrelated systems, composed of organs, made of tissues, constituted of cells. All in highly regulated processes that maintain homeostasis. Life, in its entirety seems so vulnerable to disorder that it is a wonder that it has continued for as long as it has.

A single cell in itself is a wonder to behold. Substances of many kinds diffuse in the cytoplasm or are bound to a tightly organised membrane system; ions, carbohydrates, amino acids, enzymes, proteins colliding and interacting in a flabbergasting chemical symphony.

Information is encoded in an elegant system of four nitrogenous bases, interpreted by a host of enzymes to produce proteins, some of which are enzymes themselves. The interpretation is influenced by another, perhaps more complex, layer of regulation as epigenetic factors silence or promote the expression of certain regions. The enzymes eventually get around to replicating the DNA itself and life goes on.

Then cells interact with other cells; with neurotransmitters, membrane proteins, hormonal factors, interleukins, cytokines, on and on the list goes. Books and books have been written and still we know precious little about the full mechanisms involved.

Tissues and organs work together to balance a hundred factors, pH in the blood, electrical activity of the heart, the transport of potassium in the kidneys, the level of glucose in the blood, calcium levels, oxygenation, blood pressure, temperature, renal output, muscle tone, hormonal levels, growth and development, maintaining immune functions and antibody levels, once again, on and on one can go, enough to exhaust the space on hundreds of pages and barely scratch the surface.

Things extend in the other direction as well. A single enzyme is a carefully arranged sequence of amino acids, folded in a precise way, maintained in the right pH and temperature range to support its function, produced, transported, modified and degraded by a committee of other enzymes. Biological molecules are made of atoms, atoms of quarks and leptons. It is stunning that the simple laws of mathematics at the heart of this reality, the geometry of three dimensions and the strengths of various forces, allow for the functional complexity that is ribosome reductase.

We know more about the human body, about life in general, than at any other time in history, yet we are also more powerfully blinded to the marvel of it all because each successive discovery is gradually integrated into a framework that tells us that we are nothing more than self-conscious stardust, that all the information we have discovered is something that a bunch of monkeys would one day type out given a typewriter and enough ink.

That is my major contention: Information does not arise spontaneously. As a creative and imaginative being, I see already how difficult it is for me to compose in the medium I am most familiar with, the English language. The time that goes into my diction, punctuation and the inspiration for my posts is not insignificant, but I daresay that if I had not written this post, no other individual in the world would string together the exact same words to convey the same sentiments. There is a reason why sites like Turnitin have any success after all. To say that this post would arise from random generation is even more futile. Leave a blank page alone, and perhaps it will acquire a tea stain, inadvertent creases, grow damp with humidity and eventually disintegrate, but it is not going to give you the line 'What a piece of work is man.' We never see information arise in our experience except from intelligence. Intelligence both creates and interprets information.

There is a marvellous website that may be proposed as a counter to this enshrinement of creativity: The Library of Babel. It even has prose of my own original composition which I have not shown to another human soul. Yet it relies on a system that generates text in the first place. It relies on an even more complex system of a language that has evolved over the millennia to give us odd contradictions like the words 'restful' and 'restive' for the text in the library to have any significance to any of us.

Modern evolutionary theory admits the need for a driver, a creator of information, and we put this down to mutation. Mutation it says, gave us the language of life. Yes, mutation is overwhelmingly detrimental, but occasionally, it gives us something useful it says. The eye is used as a prime example, proceeding from a simple structure into the full organ that gives us the ability to sense wavicles of the electromagnetic force.

To me mutation will only result in the loss or modification of information. To me, a strain of wolf that has been domesticated and gradually selected for meeker and tamer characteristics until it becomes a shitzu has not gained information. The information contained within those genes has been from its original expression, absolutely. The strain of this organism has adapted to a new environment, certainly. The two animals look nothing alike and behave in ways that are not alike, indubitably. But there is no new information. There is only information that has been altered. Both are still Canis lupus. They still have the same enzymes or variations of those enzymes. We see the same phenomenon in human populations. The Hapsburg jaw is just as unnerving a phenotype as the pudgy profile of a bulldog. One only has to look at diversity among Homo sapiens to see how much potential there is for intra-species variation.

Let me use a non-biological example. The Bible is a book that singularly has more translations, copies, versions and languages than any other book in the world. Do I believe that all of them are accurate and absolutely free of error? No, I do not. The Message is quite a different creature from the English Standard Version, and both are in turn different from Jerome's Vulgate. The text in Hebrew and Greek are still the ultimate authority, and we go back to them when there are translational issues. In a way, the versions of the sacred text are all mutations of the original, adapting themselves to different communities so they can be read and understood, appreciated and applied. Some bible translations are more faithful to the original than others, and some are so compromised that they should really not be touted as bibles at all. Translations that are so inaccurate that they fall into the latter category are like organisms with mutations so severe that they are incompatible with life. Can those books still be read? Surely they can, just as a baby with anencephaly can be born.

To say that the information of life, not just DNA, but the complex interactions that occur between other compounds, between cells, between tissues, organs and the environment, in between male and female, organisms and species, ecosystems and climates all come from mutation and not from intelligence, requires a level of faith that I cannot sustain. It is not just a matter of information, but that there should be systems in place to interpret and apply that information at all. A string of DNA is not going to produce anything on its own.

This is becoming quite the disorganised rant. In summary, my point is that, if evolution had been proposed as the driving mechanism for the development and diversification of life in a world that new as much about life's complexity as we do today, it would seem laughable. It was compatible in a world of aqua vitae and widespread belief in spontaneous generation, not so much in a world of phospholipase C and voltage gated potassium channels. It is only because each successive discovery has boarded the sinking Titanic that the Titanic is full while the Noahic Ark seems empty. To continue to propose so is, to me, akin to reading the prolific works of Voltaire and insisting that they were in fact generated by mechanical random letter generators and editors over the entire span of human history instead of a remarkably gifted and incisive mind. This may sound a little irreverent, but: 'Oh look, they have common themes, it must have been 'convergent evolution', definitely not because they were written by the same intelligent individual!'

Let me now move on to what I do believe that modern science has given us. Yes there are genes, yes there are mutations, yes there is variation in a population, yes there are populations that get behaviourally and sexually isolated and diverge in characteristics. Yes the fittest survive and the less well adapted die out in extinction. There are ways that we can construct phylogenetic trees and observe the variations of a single enzyme across multiple populations that gives rise to distinct phenotypes. Yes we can apply the Hardy-Weinberg principle to conceptualise changes in populations. I accept all these things because that is what the evidence demands, to deny these points is to be ignorant and dogmatic. The evidence however, does not demand that I have to buy that mutation is somehow the author of the corpus of information that assaults me in every nature reservation. In fact, I feel it demands quite the opposite.

What if God, in His wisdom, created species, or as the Bible phrases it, kinds, with the genetic potential for adaptation to all the environments this world would offer? I do not see why an omnipotent God could not have placed genes, dormant, in the equivalents of Adam and Eve for the otter, the gecko, the salmon, the cockroach or even the beloved finch, to allow them to acclimatise themselves to very different conditions. Changes in diet, temperature, humidity, ecosystems and micro-organismal milieu and so on would have been foreseen by a God who foresaw that His Son's executioners would cast lots for His robe. His creation is not so fragile to be upset by such disturbances, but learns, reorganises and modifies itself in a remarkable way to show the degree of compensation that has been incorporated into the design from the very beginning.

To me, all that the mechanics of evolution prove is that our God is a far more ingenious author than we first supposed. There is no artificial system that does what the natural system of genes and enzymes does to any degree of comparison, not without constant new input and maintenance from the intelligent human designers. On the other hand, the game plan for natural life has been tremendously successful and resistant to stresses over thousands of years, without God having to say, 'Oh excuse me, let me send out the latest patch.' On the other hand, the 'bugs' that we observe in the programme of life, the effects of thalassemia, atrial septal defects and cerebral palsy are precisely what mutation and mistakes cause. These conditions were not part of the original design in my worldview.

I would like to end off with another final point. The purely materialistic evolutionary worldview limits the 'function' of an organism to its ability to perpetuate its selfish genes, id est, surviving from conception to reproduction. Many other structures that appear to have no role in this are dismissed as accessory and vestigial. Other aspects of the human body we have no logical reason for. The palmaris longus, the decussation of nerve fibres in the spinal cord, I can go on.

What if our bodies were designed with more in mind? Is it so hard to accept that perhaps our bodies were designed to be beautiful and organised? To go beyond that, that our bodies were designed so that we could investigate them and discover how they work, designed to be comprehensible? What if the spinal column is organised in a way that allows us to test its function and relations to the nerves at each level, that we can draw charts of dematomes and myotomes and predict with accuracy the functional loss that comes from a lesion of a certain vertebral level. Taking this further still, that when God put in the palmaris longus, He knew that He was putting in a structure that would be able to serve as a source of reserve tendon tissue for repair operations without the need to worry for immunological effects? It lends even more credence to the idea that as we study nature, we get glimpses into the mind of the creator that complement the revelation of His character in the bible and in our daily experience. Do you think that God intended for us not to know about our own bodies, or that He did not anticipate every advance and development of modern medical technology?

We are too quick to judge something as significant and another structure as insignificant. We are too quick to pronounce evidence of 'unintelligent design' when we do not even know the purpose of the means by which it is constructed. We flaunt our definitions of purpose, value and utility onto a human body that is intricate beyond belief, and in doing so, discredit its ongoing miracle.

It is almost tragically ironic, that the psalmist, who probably didn't even know that the heart pumps blood, could declare 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made' while our information saturated societies have such discomfort from the implication that there is a Maker.

The Serpent's Curse

The Lord God said to the serpent, 

'Because you have done this, 

cursed are you above all livestock, 

and above all beasts of the field; 

On your belly you shall go, 

and dust you shall eat, 

all the days of your life. 

I will put enmity between you and the woman, 

and between your offspring and her offspring; 

he shall bruise your head, 

and you shall bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:14-15

Within the context of Eldwan, Alero's motivations have always seemed nobler to me than Lucifer's but now I am not so sure. In the course of developing Eldwan, I have made the story not just about human characters struggling through the contradictions they are faced with, but also about the greater powers that be in the subcreation. I claim no knowledge of the nature of angels or spirits in this world, but within Eldwan I am free to define them as I will. 

As I last told it, in the creation of Eldwan, Eleyon sets up the garden of Elin with two chalices in its centre, the chalice of energy and the chalice of ether. As humanity matures, the chalice of energy is made freely open to us, but the chalice of ether remains off limits

Alero's main point of contention with Eleyon is that the prohibition on the chalice of ether is unnecessary, especially for his most capable students. When he encourages his disciples to rebel, he does so because he believes that he is doing so for their best interests.

Side note, but come to think of it, a fruit is a far more potent symbol than an artificial chalice. A fruit is a natural creation, that bears that signature of the masterful creator, that unreplicable complexity that is life. A chalice is something made by human hands, and is not primal. The notion of a fruit of a tree is a fundamental symbol in our world. I feel conflicted about whether I should change the chalices to another object, at least one that is natural, or biological. Though, once I apply those restrictions as well as the sentiment that animals were not given yet as food, there are not really many options left but a fruit of some sort. 

Alero never intended for him and humanity to be at odds. Though the whole of Eldwan's age of light, he works with humanity to help them achieve their apotheosis, through the Luminosa. He is frustrated by the frailty and imperfections that he observes, but he chooses to believe in his obstinacy that humanity is better off without Eleyon and in a space where they can define their own reality. 

At the end of the age of light, Alero's conviction is shaken, because in spite of anything, he cannot find out what they are missing that prevents them from being like Eleyon. Luminosan society has imploded, and Alero finds himself in a state where he is analysing the whole situation, unsure of what went wrong. Eleyon gives him a chance to return to the fold, but Alero still feels that Eleyon must be the one standing in the way of his success, and rejects the invitation. Alero blames Eleyon for the destruction of the Luminosa, but deep within himself he wonders if his original purpose was misguided.

When Alaris is rejuvenated, Alero gets a taste of rejection for himself, and in a selfish anger, he determines that he will be the one to humble the new gods. By the end of the age of water, Alero has decided anew about the nature of humanity. Eleyon has not made them too good, he has made them too flawed, and Alero makes it his new mission to prove to Eleyon that humanity is capable of atrocities so debauched that they are not worth the saving, not worth Eleyon's concern. At the heart of this is an unwillingness to accept the blame for the disharmony he has caused. The culpability Alero throws is not on himself, but on the nature of man, and on Eleyon himself. 

This is the point of resonance between the mythos of Eldwan and the curious statement: 'I will put enmity between you and the woman.' The statement as a punishment seems in a way to imply the converse, that prior to the fall, the serpent had not intended for himself and humanity to be at odds. This point has many areas worth speculating about, such as the extent to which Lucifer understood the effects of sin and the ultimate destruction that would await before he tempted the man and woman, or the kind of relationship that the serpent had with the man and the woman before the fall. At least in my mythos, Alero is unaware. But like Alero, Lucifer is not omniscient.

Before Alero tempts those who will become the fallen, he declares his intentions in the city of the gods, and a third of the wevel agree with him and they are all cast out of the city. Oleri is Michael in this scenario, embodying justice and truth. On that note, Uleva will be linked to the other side of the equation, namely agape and grace. Eleyon watches everything that happens with the quiet knowledge that rebellion must be allowed to run its course. Ilvesu tries to conceal her own guilt for having poisoned the chalice, or perhaps now, the tree of ether.

The first rebellion must have been the subtlest of things, or at least I feel that it should be. Borne out of pride indeed, but pride manifests under many disguises. Yet rebellion is rebellion indeed, stark against the holy perfection of God.

The second part of the curse then comes into play, and in the age of Kings, as Alero revels in his new purpose, he begins to see that Ilvesu, Lady Wisdom, has curiously been assigned to a particular group of people. They do not seem too different, or exceptional, but she is tasked to them for now. Remembering that his destruction will come through the ever contentious nature of humanity,  Alero begins to watch in growing apprehension about what Eleyon is planning through his chosen family, and resolves to try and destroy them in particular. The rest is history. 

I don't really know where this idea will take me, but to incorporate it into the shifting tapestry of Eldwan's history is a way I could give it voice and a canvas without infringing on dictating the nature of this reality.