Versicle for guidance

When I hold up this grapefruit for the purpose of understanding its qualities and ask, “Is this yellow or is it spherical?” you would have to say that my question poses an invalid “either / or” scenario because the answer is “both / and.” It is the wrong question for the purpose it was asked. It is the same problem when one sets up the false dichotomy of belief in science or religion. Science is unconcerned with the answers religion provides and the reverse is also true. These two areas of study ask different questions. Science is concerned with “how?” and religion is concerned with “why?”

Our annual celebration of Evolution is not meant to incite discord but to appeal to the proposition that one can be fully, intellectually awake appreciating the wonders of scientific advance while at the same time hold to a faith tradition with intellectual integrity.

We began with an abbreviated reading of the creation story from our Judeo/Christian bible. It is a story that must be accepted at face value for what it is and not inspect its claims too closely or we get into some difficulties with reason. As you may have noticed, there are two accounts of creation in Genesis. Creation takes 6 days in Genesis 1 and only 1 day in genesis 2. In the first account, there is morning and evening, plants and vegetation even before there is light, which occurs before there is a sun. Adam, which is not a person’s name but comes from the Hebrew, adamah, means human. This creature is androgynous, neither male or female and it is created twice, once by being spoken into being, the second time fashioned from mud.

Even though every culture has its own creation myth, with common themes found in all of them, most religious people in this country insist that only our creation story is authentic. Why is that? Is our’s so much more credible than others? With few exceptions, the process begins the same way: There is a void, or chaos, and a male sky God joins with and female earth God and creation gets going that way. Some stories have fairly fantastic aspects such as the Den-e myth which involves ant people and ascent through several different worlds. The original people were driven from each realm by an angry God who sent, you guessed it, a flood to punish them for their wickedness. The Tohono-odam of Southern Az share many similar aspects including a flood, but one righteous individual is spared by fashioning a large canoe into which he places, you guessed it, two of each kind of animal. He even sends out a variety of birds when the rain stops until one comes back with mud on its feet indicating land has resurfaced. There is a very clever animal in this story called coyote who can talk. Imagine that, a talking animal.

I could literally spend all day sharing the myths of the people of the world and what we would find is that the tellers of these stories all believed that: they were the first people; their behavior angered their God; destruction was sent to all but a few; order came from primordial chaos; there was a sky God and an earth God etc. We might find it amusing how primitive peoples came up with such fantastic notions. Then we would need to reflect on our creation myth.

Did you know that within Jewish mythology, there was a first wife for Adam who was named Lilith? She was feisty. She was independent. She refused to lie under Adam during intercourse. Of course, she was disposed of in favor of a more compliant Eve. Early depictions of Lilith show her as being half reptile, a comment in itself. We too have a male sky God. At the beginning there was chaos. And who was a central character in the story of creation we have adopted as our myth? A talking snake of course.

I am not poking fun at any of these myths. Quite the contrary. I am acknowledging that every primitive culture had a need to understand from where they came. Genesis is nothing special in that regard, except that it is OUR MYTH. Genesis is no more plausible than any of the other creation myths of the world, it is simply a matter of perspective and tradition. The Judeo/Christian view point which dismisses every account of creation other than our own is simply hubris. None of these myths is an adequate explanation of how the universe came into being, but as I said earlier, their purpose is not to explain how, but why.

That is the role and function of myth. It was humanity’s best effort to understand the universe before the advent of scientific thought. There is a truth found in these stories that helped provide structure to society and provide moral instruction for communities. Pre-scientific people came up with modes of behavior that made sense to them in their time. When they observed phenomena they created stories to explain it. Thunder and lightning were angry gods to many cultures. Jehovah says in Job that He is found in the earthquake and whirlwind. People have always had the need to tell stories and find symbols that we invest with a surplus of meaning. That is OK.

Sarah Lawrence College professor Joseph Campbell decried the fact that modern people have “lost their myth.” This being the root of much of what ails society. I think he may have been on to something there. The problem is when we take mythology and attempt to literalize it. This has lead to all manner of human suffering whether it be human sacrifice or persecution because one believes differently from the majority view.

The church has played the role of enforcer of the belief system based on a literal reading of the bible. I don’t need to itemize the cruelty and outrageous actions of the church in the past. Today, however, the church is impotent to require people to at least say they believe one thing or the other. Now some types of churches act like spoiled children stamping their feet insisting on their own way but are powerless to require it. Such is the situation when science advances our understanding of biology, or cosmology, or geology, or anthropology. Rather than considering that God may be in the process of enlightenment fundamentalism attacks the integrity of the person and smugly assures its adherents that God will send this “non-believer” to hell.

It is my belief that to hold to a literal reading of Genesis is to stunt our understanding of who and what God actually is, and more importantly, may become. What is exciting is the opportunity to re-imagine God, to glimpse aspects of the deity that surpasses mere anthropomorphism. Humanity has always created gods in humanity’s image. Discarding such limiting framework, we free God to be what ever we might learn to perceive God to be. It is an open-ended proposition. Considering that God may be found in the whirlwind and earthquake also allows for the possibility that God is also found in the sub-atomic structure of matter or the vastness of the universe.

Myth liberates the human imagination to perceive God in new ways. The error is to then confine our imaginings to mythology that no longer has resonance with truth.

There is a new museum in Kentucky called the “Anti-museum” or the Creation Museum. It is a 30 million dollar project dedicated to proving the literal truth of Genesis. People throng to see it. In Glen Rose, Texas a major tourist attraction is an area of sandstone that depicts both human and dinosaur footprints together. In fact there is one set of prints where the dinosaur has actually stepped on top of the human footprint. People throng to see it. Just like the Creation Museum where vegetarian tyranosaurs frolic with modern humans, the footprints have similarly been shown to be fantasy. Someone deliberately set out to deceive the public in order to shore up the shaky account of Creation in Genesis and undermine scientific claims of evolution.

Religious fanaticism brings with it all sorts of human ills. Slavery, polygamy, subjugation of women, racism, bad politics and incites people to murder others with whom they disagree. I think it is incumbent on thinking people of faith to become active in opposition to religious fundamentalism of any stripe. There needs to be a voice of reason that witnesses to the truth of a God bigger than one narrow interpretation; denounces ludicrous claims such as God has punished the Haitian people for making a pact with the devil; that rejects ideas that mere human intellectual advance threatens the existence of God.

Richard Hawkins made the point that there are people who claim that the creator of the universe, the designer of DNA had to come to earth, got himself born to a Jewish virgin, grew up and presented himself for torture and murder because he couldn’t figure out another way to off-set the theft of a piece of fruit, a crime instigated by a talking snake. There are people who believe this and these people vote.

I stand here today to proclaim that there is an alternative that neither undermines one’s relationship with God nor requires ignorance in the face of scientific advances. It is cultivating the exciting ability to see God anew, to understand God in light of modern, rational thinking, while at the same time valuing and treasuring our own myths. These two ideas can be held simultaneously without intellectual discord because these are truths of a different order from one another. That is my statement of faith and the good news that Jesus preached when he said, “You are to love the lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matt 22:37)

Amen.