Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. – Maria, The sound of music.
Creation stories appear in most religious traditions on Earth. They play a very important role in any meaning system as they usually set the groundwork for the rest of the narrative. They also form a premise upon which later theological propositions are developed, set up a tension that is to be resolved and suggest an orientation of humanity to the physical and spiritual world.
Not surprisingly, this is also true of Christianity. Christians adopted the Israelite account of creation, found in the book of Genesis, as an explanatory backdrop to understanding the life, purpose and teachings of Jesus. However, because the Genesis stories contain outdated understandings of the physical universe, some of the theological arguments based on them are likely to need updating. It is important to remember that the authors of Genesis were not in fact there at the time and, unless we subscribe to the divine dictation view of scripture, what we have is speculation. In contrast, science has in fact given us ways of looking back to the beginning of the earth and even to the beginning of our universe.
Although most mainstream churches have largely accepted evolution as a scientific truth, they have not yet subsequently changed the theology which was based on these stories. Change the creation story and you change the spiritual narrative.
Some of the changes that might need to be made in light of the truth of evolution:
- Creation is not complete; it is ongoing and God never rested
- There never was a time of perfection and innocence for human beings to fall from.
- We have never been separated from God nor cast out from his presence; he has continued his loving, creative, evolutionary work in us.
- Evolution is part of the character and nature of God and he is therefore not “unchanging”, he is “becoming”.
- Human beings are not a separate and unique creation but are built upon the collective physical, biological and psychological advances of prior evolution.
- God is not magical. He did not just make the universe appear instantaneously and he still does not work by magic.
Evolution has largely been adopted by Western culture as its creation story and not surprisingly most people refuse to go back to a world-view based on pre-scientific understandings. Therefore the church is doomed to face an evolutionary dead-end if we cannot adapt.
Evolutionary Spirituality 