This essay comes out of dream.
I’m a scientist so it’s a little weird that I believe in dreams. But I do.
Last year I had a dream. It had the strange and distinct quality of dreams I have that are different than other dreams. Dreams that I feel are calling to me or telling me something. Dreams that are sometimes prophetic.
In the dream a rush of something I can only describe as "gray-ness" came toward me. It looked kind of like a huge whirlpool and rushed hard and powerful toward my face. It was a little terrifying like it might sweep me into it.
Then I awoke to a loud, booming voice that said:
“Grace is evolution.”
Grace is an infinite number.
Grace is evolution.
Evolution is grace.
The story of the moths
The moth was an ordinary grey moth in every way, except for the fact that she felt as humans feel and thought as humans think. She had a good life and was thankful to god for her life. She lived on a tree with a grey trunk and her soft peppered grey color hid her from the monstrous moth-eating bird monsters.
She had heard that there was a strange thing happening in the moth community. Some moth mothers were having black babies. This was a terrible evil because the black moth babies were easy prey for the bird monsters and the mothers had to endure the horror of seeing their beautiful babies eaten right before their very eyes. She thanked god every night that she was a grey moth and her babies had all been born grey.
One day the unthinkable happened and the soft grey moth had a black baby. She did everything she could think of to hide the baby. She positioned it in the deepest crevices she knew of behind a branch in the tree. She prayed to god to protect her baby. But despite all her best efforts, it didn’t work. The bird monster saw her lovely black baby almost immediately and ate the baby whole right in front of her eyes.
The moth became deeply depressed. She grieved for her baby. The world was a dark and evil place to her. What kind of a world was it where babies could be born with such a terrible disability? She didn’t want to bring any babies into such a terrifying and evil world.
But because she was a moth, birth control was not an option. She kept having babies. She used to love being a mother, but now the prospect of motherhood was an awful one. She still loved her babies, but she lived in fear and anxiety. Some of her babies were born soft grey like her and she felt a wave of relief and gratitude to God. But some were black. As the months of her life went by, she grew more and more deeply depressed as she saw one black baby after another die a cruel and horrifying death in the beak of bird after bird. She began to curse God and eventually came to believe there was no God at all. How could a loving God create black moths?
After a time, the mother moth died, but within her moth community, black babies continued to be born. .
The moth community discussed this awful evil at length. The world was a dark and terrible place. They discussed what measures they could take to eradicate the great evil of this black coloring mutation. They discussed what types of protective measures they could put into place against the birds. But they were just moths and were helpless in the face of it.
Moth theologians and philosophers debated on the question of suffering. How could a loving God create such suffering? Did the black moths come from God or Satan? Was there even a god?
But a strange thing was happening in the city that the moths were unaware of.
A factory had been built that was pumping gallons of black smoke into the air. Little by little the soot coated the trees and the bark became darker and darker.
Pretty soon the soft grey moths were being eaten in great numbers and all that was left alive were the black moths. Sad and orphaned as they watched their lovely grey mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters eaten one after the other right before their very eyes.
What kind of an evil God would allow for such death and destruction? How could a loving God allow the trees to become black? Was there even a God?
Eventually only black moths were left - a shockingly low number of moths. But there were enough to have babies. The black moths were having mostly black babies. The black moths thanked god for being black. But still, evil persisted and every so often a grey baby moth was born and was promptly eaten by the birds.
As the years went by the moth elders told stories to the younger moths about how their entire species used to be grey and the trees used to be grey. They told the story about how in those times, it was a great evil was to be born black. None of them could remember this way of thinking about evil. It was good to be black and terrible to be born grey.
But a strange thing was happening in the city that the moths were unaware of.
The soot in the air was making people sick. Governments were passing laws that factories couldn’t billow huge clouds of black smoke into the air. And little by little the trees were becoming grey again.
Pretty soon the black moths were being eaten in great numbers and all that was left alive were the few grey moth babies, sad and orphaned as they watched their beautiful black mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters eaten one after the other right before their very eyes.
What kind of an evil God would allow for such death and destruction? How could a loving God allow the air to become clean and the trees to become grey? Was there even a God?
Eventually only grey moths were left - a shockingly low number of moths. But there were enough to have babies. The grey moths were having mostly grey babies. Every so often a black baby moth was born, but it was promptly eaten by the birds.
As the years went by the elder moths told the young moths stories about how their entire species used to be black and the trees used to be black. They told the story about how in those times, the great evil was to be born grey. But none of them could remember this way of thinking about evil.
It was good to be born grey and terrible to be born black.
(This story is a fictional adaptation based on a phenomenon during the industrial revolution in England in peppered moths Biston betularia f. typical)
Science and Religion
I'm a biologist and I like to think about spiritual things in light of biology. Science has always been a religious experience for me. That is why I love science and the study of biology. It is my church.
“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Romans 1:20)
I have always felt that in studying biology, I am studying God himself. Creation is God’s revelation of himself. Before the incarnation of Jesus was the creation. It was god’s first incarnation. In studying biology, I am studying what has come forth from God. Creation reveals the creative force behind it. I use the word "god" for that force, but you might dislike that word and prefer another one - or none at all. That's fine. I find the principles are the important thing, not the metaphors and words we use to try to describe them. A rose by any other name......
Scientific pursuit feels like spiritual pursuit. Not just in the way that it is the study of God’s creation, but also in the nature of the pursuit itself. In science, discoveries are made and disproven and made and disproven over and over again as one revelation builds upon another time and time again. Scientists live with the knowledge that there is no holy grail. Nature is at once revealing itself and concealing itself. As soon as they discover something, it will become immediately obsolete. The universe and its secrets are infinite. And they love it.
So it is with God.
There is no holy grail in the pursuit of God. God is unknowable. Whatever we make of god today, if we are seeking, we will unmake of god tomorrow. God is always revealing and ever concealing himself. As soon as we discover some truth, it will immediately become obsolete. God and her secrets are infinite. And we love that.
So it’s always been puzzling to me that science and religion have ended up enemies so many times. I never had a problem with the Genesis story. It said seven days, but I always felt it was poetry.
“And there was evening and there was morning the first day”
The sun and moon hadn’t even been created yet, it seemed quite obvious to me it wasn’t a literal 24 hour day. It wasn’t morning and evening as we know it. It was a figurative “day”. Like, “in the day of King Nebuchadnezzar”
A time period.
An Eon.
An Age.
Evolution
Even in my most fundamentalist religious days, I never felt that there was a conflict between evolution and religion. It seemed to me that a God who created things that evolved was far more miraculous and powerful and interesting than a God who could only create non-changeable things.
Evolution is fascinating and miraculous. It makes sense to me. Much of the religious objection I hear about evolution is based in incorrect fact and misinformation.
Let’s do a little basic evolutionary review.
DNA replicates. This happens all the time, over and over in order to keep any organism alive. When DNA replicates, often errors or mutations occur. Most mutations on the DNA are harmless and nothing comes of them. Some mutations on the DNA are lethal and the cell or even the entire organism dies. Some are harmful and can lead to disability or disease of the organism.
Like the moth in the story, if you are the owner of the disability or disease, or the parent of the disabled or diseased, to you this is painful, tragic,
….evil.
If you are the offspring of that mutated organism and generations later, the mutation has given you a survival advantage – to you it is good.
Good and Evil
Good and evil
Evil and good.
Many times it’s our vantage point that determine which is which.
If you were watching woman giving birth, but you didn’t have any idea that a child was on its way, all you would see is a great deal of suffering. You would see hours of pain, blood and gore. You would hear screams of agony. If no baby comes forth, you might see the woman die.
You would think, “What a terrible evil – this suffering she endured!!” And you would be right.
But if a baby is born you would see the woman’s suffering turn to joy and you would change your judgement. You would think that you had just witnessed a great good. And you would be right.
If you standing at the crucifixion of Jesus, and you believed him to be a good man, or the son of God even, you would think you were witnessing a terrible evil. And you would be right.
If you thought him to be an enemy of God or an enemy of the state, you would think you were witnessing an act of good and of justice. If you knew his death was a redemptive act, you would think you were witnessing good. And you would be right.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if a thing is good or evil.
Even in your own life, you can probably look back on many events that at the time were tragedies. You may have raged at God, or at the fates, or at the world. You may have despaired of life itself, or tried to kill yourself. I’ve been there.
But sometimes, after you make it through to the other side, you look back on those times and see that you were transformed. The great evil became an agent for great good in your life. I’ve been there too.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if a thing is good or evil. It’s caught up in vantage point and timing.
In the present tense, in “quick time”, a thing may be evil.
In the future tense, in “deep time”, that same thing may be good.
Or not.
It can’t be reduced to a simple equation or to a platitude that says that everything works together for the greater good. Not all error in life or in biology leads to good. Sometimes it can lead to death and destruction.
That’s why it’s tricky when human beings, who live in quick time get into the business of discerning good from evil.
There was a story about that:
The story went that the man and the woman lived in deep time where everything was good. But they thought they needed to improve upon things and become more like god, so they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But instead of becoming more like god, they began to determine what’s good and what’s bad. They thought their nakedness was bad.
The story has lots of twists and turns. Lots of chapters and characters that talk about how mankind over and over keeps trying to be godly, but they keep misunderstanding God and godliness. How they continue to use their knowledge of good and evil and create death time and time again.
The finale of the story takes place centuries later. God comes to earth and goes around telling people, “Hey, all these things you’ve judged as bad? Those prostitutes? Those tax collectors? Those Samaritans? Those lepers? Those laws? You got the whole good/bad thing wrong. You suck at figuring out what is good and what is bad. You should have never gotten into that knowledge of good and evil game to begin with.
It was curse.
Let me reverse it
It started with a tree.
I’ll end it with a tree.
That would be poetic.
Grace and the Law
My religious upbringing taught me that Grace was pretty much the same as forgiveness. Some would go so far as to say it was “unmerited favor” with God. It left me with the perspective that Grace was the aspect of God that looked turned a blind eye to my imperfections. In my earlier fundamentalist days, grace was tenuous. You had to do just the right things; believe, repent, confess, be baptized to be a recipient of this grace. You had to continue to live the right kind of life to remain in this state of forgiveness and grace. Later on it opened up and I came to believe that once I received this grace and forgiveness, there was nothing I could do to lose it. And even later on I moved to a belief that the Grace was given freely and no spiritual act I had performed had put me in a “right relationship” or a place of Grace with God. Not even faith. This evolution of belief is still a work in progress.
It seems to me now that grace, rather than being a “state” I am in with God is in fact an aspect of being that we can either sit in and enjoy, or take ourselves out of. It’s always just there as an underlying fact or principle. We cannot search for it or enter into it, or take hold of it. How can we enter into something we already have hard wired not only into ourselves, but into all of creation? We can only acknowledge it and enjoy it.
Grace says: God created goodness. You cannot.
Grace says: there is nothing you need to change to be more “good” or more “like God”.
Grace says: Everything is permissible
So anything can happen.
Anything, so….
Grace is infinity.
Grace says there are endless possibilities and outcomes.
Grace is the full openness to an infinite number of options.
With Grace we are out of control.
Grace allows for error
Grace opens things up for error
With Grace error CAN occur
With Grace error DOES occur.
With error comes suffering.
Wait a minute – with grace comes suffering? Aren’t we taught that grace alleviates suffering?
But we know just by observing the world around us that not all error ends in good, not in life, not in biology. Not all mutations lead to life. Some just end in death. But the same mechanism that opens up error also allows for life. Grace is that mechanism. It is that permission for endless possibilities. It is that infinity.
Let's just stop there and be honest - we hate this. This is our fundamental problem with grace. It’s why we resist it on so many levels. You see grace cannot be infinite if options are limited only to those options we call good. Even so, we like to limit the options. We like to control things. We like predictability, security and knowledge of what the future holds -- at least to some degree.
We like that tree of knowledge of good and evil. We like law.
We don't want the people we love to change too much, we don't want our bodies or our health to change too much, we want secure jobs, secure homes, secure incomes, secure economies, secure stock markets, secure political systems. We like to analyze things and put them into neat little categories so that we can feel like we understand them. So that we feel some measure of control.
Right/wrong.
Good/bad.
Dualisms.
Laws.
With law we can create good. Good laws, good policies, good societies, good deeds in people.
With law: We are always trying to be more “good” and more “like God”.
With law: we define what is and is not permissible
So we can control outcomes and limit unpredictability
Law is a finite number.
With law we are in control, trying to control.
Law limits error and that’s a good thing right?
Because with error comes suffering.
Grace is evolution
In the very essence and basic building block of life – the DNA – we find laws at work. These laws of nature tell the DNA how it will replicate and how that will lead to life. Built into these laws we find another law of nature. This is the law of error.
The law of error says that error can occur, error will occur, error must occur. Error will lead to variance, and that variance can be harmless, or it can lead to terrible mutations, or it can lead to death, or it can provide the very material for life in situations where the environment is changing.
The capacity for error is infinite.
With Grace the capacity for error is infinite. Grace is door that opens everything up to error.
In spiritual terms, sin is often another word used for error. Sin is the spiritual equivalent of the error in DNA replication. Many times, very little comes of it. Sometimes it has terrible, destructive consequences. Sometimes it leads to death.
But without it, we lose our capacity to grow and change. We lose our capacity to evolve.
So, maybe it’s built into the whole system.
It’s an integral part of life.
People debate the question of god and suffering, of god and the existence of evil. Some will say that sin, error or evil only occur by chance and they have nothing to do with God, others will say it is God's plan, and still others will say it is NOT God’s plan, but rather a part of the "fallen-ness" of creation, or the work of Satan.
If God is good, can he create evil? If God is love, why is there evil?
We tend to think that an all-loving god would not create a system that contained evil. We tend to think if we could live perfectly under a set of rules of good and evil, and no error were to occur, this would be a utopia, paradise, Eden, heaven.
In the story of the Garden of Eden then the question is often asked, "why did God even put the tree there? Why would he tempt people with evil?" And whether you read the story as allegorical, mythological or literal, the answer to that question may be the same. The very fact that God (or creation, or biology, or the ground of all being), allows for freedom for error -- is not a temptation to evil, or evil itself. It is the creation of the opportunity for error. It is Grace.
Regardless of where you come down on this, it seems obvious to me that in some way the error, that we call evil or sin is hard wired into the very system and is necessary for growth and change to occur.
The very error that brings suffering and death, the very EVIL – IS also the very thing that also contains the capacity for change, growth, survival,
Grace makes space for error. Law does not. Life cannot occur without error. Grace makes life out of error.
LIFE
From the place that brings death, life is possible. .
Biological life, emotional life, spiritual life.
So, good and evil are bound up in the same thing. The debate of can love create evil, can good create evil does not need to arrive at an either/or conclusion.
It could be both/and.
Both are God’s grace.
“first there is the fall, then there is the recovery from the fall. Both are the Grace of God” Julian of Norwich