Thank God for Evolution!

For many folks “evolution” is a bad word. In the church that I grew up evolution was looked upon with suspicious disdain, often described as Satan’s attack on the Biblical creation story (literally understood). 

In the public schools I attended it was mentioned but never elaborated upon or never offered as a credible alternative to a literal reading of the Genesis creation accounts.

The fear of evolution was so intense that many positive aspects of it were neglected or misunderstood. This is sad because in many ways we all are products of our own evolving lives. 

For instance, our brains have evolved over time and so have the ways we think about our world. For example, do you know of anyone who really thinks slavery is acceptable and normal anymore. We just don’t think that way any longer. We’ve evolved beyond such primitive thinking (well, most of us have).

I would even argue that there is solid Biblical evidence supporting the evolution of human thought, especially how folks thought about God. For example we witness an evolving understanding of God developing within the Scriptures themselves. Biblical characters evolved in their thinking about whom God is, how he operates in the word, and their own relationship with him.

The Apostle Paul is a great example of how one’s understanding of God evolves. Certainly the man who hunted down and persecuted followers of Jesus is not the same man who wrote Romans. In fact many New Testament scholars would argue that the Paul who wrote 1 Thessalonians is different from the Paul who wrote Romans.

Why? Because Paul’s thinking about God evolved over time.

We see aspects of evolutionary thought right on the pages of the Bible itself. The God of Abraham for example, then later Moses, was conceived of as a tribal Deity fighting for his people and exterminating their enemies. Read the stories of the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua which represent early thinking about God. 

God made it crystal clear that he was going to give Canaan to the wandering Hebrews and defeat their enemies (God’s enemies too it seems) for them. But along comes Jesus saying: “Love your enemies.” These three little words represent a huge shift in the way folks thought about God. This did not happen over night.

Many will push back at the suggestion that our understanding of God evolves (changes) over time. The belief that God never changes seems to be a preferable confession. It feels safe. It feels orthodox. It feels right. 

Yet what changes is not God but rather our understanding of him over time.

My understanding of God is much different now from what it was when I was younger. My thinking has grown so to speak in the ways I understand God.

The God of vengeance, the God whose anger simmered against my own personal failings no longer exists. I feared this God. His wrath was real to me. 

This God also hated those who were not members of my own faith club. Non-Christians were doomed to eternal torment. God would ensure that they would pay for their disbelief in never ending torture.

This God was on the side of all those who believed like I believed (which probably didn’t include the Catholics and maybe even the Pentecostals, and certainly not the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons). 

One’s fellowship with other Christians depended on what those other Christians believed of course because God for me was in charge of the doctrine police.

Moreover, I pictured a God who hated homosexuals and transgendered people. Certainly he hated Communists. It was very clear to me that God also hated liberals, with a passion of course!

Yet there was so much mental dissonance between the God I believed loved me yet also who could turn on me in an instant if I failed him in some way. But as I grew older my understanding of God evolved. One could say that God himself was actually transforming my image of him. Either way I evolved as a Christian. 

Then it occurred to me that this same evolving phenomenon took place on the pages of Scripture themselves. The God of Moses or Abraham looked much different from the God of David and Solomon who looked much different from the God is Isaiah and Amos, who looked much different from the God of Jesus and Paul. 

Jesus came to reveal the God of universal love; the God who is merciful beyond anything any of us can imagine. The God of Paul the Apostle was certainly different from the God of Saul the persecutor.

The God of Peter before Cornelius was indeed different from the God after Peter’s encounter with Cornelius.

Thank God for evolution—at least the kind of evolution that helps you and me understand God in new ways. 

As my life evolves those  small images of God begin to grow. 

Don’t be afraid of the evolving images of God that might occur in your life. Welcome them and embrace them as the fruit of your own personal growth.

Remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

Once your image of God is stretched into a much larger evolving image, the smaller images will no longer work.