Faith, Evolution, and the Economy (revisited)

The following is something I posted on the Emergent BB about a year and a half ago, and thought I’d throw it out again, this time here on my blog.

This is what comes when I read too much. I read the recommended reading from Brian McLaren on Wendell Berry’s essay “In Distrust Of Movements” and I read an article referred from Tim Keel's blog by Dell deChant, “Economy as Religion”, and an article on Don Beck's website on “Spiral Dynamics” as well as my scripture reading below. All these diverse elements get stirred up in my head, and explode into a rambling post.

Matt. 6:26, Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

The questions that came to my mind when I considered this verse is that Jesus first gives us an injunction, Look, Behold, Consider the birds as an example of God’s sustaining activity. Now any trip to the neighborhood park with a sack of bread crumbs, where there is a pond and water fowl, will quickly demonstrate the way in which these creatures acquire their food. It is a short lesson in Darwinian principles of the quickest and the strongest gaining advantage in the melee that occurs. One could argue that the importation of the bread into their environment is artificial to the regular routines that these birds follow to survive, and therefore maybe this example isn’t a good picture of how birds feed, but that doesn’t change the fact that competition and struggle is part of their ordinary way of feeding. No they don’t plant and harvest grain, but they do go hungry and search for sustaining resources, and when those resources are scarce will aggressively compete for food. When I consider the birds, I picture the Seagulls from the movie, “Finding Nemo” squawking, “mine, mine, mine….” While this could be a caricature of the nature of birds in general, it resonates with my experience of both birds and human beings. I can’t believe that this Darwinian formula is what Jesus was pointing to in this lesson on the way that God provides? Because to be honest the Darwinian formula of the ‘tooth and claw’, exaggerated or not, does little to dispel anxiety over how we can rest in God’s provision, even if we are worth more than birds.

But there’s more to consider when I go to the local pond and scatter bread crumbs for the birds to feed on. There is another principle at work that is just as natural and as convincing as Darwin’s 'struggle for survival' and that is the principle of “being in the right place at the right time” which has less to do with size and speed and strength. When I scatter the crumbs, the poor little duck on the sidelines who is just as hungry as his cousins, but who is not big enough or aggressive enough to push his way to the front, patiently waits for food within his range of reception. When I throw unaware of the sideline duck, bread will inevitably fling within his range, and if it happens to be one of the bigger pieces, the small weakling duck will get a beneficial meal. The operative principle for his survival is not strength, nor speed, nor size, but just being in the right place at the right time. We have several terms for this principle, such as luck, chance, fortune, fate, serendipity, and my favorite…grace.

So how do we look at this from a position of Faith? Additionally how do we look at the whole economic realm of acquisition-consumption-disposal and resource allocation and distribution with a greater consciousness and conscience to know and care about what is happening? Can we impart or factor “grace” into the equation?

I sought to answer these questions, and would like to share what began to make sense to me.

First in trying to understand Jesus’ statements I had to take the whole of the scriptural view into account. And see Jesus’ words in the light of Psalm 104: 27-30. That God is both giver and taker of life, sustainer and destroyer. And realize, that yes, the Darwinian struggle is part of what happens in this world, and whether it is a result of the Fall from grace that all of creation groans for deliverance, and God doesn’t like it any better than I do, or if it is a natural process that is necessary and just seems distasteful to me because of my current perspective, I don’t know. It is possible for me to see that I might have a limited perspective in the sense that when I was a baby I ate baby food, but now that I’m grown up I don’t care for it much any more. But it was necessary for me to mature to this point. Maybe some aspects of the Darwinian struggle for existence are necessary for other aspects to emerge, and then to transcend. And the principle of “grace” actually explains more about why there is more genetic diversity, and all creatures are not ultra superior beings by this point in our evolution.

Using the model of spiral dynamics formulated by Clare Graves, Don Beck and Ken Wilber, bird consciousness is at the instinctual level. I too am instinctual but as a human I am more than that also. I have a culturally coded value system, (meme) through which I interpret the world that is developed beyond the instinctual, and includes a sense of self, tradition, achievement, a pluralistic inclusiveness, a holistic and integral perspective. While I still have instincts and can still act instinctually, because of the progression humans have demonstrated through history, will more than likely, or have the capacity and opportunity to operate from these other developed faculties. So when considering the economic realm of acquisition-consumption-disposal and resource allocation and distribution it is from these higher levels that we can find meaning in Jesus’ words about resting in God’s gracious provision, and where we can get to the place where we can consider the point that Wendell Berry makes, when he says, “One way we could describe the task ahead of us is by saying that we need to enlarge the consciousness and the conscience of the economy. Our economy needs to know – and care – what it is doing.”

Resting in God as sustainer, knowing our value in creation, and seeking to live and bring redemption to all the world, we can begin and continue the healing up and down the spiral.