The Central Questions - Part 1

(This is a repost from a few years back.)

The central questions

In my 54 years on earth, I have had only two significant challenges to my faith.  It occurs to me that both of those challenges focused on the same basic questions, perhaps the central questions that all human beings have to ask.

This will sound a bit odd, but those two challenges were evolution and Calvinism. (More)

Faith for me has been centered on two questions that, in essence actually get rolled into one.   Those questions are: "Why is there suffering and death in the world?  And is death the end or is there something more?"

My interest in those questions has a fairly personal stake, in that I was deeply affected by the death of a family member while I was just a child.   Questions about life and death, heaven and hell were thrust to the front and center of the mind of a six-year-old, and I have to say that the Roman Catholic church I attended growing up did not provide either emotional comfort nor satisfying answers.

It would be wrong and an unfair characterization to suggest that my "answer" to those questions is rooted in emotion.   Certainly there is emotion involved and psychological motivation.  But it was always the case that what mattered to me was that life "make sense" and the emotional comfort that may or may not follow was secondary from an early age. The evangelical Christianity I eventually embraced provided both comfort and answers.

The answer, intellectually, was what is typically classified in Christian apologetics as the "free-will defense", that is, there is evil, suffering and death in the world because free beings (beginning with Lucifer, and later Adam) have rebelled against a God who is by nature and essence good.  It is intuitive to us all that when we see injustice we wonder "who is to blame?"  Sometimes the answer to that question is clear, sometimes it isn't.

Christianity, in both my Catholic upbringing and later Protestant affiliations, always in some from posited that human beings are free to do harmful things, to commit acts that harm themselves and harm others and that this chain of events had a beginning.   In my old Catholic Baltimore Catechism it was fairly clear:

Q. Who were the first man and woman?

A. The first man and woman were Adam and Eve.

Q. Were Adam and Eve innocent and holy when they came from the hand of God?

A. Adam and Eve were innocent and holy when they came from the hand of God.

Q. Did Adam and Eve remain faithful to God?

A. Adam and Eve did not remain faithful to God; but broke His command by eating the

forbidden fruit.

Q. What befell Adam and Eve on account of their sin?

A. Adam and Eve on account of their sin lost innocence and holiness, and were doomed to

misery and death
Q. What evil befell us through the disobedience of our first parents?

A. Through the disobedience of our first parents we all inherit their sin and punishment, as we should have shared in their happiness if they had remained faithful.

47. Q. What is the sin called which we inherit from our first parents?

A. The sin which we inherit from our first parents is called original sin. 

I would later become convinced of the inspiration and authority of the Bible through the study of messianic prophecy and would devour Christian books by C.S. Lewis, Paul Little and others.  Whenever the question of sin and evil came up, it was always answered by pointing back to Adam and Eve.

Even among those who do not take the story of Adam and Eve as historical, there was always an allusion to the free will choice of the first humans, and the ripple effect of corruption that washed through the rest of human history, eroding away so much of what was intended to be good and beautiful.   

Sure it is a nice story, but so much more than a story.  When we see the ravages of war, we know that human lust for power plays a role.  When we see homes wrecked by infidelity and selfishness, we know that the pains the children endure are not random.   Even when there is not a direct connection to a specific act, we understand that much of what we endure is traceable to some series of human choices perhaps removed by several generations, but still a connection between cause and effect remains.

But it is not just the explanation of the negative effects of sin, it is the inverse that is appealing, the sense that it wasn't meant to be this way and it won't always be this way.  The story begins in an idyllic garden and ends in a new City with streets of gold where every tear has been wiped away.   

In the New Testament, death is presented as an enemy.   The apostle Paul writes the well known words: "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  “Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”

 
My purpose here is not to make the arguments to defend the historicity of the Genesis account, but to simply state that the worldview it communicated satisfied my intellectual, psychological and emotional quest to understand the human condition.

In the Christianity that I knew and understood, the world was intended to be good, in fact once was good, and became corrupted by the rebellion of creatures leading to suffering, pain and death.  

In in the end, evil is not an equal and opposite force that has any chance of winning over good the final battle.   Rather, the day is certain to come when death will be overcome, suffering will end and evil will be washed away.

This was a view of reality that I took for granted. 

But both evolution and Calvinism challenged that view of reality from different angles, but both undercut the answer to the deepest question I had ever or will ever ask.