Let's Talk Evolution, Real Evolution

[HKHaugan]

Let’s Talk Evolution, Real Evolution

 Gotcha! Bet you thought I was going to do a diatribe against Darwinism. Nope. Not my intention.   I want to talk about real evolution, personal evolution, spiritual and relational evolution. How we start our life as spiritual persons, evolve into mature individuals and shift our gaze toward the horizons of eternity in the Lord God.

 But first, let’s talk about personal evolution after birth in the world. All of us have a physical origin and we are part of a creative process that began along ago but its more about our consciousness of self, of being an individual person and existing in a huge universe in the midst of others like us. It’s about our limitations. They are spiritual, relational and personal (mentally, physically and emotionally). It’s about the things we can’t see more than it is about what we can see. It’s about how we make sense out of why we are here at all, about purpose and meaning and what drives us to do what we do, about the need to be right as opposed to wrong which includes finding our place in a world of people. These are the things that consume our mind, how we feel, what motivates us and where it all ends. We’re told that we need to mature, mature to adulthood.

 Looking at myself I start with the fact that there’s a drive in me that wants a basic good of some kind and avoid whatever causes me to feel bad. It’s all kind of mixed up inside. Looking around me I find that others have the same concerns and whatever they do evokes in me a reaction of like and dislike. Then there is another discovery. Whatever I say and do gets a similar reaction from others. They either like or don’t like what I say or what I do. What I learn is to fear rejection but find pleasure in their approval. It’s learning to live by fear, fear of not being accepted. That’s what it means to mature. So, whatever it takes to avoid the one and gain the other I’ll do. That seems to be the basic dynamic in all of us. Personal evolution then is learning to fit in to whatever gets acceptance and avoid whatever brings rejection. We evolve from having no experience to becoming someone who learns all the ins and outs of fitting in by fear. That’s the road to maturity in the world without God. We are to evolve into a mature adult person and fear is the grease easing us into the process along the way.

 My evolution seems to be slowed down along the way as I shift from one group to another. It seems there is a set of standards every human grouping has that we have to learn in order to fit in to it. Whatever works in one place doesn’t work in another. Maturity isn’t as easy as I was told. Along the way I also discover that to buck any of these systems, begin any kind of individual response unlike the group I’m in, causes painful rejection, emotional pain within, and the need arises to either find a way to be accepted again or to escape and find another group that doesn’t hurt me inside. So, there is a mobile evolution, a mobile way of living that enables me to fit in wherever I go. I evolve into a more adaptable person. It takes practice but I get good at it. It’s difficult but I’m on the road to maturity, I think anyway.

 However, the more I move from one grouping to another there is something else happening. I’m feeling alone and the more I move around looking for a comfortable place, the more alone I feel. My evolution to feeling better, to maturing, is turning me into a far lonelier person and aloneness is painful, invisibly hurting. Evolution is not really all that good. The more I adapt the more I feel like I’m working against myself. I’m evolving into someone who is doing all the right things to fit in to what others around me want me to be but it’s not working inside me. Evolution is a lonely pain.

 It seems my relational evolution is facing isolation. The more right I am among others, taking in their ideas and behavior, looking good by their standards, something inside is telling me my relational tank is empty. There is neither trust nor acceptance, only increasingly depressed emotions. When I get angry, I have no place to express it. When I’m happy no one cares. There’s lots of joy at the parties and games and fake smiles at strange humor which I really don’t like but smile anyway because that’s what’s expected. When I leave and go home I feel lonelier.

 Actually, I feel like I’m evolving backwards into some primitive kind of cave with no place to go. It’s worse when I’m in a strange place among strangers. I’ve evolved into a state of dread. Dreading that every day I awake will be the same old thing of fitting into what my inside tells me is not me nor is it them, the ones whose attitudes and opinions I’m told to please. I thought I was getting it together. The smiles, the way I fit in, the way I dressed, the appearance I created to look the part whatever the part was that needed playing. I was mature but there was no reward, no good feeling, no payback from all the people I was pleasing. It became apparent they were as alone as I was and felt all the stuff I felt. They were as lost as me.

 What a world, an invisible world of aloneness. My personal evolution had led me to a kind of false maturity and my relational aloneness was worse. A great void in and out. Aloneness, the wilderness of the mind, the heart, and now recognizing there was another part of me I never dealt with and that was my spirit. Evolution in the world of people was an evolution into angry depressed aloneness with only a physical drive to stay alive in the human hive and strive to survive. Maturity was a lie masquerading as truth. My spirit was yearning for something to motivate me and it was in my spirit seeking its source.

 But what about this invisible part of me that is the ‘aliving,’ driving, thriving, part? Is it real? When personal and relational evolution breeds nothing but a dead end, what then? Is there something more out there? It’s really already in there but unused. It’s been there all along but not faced or used. It’s the fact of who we really are, not what we got ‘maturing’ in the empty ‘world,’ the fake ‘sociality (my word)’ around us. There is an evolutionary experience that is spiritual. And you can evolve, mature, into something real and fulfilling. It is an evolution of belief, of trust and it results in productive action. this evolution is not based on the expectations, the attitudes and opinions of others.

 Spiritual evolution is something brand new to everyone who accepts it. Instead of localized in the self, it’s reaching outside the self to an unseen Creator, a spiritual eternal Creator, a personal and relational Creator, the One Lord and God, Jesus Christ, who made us in His image which is spiritual, personal and relational, first with Him and then others. The process is one that is a maturing way to evolve into really being honestly relational with self and with others. He is the logical answer to an illogical lostness. If we look at the parts of us, our mind, heart and spirit, He is the only One who fits all three needs.

 His acceptance without conditions is the beginning. It’s letting the Creator come into your mind by believing who He is, into your inside heart by trusting what He is and into your spirit with His Spirit motivated by faith letting Him work through us. Where you are is where He is and that’s with you all the time. If there is a ‘fitting in’ process it’s letting God fit Himself into you, a God who accepts you and loves you. This is when you mature as you allow other people who believe become a part of your maturing. Into your evolving as you grow relationally within a family of others who have let God fit Himself into them.

 Now we’re talking real evolution into spiritual maturity which satisfies the personal and relational life with which we were born. It is spiritual evolution, real evolution, that matures the personal and relational evolution that changes the world of the lost and lonely having followed fake evolution.

 Spiritual evolution starts when we receive Jesus as the Savior from that dreaded world process of evolutional fear. Being born spiritually we are given the Holy Spirit to replace the spirit of fear with the Spirit of faith and love, God’s love. It’s when we are led by Jesus as Lord that our Counselor is the Holy Spirit evolving us in a new personal freedom discovering by faith who we really are in God.

 As an afterthought we can say something about Darwinism. It has no spiritual source to authenticate it. Evolution as a graduated form of physical development and environmental adjustment over long periods of time is certainly interesting but has no bearing or effect on the internal spiritual reality we are as images of God. We are spiritual beings first and foremost. The Darwinian concept is unprovable conjecture. Ask any human being what his or her main concerns are and you will find they are personal welfare and the welfare of their families. If there is a course of human evolution it is how they have evolved from a cave existence to what we are in our modern society.

 There is one thing consistent through the length of human existence---individual aloneness; its inner needs for acceptance, love and being right. There is one negative reality and that is the self-centeredness we call sin and its inevitable end, aloneness. If you peruse Scripture’s characters, both good and evil, you will find the believers are not only the most productive, they are also the most confident and relational. They didn’t start that way. They evolved that way through belief, trust and faith. The patriarchs and kings of old and the apostles of the Gospel evolving through the Holy Spirit’s counsel, changed the world. Jesus is the center of the motivation that has brought us increased scientific discovery and advancments in medicine, education and social welfare. History is the proof and now our part of the spiritual evolutionary process rest in our willingness to step our and share this truth.

 Sin is the devil’s ‘evilution’ spreading its lonely pollution, but the Lord has come with a spiritual revolution to overpower the intrusion and confusion of ‘devilution.’  Jesus as personal Savior and Lord the eternal conclusion, a relationship with Him the final solution. That’s real evolution.