The Evolution Infection

[HKHaugan]

There are four glaring reasons secular culture rejects the Bible and they are spiritual which is the main reason.
First, its insistence on the condition of human nature (sinful and uncontrollable apart from God).
Second, its unchanging principles for thought and behavior (moral absolutes).
Third, its central figure Jesus is perfect humanity defined spiritually (a perfect human/spirit blend).
Fourth, its spiritual inspiration and revelation (God’s perfect Word revealed through and in spite of imperfect writers).
In all four the Theory of Evolution has played a significant role in undermining them. Especially the way man sees himself apart from God. Remember it’s a theory not an absolute truth even though educators on every level have accepted it as such.

Those four reasons mean God and His Word take second place as each person attempts to find his ‘place in the sun.’ Self-centeredness rules the market place. Regardless of the mask that self-righteousness disguises itself with, pride is the nasty repetitive spirit covering personal motivation in every human being. Self-definition is the technique of the mind without God. We can reason, emote and believe apart from a Creator. We are ‘evolving.’ That is, we are getting better day by day and one day we will have developed the perfect human being.

If you’ve noticed I have used ‘self’ three times already to kick off this subject. Please follow me as we look at how we have fallen into the ‘self’ trap. There is self-fulfillment, self-worth, self-esteem, self-motivation, self-pity, self-love, self-adjustment, self-help books, self-help seminars and so on. This is an ongoing malady in every generation. Every age is an age of ‘self.’ Every person is self-developing or self-destructing. All in all what happens to us is self-determined even though our common worldly end is death, the ‘fly in the ointment’ of self-determination, the great flaw. Let’s look at every individual’s personal history.

Four things are historically consistent.
First, everyone is born brand new. Babies have no culture, no knowledge and no memory when they are born. Further, no one is born like anyone who has lived before or after. Everyone is born uniquely new. The only thing you inherit from the past is your genetic makeup. In that makeup the only things we have in common are inborn talents, desires and motivation each of which is approached uniquely because of our uniqueness as individuals. And in each there is no content until we fill them. It’s the desire part that makes up most of our conscious and unconscious striving, the desire for a secure identity, the desire for a way to live and the desire for a destiny. In essence we are born question marks. Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there?

Second, everyone has to learn new. Each person being born unique and fresh has to learn what it means to be a person from the beginning. Everyone has at least one adult who takes a newborn and teaches him how to talk, walk, eat, play, dress and behave. There are schools, colleges and training centers to develop our innate capacities. The search for inner stability and the satisfaction of our needs as a person emerge every day in a new way.

Third, everyone has to live new. Each person has to develop a way to adjust to where he finds himself physically, emotionally and intellectually. We need the understanding of good and bad, how to relate to other people, how to work and how to order our life’s journey. Everyone has a new mind, heart and spirit that need to be developed to work in balance.

Fourth, everyone has to die new. Just as there is a beginning there is also an end. Each person dies just once and needs to face it with a personally conscious preparation that no one can do for another. While the idea of death may be shared it is a new experience for each person.

OK, so how has evolution affected this idea of newness? It is ever so subtle. What has happened is that the theory of physical evolution, that man’s physical body has evolved positively through a series of mutations, implies that our human nature is evolving. That is, what has theoretically happened physically is factually happening in human nature.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The fact is quite the opposite. Just because humanity has developed sophisticated technology and improved our material environment (from cave to condo, from drums to cellphones, from loin cloths to tuxedos and trekking to airplanes) it must mean that human nature has done the same as well. While this was not Darwin’s intention, sin-drenched intellectuals seeking to justify their own separated morality, found it as the means to claim freedom from God.

Evolution as a theory has led us to wishful thinking on a grand scale. It has hijacked our aloneness, warped our self-view and actually led us away from the moral foundation that enables creativity, true self-discovery and the excitement for probing the universe. It has to the contrary deepened the crater leading us to personal decline. When the morality God has introduced to energize our individuality to create and produce becomes lost in self-centeredness we end up in a morass of isolation, alienation and despair all of which keep us from developing our true potential. This is ‘the evolving’ of thought that calls evil good and good evil (Is.5:20).

This theory is at the heart of the proclamation by the President of the United States that same sex marriage is a personal ‘evolutionary’ accomplishment, implying that those who don’t believe as he does are not as ‘evolved.’ It is the groundswell of the spirit of the antichrist in action. It is modern liberalism in its most negative appearance, its skirts raised to entice the minds and hearts of the spiritually vulnerable who are driven by self-satisfaction regardless of what happens to the future of an entire world populace.