know from our study of evolution that life is a single whole. All life has developed from that first cell of living matter that was born in the sea some four billion years ago. Life moved from that single cell into clusters of cells over hundreds of millions of years, allowing in those clusters the beginning of cell differentiation and therefore organic complexity. Hundreds of millions of years later, this seamless source of life split, with one strand producing plant life and the other animal life, but both were deeply interdependent. Each was a source of life to the other. Hundreds of millions of years later, life left the oceans and moved into estuaries and riverbeds and it kept evolving and adapting. When the land finally became hospitable to life, these living specimens climbed out of the riverbeds in both plant and animal forms and began to live in the unique land environment, always changing and adapting, but still deeply related. No more than one to two million years ago, this process finally evolved into our earliest recognizable human ancestors. Perhaps no more than fifty thousand to one hundred thousand years ago, self-consciousness and the ability to create symbols, called words, to convey abstract ideas combined to make us uniquely human. Human beings were not created in the image of some external deity; we developed out of the evolutionary soup as part of the fabric of life itself. DNA evidence today demonstrates that we are kin not only to apes, but also to cabbages. We are part of an emerging life force sharing a common environment with every other living thing. No creature can dominate the world, as those called Homo sapiens have sought to do, because all life is radically interdependent. God’s spirit, which brooded over the waters to call life into being, is not an external, but an emerging presence. It is not a theistic, supernatural, alien-to-our-world deity, but the source of our common life.
Even when the Bible moves on to a second story of creation, the portrait is still of a deity who is not really external. God breathes into Adam, says the ancient Hebrew legend. Adam becomes a living creature because the breath of God becomes his breath. God then creates the animals to alleviate the man’s loneliness. All living things share that divine life. In Hebrew the word for breath is nephesh, and it is related to the wind, which was thought to be the breath of God. Nephesh, however, is present in all creation. It is the prophet Jeremiah who says that the animals too are the creation of God and must therefore be regarded as holy (Jer. 27:5). It is the Psalmist who asserts that all creatures look to God for their sustenance and that even the creatures are dismayed when God hides the divine face. When God removes the divine breath, says the Psalmist, even the creatures die (Ps. 124:29). God is not external to life. God is to be identified with the life present in all living things. The Psalmist goes on to say that God’s springs quench the thirst of the beasts. God caused grass to grow for the cattle, cedars for the birds, fir trees for the storks, high mountains for the goats, rocks for the badgers. God even made the darkness so that creatures may seek their prey in it just as God made the day so that human beings could earn their livelihood (Ps. 124:10–30).
In the Noah story saving the animals was part of the plan of salvation (Gen. 6:20). In Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth, the Preacher, reminds his readers that “the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same…. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts.” In contemplating death this writer asks, “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?” (Eccles. 3:19, 21). This is not the portrait of a supreme being living beyond the sky, separate from the earth; this is the portrait of a divine presence that permeates all of life, that binds all creatures into the
Even when the Bible moves on to a second story of creation, the portrait is still of a deity who is not really external. God breathes into Adam, says the ancient Hebrew legend. Adam becomes a living creature because the breath of God becomes his breath. God then creates the animals to alleviate the man’s loneliness. All living things share that divine life. In Hebrew the word for breath is nephesh, and it is related to the wind, which was thought to be the breath of God. Nephesh, however, is present in all creation. It is the prophet Jeremiah who says that the animals too are the creation of God and must therefore be regarded as holy (Jer. 27:5). It is the Psalmist who asserts that all creatures look to God for their sustenance and that even the creatures are dismayed when God hides the divine face. When God removes the divine breath, says the Psalmist, even the creatures die (Ps. 124:29). God is not external to life. God is to be identified with the life present in all living things. The Psalmist goes on to say that God’s springs quench the thirst of the beasts. God caused grass to grow for the cattle, cedars for the birds, fir trees for the storks, high mountains for the goats, rocks for the badgers. God even made the darkness so that creatures may seek their prey in it just as God made the day so that human beings could earn their livelihood (Ps. 124:10–30).
In the Noah story saving the animals was part of the plan of salvation (Gen. 6:20). In Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth, the Preacher, reminds his readers that “the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same…. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts.” In contemplating death this writer asks, “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?” (Eccles. 3:19, 21). This is not the portrait of a supreme being living beyond the sky, separate from the earth; this is the portrait of a divine presence that permeates all of life, that binds all creatures into the
Similar Books
