Anthropocentric? Doomed? Yes, and No!

If the Creation/“Fall” (so-called) Story is told in order for us to know we once had the power to live peacefully, with God, but decided against this and so now we still have that power, Free Will, to get back to that place of peace with God, then the whole narrative of biblical history (and then church history) is a description of this striving to use this power, Free Will, to get back to our origins.

But, what if the Story (Creation/“Fall”) is told not as prescriptive of what could be but rather as descriptive of what actually exists: we do not love or trust God and never did and never will. Maybe, Ok, we did: Eden. But it there wasn’t us loving and trusting, it was God loving and trusting as in providing (God created, we might remember!). Thus, the biblical narrative springs alive with Promise instead of Demand. God simply will not stop giving us life out of the death that we are. We will not love and trust God, but God loves and trusts us still [“love and trust” by the way, not as Affection (as in “look how sweet and adorable they are! I can’t help but pinch their cheeks!”) but as Devotion. There’s that interesting account in Exodus 32 where Moses begs God to not wipe out the Tribes of Israel by telling God that Pharaoh and the Egyptians will think God not devoted to the promise God made to Israel].

 Stephen Paulson writes about Erasmus’ argument in favor of Free Will: “The coup de grace of the argument is swung: if the power once existed in humans to rebel, it may also exist to reverse the rebellion and fulfill the law” (The Outlaw God, Volume 2, 2019). Luther’s argument (in The Bondage of the Will) in response to Erasmus is that human beings certainly can change behaviors (and move from disobedience to obedience) but cannot and, more significantly, will not, change in whom they trust and love.  Humanity does not and never did trust and love God. We can’t go back to what we never had.

 This is all not good news, I’m afraid, for the sustainability or survival of the human species. We are incurably anthropocentric, seeing ourselves as the Subject of the Story. And so it goes like this: Just watch the persons in the bible stories, study them, observe them, and some day they will get it right and obey God’s Law and reach perfection that once was. And then, by extension, we can do the same. We can, and will get it right some day.

 But the human species, Project if you will, will not survive not because we don’t strive hard enough or correctly enough but precisely the opposite. It’s because we do strive and see ourselves as the Masters of the Universe that have the power and ability to get it right (and, by the way, determine that others of our species get it wrong and so must be eliminated) that we will strive our way into oblivion.

 Science today has labeled our current Geologic Era the “Anthropocene.” This time can be identified at least to the rise of the Sumerians in about 2,500 BCE (the development of so called “civilization”) but actually is more accurately placed tens of thousands of years prior when Homo Sapiens Sapiens found their footing. The Anthropocene: where people are the Center of the Universe, where humanity is the Subject of the Story and everybody else and everything else, including God, if God exists, is the Object.

 One can bracket God, and most do today (and I don’t blame them because the Christian Church for the most part and other World Religions as well, have themselves “bracketed” God and replaced God with Human Free Will) and replace “God” with “Evolution” and one comes up with the same sad and tragic story as chronicled in the Bible Book of Genesis, Chapters 3 through 11. The human race “evolves” by devolving into greater and more deadly violence against each other, other species and indeed the earth itself. Listen to how John Dominic Crossan lays it out:

“Our particular species, named Homo sapiens with ineffable irony, left Africa at least seventy thousand years ago by land passage northward on the Levantine coastline or by sea passage eastward on the Arabian coastline. Then, in effect, even is not in design, the bitter angels of our nature declared an integrated three-fold onslaught on the world: on the physical environment resulting now in ever-accelerating climate change; on all other species resulting now in ever-accelerating biodiversity loss; and on ourselves resulting now in ever accelerating weapons of mass destruction. We endanger ourselves atomically, biologically, chemically, demographically, ecologically – and are only up to e in our apocalyptic alphabet. This is the Holocene as Hollowscene, and Anthropocene as Anthropocide, the world as Titanic and we its iceberg.” (Paul the Pharisee: A Vision Beyond the Violence of Civilization, 2024)

We will not not be the Center of the Story. But I am not here being Fatalistic. We are not doomed as a species. Things can be corrected. We could and can actually behave as part of the Created Order and not Superior Over It. This is called living ecologically. This means more than caring for the environment (where we are hugging trees). It means being a part of the environment (where the trees are hugging us). Now, this is possible. But it’s very, very, very difficult. It means all of us being responsible and accountable (by the way, responsibility and accountability are what Crossan says Resurrection means!).

 This would not mean that we, humanity, would be trusting and loving God. It would simply mean we are not being stupid. We would still remain as the Subject, the Master of Our, The, Story. But that’s no reason to not be stupid. We would still be trusting and loving ourselves, not God. We would just be sustainably doing so!

 No, we will never trust and love God. We can survive, even thrive, but we will never trust and love God.

 But we are not doomed there, in that trusting business, either. No thanks to us. But, thanks be to God, literally! Paul in Romans 7: “Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

 God will do the trusting and loving for us.

 So, sustainability and survivability. Possible? Yes, if we get smart.

 So, salvation (as in “relationship with God”). Possible? Yes, and more than that. It’s certain. Because of God!