Losing Eden

I'm currently revisiting an absolutely fantastic book - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. It won a Pulitzer Prize back in 1998.

Essentially, Diamond presents a sort of "grand unified theory" to explain why human societies developed in such a way that European and Asian civilizations came to dominate the planet's resources. In the process, he debunks the notion that Europeans or Asians had any inherent biological or intellectual advantage, arguing instead that their societies hit the geographical jackpot in regard to the availability of domesticable plant and animal species. Domestication led to efficient food production, which led in turn to the establishment of villages, population growth and centralization, labor specialization, and (most importantly) to the availability of time for the development of knowledge. Population centers thus permitted both the development of technology and hereditary resistance to diseases. As a result, when European and Asian societies came into contact with populations that lacked either the resources or the time to develop equivalent technologies or immunities of their own, the invaders swiftly dominated the natives. The resulting world is one in which the European and Asian civilizations have largely controlled the course of history.

As Diamond demonstrates in his book, the archaological and genetic record of humanity's development suggests very strongly that humanity originated somewhere in Africa roughly seven million years ago and started to explore the rest of the world about one million years ago. The record further suggests that about fifty thousand years ago humans that were nearly genetically and intellectually identical to modern-day humans - the ancestors of every person alive today - made their first foray out of Africa. Agriculture, or the systematic development and growth of plants for the purpose of a later harvest, originated about eleven thousand years ago in the Middle East's "Fertile Crescent" and arose independently in several locations all over the globe over the next five or six thousand years. Animal domestication (not counting dogs) followed fairly close on the heels of plant domestication.

Three years ago, when I was first reading this book, I had an epiphany. If the knowledge we have gained from archaeological and genetic records is accurate, the Garden of Eden as described in the book of Genesis never existed. Intellectually, I had accepted this possibility long before - my faith in God does not hinge on the factual inerrancy of the Bible, and particularly not the stories of the Old Testament. But what really rocked me - as I was listening to a sermon - was the realization that so much of the traditional understanding of Christian theology hinges on the Garden of Eden. We think of God's relationship with humanity as following a certain story arch - humanity was created in a state of perfection and harmony with both God and Nature; Satanic temptation and human disobedience destroyed Eden, introducing sin, toil, and suffering and requring sacrifice to restore the relationship between God and humanity; God provided the bridge for reconciliation via Jesus' death on the cross; the rest of human history will be the story of how that reconciliation is finally realized in Christ's return, in effect restoring everything to the state of perfection that existed in Eden.

So what happens to the traditional Christian story if Eden never existed? Does our understanding of God's relationship to us change if humanity had always been forced to struggle for survival in the wilderness? What might it mean for the idea of sin and redemption if there never was a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Should our understanding of a heavenly paradise change if we acknowledge that earth has never known such a paradise? Over the past several years I've come to my own answers on these questions. I'll share them on this blog, but for now I'm more interested to hear what y'all think.
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[ADDITIONAL MATERIAL, ADDED 7/30/2005]

I posed the above questions with the promise that I'd share my own answers, so here you go...

Shayna hit at one of the first issues raised: What might it mean to be "made in God's image" if we [as humans] were not introduced to Creation in our modern-day form the way that Genesis describes it? I agree wholeheartedly that humanity's relationship to God's image is bound up entirely with our existence as spiritual beings. I believe that humanity, despite the fact that we are animals in almost every way similar to those that surround us, has been specially called by God, given souls and consciences so that we can transcend the mere primal instinct that dictates the lives of all other animals. That is what sets us apart as existing specially in God's image and in a special, unique relationship with our Creator.

But what if there was no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? How did our relationship with God get off track in the first place? Sin was introduced into the world not when Adam and Eve bit into a piece of fruit, but the first time that a human understood how God expected them to live and made a conscious decision to act contrary to God's expectation. Whether or not Eden was a literal place, sin - our state of disobedience - is still what separates us from God. And, as Carl pointed out, Jesus is absolutely fundamental in human history because his life provides a model of blameless, sanctified living to which we all should aspire, and his death represents an atoning sacrifice that enables reconciliation between God and humanity. [As an aside, I'll add that I absolutely reject the notion of "Original Sin", which states that all humans enter the world with the taint of Adam and Eve's transgression, so that no one has any hope of salvation apart from Jesus. To the contrary (and true to my "Pelagius" moniker), I believe that people are solely responsible for our own sins and that we become accountable to God by choosing to depart from the loving, compassionate, selfless life to which we are all called. I'll probably post more on this line of thought some time down the road.]

As for the final question I posed above, my answer relates to the observation that our spiritual self is what is made in God's image. Many of the Bible's images of heaven are described in ways that suggest they are physical and tangible. I can't think this is really accurate. Just as God transcends physicality, I think that once we have died, our own spirits will not be bound or related to the physical world that we now live in. Granted, I have absolutely nothing with which to back up this perspective - it's just my opinion based on a lot of thought about the matter. I'd definitely be interested to hear from y'all, whether you agree or disagree.

Family Fun

I apparently have done a poor job of telling people about my family. Last week I realized that I had somehow neglected to tell a good friend some of the most basic things about my sisters. I was kind of ashamed of myself for that and since I just came home from a family reunion, I think it would be appropriate for me to dedicate a post to explaining a bit about my folks.

My family has been in the American South since long before the American Revolution. We have been in the Tennessee for many generations, which is one of the reasons why I have a fierce allegiance to my home state. My great-great-grandfather, Isaac Newton Roland, and my great-grandfather, Clifford Paul Roland (pictured), helped to establish Freed-Hardeman University, a small Church of Christ school in Henderson, Tennessee. One of the amazing things about the small world that is the Church of Christ is that I sometimes run into people who studied under great-granddaddy. By all accounts he was a very pleasant and very Godly man, and it makes me happy to hear him remembered fondly. He died when I was seven years old, so I don't remember much about him from personal experience, but one of my dad's prized photos is one taken shortly before great-granddady's death, with the four generations of Roland men from great-granddaddy down to me. I am told that C.P. and I have many similarities (including Masters degrees from Vanderbilt's Divinity School!), and I can only hope to live up to his example.

My grandfather, Hall Roland, was C.P.'s second son. He married my grandmother, Juanita June Clifton, got a Masters in Bible at Abilene Christian University (then just a College), then went on and got a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering. He taught briefly at Vanderbilt University, then took a job at the University of Tennessee, where he served for more than thirty years as a professor of Nuclear Engineering.

I love the story of how Grandmom and Granddad got together. Granddaddy was home from the Navy, and he'd decided he wanted to double-date with his little brother, Ike. So, in a time-honored tradition, they pulled out the high school yearbook and started looking for the prettiest girls in the area. Sure enough, Granddaddy saw the picture of Grandmom. He recognized her a little bit because he had been a referee at one or two of her high school basketball games, and he decided that she was the one he wanted to call. Grandmom, who lived in a small city in West Tennessee not far from Henderson, had for some time been seeing a boy from Memphis. Well he had started to get serious about the direction of their relationship, but Grandmom was getting tired of him. She intended to go off to Ole Miss for college and didn't want to be tied down. So on that fateful day she had just called the Memphis boy and told him that she didn't think she'd be seeing him any more. When Granddad got her on the phone, she didn't feel like going out with him, but she didn't really have anything better to do either. She agreed to go. By the end of the night, she didn't know for certain that she wanted to marry him, but she sure knew that she'd like to marry someone like him. Her time at Ole Miss was short-lived - they got married not long afterward.

My dad, Edward Roland, was Grandmom and Granddad's first child. He grew up in the '50s and '60s, while Granddad was finishing school and getting started in academia. Once he got to college, he failed to take it seriously and he essentially flunked out. But not before he'd met my mom, Martha Faye Clifton (not a close relation to Grandmom) on a blind date! They got married in 1969 - my mom was 19, my dad was 18. Pretty quickly after they got married, Papa realized that Vietnam was in his future. Knowing that he'd have more control over his destiny if he signed up than if he was drafted, he enlisted as a medic. My second-oldest sister (more on this in a bit) was born shortly before he had to ship out for the war - he spent his first Christmas as a father in Bien Hoa. Once he got back from Vietnam, Papa spent a long time selling insurance - a job that he hated. Mama, meanwhile, stayed at home with all of us young'uns, occasionally accepting jobs making wedding dresses. But one fateful day in 1989 a tornado hit Huntsville, Alabama, the city where we lived, and my dad was called on to use his medical skills again. That experience, along with some prodding from my mom, led him to go back to school to become a nurse. For the last few years he's been working as a nurse practitioner, and he's been more happy with his career than he ever was when I was growing up.

Now, I have to explain the sister situation. I have four of them, but this sometimes gets confusing. Bethany, the one mentioned above, was my parents' firstborn child. I do have an older sister, however, because Lauri, who is a couple of years older than Bethany, was actually born to one of my uncles but came to live with us when she was a pre-teen. I may be a little bit of a slow learner because, despite the fact that Lauri's biological parentage was an open topic of conversation, I was about ten years old before it occurred to me that she was anything other than just a regular sister. After Bethany was born, the doctors told my mom that she couldn't have any more kids. In light of this turn of events, my parents adopted my third sister, Rebekah, from Korea. Shortly thereafter, they found out that I was on the way. So in a pretty short time, my family went from one kid to four. Two years after my own birth, another sister, Miriam Grace, was born. Sadly, she was born with massive health issues and she only survived about 24 hours. It was an extraordinary blessing, then, when a few years later my mom found out she was pregnant with my little sister, Anna Caroline.

Nowadays, Lauri is married and living in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband, Dwayne, and my two-year-old niece, Meredith. She also has a fifteen-year-old son, Joshua, who lives with his father (her first husband, Will) just outside of Huntsville. Bethany teaches middle school music and lives with her husband, Scott, and my five-year-old nephew, Elijah, in Winchester, Tennessee. Bethany is expecting a baby boy in November. Rebekah, a registered nurse, is currently a stay-at-home mom living in Troy, Illinois, with her husband, Jason, and taking care of my three-year-old niece, Ruth, and my brand new (as of March) niece, Lydia. Anna Caroline lives with her husband, Len, in Huntsville, and they are expecting their first child - a daughter! - also in November. Yes, you read correctly... there will be three babies celebrating their first Christmas in our family this year!

That's an awful lot of information, so I'll leave it at that. Sorry if this is kind of scattershot or ill-thought-through, but I mostly just wanted to get it all written down.

This picture is from my Memorial Day hike with my cousin...

Dave and Nicholas

I've Made a Decision

Most people who have had an in-depth conversation with me about religious matters will know that my theological understandings are... unorthodox. In the course of studying and thinking about God, I've come to conclusions that are pretty radically different from the great majority of people who raised in the Christian tradition. This presents a dilemma when it comes to conversations with most other Christians - fundamentalist Christians in particular - because however firmly I hold my own convictions, I do not believe it is my role to challenge the structure and foundations of their beliefs. My inclination, then, is to keep the more radical of my understandings close to my vest, but subtly to encourage the people with whom I'm speaking to think about their religious assumptions from unfamiliar perspectives. If as a result my conversation partners shift their perspective, I hope it will be the result of their own reflection rather than the adoption of my ideas. I'm pretty self-conscious on this point.

Which brings me to the aforementioned decision that I've made. In the context of this blog, I've decided that I want to openly express my thoughts on theological matters. I hope that in reading the ideas that I post, my readers will think carefully about what I say and then post their own responses to let me know if you agree or disagree with something that I've said. Perhaps we can open up a dialogue that will help us understand each other better.

Foo Fighters = Greatness

One of the best things about getting home from vacation was that Amazon.com had delivered my copy of the new Foo Fighters album, In Your Honor. While I don't think the two-CD set quite measures up to the brilliance of earlier albums, it's still pretty dang impressive. I'm partial to the second disk, comprised entirely of acoustic songs. In particular I can't quit listening to the second track, "What If I Do?"

I'd say that most adults have been confronted with the question of whether they really love someone or not when they didn't have a clear answer. The second verse, coupled with the achinginly beautiful chorus, lays it out perfectly:

It's my turn, this solo burn - so throw me in the fire
Trophies earned and lessons learned, my wicked little lies
We can pave new roads with cold creek stones, wind them through the pines
Should I stay or should I go alone... I cannot decide

What if I do love? What if I don't?
I'd have to lose everything just to find you.
What if I do love? What if I don't?
I'd have to lose everything just to find you.

As I was listening to this song, it also occurred to me that we sometimes face the same feelings when it comes to God. There's a certain comfort that accompanies freedom to act only according to your own desires, without having to consider the effect on someone to whom you've committed yourself. But when we realize that we love someone - whether it's God or a significant other - it can be scary, because we know that however great the adventure will be to stick with them, it will necessarily require some level of personal sacrifice. Our task is to decide if that sacrifice is worth the love.

Adventures Out West

So I just had a two-week vacation. I had planned to spend the vacation backpacking with my best friend from college, just the two of us and a 225-mile trail out in Oklahoma and Arkansas. It's funny how sometimes God can set the best-laid plans aside and give you an entirely unanticipated set of situations to deal with.

Things started out ok. I landed in Fort Worth (where Chris lives) on a Friday evening, then we drove up to the western trailhead on Saturday morning. We started the hike from Talihina State Park in Oklahoma and blazed ahead, covering seven strenuous miles in just over two hours. At about mile 6, each of us ran out of water - which was ok, because our trusty trail guide assured us that there would be reliable sources of water at miles 7, 14, and 20. We reached mile 7, and came across a stream bed that was entirely dry except for a shallow, grey, stagnant puddle about the size of a frisbee. Even with a water filter and iodine tablets, we thought that the "water" might be dangerous. Not to be deterred, we pushed ahead with confidence that we'd find a good source of water close to where we planned to camp at mile 15.

After assuming a much slower pace to deal with the impossibly difficult terrain, at mile 10 we found a small stream. It was piddly, but it was running steadily and deep enough that we could use the filter. We took some much needed rest and refilled our water bags, then followed the trail steeply up over a mountain. Between the 95+ degree heat and the sheer exertion of carrying 55 pound packs over boulder fields and through briar patches, we were again out of water at mile 12.5. Again, we hoped that we'd find a stream where the trail guide had a reliable source marked at mile 14. But when we reached that point, we crossed three substantial stream beds, none of which showed any signs of recent life. Desperately thirsty and panicking at the thought that our next "reliable" source of water was at least six miles away, Chris and I set up camp for the evening at mile 15, our planned stopping point for Day 1. It was then that we realized that all of our food was dehydrated. Without water, not only could we not drink, we couldn't cook.

Chris and I are manly men. Neither of us wanted to even hint that we were in a bunch of trouble, but eventually my common sense got the better of my pride. I pointed out to Chris that if these two "reliable" sources were completely dry, it was very, very likely that the sources to our east would also be dry. Even the trail guide had noted that one stretch of the trail went 20 miles without a reliable water source. Given that we could no longer even count on the reliable sources, any effort to hike that stretch of trail would be virtually suicidal. Feeling as though we had no other options, Chris pulled out the cell phone and persuaded his wife to find the spot of a scenic highway that ran closest to the spring at mile 20 so that we could escape the trail.

That night was brutal. We were famished and extremely dehydrated as it was. But on top of that, we knew that there wouldn't be any water for at least another five miles of extremely difficult trail. It was daunting. We got about seven hours of sleep, then steeled ourselves for the task. The next day dawned hotter than blazes. After about two miles of climbing, I realized that I had stopped sweating - a sign of dangerous dehydration. Eventually we came to a point that the trail guide said could be used as a quick escape up to the scenic drive that ran close to the trail. Chris and I decided that if we were up on the road we could ditch our packs and walk on a smooth, if steep and winding, surface. Once on the road and free of the burden of our packs (which we hid in a ditch), we made decent time to the spring at mile 20.

The spring itself was quite a disappointment. Described as "the most reliable source of water on the Oklahoma leg of the Ouachita Trail", it turned out to be no more than a trickle of water from a metal pipe into a very shallow pool the size of one or two hula hoops. The pool itself was littered with dead leaves, dead bugs, and various other debris. But it was all we had. Chris had been without water the longest (almost twenty hours at that point), so I let him get water first. Unfortunately, in addition to the other unpleasantries, it tasted very much like liquid rust. As bad of a shape as Chris was in, dehydration-wise, he could only force himself to drink about one liter of the stuff. I drank two liters.

Finally, Chris's wife arrived to pick us up. A half-hour later, we were enjoying Sonic hamburgers and Route 44s of water as we made our way back to Fort Worth. The next two weeks (which culminated with my departure this morning) were an exercise in making lemonade out of lemons. Each day we did whatever we were inspired to do, from running alongside the Trinity River in downtown Fort Worth, to visiting museums in Dallas, to hitting a Chickasaw casino in Oklahoma, to tubing down the world's shortest river (the Comal) near San Antonio, to visiting with old friends toward Houston, to spending a day back in Abilene where the two of us met and went to college. It turned out to be a wonderful vacation, even if it was entirely different from what I had originally expected.