Sing The Song In Babylon

By Douglas F. Birch

It all began with a dilemma. And the dilemma was profoundly debilitating. It arose in the mind of an enthusiastic young man who had been raised in the circumscribed and ambivalent environment of a particular Presbyterian manse. Sunday by Sunday my father preached the life-affirming reality of Jesus of Nazareth. Imperceptibly at first, yet with increasing clarity as brain and body developed, all that talk and all that music combined to yield a fascinating perception. It appeared that this man had a focus that extended beyond the horizons of common experience. His mind, it seemed, was attuned to a reality that others could not comprehend; yet his description of it I found to be authoritative and utterly compelling. Whence came this perception? Certainly not from his own community which seemed determined to reject him and his views. Neither was it grounded in the communities of my own experience, which, though owning allegiance to him, rarely missed an opportunity to misrepresent him. Nevertheless, despite their repeated failures, these same communities continued to honour him in their music and public speech. Thus it was that by the time adolescence had matured into young adulthood, the Jesus phenomenon had become the only avenue to a genuine life and the person of this particular man of irreplaceable importance for survival. The legacy of this nurture was a virtual reality which was focused exclusively on the rhythms of the church; its festivals, practices, language, thought forms, people and world view. Central to this latter was the dominant figure of Jesus of Nazareth whose significance was all-embracing, inescapable and enthusiastically acknowledged. From this regulated if claustrophobic bastion I ventured upon a career in the world of Microbiology.

The experience was like entering a parallel universe. The dilemma emerged as I quickly discovered that the concepts that dominated the thinking and language of the church had no currency whatsoever in the biological world. Monumental theological realities that were both the 'raison d'être' and the 'sine qua non' of the church's existence: Salvation, Sin, Forgiveness, Atonement, Redemption, etc. shared no points of contact with the world of biology. Biology sang from an entirely different song sheet. In this environment, activities were not proscribed because they were deemed evil or prescribed because they were deemed good. In this regard, the Genesis myth was unhelpful, indeed downright misleading. In that account, Man was said to have acquired the ability to distinguish between good and evil by consuming the fruit of a tree that grew in the Garden. It took little understanding of biology to discover that there is no such tree in the natural world. This is not meant as a botanical statement but as a mythical statement of fact. The process by which Man acquired an ethical sense may be unknown to us. However, it is an absolutely incontrovertible fact that he did not acquire it from any external reservoir in the natural world. For there are no ethics to be found there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Jun 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781921681998

Book preview

Sing the Song in Babylon

Douglas F. Birch (BA, BD, PhD)

Smashwords Edition

* * * * *

Copyright ©2010 Douglas F. Birch

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN:978-1-921681-99-8 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

* * * * *

CONTENTS

ONE

Messiah Jesus is a Towering Figure for Religion but Appears to Have no Significance for Biology

TWO

MAN is Creator of the Inanimate

THREE

Nouns and Verbs - MAN's Interest and God's Interest

FOUR

MAN is Blind to the Verb

FIVE

MAN Lives by Dead Alone

SIX

MAN's Capacity for Love is Re-Directed

SEVEN

Messiah Jesus Embodies the Change

EIGHT

MAN has the Equipment to Follow Messiah Jesus

NINE

To Where? - Terminus or Transition

TEN

The Goal Posts have been Shifted

ELEVEN

Creation and the Verb

TWELVE

MAN can Perceive the Verb - with some Help

THIRTEEN

Zero-Sum can become Positive-Sum

FOURTEEN

MAN can Sing the Song

Notes

Index

ONE

Messiah Jesus is a Towering Figure for Religion but Appears to have no Significance for Biology

How can we sing the Lord's song in an alien land?

It all began with a dilemma. And the dilemma was profoundly debilitating. It arose in the mind of an enthusiastic young man who had been raised in the circumscribed and ambivalent environment of a particular Presbyterian manse. Sunday by Sunday my father preached the life-affirming reality of Jesus of Nazareth. Imperceptibly at first, yet with increasing clarity as brain and body developed, all that talk and all that music combined to yield a fascinating perception. It appeared that this man had a focus that extended beyond the horizons of common experience. His mind, it seemed, was attuned to a reality that others could not comprehend; yet his description of it I found to be authoritative and utterly compelling. Whence came this perception? Certainly not from his own community which seemed determined to reject him and his views. Neither was it grounded in the communities of my own experience, which, though owning allegiance to him, rarely missed an opportunity to misrepresent him. Nevertheless, despite their repeated failures, these same communities continued to honour him in their music and public speech. Thus it was that by the time adolescence had matured into young adulthood, the Jesus phenomenon had become the only avenue to a genuine life and the person of this particular man of irreplaceable importance for survival. The legacy of this nurture was a virtual reality which was focused exclusively on the rhythms of the church; its festivals, practices, language, thought forms, people and world view. Central to this latter was the dominant figure of Jesus of Nazareth whose significance was all-embracing, inescapable and enthusiastically acknowledged. From this regulated if claustrophobic bastion I ventured upon a career in the world of Microbiology.

The experience was like entering a parallel universe. The dilemma emerged as I quickly discovered that the concepts that dominated the thinking and language of the church had no currency whatsoever in the biological world. Monumental theological realities that were both the 'raison d'être' and the 'sine qua non' of the church's existence: Salvation, Sin, Forgiveness, Atonement, Redemption, etc. shared no points of contact with the world of biology. Biology sang from an entirely different song sheet. In this environment, activities were not proscribed because they were deemed evil or prescribed because they were deemed good. In this regard, the Genesis myth was unhelpful, indeed downright misleading. In that account, Man was said to have acquired the ability to distinguish between good and evil by consuming the fruit of a tree that grew in the Garden. It took little understanding of biology to discover that there is no such tree in the natural world. This is not meant as a botanical statement but as a mythical statement of fact. The process by which Man acquired an ethical sense may be unknown to us. However, it is an absolutely incontrovertible fact that he did not acquire it from any external reservoir in the natural world. For there are no ethics to be found there.

The rules for success and failure were quite different from those applying in my Christ-centered world. In the world of biology, any process or activity that was possible was likely to have been attempted, regardless of whether or not it passed ethical muster. (I say likely because certainty would require a population of infinite number.) If it worked (i.e. conferred an advantage) it was propagated. This simply meant that any processes that enabled organisms to compete in their environment and consequently survive to reproduce were perpetuated. Moreover, with apologies to the great Christian thinker, Paul of Tarsus, the natural world gave no indication that it was 'groaning in travail'.¹ On the contrary, the system appeared to work very smoothly and efficiently. It was as if the vital principles undergirding the Church's understanding of the Gospel and those of the world of nature were discontinuous at a fundamental level. This is not to say that the Gospel message was irrelevant for biologists but simply that it dealt with issues that had no application in the natural world; a world of which we humans are a part and whose practices we in large part employ. This hiatus gave rise to an apparently insurmountable problem. How could one continue to assert the primacy of the Jesus event, which was known and valued deeply at a personal level, in a context that did not resonate in the slightest degree with the expressions of his lordship that dominated the language of the Christian Community?

Three possible conclusions presented themselves. The first was to dismiss the idea. Conventional wisdom in the church at that time was that such a synthesis was both irrelevant and impossible. The implication was that this man's significance extended no further than the environment of religion as expressed collectively in the life of the Church and individually in one's personal spirituality. This had been the approach of many Christians in the past and regrettably persists to the present day in some quarters. Whenever anyone (e.g. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin) had proposed a paradigm shift in the Christian world-view, he was comprehensively demonized, or as in the case of the Dominican friar, Giordano Bruno, barbarically executed.²

The second was to adopt a Gnostic-type of dualism in which the biological and spiritual worlds are allocated different and mutually exclusive origins. The former is degrading and meaningless; the latter is uplifting and meaningful. Given the fact that we are embedded in the one and aspire to the other, the work of the Christian is to struggle free from the lower world and by dint of spiritual insight or effort or grace to become absorbed into the world of the spirit. This approach was deemed self-defeating in so far as it assumed an intrinsic disconnect between the two domains.

Driven by the enthusiasm of young adulthood, I settled for the third alternative. This required that I attempt to give meaning to the claim of Jesus’ pre-eminence in an environment in which the conventional religious framework on which his lordship had been constructed was completely inapplicable.

Faced with the enormity of the task ahead, my initial reaction was to adopt the same murderous attitude towards my scientific iconoclasts as was advocated in psalm 137. This psalm purports to come down to us from an ancient people demoralized by a violent and degrading transportation from their homeland to an alien and malevolent society. It also resonates with Christians of our own time who find themselves adrift in a strange and hostile world. Many such folk have lived through a period during which most of the theological and philosophical foundations upon which their faith had been built have been radically challenged or destroyed by contemporary scientific advances. Indeed, it would appear that the whole church has been driven into a form of exile by these same forces which have relentlessly and remorselessly trampled many of its most valued presuppositions. Having been uprooted from its familiar surroundings and after old certainties have been damaged or destroyed, the church in exile finds that its ability and even its desire to sing the old songs in the new environment has evaporated. And so it was for the psalmist's original audience. The demand that the exiles should burst into a song of Zion for the benefit of their tormentors brought a firmly negative response. These songs belonged to the old dispensation and the demand to sing them in Babylon was grossly offensive. Indeed, the very thought of such an action triggered murderous thoughts towards those making the demand and towards their offspring.

Whereas the distress of the psalmist gave rise to a violently negative response, I wondered if it could also be an impetus to search for a positive response. Is it possible that we could sing the Lord's song in this alien environment? Could Messiah Jesus be a light to enlighten our understanding of man's place in nature? Or, conversely, could an understanding of biology extend the significance of Jesus beyond the domain of religion? Unfortunately, no resolution was forthcoming from my church, either by means of discussion or reading. It was only after active church involvement had ended and scientific work had ceased that it was possible to pursue the exploration without adverse effects on others. I was then free to construct an arrangement of the song that could be sung by a jobbing biologist. This exercise grew out of the premise that an understanding of biology is capable of illuminating hitherto hidden aspects of the Christian message, or to continue the musical metaphor, that an awareness of biology is able to contribute to a grander arrangement of the Lord's song.

It is necessary to emphasize that the purpose of the present exercise is not to produce a comprehensive study of any aspect of Christology or of any aspect of Biology. It is simply a series of snapshots from one pilgrim's progress through uncharted territory.

* * * * *

TWO

MAN is Creator of the Inanimate

Beginning with the End.

My first step in examining the relevance of Messiah Jesus for the world of biology was paradoxically to make a wide detour away from the biblical record. This was because the history of Christian thought and reflection on the significance of Jesus has at no point given even the faintest suggestion of a nexus with biology. Indeed, had there been any interest shown in the past in connecting the two the current exercise would have