While you are thinking, consider that a typical internal
combustion engine car has about 10,000 moving parts.
Oh, you science majors may say that is a false comparison.
That doesn’t make it less interesting. Science haters may say that it is false
news. They learned so on Facebook. That doesn’t make things less scary.
Anyway, think about how many moving parts must operate in
both unison and harmony for an automobile to be a Honda Accord instead of a
Jeep Cherokee. Of course, an automobile is not the direct product of evolutionary
forces acting unaided upon, as it now seems accepted, the genetic structure of
an existing body. That’s why we can put it in working order with 10,000 moving parts.
That’s also why it took three billion DNA pairs and four
billion years to produce a modern member of Homo
sapiens. Now that’s a lot of connections working at once, the product of what
Charles Darwin called “descent with modification.” Some connections serve uses
that are no longer needed. Some confuse us. I read somewhere once that there is
a genetic mechanism in our makeup that served to keep us alert when we shared
the Savannah with creatures that ate humans for breakfast, lunch, and supper. No,
it didn’t serve to warn us of danger. It warned us of a perceived lack of danger,
for a feeling of safety may be the most dangerous condition of all in a violent
world.
In other words, “You think things are fine? Think again.”
Could that archaic mechanism be what makes it
counter-productive to tell a person suffering from chronic depression to, “Cheer
up. Everything is going to be all right?”
Why do I bring this all up? It evolves (no pun intended)
from a sermon I heard yesterday, full of the love and grace that eludes most TV
evangelists. It included a story of a young man who was almost suicidal because
his 3 billion DNA pairs had produced a sexual orientation that differed from his
parents, siblings, and the majority of his peers. Why the difference? I don’t
know. Multiply 3 billion DNA pairs times four billion years and look therein
for the answer.
Do I understand it correctly from my friends who are fundamentalist
evangelicals that we are somehow spiritually ordained to hate a person who has
a slight difference in his genomic makeup from mine?
Am I supposed to assume that this slight difference is not
the result of DNA but the result of a conscious decision by a fourteen-year old
that puberty, psychic anxiety, fear of the future, a lack of popularity
among peers, and a world seemingly gone insane does not produce enough psychic
terror in one’s life? That, in order to round things out, he or she might just
choose to adopt a lifestyle that would make them an object of un-reasoned hatred
in members of society, including the adults who are supposed to be in charge?
I once knew an individual who thought so. “It’s a choice,”
this person avowed, “a result of our ‘old sin nature’ generated by the Devil
himself.”
Our what? Only someone as nefarious and full of venom as
Franklin Graham could believe that.
As a side note, this individual assured me that a college
professor had taught his class, at a central Arkansas university (not my Alma Mater
thankfully), that a homosexual could be identified by a certain bump at a
location in a certain place on their forehead.
I can’t find one on mine, although I do think Orlando Bloom
is awfully sexy.
Anyway, this post-factual age could get me down if I didn’t
occasionally run across thoughtful, caring, loving sermons like the one I saw
yesterday. Contact me for a source.
There is hope. Study and believe.
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