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Sin, Science, and Animals

by James Barringer  
8/18/2010 / Christian Apologetics


What exactly is sin? When I've heard Christians define the term, it's usually something like, "Any thought or action that goes against what God approves of." In fact, that's my standard definition, almost word for word. The next question becomes, "So why does God approve or disapprove of certain things?" For example, could God declare that it was sinful to like any color apart from red? Such a thing seems silly, but when you look at most of the non-Christians in the world, you will find that they view most of the Christian teachings about righteousness as similarly silly and arbitrary. Biblical morality, they believe, is just one set of opinions about right conduct. Thus you will find non-Christians, and even some Christians, not being particularly troubled if they enjoy a behavior the Bible says is immoral. But what if sin was actually something very different?

I think the answer about the true identity of sin can be found in the opening chapters of Genesis. God said, "Let us create man in our own image," and so it happened. In some form, whatever it means, you and I and all the other humans on earth bear "the image of God." There is something just a tiny bit godlike in us - not that we are in any way gods ourselves, but just that we are more like God than we are like animals.

Based on all this, I would like to suggest that we can begin to think of sin and righteousness in different ways. We can view righteousness or moral conduct as anything that makes us more like God, and sin as anything that makes us more like animals. This is not a new idea; it is already deeply ingrained into our consciousness. When we saw what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, for instance, some of my friends said, "Look at those people, they're behaving like animals." This only makes sense if there is another way they could have behaved - that is, like humans - and if they had a moral and spiritual obligation to choose the human (and, by extension, divine) way over the animal way.

Think about what science says regarding animals, and about humans as well, since scientists believe us to be merely very evolved animals. Darwinian evolution says that every animal is motivated by basic instincts: food, self-preservation, and sex for procreation being three of the most powerful. These are all innately selfish. It is true that there are some animals which form societies and travel in groups, but as far as I know even this is only for the utilitarian purpose of mutual self-preservation and strength in numbers, not because they voluntarily choose it over another equally satisfying way of life. Sin, then, could be described as what happens when your decision-making process is built around animalistic instincts. You find yourself making the kind of decisions an animal would make, and not the kind of decisions God would make.

Take the Ten Commandments, specifically the ones that deal with how to interact with other people. The sixth commandment is, "Honor your father and mother." In the animal world it's very common for animals to go out on their own after a few months, or a year at the most, to fend for themselves. It's exceedingly rare for one parent, and even more so both parents, to guide the animal through its maturing process. We as humans want to be like animals in that regard. I spent several years as a youth pastor, and I saw my teens acting like young animals all the time. "Get out of my hair, mom. Let me be independent. Quit asking where I'm going and who I hang out with." We want to be independent like animals, but the Bible calls us to an interdependent, interconnected reality, exactly the opposite of what our biological instincts demand of us. The question to us becomes, do we obey the primitive side that makes us more savage, or do we murder that instinct and follow the pleadings of God, becoming more like him in the process?

The seventh commandment tells us not to murder. It's totally natural for animals to murder (although it's more rare than you might think). A lion that has its territory threatened, or who finds another lion mating with a lioness in his pride, will murder to protect what he thinks is his. If a lioness has young cubs with a different male, her new mate will even murder all her old cubs to expand his genetic influence at the expense of her former mates. Darwin called this "survival of the fittest." We find that most murders in the United States happen for similarly selfish reasons. We find the same with hatred, since Jesus said that an attitude of hate and the act of murder were the same thing. People hate things that pose a threat to themselves. Jesus goes against all of that when he tells us to love everybody, especially our enemies, and once again we find ourselves pinned between the biological instincts that want to make us more like animals and a divine reality that beckons us to be conformed to the image of God.

I could do this with all the commandments, but there is one area in particular that I want to touch on to hammer the point home, namely the area of sexuality. The Bible teaches us that sex means something crucial. It is not just skin on skin, but the metaphysical union of two souls. Do you know many non-Christians who view it that way? On the contrary, most view it exactly as the animals view it: something done a little bit for pleasure and a little bit for procreation (although growing numbers of people use birth control to remove even that unpleasant consequence). Alternately, since you're already on the internet, you could cruise over to one of the many porn sites, which by some estimates make up 1/3 of all websites on the entire net, and find pictures of naked men or women with which to satisfy yourself. This is completely normal for society, and anyone who refuses to treat other people as sex objects is looked at with amazement. Sexuality in this world is an utterly selfish pursuit, and the people who view sex in that way are voluntarily behaving like animals rather than like humans in the image of God. The Bible is not merely that an old book gives us antique opinions about what sex is and isn't. The point is that you and I were made to be certain kinds of people, not animals. When we voluntarily turn our backs on the single thing that separates us from animals - our God-imageness - we're heading in exactly the wrong direction, losing our connection with the divine and voluntarily allying with the temporary dust and blood of earthbound creatures.

Now for some awkward self-introspection, I would invite you to see what happens when someone starts insulting you personally. Most of us would find that our first instinct is to get defensive, or maybe even to start insulting back. Now how can this be, if we are Christians? You can see that there are animal instincts still inside all of us that want to take hold. Self-preservation demands that we stick up for ourselves, so we do. When someone cuts in front of you in the Wal-Mart line, why do you get angry? Your life isn't in danger, and you've been slowed down by a maximum of thirty seconds or a minute. It's not really that big a deal. But you feel disrespected, and your animal instincts are screaming at you to be the alpha male or the dominant female, to be on top of the pile and have the others look up to you. We run into hundreds of these situations each day, and in virtually every time where you find yourself reacting or wanting to react in a way contrary to your faith, you can see how the immoral or sinful reaction would actually make you less like God and more like a beast.

If you look at what the Bible teaches about righteousness, you will find that it strikes directly at the heart of every animal instinct in our bodies. Jesus says that the most important commandment is to love God. From a survival point of view, that doesn't really get you anywhere. If you were motivated by self-preservation like the biologists say, religion is one of the first things that would go out the window. Jesus then says that the second great commandment is to love other people as yourself - not to view them as tools you can use to further your own happiness, not as obstacles to your self-fulfillment, but as creations of God worthy of love and respect for that reason if for no other. Jesus even stabs that old self-preservation instinct directly in the heart when he says that following him is a sacrifice equal to offering yourself up for crucifixion, and says that the only way to find your life is to lose yourself in him. That's righteousness.

And that, I think, is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1 that the gospel is foolishness to those who don't know any better. To people who are caught up in the physical here and now, who blindly obey biological instincts without even knowing there is any other way, of course Jesus' teachings run violently against everything they believe to be true. A call to come and die sounds like idiocy to someone who is determined to suck the marrow out of life. But what we find the Bible teaching is that sin, voluntarily offering yourself up to become more like an animal and less like God, is actually metaphysical suicide. It's suicide for your soul every bit as much as cyanide is for your body. It goes against everything uniquely human in us, and represents an unbelievable desertion, leaving the kingdom of God and humanity for the kingdom of the beasts, a desertion that makes Benedict Arnold look like a glittering saint by comparison.

That is how we should view sin: not merely as a set of right and wrong moral opinions dictated arbitrarily by God, but a path laid out by God to guide us straight to his own heart. If we follow the path, we find us becoming the people that God created us to be. If we rebel and go in the opposite direction, we find ourselves becoming more and more like beasts. Visualized in that way, we can even make more sense of Jesus' command to repent - literally, to turn around - and make our way back toward God instead. How do you personally view sin, and what is your definition for it? What might change for you if you understood sin as the temptation to make you more like an animal? What are some areas in your life where you are still obeying your animal instincts, and how would you like to become more like God in those areas?

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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