Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He live in Iowa with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light
Recently, I heard a young man, who was processing the pandemic we’re in, say something along the lines of, “God made every cell just as it is.” I thought it was a curious statement to bring out at this time. It would seem that he is in the camp that has been taught that things don’t evolve, but instead God made creation just as we observe it in its present state. This line of thinking is one instance that I think clearly demonstrates a bad answer to a good question.
The question could be stated different ways: “What kind of world did God create?”, “When did God create the universe?”, or perhaps “How do we make sense of a global pandemic?”
The (bad) answer, would assert that God made the whole cosmos in pretty much the state that we currently see it. A corollary of this answer would be that things don’t evolve into other things. Eagles are eagles, squirrels are squirrels, and x cells are x cells (with “x” being a placeholder like in algebra which can be substituted for specific descriptors. Grievously, I intend no connection to the genetics of the X-Men.).
The problem with this answer is that it puts God in a rather strange position. If nothing has evolved or mutated ever, then cancer cells were part of God’s “very good” creation. So were mosquitoes. And so were murder hornets. If we write off any level of change, or evolution, or mutation within creation, then we are left with the rather uncomfortable implication that God created COVID-19 in order to directly cause this pandemic.
The standard response to this line of reasoning would be to introduce the Fall into the equation. Now, we can say that the original creation of God was good, but human sin introduced evil into the cosmos changing things dramatically so that now all of our trials and tribulations are a direct result of human sin. This would then lead to the implication that human sin is the sole cause of the pandemic.
I have more sympathy for the second line of reasoning; I think sin has marred our world and distorted much of the good that God created and that we feel the effects of this in our daily life. But this option still comes with some difficulties. One difficulty has to do with how the gospel of Jesus fits into the narrative of the Bible; that I will cover in my next post. Another difficulty has to do with the complexity of our universe; that I will briefly address here.
In numerous places in the Bible there is a call to discern good from evil, right from wrong (E.g. Romans 12:1-2; Philippians 1:9-11, etc.). In every instance there is the assumption that this process is never straight-forward, but requires wisdom and discernment. So how might we judge the goodness, or evilness of something like a virus? (The pandemic is another issue, and evaluating the morality of the human agency in it is an ongoing exercise that all Christians should be engaged in.)
The virus is an interesting case. Considering that the novel coronavirus emerged late last year, it seems that we cannot say that it was created by God directly, unless we are prepared to explain why God created it when he did, which could only lead to strange rabbit holes that lead us further and further from the God of the Bible. A similar difficulty comes with relating it to the Fall or human sin because now we must figure whose sin is to blame and punish them. (An approach that echoes both old-school paganism and some political rhetoric these days.)
The main point I want to make is that we also don’t get much relief by attributing the process of biological mutation (or evolution) to sin. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, mutations are random and valueless. If all changes in biology are evil then we would have to admit that a lot of good and much beauty has been the result of evil. Or how would you make sense of our bodies’ ability to develop immunity to a virus? Surely that adaptation isn’t evil. Secondly, systems of life are extremely complex. Every small change has ripple effects that permeate the whole system. (Recall the butterfly effect.) All life exists in a web of symbiosis with its environment. If we casually label one part of the system as a result of sin, then we will likely find that sin is also the cause of some attributes that we rather like.
More likely, things like the virus that caused this pandemic are valueless elements of chaos in our cosmos. (For more on that idea, I would recommend this podcast.) They are not the result of sin, but simply unfinished parts of this wild world that God created. But more on that next time.
Perhaps a faithful response then to our chaotic world right now is not to seek answers to our questions. Perhaps, like Job, we are invited simply to be humbled by the reminder that there is so much that we don’t understand, and stand in awe of the God who is still in control of it all.