trilobites and worms and sponges

i love evolution.
i really mean it.
i love it.
at first, it was this incredibly intimidating idea...
and it was posited to me early
(by the christian church or by some book i read or who knows,
it doesn't really matter)
that there was a great either/or.
either creation or evolution.
either there is a good and loving God,
or else single-celled organisms formed in the ocean
from smaller functional mechanisms,
and over hundreds of millions of years,
cells started interacting in bigger functional units,
and eventually trilobites morphed into sponges which
morphed into anemones and so on.
i heard a recent conversation between a renowned
marine biologist and a woman who asked:
"how do you reply to the controversy of evolution in today's society?"
the biologists' response: "madame, there is no controversy."
i don't argue with mathematicians about the riemann hypothesis,
factorials or the gaussian distribution
because i'm not a mathematician,
and i sound really dumb when i argue about things i don't understand.
and i have come to find it rather silly that non-scientists
enter the conversation about whether or not evolution takes place,
when to the (respectable) scientific world it is so clear that it does.
mark hobbs asked last weekend:
"have you ever met a scientist who didn't believe in evolution?"
my reply: "not a good one."
that to say, there is quite incontrovertible evidence
that speciation takes place,
and has been taking place for eons.
so then awhile ago i found myself in that uncomfortable posture
of not being willing to give up the evidence
of evolution in front of me
and not willing to give up this central paradigm of nature:
"that through Christ all things were made;
without him nothingwas made that has been made."
and in wrestling through that conflict i cameto two realizations:
1) that creation and evolution are not conflictual
2) that there is a reason i love evolution.

i don't see anything in the "big bang theory"
that suggests against a loving God revealed to us in Christ Jesus.
nor do i see anything in evolution
that suggests against a loving God revealed to us in Christ Jesus.
i suspect God saw it all before it ever happened,
and reconciled the world to him
before anything in space or time ever took place,
when at the perfect moment,
WHAM-O
the universe stuck in the world of matter.
then as billions of years unfolded,
God
with bated breath
watching molecules of cold carbon and nitrogen gases mingle
anticipated the coming of his original idea:
a bride.

so then came light as the first hydrogen ions fused,
and matter related to matter and massive things started occuring.
one rock related well to a medium-sized star,
and in their relationship,
an earth,
a garden.
the clouds formed and water rained down and something
stirred in the ocean
and something stirred on land.
and a billion years later
when the coarse ape
was rather mindlessly grinding his rod into a stone to sharpen it,
after ages of his watching matter relate to matter
plant relate to plant
and animal relate to animal,
God was overwhelmed with affection for his dream,
and climaxing from billions of years of anticipation,
he breathed something different into the ape.
and the ape took on the likeness of God:
spiritual, profoundly self-aware, capable of language
and above all else,
capable of love.
these two features guided all things,
from the first atom
to the first adam
and guide us today:
relationship and mutability.
and when i think of evolution,
i think of God.
and when i hear again
that a new species has been discovered in thewater below the galapogos,
and i really ponder it,
i don't see a cold, lifeless work of physics,
but my faith instructs me
how the Lord has longed for his church,
his bride,
from eons past,
and how he has gave it all for her.

there is this dynamic i find in every physical thing,
and i suspect it may be present even in great heavenly things:
evolution.
babies grow from two cells that fuse into a zygote.
then as weeks turn into months,
they develop cognition and emotion.
they evolve from one zygote
into a complex thinking adult homo sapien.

and every system, organic and inorganic
has these features:
relating to all the things in it's setting
(nothing is an island in nothingness)
and change
(nothing can interact with its setting and not change).
it is in the blueprint of all that exists:
relating and changing.
developing. emerging. evolving.

i think it is not that God sits at the helm
and speciates;
it's not that he architects changes in dna
so to generate survival advantage in an organism;
instead,
we speciate because we are made by God,
we cannot avoid speciation,
because his nature is in all that exists.
we live as a reflection of the greatness of the living God.
and if there is anything that i want to understand,
i mean really grasp about it all, it is this:
that Christ is the image of the invisible God,
that he is the firstborn over all creation.
and that by him all things were created:
things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all things created by him and for him.
that he is before all things,and that in him all things hold together.
and that he is the head of the body,
the church;
that he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead,
so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
that God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
and to understand the word of God in its fullness --
the mystery that has been kept hidden
for ages and generations,
but is now disclosed to the saints --
which is Christ in us, the hope of glory.