He actually said something like, "If the last endangered white rhino stood between me and the lives of my wife and kids, of course I'd kill it," which is a little over-dramatic for the point he was making - which is that human life comes before animal life. I suppose, in individual situations I don't disagree - I mean, if the gorilla had really hurt or killed that kid, they'd've had to put it down anyway.
I'm not so sure the sentiment hold true for me as a guiding principle, though - at least as it appeared in the TIME article.* I reject the notion that humanity is the primary concern of the world. Theologically it's all wrong - God created humans to care and tend to the Earth. Yes, one might say that the Earth can't be cared for or tended if it's caretakers are extinct, but this idea seems an extreme argument and, ultimately, someone else's problem. If God creates a universe, puts us in it specifically to care for that world, calls us to live sacrificially in service of creation, then also allows us to do so to our own extinction, that's either poor planning or part of the plan all along.
I tend to think our science and theology pushes us to see humanity as something different than what's been before. Humans are really the only creatures capable of analyzing our own instincts and rejecting our natural inclinations. We're capable not just of making choices, but analyzing those choices, even before they're made. I'd say we're different enough to really affect the whole of creation, either positively or negatively.
Of course, as the "pinnacle of creation" (or evolution) it makes a lot of sense for us to think this way - and we'll probably continue to think this way right up until some other, more evolutionarily advanced creation takes our place and makes us irrelevant (and if you scoff at that, ask your friendly, neighborhood neanderthal what they think... oh, right).
Now I'm not going to argue that we're NOT responsible for humanity - after all we're a big part of this world in which we live - but I would argue that we're more responsible for making the whole work well than we are for maintaining any part within it. Creation is a system - one Christians especially believe humans play an integral part in maintaining - it should be understood and approached that way.
This is sort of what I was saying the other day: are we merely a collection of individuals, or are we individuals who've submitted ourselves to the whole? It sounds like simple talk, but it makes a real difference in how we view our purpose in the world.
Yes, if the world's last remaining white rhino somehow stood between me and my family's life, I'd probably kill it. I hope not, but let's be honest (although I have no real clue as to how one might go about killing a white rhino, especially in an emergency - I don't usually carry around high powered hunting rifles and somehow I don't think my bare hands are going to cut it - or a knife; I'm not sure a knife would cut it -rhinos have very thick skin). Would it be the right thing to do? I doubt it.
Like any issue of life, the question, though, isn't about one moment, it's about setting up a system that addresses the issue well beyond any individual moment. So, as an example, we could say sacrificing acres of rainforest is worth it if lives are saved - some would even argue that faith in science and progress leads them to believe we'll figure out solutions down the road. I'd prefer to figure out the best solution now.
Yeah, I'd rather sacrifice my own life over someone else's - at least then I'd get a choice - but I think the idea of sacrificing our lives for something more noble than just an individual life is pretty important to the way the world works. I believe in non-violence, but making a stand for non-violence usually means suffering violence - often for quite a while - before the message takes effect.
I'm not sure the big issues of environmental stewardship are really life or death for too many of us just yet, but they do call for sacrifice, for giving up pleasures or conveniences or things we might've otherwise considered needs, to create a world that's ordered and sustainable for all.
There's nothing wrong with making humans a big part of our sacrificial environmental actions, but we need to make sure we've got a more generous end in mind.
*It was called "Engineered food holds our future" by Hope Jahren, but it doesn't appear to be online anywhere yet.
In a recent series of blog posts, Theologian and Philosopher Tom Oord discussed a book by Keith Ward and specifically his contention that the "social Trinity" is a bad idea. I have not read Ward's book, only Oord's take on it.
I won't comment on the book or Oord's argument - you can read all that for yourself, but I do appreciate his willingness to re-examine theological ideas that were developed in a more concrete, Greek-influenced time. I believe sometimes Oord tries to do this in ways that continue the more logical nature of theology that I'd like to critique, but, then again, he is a Philosopher, so it might be expected.
Regardless, this post came to mind as I found myself thinking about the phrase "God is wholly other," in some reading this week. It's a very common phrase, especially in theological circles, so common it's easy to brush over without giving it much thought. For some reason I thought about it this morning. Specifically, I thought about why I don't like it very much.
As Oord and, presumably, Ward, are challenging the notion of "social Trinity," they're not really challenging it. Neither man, I believe, fundamentally disagrees with the principles this theory is trying to maintain, what they do disagree with are the implications of expressing a particular combination of core beliefs in this way. There's no challenge to the idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being divine, but simply pointing out that this particular way of explaining how that works presents some extra-biblical problems as its worked into the larger corpus of theology.
I kind of feel the same way about God being "wholly other." This is a pretty basic tenet of systematic theology that speaks to the substantive difference between creator and creation. They are different in as many ways as two beings can be different. I'm not entirely sure, though, if we can't also say those two entirely different beings aren't also the same in some ways - or at least similar. Perhaps the notion of God as wholly other needs, if not theological, certainly grammatical reconsideration.
The very notion that humans are created in the likeness of God leaves some pause for how we understand "wholly other." I get that we're trying to prevent the assumption that God is some sort of perfected human (and thus nip in the bud the notion that humans can stumble upon salvation without divine help). But as a good Wesleyan (often called semi-Pelagian by my more reformed brethren), I can't discount the ways in which God has chosen to involve creation in the ongoing story of existence.
The whole of scripture, tradition, and experience testifies to a partnership between God and God's creation in the unfolding of reality. god has and does enable creation to participate in its own salvation. It sort of makes Pelagianism obsolete in that creation cannot do anything on its own since God has already been inextricably involved in the core processes that lead us to recognize the need for salvation.
I get that we want to emphasize a difference between God and humans so as to prevent us from getting grandiose ideas about our own abilities, but by engaging in incarnation, God blurs some of those lines beyond true definition. God became a human being; the creator became the created, and no matter how we want to define orthodoxy, that statement seems vitally important to Christian thought, even among those groups excluded by Nicaea. It seems difficult to claim God as wholly other when God specifically chose to become like us. Wholly other creates a distance between God and humanity that God personally bridged.
It shouldn't be that hard for us to say God is God and we are not, without creating these substantive categories that separate creation from Creator in sorely unbiblical ways.
The other element of this, though, is the understanding of purity. Holy means set apart - this is where "wholly other" comes from. A holy thing is consecrated for a divine purpose and must avoid co-mingling with the common to preserve its holiness and, in some sense, maintain universal order. This lead to the strict rules about contamination that existed throughout the Hebrew world. This notion protects us from a kind of casualness in relationship to God that leads to, say, modern "Christian" music that sounds more like love songs to Jesus and the immortal Buddy Christ.
That's an important, worthy goal, but it also needs to be kept in check by the witness of God in Christ - the one who moved through the crowd and instead of being corrupted by the touch of an unclean woman, reversed the process and restored her health and inclusion. This is certainly a God unlike anything we've seen in creation, but this God appears more concerned with removing the notion of "wholly other" and bringing reconciliation. The same Christ who prayed that his followers would be one as Son and Father are one.
I understand that in the end we're saying that there still remains a distance between creation as it is and creation as its intended to be. The great apocalyptic of scripture foretells a future uniting of God's realm with humanity's and an eternal joining of the created with creation. If this picture of reconciliation is both our foundation and our future, we must be more creative in the ways in which we talk about God and human.
Wholly other is wholly inadequate for a God of such great love and grace.
In the buildup from Part I and Part II, we've sort of covered the introductory stuff to get to a place where it feels ok to explain what I've been really excited about - not so much because the idea itself is exciting, but more because it seems to explain things in a way that is a little more cohesive with scripture, the world around us, and the way postmodern theology is trending.
I was talking about some of the things I've covered so far in a Theology of Creation class I took a few years back and the professor (whom you can likely figure out, but will remain nameless here just in case he doesn't want to be associated with this crazy, crackpot idea) mentioned an old Rabbinic teaching about two forces at work in the world - not a "good vs evil" kind of thing, but two contrary, amoral forces underlying reality. (I wrote a paper for that course exploring the biblical and historical basis for this idea, which is long and pretty dense, but gives more detail.)
Ultimately, I decided the biblical basis for the notion was tenuous at best (and that's being generous), but the fact that people have been toying with this notion for thousands of years really sparked my imagination. It struck me how well this notion of two forces fit into the way I had already conceptualized sin and creation; it also made great room for evolution in the process.
Selfishness isn't good or bad - it's one of those amoral forces I mentioned above. Selfishness is what keeps a baby alive - if it didn't cry for food and attention, it would die. There's a sense that our self-preservation is essential to our survival. Now, obviously, selfishness can be really terrible and lead us to do terrible things, but the notion to self-preservation can't be condemned on its own. This is essentially what evolution is - an individual trying to survive and pass some part of itself on to the next generation. That's natural selection; it's survival of the fittest. You can even extend it back to the big bang. Even when the elements of the universe weren't sentient or alive, they were living in a process of continuing.
What if that was how God created? Just spoke existence into existence with the knowledge that things would continue to develop. God wouldn't have to plan out what specific things would evolve and arise, but putting the universe on a trajectory of self-preservation necessarily determined where things would end up. Eventually some specifies would arise capable of understanding this selfish force at work in the world, evaluating it, and potentially acting contrary to the very forces that provided for its creation.
I'm not sure God planned on relatively hairless, bipedal primates as that species (we could have been purple, globulous things with beaks for all it mattered), but we would have the ability to understand our natural inclinations and choose against them. That was the important part. From there God could enter into our existence in a relational way - choosing a specific tribe, for example, to pass on specific guidance for life - but even more broadly than that, the very reality that humans can think outside instinct and drive makes the God who inhabits all reality not only a possibility, but a force in the world we are aware of. The very nature of who we are as humans means we have some understanding of God - it's why we can see core elements of a very similar belief underlying the metaphysical understanding of every culture and religion. There's something deep within us as humans who understand at least the reality of God. The creative force of the universe - this amoral self-regard - demands it.
Now this force, on its own, it utter destruction, right? It's what leads a society to kill of its disabled members, it's troublesome. Those things make sense evolutionarily, but we naturally react against them because we also have within us this force of selfless love. This is the presence and action of God in the world. God is love. This force of selfless love works in tandem with the force of self-preservation, where they can temper each other and keep us moving forward towards God's end.
The way I'd describe the reality of this is simply that from the moment of creation, that self-preservation force "took the lead" (for lack of a better term). This force was the driving force that brought us to existence and drove the world to where it needed to be for God's big turn. That turn comes in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Creation has reached a point (in the fullness of time, as the gospels put it) where God could physically enter into the picture. We always talk about the cross meaning something - that it effects not just spiritual change, but real, permanent, physical change in the world. Theologically we might say Jesus was the "inauguration of the kingdom" or the point in which we start to experience heaven.
In this particular narrative we say this is where self-preservation takes a back seat to the selfless love of God. We talk about the defeat of death and the coming of eternity, in which there is no need for self-preservation because the self will be eternally preserved in resurrection. Death is the roadblock that drives evolution - without the reality of death there is no imperative to grow and change, to reproduce and survive. You can't start a world like our without death - it would change all the rules.
Now, however, we can build upon this world already created - with the rules already in place - and we can begin to work by a different set of rules, to change and shape the future into something that looks like the life Christ lead, the kind of hope and future most religions envision. We begin to work toward heave. Jesus is the turning point.
This leaves us with a future world in which we're being shaped and formed by different rules, moving again, without prejudice for specifics, into a different kind of people - no longer ruled by self-preservation, but by selfless love. This is what people talk about in the coming of the Kingdom. Just as creation could have taken an infinite number of paths to get to it's crisis point, so creation can again take an infinite number of paths to get to our final destination (which may, in itself, be an eternal, continual process - who knows?).
Everything in our world is changing - moving from one thing to another. It always works this way - in nature, within ourselves, and in the relationships we have. There's no reason to think, as the traditional narrative does, that God started with what he wanted, we screwed it up, and the purpose of all existence is to get back to what we lost.
No, rather, I'd argue we were created exactly as God intended - through a process that produces people with a distinct lack, a lack only filled by the selfless, mysterious love of God, exemplified in Christ, that will eventually provide us with the power and grace to become what we ere always intended to be. The story of God is one of things getting better and better, becoming more and more right, ever increasing in value and purpose. So, to address the second half of the title - sin is simply any action which works against this trend, some of it is accidental, some is intentional; some does real damage, some is merely a detour that slows us down, but all of it is covered by the love and grace of the God who designed and inhabits the whole thing.
Now this raises any number of questions - some I've thought through and many, many more that I couldn't even have imagined yet. I'd love to keep doing posts tackling some of those - likely not with answers, but with directions and ideas for further conversation. So bring on the feedback.
Producers have always won awards. The Grammys and Oscars for Best Album and Best Picture go to the producers of those works, the people who put the team together and guided the process. For a long time (and maybe still), they are not necessarily seen as part of the creative team, if anything they are the glue that holds the creative types together. Producers form the structure.
Lately, though, producers are becoming the artists - or perhaps they always were. This is more common with movies - Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, and Reese Witherspoon all have successful production companies (it doesn't hurt that there's lots of money to be made there) - but it's happening more and more in music. Daft Punk won the Best Album Grammy last year for a record they essentially produced. Nearly every track has guest performers and much of the construction was collaborative, but they're given credit. EDM artists are doing the same thing - think Calvin Harris or Avicii - artists whose major work is compiling a track, often by sampling or combining the work of others. Sometimes the named artist on an album doesn't sing or play any instruments.
It's a different world, but there's also something viscerally familiar about it.
I had the opportunity to write for a book done collaboratively. A friend of mine started a publishing company, conceived of a book written by many authors, working in concert. This is not just a book pieced together from disparate chapters, but something with which each of us was involved from the very beginning. It was (and is) very much Keith's baby - he designed the parameter, the skeleton upon which we added our prose and editorial opinions - but it's certainly not his alone.
The publishing world hasn't quite figured out how to label something like this. They're still working in the real of authors and editors. The music business hasn't gotten it either, although there are enough rules about how to credit various contributors and the creative people themselves are fluid enough that recognition generally finds its way to the right people.
I am, from time to time, creative. I like to write. There is a real sense in which what I create is entirely mine (save perhaps the occasional divine inspiration). At the same time, my creativity belongs almost entirely to the people who, through relationships and shared experiences, have shaped who I am. I see the world in the way I do because of the people around me. I may individually express and nurture my ability to express myself creatively, but it would be foolish to claim any of that for my own.
This takes on a much deeper aspect when we consider our creation alongside the creation of the world. I'll never begin to grasp the intricacies of the universe or the ways in which it came to be what it is. I believe God created, although my understanding of scripture leads me to believe God involved the creation itself as collaborator almost from the very beginning. This tracks well with both our best understanding of creation from science and also from our own experience in life.
Creation is a collaborative endeavor. Even if we create just for ourselves, there is an added dimension which arises when others interact with what we've done. Creation is a form of communication. Help us to recognize the creative value of those around us. Help us also to recognize the importance those around us have in the ongoing creation of our lives.
They hit on a blog post from the "Christian" music group Gungor about their perspective on historicity in Genesis. The post itself was a reflection of a radio interview given eighteen months before and expressed an opinion that was not revelatory for them or new to the world - namely that the biblical book of Genesis is not intended to answer specific historical questions, perhaps Adam and Eve were not the names of the first people, the great flood probably didn't cover the whole of the Earth, and that perhaps it took longer than seven days to get the world to the state it was in when humans showed up.
By using words like "unorthodox" the viral piece made something controversial out of something mundane. Yes, a few fundamentalist baptists cancelled concerts or wrote angry letters, but no one was really shocked.
The things the band said might be considered on the liberal side of evangelicalism (although maybe not even there anymore), but certainly are well within the confines of Christian orthodoxy. What's more, they align with nearly all scholarly research and investigation into the subject. In other words: this is not news.
I have seen a lot of interesting responses, though - the one most interesting is this idea that "you must believe all scripture is literally true or none of it is trustworthy."
Beyond the egregious abuse of logic in that statement, it sort of skips over the more important issue: how does one know what the Bible "literally" says? The most common answer: "It's pretty clear if you read it," leaves much to be desired.
I'm coming out here today. I can admit to you, publicly (I'm pretty sure I covered this in a previous post, but I couldn't find it, so here it is) - I believe the Bible is literally true. I do.
The word literally literally means to take seriously the author or speaker's meaning when interpreting said communication. There's been a lot of controversy lately because the dictionary definition of literally has been amended. So many people now use the word to place emphasis on something, rather than to define anything specifically (that new Taylor Swift song is literally the pinnacle of human creativity). We get fooled when we think literally means "exactly what most people hear when they hear the next few words." It's not an interpretation by democracy. Literally means whatever the speaker/writer means. It's up to the interpreter to notice body language, inflection, context, past interaction, etc to parse the exact intention of the word.
It's always meant that, but the dictionary has traditionally relied on people meaning the same things when they speak. Now there are literally no rules. People can use the word any way they choose and its up to us to figure out what they mean. Sad, I guess, but helpful in this context.
When I say I believe the Bible is literally true, I mean exactly that. I mean I believe it says exactly what it's authors and compilers and editors intended it to mean when they put it together.
That's different than just "what is says if you read it," often called the "plain sense" interpretation. It's a popular one, but, again, interpretation by democracy is not always the best way to find out what something literally means.
When I say I take scripture seriously as a literally true document, I am committing myself to a lifelong process. I have to become knowledgeable about the various genres of literature found in the Bible, how they're constructed and the ways they're intended to be used. I have to parse out historical context - what was happening in the world when people first read these stories in these ways? How does that history change the meaning and purpose of the text? I have to look into the history of the passages themselves - were these oral histories, later written down - how does the process of transmission and the various contexts in which this was received over time shape the story?
In short, I have to ask a lot of questions - questions that can be answered, but never completely. Scripture itself is called the living, active word of God (although at the time those words were written, they themselves were not included in scripture, so one has to speculate about the author's intentions for his - and it's almost assuredly always his, which adds its own layer of bias and investigation to the process - own words should be viewed, and also brings into our discussion the subject of cannonization and the process by which God's people chose which writings would be scripture and which would not - another layer of investigation), which means it's an ongoing process.
All of this speaks to the notion of inspiration. Christians of most sorts confess that scripture is inspired by God - how that happens is a topic of some debate, but ultimately what it means is we think it's a true, reliable source of information upon which to base our understanding of the universe and our actions within it. During the trial of Jesus, scripture recounts Jesus' interaction with the Roman authorities who ultimately allowed his execution. One of the most famous questions posed to him is, "what is truth?" That's ultimately at the bottom of this whole thing.
I confess that Jesus Christ is truth. He claimed as much (if the scripture is to be believed). The only problem with that claim is that it's so squishy. Confining truth to a person brings into the equation relationship - something that changes over time, even if the people involved are the same people throughout.
Just another wrinkle in the process of discerning "literal" truth.
A lot of Christian believe the Bible says the universe was created in seven "literal" days." Unfortunately, that's not even an historic position. It's relatively new. As far back as the scholars of Alexandria in the second and third centuries or the great theologian (who practically defined orthodoxy for a thousand years) Augustine in the fourth and fifth, Christians (leading, important, influential Christians - and many more beyond these) were calling that particular belief silly and a menace to the spreading of faith - pretty much everything that's been said about Gungor the last week.
In the end, I do have an opinion. I can talk you through the "literal" truth of Genesis as I see it, provide the historical, theological, and contextual discoveries that have led to my conclusions, and present the ways this "literal" reading has changed over time as I've grown in knowledge and experience.
What hasn't changed, though, is my commitment to the literal truth of scripture.
That doesn't depend on how many days it took for humans to show up on the Earth, or how massive Noah's flood was, or whether Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even existed at all. The modern study of history as we know it has only been around for a couple hundred years - it's pretty new as academic fields go. The questions of history we so often ask of ancient texts (like the bible) are completely anachronistic to their interpretation.
if we're going to take anything literally, especially something so old, diverse, and complex, we're going to have to ask deeper questions, spend more time studying, and perhaps admit we don't always know everything so concretely - even as we know more things, more thoroughly than we did before.
That's just the nature of literal truth and, I believe, what makes life exciting.
[Edited to add: Here's a great link with a brief interview with Michael Gungor, but, more importantly, lots of links to other things I only referenced in passing in the post above.]
Long ago, when the earth was formless and void, chaos reigned. Tiamat, goddess of chaos, a great sea monster was challenged by Marduk, god of the sun and all light. They wrestled for control and allegiance of all the lesser gods; they fought for power. In the end, Marduk killed Tiamat with an arrow through the heart. He took her corpse and split it in two. With one half he made the earth and with the other, the sky – to separate the waters from the waters.
Marduk then took his place, ruling from on high – shining down on the whole world. He ruled with his supporting gods – the planets, moon, and stars – together they marked times: days, seasons, and years. Finally, Marduk created rain and gave life to the world. But his fellow gods began to complain – ruling the world was too much work, maintaining all these plants and animals was no fun. So Marduk created humans – savages, he called them – charged with service to the gods the gods may be at ease. Humans serve at the beck and call of the gods, bowing to their every whims, forever slaves, constantly trying to remain on Marduk’s good side.
This is the creation story as everyone in Mesopotamia would have known it before the time of Israel. Marduk was the patron god of Babylon; the name would have differed if the story was told in Sumer or Assyria or Canaan, but the story itself remained the same.
It tells a sad story of creation. A world created from violence and selfishness; humans created as reviled slaves of the gods. I don’t doubt that’s how the world seemed to many people. Floods and famines were commonplace; it was difficult to grow crops, build cities, or find grazing land without a fight. The creation story was crafted to reflect their underlying beliefs about the world.
Israel, God’s people, had a different set of beliefs about creation. They used the Marduk story, the language of it anyway, and changed the details around to reflect these different beliefs about God and the world. It’s sort of like the missionary, Don Richardson – you may have heard this story – who was working among the Sawi people in New Guinea. The tribes there often fought, but they had a unique ritual for making peace – the leader of one tribe would give his son to the leader of the enemy tribe as a sign of peace and good faith. Richardson used this analogy to introduce Jesus, the peace child, and explain the gospel in a context the Sawi could understand.
So too, Israel. They took the language of the day – the only creation language anyone knew and transformed it to reflect the truth of God’s work in the world. You notice the beginning of our passage is still a story about the conquering of chaos – but it is non-violent. Chaos is not another god or another person, but an enemy force, like hunger, pain, or death. Creation is the ordering of chaos. You see the same phrases used “formless and void,” “separating the waters from the waters,” but in this story there is no battle, God just does it: creation out of nothing.
In the ancient world, the words for sun, moon, stars, light, etc were also the names of the various gods they represented in culture. Through the Genesis creation story they are depersonalized and domesticated; they are all created things, subject to god. So, too, in verse 21, the odd reference to God creating sea monsters makes more sense when you know about Tiamat – the sea monster goddess of chaos. In Genesis, she has no power, no identity other than as God’s creation.
It can be dangerous to preach on creation these days. Many Christians like to fight tooth and nail over how creation happened – but ‘how’ is not the question any of these creation stories were designed to tell. The ‘how’ is only in service to the ‘why’ and the ‘what.’ Why would God create the world and what does the kind of world God created say about God?
Jesus was never a peace child on the island of New Guinea, but presenting the story that way communicates the truth about God and God’s love and salvation in ways the Sawi people would understand. For Israel, using the language of the time and place in which they lived was the best way to communicate the truth about God and creation to the people who needed to hear it.
Ultimately, the ‘how’ didn’t matter at all to the Israelites or the Babylonians for that matter. They assumed it was impossible to know how the world was created – no one was there to see it. What’s more, I suspect they thought it was impossible to ever know anything about how creation happened. The very fact that today we can look back and even begin to examine the past in such ways would blow their minds. The ‘how’ may be important and interesting to us, but it is not at all a concern of this passage. Our creation statement in the Church of the Nazarene says: “we oppose any Godless interpretations of creation,” which means so long as you believe God did it and it’s consistent with the rest of scripture, you can tell the creation story any way you want.
For us, for the Babylonians, and for the Israelites, the ‘how’ is just not the main question. The real meat of Genesis 1 is the ‘why’ – and especially what the differences between the Babylonian story and the Israelite story say about God.
The first big difference is that God created out of love and with intentionality. Marduk almost seems create the world accidently. He didn’t need the world. Those gods were floating around in space and doing just fine on their own. Creation is an afterthought for him – and what’s more, creation is the result of a violent, bloody war. There is no love in that creation, only hate.
The Israelite creation is an act of care, generosity, and love. We like to say God is love and God is so much love that this love can’t be contained even within God, that love was so overflowing, so bursting forth, that God chose to create the whole universe as a repository for that love. And it wasn’t an accident. Genesis talks of God’s careful crafting of the world – whether that was done in an instant or over billions of years is irrelevant to the main point: God created out love and with intention. In fact, God cares so much about the world that creation itself is given a part to play in its own ongoing development. You see, over and over again: be fruitful and multiply – that’s God letting the world be co-creators; we get to bring forth life.
It’s not in the passage we read today, but God lets the first human being name all the animals – and scripture is careful to point out that whatever the Adam named them was their name. God gave up the right for final say over something pretty important. That’s an example of great love.
It’s also a great introduction to the second major difference between the Babylonian account and the Genesis account: God created with a purpose. That purpose is to reflect God – a God who is entirely selflessness, radically self-giving. Nothing God creates exists for itself. The land is created for the plants, the sea for the fish, the sky for the birds. The plants are created to feed the animals and the humans are created to take care of the whole thing – to make sure God’s creation continues to work in the way God intends. If you look into chapter two a bit you see we were created to serve the Earth, not the other way around.
It’s all about self-giving. God exists only to love and created, not just us, but the whole world to reflect that same purpose. In the Babylonian story the humans are slaves; they are created to serve the gods, so the gods can lounge around by the pool and take it easy. The Genesis story is the opposite of that. God didn’t need creation – in fact, things probably would have been a whole lot easier for God without creation.
It’s sort of like having kids. If you have kids selfishly, to fulfill something missing in you or to make your life better, the whole process will be horrible – they’ll get on your nerves and they’ll constantly be bothering you and you’ll grow to see them as a pain in the neck – the way Marduk viewed the people he made. But if you have children as a means of extending your love, of giving yourself to another, well, they will still get on your nerves and bother you and be a pain in the neck – but it’s worth it because you love them and we’re designed to find fulfillment by giving ourselves away, by loving others with no expectation of return.
God has poured all of who God is into this creation. The universe was made out of deep love and with a purpose. That purpose extends not just to people, but to every last atom of the universe – each and every molecule contributing something for the good of the whole. We humans do have a special assignment, though; we’re specifically tasked with keeping the world on track, making sure each part of God’s creation is free to do what God created it to do. It’s a big responsibility and quite frankly we’ve been horrible at it.
We take the mandate in verse 28 to subdue the earth and rule over it and we interpret it through our own history. When we think of subduing, ruling, we think of kings – of King Tut and Julius Caesar, and Richard the Lionhearted – all strong men who ruled under the threat of violence. You did what they said or you paid the price. We think about ruling in terms of power. When we do that, we miss the whole point of the creation story. Ruling by power is what the Babylonian story teaches us to do. In Genesis, we rule by giving of ourselves, by sacrificing for each other and for creation. We’re not supposed to use our historical, human kings as a model; our example should be the rule of God – a rule expressed most fully in Jesus Christ, who humbled himself to be like us, served selflessly, and died innocently and tragically.
That is the kind of ruling we were created to do. Human beings are tasked with keeping everything in line. When the forest gets too thick or the deer too numerous, we cut them back. Often we’ve taken that responsibility for granted – we use creation to make our lives easier, like Marduk and his friends – rather than sacrificing our desires, our ease, for the good of the whole.
The creation account in Genesis is not about how the world was created; it’s about why the world was created – and what our responsibility is in light of those reasons.
Some of you may know, our family is, for the most part, vegetarian. I came to a real conviction about the way we were eating during a class focusing on this very passage. I was really challenged by our responsibility as God’s superintendents of the world. I did some research into how we treat the animals we eat and I found they’re not often treated like animals, but like products, commodities. We use them, rather than care for them, keeping them in cages and artificially fattening them up. They lack the freedom to roam and do what God created them to do. Cows are meant to be nature’s lawnmower; pigs are the composters. When we rob them of the chance to be what God created them to be, we’re neglecting our responsibility. I’ve come to believe that ease and efficiency are not good enough reasons to act this way.
Now, I’m not saying you all need to stop eating meat (and if we could afford the good, grass-fed, free-range stuff or had access to wild game, we’d probably eat it). I’m also not saying you have to read this passage and come to the same conclusions we have. I am saying we all have to take this chapter seriously. We need to wrestle with the question of what our actions say about the God we serve and the world our God created. The world wasn’t created for us to use as we please; that lie has been going around for far too long and it’s time to put it to rest. We were put here with a purpose – and that purpose is to serve the world, because that’s how we serve God.
This isn’t just an ecology lesson, though. Genesis 1 focuses on non-human creation and so the sermon has too, but the principles here are not just about environmentalism. The way we interact with each other, our fellow human beings, is just as big a part of our purpose in the world. It’s just that most every other sermon we ever hear deals with that stuff, so perhaps just this one time the rest of creation can get its due.
In the end, it’s not about who or what we interact with, but the attitude and perspective from which we act. Are we using our relationships, our abilities, our politics, to make our own lives better or are we sacrificing the pleasures we have and the ease we enjoy in service of others? Sometimes people call this utopian ideal unrealistic, it’s a pipe dream, it’s socialism. I call it a picture of heaven; I call it the Kingdom of God. Guess what? The Kingdom of God takes work.
We chose, each and every day, which creation story we’re living out: the story of Babylon or the story of Genesis. We choose whether to be slaves to our own happiness, our own desire, or to be the superintendents of the world as God created us to be. We are not called to find our own place in the world, but to work – tirelessly, sacrificially, lovingly – so that every part of God’s creation, every person, every thing, can fulfill their purpose and be what God created them to be.
We’re going to close with an old hymn - #77, All Creatures of Our God and King. The lyrics were originally written by Francis of Assisi in 1225. St. Francis is sometimes called the first environmentalist, because he recognized the call of God in this passage and he lived it out – sharing his food with birds and beggars alike. The opening line of the last verse says, “Let all things their Creator bless, and worship him in humbleness.” I hope we’ll pay special attention to those lines today. We are incredibly fortunate to have a God worth blessing, worth worshipping – a God who loves us and gives us purpose, a God who cares not only for the mighty and powerful, but also the lowly and forgotten.
Let us be who we were created to be: people who reflect the image of that loving, awesome God!
Usually when I have this kind of lengthy anticipation, the end result fails to meet expectation (see the third Hunger Games book) or wildly fails to meet expectations (the movie version of Sphere). I went into Noah expecting to be disappointed. The run-up to the movie wasn't great and I didn't expect much.
What I really didn't expect was to have my expectations, as high and artificially inflated as they were, totally exceeded. I really think this is my favorite movie of all time (I've only had two others - Good Will Hunting as replaced by Wonder Boys in the early 2000's). I loved it. I know that without another fifty viewings I will not do the movie, or my impression of it, justice.
At the same time, there have been so many reviews and critiques from across the spectrum of viewers - most who hate the movie - that I feel like a more formal (and lengthy) defense is warranted.
To be honest, even in my wildest imagination for the movie, I expected something like what the scholarly community seems to have experienced: a film with biblical narrative and questionable theology. I was expecting Aronofsky to focus more on the likely historical and cultural aspects of the story and avoid the theology.
In truth, we worked the other way. The technology of the people in the story is most likely well beyond the capability of someone in prehistory (really the only time frame possible for a story like Noah). That being said, the historicity of the story is irrelevant; I'm glad Aronofsky understood that. The story of Noah is a story about God and God's relationship to creation (particularly humanity) - it's not intended to say anything about history or science.
Noah is a mythic movie. It tells a fantastic story for the purpose of a larger message. It is chock full of allusion, imagery, and metaphor. To take any of the events of characters within as concrete fact is misleading at best (and delusional at worst).
I keep hearing this notion that Noah was never intended to be a biblical account. I'm not sure where that's coming from - I've seen several places where Aronofsky speaks of his Jewish upbringing and his desire to be faithful to scripture. He would never included the scene of naked Noah at the end of the movie if he hadn't desired to include all the biblical references; that scene has no real place in the narrative he told and it could easily have been done without.
The biblical account of Noah is pretty sparse fact-wise. Most of what we know about the narrative came through interpretation as someone else fleshed out the details for our benefit in telling the story. Yes, there are things in this movie that are not in scripture - but that is true for literally every re-telling of the story that isn't a direct recitation of the Hebrew text. More importantly, there is nothing in scripture which is not included in the movie. Aronofsky doesn't leave anything out - even the complicated, mysterious parts that make understanding the story and its theology so difficult.
Noah is not a children's story, as much as we like decorating our nurseries with its images. It's dark and difficult and foreign. That doesn't mean it's unclear, just that it provides less specificity than we're comfortable with in our age of certainty.
I am of the opinion that certainty is the enemy of faith. I know others disagree with this notion, but I think the drive for certainty can blind viewers to the overall message of Noah - which is ultimately as faithful a representation of the gospel meaning of Noah's story than any other movie I've ever seen.
Yes, I know Aronofsky said on several occasions that he's an atheist, but he also speaks deeply about his respect for the idea of God and God's place in his cultural and religious heritage. He chose not to have God speak in the film because he felt those sorts of representations of God diminish who God is. Aronofsky might deny the existence of God with his words, but his actions speak volumes about his belief. He represents a deep respect for God and for scripture, perhaps more than some avowed theists I know.
I read one, well-educated, specific review contending the entire plot, imagery, and function of the film is to promote Kabballah-influenced gnosticism. This particular review, I think, overreaches it's own purpose. Yes, pointing out and understanding the Jewish mystical tradition within the movie is important - it helps to explain why the imagery and details used here might differ so drastically from what Christians expect (even I had to go back and read Genesis after the movie to disabuse myself of some faulty "facts").
I don't doubt there's some important influence uncovered in the review. Aronofksy's said on multiple occasions he used the mystic tradition to flesh out the story; it is as much a part of his culture and heritage as the Genesis account. I'm still not sure I see the gnosticism as clearly. The only characters in the movie who escape a physical existence are the angels - who were never intended to have one in the first place. The rest of the characters are stuck with their humanity for better or for worse; and despite the dim view taken through most of the movie, the resolution does affirm the goodness of creation.
I've also seen a lot of criticism that Noah is humanistic. I don't see that at all. Tubal-Cain is the villain in the movie. He represents humanism overtly, often saying humans are the greatest, strongest beings and will survive by their own strength. (He represents what has been called the "dominionism" perspective on creation which shapes a definition of human superintendency based on human authoritarian rulers rather than leadership in imitation of God.) Tubal-Cain loses. The battle over who is in control has a clear winner, even if the characterization of God (or lack thereof) is troublingly vague.
Which may really be the biggest problem people have with the film. God is absent. There is no description of God. This, quite frankly, fits the text as well. Noah takes place before there is an Israel, a law, a religious tradition of any kind. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are the most difficult to give historical or theological context. It's just a confusing portion of scripture. Yes, there are real and important truths about God to be received from these passages - and the movie covers (and affirms) them all - but these passages fall far short of providing the kind of detailed, thoughtful portrayal of God religious people have come to devise or understand over time. It's just not realistic to the story (and wouldn't be faithful to scripture).
Some respected Biblical scholars think Noah removes the heart from the scriptural message. I couldn't disagree more.
Noah presents a succinct and accurate biblical understanding of creation: God created the world for a purpose and gave humanity the role of care for and responsibility over creation. They act selfishly, separating themselves both from God and God's intentions for creation. The result is disastrous. The effect of human sin on humanity and creation has become so outrageously destructive that God decides to start over.
In the movie, Noah wrestles with the depth of human depravity. Are humans so bad that none (even Noah and his family) deserve to live? In the end, his daughter-in-law changes his mind, affirming that the human capacity for love and mercy reflect the goodness in which God created and, despite how awful humans are prone to being, that Godly image provides more than enough value for God continued faith and care.
I just cannot see how people object to this notion. God cares enough for creation, for humanity, that total destruction is not a possibility. God loves us too much for that. Yes, God could be nicer than God seems to be at times, but that only denies and negates the real consequences of human error in acting outside the intended purposes of creation.
In the movie, human depravity is depicted so realistically that, for me at least, I came to view the upcoming destruction as merciful. For a God to allow such violence to continue would have been truly unloving.
God is silent in the movie. The characters don't always hear from God in the detailed specificity which they so desire. I believe any Christian who doesn't recognize the reality of this depiction in their own life is fooling themselves.
Noah depicts life and God in ways that defy our desire for certainty and knowledge. There's a lot we don't know about faith - more than we do know - in this instance, I think, the focus on the unknown obscures the powerful affirmation of those few constants upon which faith is built.
Ultimately, I think there are two considerations that make it difficult for people to find beauty and truth in Noah:
1) For most of the movie, Noah gets the message wrong. He sees God as entirely consumed with judgment. People are bad and must be destroyed. He fails to see grace or mercy and thus the movie is devoid of either for 98% of the running time. That's troubling, but again, probably reflects reality. Our world is desperately short on grace and when it comes, it is usually surprising. The end of the movie is profoundly beautiful. The conclusion is redemptive, affirming, and gracious.
2) It rejects the notion of total depravity. I imagine this movie is much more difficult for Calvinists to stomach than it is for Wesleyans. The main struggle undergone by both Noah and Tubal-Cain is the notion that humans are evil, broken, violent, and selfish. Noah works as hard as he can to avoid these traits, but succumbs all too often anyway. Tubal-Cain embraces them as reality.
This means that both the "good guy" and the "bad guy" believe something that a certain segment of Christianity would affirm as correct. When the movie proves (or purports to prove) this notion of total depravity false, it can mess with one's theology. As a Nazarene minister, I come from a tradition that maintains while humans can never be the kind of people we were created to be in our own power, there is something valuable and worthwhile that remains within us by virtue of our creation in God's image.
The theological message of Noah is one with which the large majority of evangelical Christianity would disagree. That's potentially problematic. Much the same way that a depiction of the 13 billion year history of the world under a voice-over of Genesis 1 will be blasphemous to those who hold to a 6,000 year old Earth.
These are problems that will not be skirted. They're not problems for me (nor, would I hope, are they problems to you), but they are problems. People who don't like watching dark, often-violent movies aren't going to like this one. That doesn't make it bad, just not for everyone.
Some of the struggles I see in responding to the movie come from our perceptions. There's a ton of imagery and allusion. People whose minds don't ordinarily operate in creative or artistic ways may have difficulty cutting through what's on the screen to what it represents. I had difficulty and I think I'm a pretty imaginative person most of the time. You really have to immerse yourself in the world of the story and, even if you believe the story is historical and not mythological, you still have to recognize that a pre-flood world is not entirely the same world in which we live.
I also wonder if a person's attitude towards scripture makes viewing this film too difficult. Some people have elevated scripture to the level of deity; they, in essence, worship scripture itself or their particular interpretation of such. THerefore, a movie depiction of a scriptural event must, itself be treated almost like an extension of scripture. You see this in those who insist on Jesus movies using only scriptural dialogue, as if any alternative depiction is inherently blasphemous.
I have real problems with this as a preacher, since 95% of what I do in a sermon is tell the scriptural story in a different (hopefully faithful) way. I am entrusted with representing the truth of the Bible in ways that help us overcome our biases and comfort. Scripture itself is not the bedrock of faith; rather, it is the authoritative testimony of God's people to their interactions with a holy, living, active God.
I don't think of Noah as anything other than a rudimentary sermon, of sorts. Yes, it's constructed and presented by someone who doesn't inherently hold to all of the same theological and faith convictions I do, which means it needs to be approached critically. I'd love to watch it a bunch more times and to do so with other people because it was just so rich with thought-provoking ideas that once just isn't enough. (I talked about challenges to faith briefly in my pre-viewing post about Noah.) I loved this movie enough that I'm not even angry with people who disagree - I'm just sad they didn't enjoy the same kind of pleasure and satisfaction I found therein.
In the end, does it really matter what the intentions of the filmmaker were in constructing Noah? It is a beautiful, poignant, and breathtaking portrayal of profound truth. God has given humanity real power in the world, power we often use selfishly and with dramatic consequences for ourselves, the world around us, and for God as well. In spite of just how often we miss the point or downright ignore it, God still values us because of our construction in God's image. There is something worth saving in us and God continues to bring that value out through intense, world-changing love.
I suppose it's true that Noah is not a Christian movie, but the Jews probably have more claim over Noah than do we Christians anyway. Maybe the director didn't intend for the message I received to come across as I received it; maybe there are other ways one could twist the story and produce a troubling result. Maybe there is something insidious at work inside Noah. But the gospel story is there as well. The understanding of a loving, faithful God is present and alive and there is plenty of space for a powerful affirmation of faith. That's present, too.
I'm sorry if you didn't see it in this movie. I'm sorry if you were bothered by the violence or the darkness or the rock monsters. I am sorry if it didn't fit your understanding of scripture or creation or Noah, but there is real truth here. Darren Aronofsky has provided a valuable tool for exploring God, faith, creation, life itself - and the place of humanity within. I think perhaps the greatest gift we receive from Noah is the best of high art - a place for conversation, a movie that can bring people of different perspectives together to better understand each other and the world around us - even if we disagree.
Here's a great interview with Aronofsky about the movie, scripture, and faith. It's pretty good. Also, an interview with co-writer, Ari Handel - it answers a lot of questions, including "Why the snake skin?"
Daft Punk stole the show, by the way. They won almost every relevant category - and rightly so. If you're unaware, Daft Punk is a French electronica duo who, in those rare instances they appear or perform in public, wear elaborate robot masks that make them look like a Storm Trooper's cool older brother.
Since they're essentially producers, most of their album was collaboration with other artists. They didn't win any award just the two of them. As I was suffering through a second acceptance speech made impromptu on their behalf by the colossally awkward Pharrell, I began to wonder why they remained so silent.
It's not as though their faces are a mystery. They give interviews. They even did a photo spread for GQ, partly without the masks. They're not mystery men. It's a public image thing. While I wouldn't have expected them to perform without the helmets, I was surprised to see them wearing them the rest of the show (maybe it's just easier to recognize them that way?).
When they won Best Album, the Grammys' biggest award, Paul Williams took to the mic. Paul Williams has an interesting back story. He's no stranger to the Grammy stage, winning numerous times in the 1970's. He wrote Rainbow Connection. He was on Johnny Carson. He was a big deal. Then he disappeared until a year or two ago when a filmmaker did a documentary about just where he went. It's a story of addiction, loss, devastation, and redemption. If he'd only known, the film might have ended Sunday night.
It was touching that Williams got to speak on the Grammy stage one more time. That moment alone was worth the atrocious production they put together and I (willingly, I guess) sat through for four hours. It was a profoundly beautiful moment.
It wouldn't have been possible if Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter hadn't decided to remain silent.
In a way it is the ultimate artistic expression. When people make public art, it ceases to belong entirely to the artist. People begin to interpret and take some measure of ownership. When you enter a partnership, if it is a true partnership, you give up your rights to power and control - some part of your life is now no longer entirely within your grasp.
Daft Punk had to stand there while Pharrell riffed and stumbled over two odd acceptance speeches. They seemed to do so happily, I suspect, because they were grateful for his collaboration. His part in the music made possible something they could not have done on their own.
Their silence also led to profound beauty.
I thought a little about God and creation. I am coming more and more to believe God created this world in partnership with creation. Not that God had to do things this way, but the overflow of God's love allowed us - and allows us - to participate in our ongoing creation.
For good or for ill.
There may be times of embarrassment or awkward moments, times when that decision for partnership looks like a poor one. There are also moments of pure beauty. In the end, though, neither moment is a bad moment. Neither moment is a mistake. Both are indicative of true creative partnership. They are the embodiment of public art.
What is the world other than a work of art? What are our lives other than a public statement of some core belief resonating out from inside us?
I need this lesson, perhaps more than most. I hate to give up control of anything. I'm that guy who always has to correct some factual error in an otherwise unrelated story. I pass it off sometimes as a mild neurodevelopmental disorder, and I'm only half kidding (I certainly have lots of Asperger symptoms). I have this ingrained compulsion to "make things right," a difficulty discerning the difference between fact and opinion.
It gets me into trouble.
So I am glad for these moments. These expressions of silence that allow for collaboration. So many artists and musicians hold tightly to their work and struggle for it to be seen the ways in which they intended. Daft Punk made their art and released it to the wild.
Perhaps creative partnership is the key. Perhaps becoming accustomed to outside influence births the capacity for letting go. Or perhaps they're just super-evolved, futuristic, French robots who have a lot of complex things figured out.
Either way, there's something to be said about the openness in which we live life and the ways we allow the genuine contributions of others to impact who we are.
So, over the last couple of weeks I've had good conversations with a few friends about the implications of evolution on traditional Christian understandings of sin. My beginning on this course had nothing really to do with evolution, but I wound up there quite by accident when I found it dovetailed with my explorations of sin, especially original sin and redemption. I just finished a paper for a Seminary course I took on the Theology of Creation. It's a doozy (over 4,000 words), but I suspect a few of you might appreciate it. It's sort of an expansion on some of the ideas I touched upon in my Nazarenes Exploring Evolution essay. I was hoping this could be a summary of my study, but I fear it is merely a starting point.
Happy Reading!
Sin and Redemption: An Exploration of the yetser hara in the Past, Present, and Future of Creation
I have the real privileged to be invited to participate in a cool initiative called "Nazarenes Exploring Evolution," an attempt from members of my tribe, the Church of the Nazarene, to enter into respectful, personal discussions about creation and its implications for faith. The project will culminate in a book of essays and a conference next January for continued dialogue.
My essay talks a little about both my life journey and my theological journey to this point. It is an evolving position and something I've been working to continue to develop recently through my work in the NTS class "Theology of Creation," which I am finishing up now. Stay tuned.
In the meantime: Check out my essay here. I know the post went up last Thursday, but I already had something posted last Thursday and I like to keep my schedule.
The latter really applied for me. I've been spending a lot of time reading about origins and thinking through how our origins define us as humans and define our place in the world. I've also been forced to creation theologically in analyzing various beliefs and why we hold them - most everything goes back to the beginning.
As our professor (Dr. Joseph Coleson) mentioned frequently - if we get the beginning right, we have a better shot at getting everything else right as well. I won't claim to have any of it "right" per say, but I think there's a lot of places we've been getting things wrong.
I can't say I learned a lot of new thing this week, but I did find some wonderful context for things I've been thinking through. There were some challenges and questions and new space explored (along with some new friendships birthed).
One of the things I just can't get over is how much we've missed the primary purpose of creation (or at least our place in it). God created this big, amazing world and then put us in it to make sure things worked as God intended. Dr. Coleson put it like this: we're here to maintain relationships of integrity.
Too often humanity has treated creation like a bag of candy the day after Halloween - scooping up any and all that we can get our hands on with no understanding of appropriateness or good sense. The vast resources of the world are not there for our pleasure, but the other way around. Check Genesis 2 again - humans were created to serve creation. Even if you buy into the terrible translation of "reign" or "have dominion" in Genesis 1 - it's still reign in the image of God - a God who sacrificed life itself for selfish buggers like us.
The world isn't going to burn up - not unless you're a big believer in Zoroaster. God is at work - and always has been - at redeeming and restoring creation, bringing it to fulfillment. Our mission in life is not to save souls or get to heaven, but to live faithfully in the world and the role God created for us. All that other stuff takes care of itself if we're focused on those relationships of integrity.
I've been preliminarily looking for a new water heater (ours is 17 years old and, well, a bit testy). It turns out the more energy-efficient option isn't a match for our infrastructure, so it's a moot point, but I had a discussion with someone about the value of spending more to be efficient. He said it wasn't worth the money since the cost difference wasn't that great. My thought was, who cares, if it uses less energy over time, that's a win - even if it doesn't end up with more money in my pocket.
It's the little things. What are we willing to sacrifice to maintain the integrity of our relationship with creation?
I don't have a problem with us taking the coal and oil and whatnot out of the ground to use - I just have an issue with us doing it the cheapest possible way. If we're willing to sacrifice a bit of profit, we could leave the land relatively as it was when we began - and not sink all the protective wetlands on the Mississippi Delta into the ocean thus leaving the Gulf Coast uncomfortable open to large storms - for example.
I just happen to think that when we treat the world around us like a commodity, it makes it easier to treat each other, and ultimately God, in the same way. When Saint Francis said "Brother Sun and Sister Moon" I don't think he was joking.
People have politicized Climate Change (and it's unfathomable denial) for their own personal gain. I'm not sure what the proper political response is, but I do know it's terrible theology to assert that human beings have no control over the world around us. We've got nothing but control.
It's a pretty awesome responsibility to be God's caretaker for the world - I hope we're getting to a place where we can take that seriously. The world may just depend on it.
The simple answer is that God made all of us one way and expects us to act in another. We're all bent towards selfish, self-destructive tendencies in the name of immediate gratification and, at times, self-preservation. Everything from overeating to an almost constant need for sexual contact to a kill or be killed instinct in situations where our safety is jeopardized. We are ingrained with instinctive, natural responses that fly in the face of Christian morality.
Each and every one of us has to deal with the fact that "God made us one way and expects us to act differently."
But I'd like to posit the notion that God doesn't "make" us the way we are; God doesn't "make" people gay. Now I'm not going to argue that orientation is a choice. I don't doubt that a very few people might choose same sex relationships based on some severe trauma or other factors unrelated to orientation, but I don't question that people are born with a specific orientation. In fact, even my own, quite conservative denomination, seems to tacitly acknowledge that lots of people have an intrinsic orientation that is well beyond their control.
The question is not whether people are born with a homosexual orientation, but whether God made them that way.
You might respond, "God made everything," which is technically true, but I hope we're beyond the idea that God made things appear like Barbara Eden. God uses lots of complex systems to create and animate the world in which we live. The more we discover about this world, the more awed we become in its complexity and God's majesty within.
I believe quite strongly that God made a good creation, but I also believe God made a creation that was meant to be united to God, a creation that suffers when it acts counter to God's design, even if those actions are instinctive, inborn, and entirely natural. The point being that we discover the true beauty in self-denial, in thinking of others before ourselves. It's entirely counter intuitive, but, for me at least, based on my experience, seems to explain a lot.
Our best guess at why and how we've arrived at this point in history is the theory of evolution. Over time species have evolved into greater complexity through a natural selection of traits most fit for reproduction. Evolution is that drive for self-preservation deep within us. It is entirely natural, even as it runs counter to God's plan. For a while, I chalked up evolutionary outcomes contrary to God's purposes to the overall effects of sin in the world. Humanity, as a whole, corrupted itself over time, leading to the imperfections each of us possess. Of course this doesn't explain similar abnormalities in other species and evident long before humans showed up.
At this point, I don't really have an answer, but I'm playing with the idea that God's relationship to creation is even more complex that we could ever imagine. The explanations are beyond me, but I do believe we exist with a bent towards selfishness, but will find fulfillment only in denying that drive and committing completely to selfless living.
So, in a very real sense, we each have been "created" with drives and predispositions to things that are not part of God's plan for life.
Some of these predispositions are more obvious than others - dwarfism, albinism, homosexual orientation - all groups of people subject to derision and persecution over the course of human history, for things over which they had no control. It seems like much of the struggle for gay rights has simply been getting society to acknowledge "it's ok for me to be this way." Rolling Stone published an article about Peter Dinklage a few weeks ago, dealing with his struggle to be known as a person, not a little person.
This path has been tread (and continues to be) by people with different levels of skin pigmentation. We're working through this process for addicts and those with mental imbalances. Each of these traits that were likely inborn.
So often we attempt to apply a morality to such inborn traits, when in reality morality can only be ascribed to actions. This struggle is detrimental to everyone, but especially painful for homosexuals who end up hating themselves for nothing more than existing. It takes a monumental effort just to put everyone on the same footing before we can even get to ethics - a judgment of actions, which is really where people get hung up. Ethics and our understanding of how people act on their homosexual orientation is really where the drama occurs.
That depends much more on your understanding of God, humanity, life, and your place in the world than it does about your sexual orientation or the way God "made" you.
