What makes us human?

The other day in our Education for Ministry (EfM) group we did one of the exercises known as “common lessons.” The exercise asks each of us to write our own creed by answering a series of questions.

The questions are as you might expect – who is God? Who is Jesus? Who is the Holy Spirit? All rich questions for thought and conversation.

I’ve done this exercise many times before in EfM groups. But there was one question this time around I found most intriguing:

What makes us human?

We had many answers, starting with the obvious: our DNA. But what else makes us human? What connects us as human and makes us different than any other living creature on this planet?

We had many answers.

Is it human intellect? Not all humans have intellect.

Is it technology? Other primates make tools.

Is it language? Chimpanzees and whales have language.

My answer: Humans have story.

A wise sage once said there is no past and there is no future. There is only the present. We give the past and future shape by the story we tell, and how we tell the story.

We certainly have secular stories and call it history. The story of wars, heroes and villians, national myths and traditions. Science itself is story by the selective examination of the facts that science discovers. The fact of the cosmos – the stars and planets and this earth, our island home – is a story.

Quran, 11th century, North Africa
British Museum

Our stories connect us as human because at some level each of us become part of the story.

Human religious traditions are essentially story, whether it is the Hindu saga of many worlds, or Moses leading the exodus out of Egypt, or Muhammad’s prophetic vision, or Jesus Christ dying on the Cross.

Each of the religion tells the story its unique way.

The Christian story is a continuum connecting the people of God to the primal story of creation, to the desolation and redemption of the Jewish people, to the story of Jesus of Nazareth and his Resurrection, and to the people of God who came after living into the hope and promise of salvation.

Baptism is story.

When Christians are baptized they enter into the story and thereby continue the story of salvation into the next generation and beyond.

It is true that there are many things going on in baptism – the initiation into the Church and the outward and visible sign through symbols of water and words of the inward grace of the Holy Spirit present in the person being baptized. All that is true.

Yet there is something more to baptism that makes it completely human: When we are baptized we enter into the great story of salvation history. The ancient story continues onward through us.

It doesn’t matter our age or intellectual capacity to understand because baptism brings us into the story. It doesn’t matter that we fall short, or whether we are a sinner or saint or combination of both. We continue to write this story of baptism the rest of our lives.

It is no accident that Christians use the Apostles’ Creed at baptism. Unlike the Nicene Creed, which is an abstract (and hard to access) statement of the definition of the Trinity, the Apostles’ Creed is a story. It isn’t abstract. Hear the Apostles’ Creed again, and hear it as a story without an ending:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth;
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

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This Lent I am offering a special course for adults who have not been baptized or confirmed in the Church. The course, entitled “Journey of Faith,” begins this Sunday at 11:30 am at St. Paul’s, and will continue for seven weeks. All you need to do to get into the class is show up.

Even if you have been baptized or confirmed, the course is a good way to explore your faith, your doubts, and this great story we share together as the people of God. Come ask the hard questions of faith and life and meet fellow sojourners on the path.

For those adults who are interested, the course leads to baptism at the Great Vigil of Easter on April 7 at 7:30 pm. We are also offering baptism for babies and children on the following Sunday April 15, and for information on that please contact our office.

For those who are interested, the course leads to confirmation or reception as an Episcopalian at a special service Wednesday April 18 at 5:30 pm with Bishop Shannon Johnston.

You can still take “Journey of Faith” even if you aren’t interested in receiving any of these sacraments. I hope you will join me beginning this Sunday.

Part I: Original sin, arguing with God, forgiveness, healing and a few other Big Hairy topics

The calamitous events of our world in recent weeks are many: the attempted assassination of a Congresswoman in Arizona and the murder of six people, floods in South America, an earthquake in Pakistan, war in Afghanistan, the death of friends.

The list begs many questions. Some of those questions are about public policy and democracy, and our response as human beings to the plight of other human beings.

Other questions are about God.

Why is it that our world is broken? Why does God put up with this? Where is God? Those are theological questions; many have proposed answers, none fully work.

For some, the answer is that we are being tested by God. Life is a big test, and for those who pass, there is a prize at the end in the here-beyond. That concept, however, seems to blame God for everything that goes wrong, and the logical extension of that is to give ourselves credit for everything that goes right. That seems backwards to me and not very satisfying.

The classic response of the Church is that the brokenness of the world reflects the “original sin” of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis 2:4-3:24.

But I must confess that I’ve struggled with the concept of “original sin.” It has never made much sense to me. How would the “sin” of Adam and Eve be transmitted to me? Where is the “original sin” DNA located in the human genome?

And if our human species evolved from earlier primates, as I am certain beyond a reasonable doubt is factually true, just who is Adam and Eve? The fossil record shows our human ancestry to be far more complicated than the myth of two people who were created whole out of mud.

We’ve crossbred with other earlier hairy hominids (now called “hominins” by scientists). From which branch of the human species do Adam and Eve get and their “original sin”? And, even if there were an Adam and Eve, how would their sins be transmitted to me?

To put this another way, I don’t buy it, at least not the way much of Christianity has warped science to fit the concept of original sin.

I suspect those who hold to a “creationist” view of the Genesis biblical story do so not out of any genuine interest in scientific pursuit, but to defend the concept of “original sin” transmitted from Adam and Eve. A lot of sin-punishment-repentance-election-salvation theology hangs on that story being literally true. If the story goes away, the doctrinal edifice collapses, hence there are people willing to die in the ditch to defend the historical veracity of the Adam and Eve story.

Yet even of the story doesn’t go away, you don’t have to reach the New Testament to call into question human sin as the explanation for all that is wrong in the world. The sin-punishment etc. doctrine is picked to pieces in the Book of Job, and rather convincingly.

So we are back to the original question: How do we explain the brokenness of our world? Something is out of kilter, of that I am also certain. Science is not getting us off the hook either.

Recently, I’ve begun to see this original sin concept another way, and I hope you might go with me here. There is considerably more depth to this concept than meets the eye or the popular religionist’s lore.

I will say more about that tomorrow. Please join me then for Part II.

Illustrations: "The Creation of Adam," Sistine Chapel, by Michaelangelo; the fossil "Lucy," a 3.2 million year old hominid found in Ethiopia.