The Survival Mode Part 1 of 2
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God…the Second Person of the Trinity…incarnated through a human birth to become the perfect God/man…the sinless, blemish-free Passover Lamb of God…uniquely qualified to be the atoning sacrifice for sin…to justify the free offer of forgiveness to every person who will repent and place their trust for salvation in Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:12-13)…substituting Himself in our place…making full payment on the cross for our offenses.
Numerous scriptures in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible spell this out…too numerous to cite them here…as a long list that would fill up several pages.
One of the most important statements asserting the source and origin of truth…in all of human history…is recorded in the first chapter of the New Testament gospel of John:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.
In John 11:25-26, Jesus is quoted as saying to Martha just before He raises her brother Lazarus back to life after being dead four days in a rock covered tomb: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
In response to a question by one of the twelve apostles Thomas, coming at the end of His earthly ministry: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5)…Jesus answers:
6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Then Philip…also one of the twelve apostles…asked the follow-up question: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (Jn. 14:8)…to which Jesus responds:
9 Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?
10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The foregoing sets-up the context for the singular authority of Jesus Christ the eternal Word and the Creator of everything in the universe…having therefore the first to say and the last to say on any subject in the living and non-living natural world…and in the realm of intellectual and moral reasoning…for us to then posit to Jesus the legitimately perplexing question regarding The Sermon on the Mount…the penultimate sermon that changed the thinking of mankind from the ancient world to the present day…the most detailed version of which is recorded in the gospel of Matthew chapters five through seven…the question of why this teaching by Jesus cuts so strongly against the grain of our universal, innate drive for mere survival…in this often hard and difficult life?
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus puts-out standards for human thought and behavior that are impossible for us to achieve perfectly across-the-board…for us to exhibit lives anywhere near consistently perfect performance…and in some difficult areas of our characters even be able to demonstrate mere satisfactorily mediocre performance.
Human beings are imperfect creatures…and struggling to provide food, clothing, and a roof over our heads…is a universal part of the pursuit of basic survival.
In the sea of multiple competing narratives…the route of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking places the daily expediency of procuring basic sustenance…at the top of the list of priorities.
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus rearranges this list of priorities…placing seeking the kingdom of God at the top of the list (Mt. 6:33)…and listing the beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12 as the crown jewels of an elevated moral life…the principles that define and govern His kingdom…but again unattainable through human self-effort.
Why are all human beings universally in the survival mode…trying to “keep the wolf from the door”…when the eternal Word of God Jesus Christ is telling us to: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This question lies at the deepest core of the biblical narrative option for human life…at the fork in the road leading either to going our own way…”setting up shop” in self-reliant autonomy…or choosing the other road starting at the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…of following by faith the guiding leadership of Jesus Christ as life’s only qualified tour guide.
This question…in my opinion…also utterly destroys the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism…because the mere recognition of its existence in the marketplace of ideas…of God displacing our ways with His higher ways through our willing cooperation…at the central location of one of the most risk-filled decision-points challenging every human being…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount…has no plausible explanation of origin coming from the worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of the “survival of the fittest”…of “looking out for number one”…of insuring the care of “me, myself, and I”…in terms of putting food on the table and providing a roof over our heads.
Jesus is saying here…that from the perspective of being the eternal Word of perfect truth, brilliant pure light, and absolute moral goodness…and being the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it…that we can rearrange the priority of our aims and goals regarding the imperative pursuit of food and clothing (Mt. 6:31-33) down to a lower, not all-consuming level of concern and worry.
Not only is this an important feature of the good news of the gospel message…coming from the highest authority…but it also raises a fundamental question…of why life is set-up in such a way that basic survival is a part of the reality of every living organism on earth.
What would be the reason for the existence of this common reality…of struggle for survival…in a universe assembled through a mindless and undirected process…being the godless fundamental axiom of the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism?
How and why would this competing dichotomy of two opposing narratives…of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking arguing for independent self-autonomy apart from God…contrasting sharply with a biblical-quality journey of faith…come into existence in the first place…out of a purely materialistic universe?
These are huge questions…that must at least be partially addressed in a book entitled The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
Charles Darwin, in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species…correctly identified survival-of-the-fittest…as the prime motivating engine that drives and maintains “fitness” in every living species. The controversial part of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that he hypothesized that this motivational engine…of overcoming the challenge to survival in all living organisms…could extrapolate to a broader application to be able to create entirely new species through genetic mutation and natural selection…producing constantly evolving change in pursuit of better and improved function.
But again…where does this built-in “need”…this motivating engine driving the universal pursuit for survival…come from?
Enlisting this clearly obvious reality in a theory to support the hypothetical mechanism for macroevolution…to attempt an explanation for the origin of new species…does not account…other than as a given assumption…for the existence of this supporting reality…in the first place.
Assuming the observed reality of the survival-of-the-fittest as a key factor into our equation for explaining the origin of species…does not tell us where this critically important factor comes from.
Merely plugging this factor into our theory…becomes a which-came-first dilemma of the chicken or the egg…the cart before the horse…a circular exercise in logic without an answer.
Did the materialistic universe first “need” to have survival-of-the-fittest up and running ahead of time in order to produce the evolutionary progression of the origin of species…using what would appear to be foresight…or was it the other way around…that the diversity of life somehow exploited this naturally included, driving force in the pursuit of securing survival…being an integral part of life itself…an inexplicable and not strictly necessary fuel for change…arising on its own out of nothing…without explanation?
Could not the universe and our daily experience be non-competitive and struggle-free…absent any “survival-of-the-fittest” motivational drive?
This existence of the survival-of-the-fittest goes much deeper and is far too profound to be merely the explanatory mechanism of Darwin’s theory of macroevolution.
The survival mode is a God-created reality that transcends to the peak and the pinnacle of contemplative existence.
Numerous scriptures in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible spell this out…too numerous to cite them here…as a long list that would fill up several pages.
One of the most important statements asserting the source and origin of truth…in all of human history…is recorded in the first chapter of the New Testament gospel of John:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.
In John 11:25-26, Jesus is quoted as saying to Martha just before He raises her brother Lazarus back to life after being dead four days in a rock covered tomb: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
In response to a question by one of the twelve apostles Thomas, coming at the end of His earthly ministry: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5)…Jesus answers:
6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Then Philip…also one of the twelve apostles…asked the follow-up question: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (Jn. 14:8)…to which Jesus responds:
9 Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?
10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The foregoing sets-up the context for the singular authority of Jesus Christ the eternal Word and the Creator of everything in the universe…having therefore the first to say and the last to say on any subject in the living and non-living natural world…and in the realm of intellectual and moral reasoning…for us to then posit to Jesus the legitimately perplexing question regarding The Sermon on the Mount…the penultimate sermon that changed the thinking of mankind from the ancient world to the present day…the most detailed version of which is recorded in the gospel of Matthew chapters five through seven…the question of why this teaching by Jesus cuts so strongly against the grain of our universal, innate drive for mere survival…in this often hard and difficult life?
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus puts-out standards for human thought and behavior that are impossible for us to achieve perfectly across-the-board…for us to exhibit lives anywhere near consistently perfect performance…and in some difficult areas of our characters even be able to demonstrate mere satisfactorily mediocre performance.
Human beings are imperfect creatures…and struggling to provide food, clothing, and a roof over our heads…is a universal part of the pursuit of basic survival.
In the sea of multiple competing narratives…the route of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking places the daily expediency of procuring basic sustenance…at the top of the list of priorities.
In The Sermon on the Mount…Jesus rearranges this list of priorities…placing seeking the kingdom of God at the top of the list (Mt. 6:33)…and listing the beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12 as the crown jewels of an elevated moral life…the principles that define and govern His kingdom…but again unattainable through human self-effort.
Why are all human beings universally in the survival mode…trying to “keep the wolf from the door”…when the eternal Word of God Jesus Christ is telling us to: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This question lies at the deepest core of the biblical narrative option for human life…at the fork in the road leading either to going our own way…”setting up shop” in self-reliant autonomy…or choosing the other road starting at the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…of following by faith the guiding leadership of Jesus Christ as life’s only qualified tour guide.
This question…in my opinion…also utterly destroys the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism…because the mere recognition of its existence in the marketplace of ideas…of God displacing our ways with His higher ways through our willing cooperation…at the central location of one of the most risk-filled decision-points challenging every human being…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount…has no plausible explanation of origin coming from the worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of the “survival of the fittest”…of “looking out for number one”…of insuring the care of “me, myself, and I”…in terms of putting food on the table and providing a roof over our heads.
Jesus is saying here…that from the perspective of being the eternal Word of perfect truth, brilliant pure light, and absolute moral goodness…and being the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it…that we can rearrange the priority of our aims and goals regarding the imperative pursuit of food and clothing (Mt. 6:31-33) down to a lower, not all-consuming level of concern and worry.
Not only is this an important feature of the good news of the gospel message…coming from the highest authority…but it also raises a fundamental question…of why life is set-up in such a way that basic survival is a part of the reality of every living organism on earth.
What would be the reason for the existence of this common reality…of struggle for survival…in a universe assembled through a mindless and undirected process…being the godless fundamental axiom of the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism?
How and why would this competing dichotomy of two opposing narratives…of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking arguing for independent self-autonomy apart from God…contrasting sharply with a biblical-quality journey of faith…come into existence in the first place…out of a purely materialistic universe?
These are huge questions…that must at least be partially addressed in a book entitled The Biblical Narrative in a Modern World.
Charles Darwin, in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species…correctly identified survival-of-the-fittest…as the prime motivating engine that drives and maintains “fitness” in every living species. The controversial part of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that he hypothesized that this motivational engine…of overcoming the challenge to survival in all living organisms…could extrapolate to a broader application to be able to create entirely new species through genetic mutation and natural selection…producing constantly evolving change in pursuit of better and improved function.
But again…where does this built-in “need”…this motivating engine driving the universal pursuit for survival…come from?
Enlisting this clearly obvious reality in a theory to support the hypothetical mechanism for macroevolution…to attempt an explanation for the origin of new species…does not account…other than as a given assumption…for the existence of this supporting reality…in the first place.
Assuming the observed reality of the survival-of-the-fittest as a key factor into our equation for explaining the origin of species…does not tell us where this critically important factor comes from.
Merely plugging this factor into our theory…becomes a which-came-first dilemma of the chicken or the egg…the cart before the horse…a circular exercise in logic without an answer.
Did the materialistic universe first “need” to have survival-of-the-fittest up and running ahead of time in order to produce the evolutionary progression of the origin of species…using what would appear to be foresight…or was it the other way around…that the diversity of life somehow exploited this naturally included, driving force in the pursuit of securing survival…being an integral part of life itself…an inexplicable and not strictly necessary fuel for change…arising on its own out of nothing…without explanation?
Could not the universe and our daily experience be non-competitive and struggle-free…absent any “survival-of-the-fittest” motivational drive?
This existence of the survival-of-the-fittest goes much deeper and is far too profound to be merely the explanatory mechanism of Darwin’s theory of macroevolution.
The survival mode is a God-created reality that transcends to the peak and the pinnacle of contemplative existence.
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