My Spiritual Journey
My EvolutionI remember clearly the first, and only time, I ever shoplifted. The summer I turned eight years old was an exciting and adventurous time; a time of endless excitement of events like outdoor make believe and playing sports like baseball, basketball, and football. I was a rambunctious adolescent who would continue to push the boundaries of curfew by persuading the sunset, by which curfew was set, to last just a minute longer. On a particularly warm August afternoon, I do not want to partake in the usual agenda set forth by the self proclaimed leader of this rugrat group, me. Instead, I lead our pack into the neighborhood grocery store just a couple blocks away from our stomping grounds. As we walk into the store, I cleave myself from the group and have a brief moment of yearning; a yearning for a treat that I am not allowed to have: Bubblicious® gum, a particularly sweet bubble gum that contains copious amounts of ‘real’ sugar. The dilemma at hand is two fold: One is I should not consume this gum because I am forbidden to eat it, suffice it to say that there are many other varieties of sugarless gum on the shelf, but they lack the mouthwatering flavors I so desperately crave. The other dilemma is that I have no money. At this point I am coveting like no other almost eight year old can covet. The next moment is a blur, because what I can recall is that I was savoring that piece of gum like it was the last one on earth. After that moment of pure bliss, I was brought back down to earth and the reality of my actions were upon me. My thoughts were not on the fact that I just broke the law, but it was more of the realization that I have just sinned. I had just broken one of the ten commandments: “Thou shalt not steal” (King James Bible, Exod. 20:15), and now I was destined to spend eternity in Hell-based on what the nuns had ingrained in me from the first day of school.
I preface with this story, not because I feel the need to confess, which I did immediately following this incident of sinning, rather because all of my Catholic upbringing and schooling could not have prevented me from taking that gum. As Pieper defines, “Sin is a human doing, an act of man; and thus not primarily a condition” (29). He continues with Plato Socrates question: doesn’t virtue ultimately rest on insight, and so aren’t all guilty deeds done out of ignorance?Kierkegaard had the right answer: If sin is ignorance, then there is no sin, since sin includes by definition the notion of “conscious intent” (32). My story is not about the study of sin, it is about the beliefs I have come to develop based on the culmination of 12 years in Catholic school, Sunday Mass, Seminary School, University level Biology courses, and serving the less fortunate. Through my years of studies, I continued to ponder where my beliefs about evolution and creationism lay. What teachings could I apply to further solidify the foundations of my core? These were confusing times in my life. My Catholic school teachings in the early years covered subjects like biology and chemistry, but did not trespass into the realm of evolution. I did not encounter the notion of evolution and Charles Darwin until my later years in Catholic high school. To learn about evolution contradicted what I knew to be true throughout my schooling. In fact, Nemesszeghy and Russell discuss what a contemporary anglican bishop wrote when Darwin published The Origin of Species, “if Darwin’s thesis is true, then Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man…is a delusion and snare” (10). How could I contend with this new revelation, this notion that humans, as well as most other organisms have evolved from another “lesser” organism? My apprehensions about this new found theory were further enforced when I decided to conduct my own independent research, for I was never one to take anything for face value. My belief systems was based on a collection of biblical recounts, more specifically, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Gen 1:27). To read books on modern evolution and then wonder if what I was taught all along in Catholic School was incorrect, I feared the worst. As Pope further explains, “Creationists regard ‘Darwinism’ as a global scientific materialism that necessarily implies atheism” (191). I refuse to label myself an atheist because that can only mean I do not believe in God, which would jeopardize my foundation of faith. As Ruse proclaims, “Moody preached…’four great temptations’…theater, failure to keep the Sabbath, Sunday newspapers, and atheism, including evolution” (154). Ruse continues with a statement from Charles Hodge, of Princeton, “‘What is Darwinism?’…’It is atheism’” (155). I had to make a decision whether to continue accepting what I always held to be true, or that all organisms, eukaryotes and prokaryotes, evolved from some primordial form of prokaryotes. As the textbook Understanding Evolution begins to explain, “Evidence supports the idea that eukaryotic cells are actually the descendants of separate prokaryotic cells that joined together in a symbiotic union” (3).