On toothbrushes and the need for prayer ...

I suppose I should post something on here every now and then.

Lately, as a result of my lack of employment and lack of direction, my focus has waned from theology-driven inspiration and moved towards self-preservation. There's one thing I've been meaning to discuss for a while though- Adam & Eve.

So if those of us who believe in evolution decide that we can't take the story of Adam and Eve exactly literally, then that means we have to figure out how that fits into human history. Was there some point in our history when we made a deliberate choice that gave us what we felt was a more direct control over our fate and consequently altered our evolutionary path?

Twice in the month of December, I somehow found rocks in my restaurant food. It happens to me fairly often and I've come to chewing more delicately in restaurants just in case. I remember my dentist explaining the disproportionate strength in the jaw and the slow reaction time when we hit something unexpected, and the result is cracked teeth. Being that I'm unemployed and have no dental insurance anymore, my cracked teeth have been left festering and probably slowly destructing at the hands (or unrelenting enzymes) of not-so-friendly oral bacteria as I negotiate with myself about whether or not I can endure the discomfort for yet another month.

Why are our teeth so fragile, I wondered.

I remember in my first year of biology, one of my evolution profs was explaining things and mixed into his explanations was that our ancestors and tooth decay were mortal enemies (although, I can't seem to find evidence of that on the interwebs to provide adequate back up, so for argument's sake, let's just use it as a metaphor). So supposedly, ancient variations of ourselves were prone to cavities and tooth decay and eventually, the oral rot would poison the blood and cause premature death, which makes sense since poor oral hygiene can still do that today.

And then we invented the toothbrush. Or at least a wooden variation of what would become the toothbrush sometime in the twentieth century.

Had we not invented the toothbrush, survival of the fittest would have meant those least prone to tooth decay would have flourished and those with weaker teeth would have died out.

But, in adopting teeth cleaning methods as a way of preventing our demise, we may have chosen intelligence over physical fitness. That may have been our fruit in the garden of eden.

Think about it. Do animals know what is good and what is evil? Are they cognitive enough to realize the difference? I wouldn't say animals are evil, but would they recognize it? Some dogs do, I guess, but it's on more of a personal level. While they might recognize a certain person as being evil, I'd bet that they don't sit safely at home and wonder why the world is so full of evil. But if we selected for ourselves a path of evolution that favored intelligence rather than strengths of a more physical nature, then we also chose a path that would lead us to become more aware of ourselves and of the world around us.

While we could have remained blissfully unaware, by opening ourselves up to learning the truths of the universe through favoring intelligence, we become image bearers of God because all of a sudden, we've placed ourselves on a path to know. Knowing the difference between good and evil might create in us a sense of justice, which Christians seem to believe is an innate attribute that humans have as a result of being image bearers of God.

Obviously, we were image bearers before we chose anything (according to the Bible), but then God being all-sovereign knew that we'd choose this path, right? And He also knew how much it would affect us.

As we progress, the world becomes smaller and smaller and we become more and more aware of the worldly suffering, hardship and evil. And it's not just ours either. We see the animals suffering. We see the brutality of the natural order of things and we somehow decided we're apart from it, even though we have our own massive examples of human cruelty and torture.

We chose to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What if that was us choosing an intelligence-driven evolutionary path? We chose knowledge over the rules of fitness by which everybody else with whom we share this planet abide. We chose to know and knowing means becoming aware of the good and evil in this world.

If it's not the toothbrush, it might be something else. But really, how come other animals' fitness doesn't seem to be based on one evolutionary characteristic? They're fit overall, whereas we use our intelligence to overcome our physical weaknesses.

And what if God gave us prayer so that when we did start to learn of the misery and suffering of this world, we could feel a little less powerless? Maybe He gave us prayer because He knew we'd often get to a point where we'd know too much and could do nothing about it.

Choosing intelligence would give us this overall sense of empowerment and authority over our existence that we absolutely don't possess. Prayer is for those moments when we humble ourselves and realize that.

I've been praying a lot more for me lately. For my faith and so that I won't give up praying for others. It just seems so futile sometimes. You pray for a friend to have the strength to get through the heartbreaks of the day, and tomorrow, they're faced with a whole slew of new heartbreaks to face. It never ends. I used to know a couple of people who were lucky and now I don't (lucky people tend to just hide their sufferings better than others), and where those lucky people used to give me hope, now, the only hope is from God and God alone. There's no other source of hope. Without God, the world really is this merciless place of endless suffering and anybody who sees it as anything else should open themselves up to empathizing with those around them. There is so much suffering. So much grief. And when prayer feels futile, when everything seems overwhelmed by the brokenness, then there is no hope, there is no God. But somewhere deep in our soul, regardless of what we face, we just know that's not true. We know there is hope.

And that is impossible in a random, merciless universe without God.

Thank God He knew us before we ever will and prepared us for the consequences of the choices we made and still make every day to our own detriment.

Thank God for prayer.