“From the fruit, the tree is known” Matt 12:33.
Human civilization has a problem. Well, it has many problems, as we well know. But what if, rather than enumerating a long list of its problems we could identify something basic, some root-level cause that connects and explains all these other problems? What if there were some underlying cancer in the brain of humanity that is leading toward disastrous results? We might simply say, “Well, of course, that’s what sin is.” But all we’ve done is put a word to this root cause rather than precisely identifying what sin actually is. For hundreds of generations “sin” has meant something equivalent to what the Westminster Shorter Catechism describes, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God” (A.14). Sin is the breaking of God’s law. Certainly this is a large part of what sin is. But this vastly oversimplifies how the Bible talks about what is wrong with things. It also misses out that sin is identified as a power that owns us. It’s not simply the acts we do or fail to do, sin is our master, our god, our love, and our doom. Sin is the essence of our most deeply held religious beliefs, and it corrupts even the best intentions of theologians, including myself. Sin shapes our languages and our myths or stories of meaning. It twists our sense of reality, replacing God’s creation with our creations and imagining we are doing the work of God by edging his creation and his influence out of our lives. This is the sin of Cain, the one who is warned about sin prowling around, waiting to pounce on him and devour him. And Cain’s line from Genesis 4–11 is a biblical case-study of the growing corruption that sin produces when it devours a man and masters him and his descendants. Sin takes ownership of Cain and each successive generation perfects the good things that Cain believed in: power, violence, and possession. These goods of sin find their expression in agriculture, smithery, music, hunting prowess, in short, civilization. The violence of Cain is surpassed by Lamech, and his city-building is surpassed by the builders of Babel.
At the other end of the Bible we find another city, Babylon the Great. It is celebrated by the great and the good of civilization. Those who work hard, who gain power, wealth, and influence, who explore new trade routes, and who spread the goods of civilization by conquering and re-educating the savages rejoice in Babylon the Great. And yet it is precisely here that we find God’s dramatic interventions. Cain’s lineage is washed away in the flood, scoured from the earth by the wrath of a God enraged at the desolation of his creation. The builders of Babel are confused and prevented from cooperation and communion, from being a united humanity, free to build and expand (Gen 11:4–8). Sin is summarized in Babylon the Great, the “mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations” (Rev 17:5). And the people of God are told to leave this city and rejoice in its destruction (Rev 18).
The Myth of Civilization
Throughout the Bible, and especially as we consider a broad narrative sweep of the whole, we find that sin is not simply related to poor decisions made by individuals to violate the law of God on this or that occasion. Sin has become the essence of what it means to be human, as we define it for ourselves. Sin is the myth of civilization. The myth of civilization is the story that has often been told by the powerful to enslave the powerless. It is one of the earliest extant myths in the Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 1800 BC), as the wild man Enkidu is civilized, ironically, by a prostitute, a Babylonian whore. The myth of civilization holds that it is the mission of humanity to tame, conquer, civilize, urbanize, submit, and unify all things. It is the myth of human godlikeness, that basic desire of Adam and Eve to become like God by deciding for themselves what would be good and evil, and building their own creation in which their own redefined notions of good and evil could prosper. The myth of civilization is the story of sin, of the human attempt to gain godlike powers by creating our own creation over which we are the masters.
Jesus: Hero?
If the myth of civilization is a key component of the root cancer that is called “sin,” what about Jesus? Jesus is the one who defeats sin, of course, but only by being defeated by it. It is by the collusion of the people of God with the representatives of Babylon in his time, Rome, that God himself is finally murdered on the cross. The greatest triumph of the myth of civilization is not landing on the moon or colonizing other planets, it is the murder of God, done in the most civilized of ways—through legal proceedings, tradition, greed, betrayal, public shaming, and finally, capital punishment. The myth of civilization cannot be defeated by the very things it believes to be good, because that just reinforces its power. For God to achieve victory over the power of sin, God himself must become subject to sin, defeated by sin, so that the good of sin is revealed (for those with eyes to see) that what humans have called “good” is indeed the greatest of evils. The myth of civilization must be overturned by a shock of reality, a great awakening, an enlightenment. This was the mission of Jesus, and the mission he gave to his followers who were to make disciples of king Jesus out of all peoples, transferring their allegiance from Babylon the Great to the Kingdom of God, to the heavenly Jerusalem. God will win, but whose side are we on?
The Rotten Fruit
A question arises then, what of Jesus’ disciples, the Church, the people of God? Where are they and what have they been doing? Have they proven faithful or faithless? If a tree is known by its fruit, we will know a rotten tree by its missing or rotten fruit. The fruit of the tree of the myth of civilization is becoming more readily apparent day by day. Whether or not you choose to believe in the science behind climate change, there are other basic signs of the great violence humanity is thrusting upon the creation that God himself called “good,” and we said, “not yet good, let us perfect it for you.” In 2015 the global team of scientists working with the United Nations commission on Food and Agriculture proclaimed that humanity has 60 years of harvests remaining before the vast majority of Earth’s soil is depleted. Soil depletion is a threat coming perhaps even sooner than catastrophic global warming. More recently various groups of scientists, again working through the UN, have forecasted that humanity will soon be the cause of the extinction of a million species. This century may prove to be an extinction-level akin to the destruction of the dinosaurs. The tree of human civilization has born its fruit and it is proving to be the very un-creation of God’s very good creation. Light and darkness are confused, with light pollution leading to the unintentional deaths of creatures whose lifecycles depend on deep darkness. The sea is no longer constrained by the land that separated it as its level rises. The rich diversity of plant life is wiped out in favor of clear-cutting making space for monoculture industrial crops and enslaved animals. The waters may no longer “swarm” with life, but are filled with plastic death. Microplastics, even microfibres from washing of synthetic clothes have been found in the flesh of fish. Birds are confused and killed in the billions each year by the very presence of skyscrapers (by collisions with glass). As human civilization penetrates its way into the heavens and down into the earth, we bring together what God himself separated in his creation. We unify that which God himself separated at Babel. We pursue a humanity united by the spirit of endeavor, discovery, and growth.
This is a harsh condemnation of what has supposedly been the human project. But civilization is not the essence of what it means to be human. In reality, 95% of the existence of homo sapiens was spent as hunter-gatherers. The last 4,000 years since the Epic of Gilgamesh is but a small blip on the chart of the age of the human species.
Christianity: A Rotten Tree?
Christianity drank deep the wine of the passion of the whore of Babylon the Great. Christianity has merged the myth of civilization with the good news of Jesus Christ. It has turned Jesus into Gilgamesh, that universal human hero pushing back the forces of “chaos” and savagery with the gifts of civilization. The Jesus of much of historic Christianity has upheld people in power, stood behind crusaders fighting to claim territory in his name from infidels. It has sent missionaries who preached the myth of civilization as though it were the gospel of Jesus Christ. The savages of the world had to be saved from themselves and their own ignorance. But ignorance is not sin. According to Genesis 3 the break between God and his people came from their desire for the creation of their own, independent knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless, Christianity transformed Jesus into a civilizing hero, a mythical founding father figure.
But how so? Consider the Nicene Creed’s description of what Jesus came to do, “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.” This is fine, so far as it goes. But as with sin, this is vastly oversimplified. Jesus came to bring salvation to all of creation, not to save humans out of it. The problem is not the world, but the ruler of the nations of the world—sin or personified as the evil one (Eph 6:12, 1 Jn 5:19). Jesus came to reconcile all things to God. Jesus came to become, not just king of humanity, but king of all creation. And this would have to involve the rescue of creation from a humanity drunk on the wine of Babylon the Great. The Nicene Creed was itself the fruit of a church council called by the Roman Emperor Constantine, on a great mission to civilize the world with the help of a united Christian church.
From that time until the present, the myth of civilization has penetrated deeper and deeper into the soil of the gospel of Jesus Christ, robbing it of its fertility, polluting it with its toxins. Until our time in which the church is as divided as imaginable, divided along lines drawn by the civilizers of the world. Christianity has no longer any voice, for it has proven faithless to its prophetic role of speaking truth to power, of lifting the veil on human false-creations that we think is reality and presenting it as the false myth that it is. Christianity has not sought the reconciliation of all things in Christ, but has sought the betterment of humanity at the cost of all creation. It has agreed with the spirits of the various ages in defining good and evil, and how the world ought to be shaped. And thus, at the cost of its soul it sought to gain the world by speaking the world’s language and revealing a Christ in the form of the heroes of the myths of civilization.
Theology Implicated
The core elements of Christian theology have continued to bear the stain of the myth of civilization. Without going into detail, we can enumerate many. The image of God has been misunderstood as something inherent within human nature, rather than a function humans are meant to play in their relationship with the creation, as many Old Testament scholars have noted. The image of God has also forgotten that it finds its fulfilment in Christ on the cross rather than in David triumphing over the Philistines. The image of God is something to become as we bear his image more and more by our actions, not something we are by human nature (an anachronism for Genesis in any case). Connected with this is a notion of God’s providence and sovereignty. Christianity has loved to imagine that God is in control and that all things happen according to his will. And yet, even in Jesus’s model prayer we are told to ask that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, thus implying that heaven is the place where God’s will is done, and earth is the place where it is not. Scripture is fairly universal in its portrayal that the world is not ruled, at present, by God. God has all authority. He has the right to rule. But he does not, because for his rule to come in fulness would be to destroy sin in judgment. The second coming of Jesus is the time when God will rule, when God will be sovereign. But, as yet, we do not see all things submitted to him (Heb 2:8). This means that not everything in life has some grand, divine meaning. Life can be mercilessly meaningless, as the author of Ecclesiastes well observes. This is the way of sin—the ceaseless and slavish pursuit of “good” leading to death of ourselves and the creation. If this is the case, then civilization is vanity, and human history meaningless. Meaning and truth comes through Jesus Christ, not through the building of buildings, towers, commerce, or political victories. None of these bring the kingdom of God, the only source of lasting meaning which can return us to the hidden and dying creation we were created to be a part of.
Predestination also plays a vital role here in the corruption of Christian theology. We have imagined that Paul’s grand passages in Romans and Ephesians about predestination and election refer to the rescue of human souls from the wrath of God or the pits of Hell. In context neither of these make sense. In Romans 8–9, Paul gives a grand theology of the whole of creation and fits the people of God into their proper place within. God has predestined his people to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son.” It is only in this way that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28–29). This predestination is not to salvation as classically understood, but to adoption into the inheritance (i.e. kingdom) of God in Christ. This is not a pie-in-the-sky kingdom with castles on clouds, but the invasion of the power of God to take over the world through love and reconciliation. This means that we are “more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37) as we not only join the invasion force of heaven, but receive an inheritance of the spoils of victory. Creation groans because the people of God have not yet shown up. Victory has not been achieved. Sin has not yet been finally defeated and the corruption all creation experiences continues.
Conclusion: We are the chaos monsters
Doctrines of creation, of sin, of redemption, of new creation all need a rethink as we try to rediscover the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that is not focused on us, on humanity, nor on getting victory through overcoming forces outside of ourselves. For, we are the chaos monsters of ancient myths. And Christ is the hero who does not slay us, the dragons destroying his very good creation, but rescues us by the renewal of our minds (Rom 12:2), so that we learn to count everything important to us—yes, even the myth of civilization—as loss for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus (Phil 3:7–8).
Like a mother groaning, half asleep, half passed-out, with each wave of a contraction bringing fear, agony, and a seemingly endless tide of meaningless suffering, powerless to do anything to bring the child to birth of her own will, creation suffers in transitional labor. Will the excruciating pain of delivery turn into the joy that will come when the children of God appear, setting the whole creation free from corruption, free to experience the very goodness of God’s creation liberated from sin and corruption? Let us pray that the people of God have the courage to sacrifice all of their humanly created and vain idols—work, self-fulfilment, identity, technological advancement, convenience, success, career, political power, rights and liberties granted by surrogate gods known as nations. For only when we die to ourselves can we become the image of God in Christ, representing his reconciling power to all of creation.
Rev. Dr. G.P. Wagenfuhr is author of Plundering Eden: A Subversive Christian Theology of Creation and Ecology (Cascade, 2020) and other books. He is Theology Coordinator for ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.