Week Three - Day Two: End of Day

Let’s continue our line of thought from this morning.

We said that St. Augustine argued that our deepest longings and desires point to SOMETHING GREATER than us; they point to God!

Against Augustine’s argument, Bertrand Russell once called human beings “an accidental collocation of atoms.” Russell believed that while Freud and Nietzsche gave atheism its voice, Charles Darwin gave it a real explanation. Because Darwin outlined the theory of evolution, in which he seemed to explain the origin of human beings, Bertrand Russell believed that religion had finally reached its midnight. He believed it would die. I think he was wrong.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Russell and Darwin were right. Let’s say that we are accidental. This means that we are the product of ages of genetic accidents – accidents of nature where certain characteristics gained biological ascendancy over others because of their highly adaptive features. In other words, certain features were passed on to succeeding generations because they increased the likelihood of survival.

We can see what Darwin means. Some distant ancestor was a genetic freak who could stand up on two legs. And this gave him such an advantage in gathering food that all the ladies wanted in on that action. Thus nature encouraged his progeny because his genetic features increased the likelihood of survival.

What About Our Unfilled Desires?

That at least makes some sense. But what about all of our unfulfilled desires? Can this theory really be used to explain love and longing? Where’s the advantage? So somewhere along the way, some distance ancestor was advantaged because she was able to sense love. Maybe that made her more attractive to the alpha males in the clan and so it made her genes more likely to be passed on. Maybe ...

But try as I might, I can’t really see the genetic advantages to such a thing. And the skeptic’s case is made even more difficult when we consider our response to beautiful music or to art.

Have you ever heard a piece of music or stared at a piece of art which increased your sense of hope or your sense of meaning or significance? Or have you seen a piece of art or heard a piece of music that simply increased your sense of desire? Even if you don’t know exactly what it is that moves you, I’ll bet there have been many times that you have been so moved. I’ll bet there have been times that you have screamed your way down the highway while some favorite song rocked the radio. That song took you to a different emotional place than you were occupying just before you heard it. Where is the genetic advantage in that?

Tim Keller quotes Leonard Bernstein on exactly this point. Bernstein is talking about Beethoven’s music and the quote is very, very telling. Listen to the kind of language he uses.

“Beethoven turned out pieces of breathtaking rightness. Rightness, that’s the word. When you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant in that context, then chances are you’re listening to Beethoven. Melodies, fugues, rhythms … leave them to the Tchaikovskys, Hindemiths and Ravels. Our boy has the real goods; the stuff from heaven; the power to make you feel at the finish something is right in the world…”

I added the italics because I want us to pay special attention to the kind of language that Bernstein is using. He’s not trying to be literal, of course. He does not believe that Beethoven literally wrote something from heaven. But the feeling of the sense of rightness, where does this come from? Okay let’s say, this is just a feeling. Perhaps there was some time in some dark jungle or on some desert plain when it gave some distant relative of our species an advantage to feel such a thing. And perhaps that advantage was then selected randomly by nature because it made that relative more adaptive to her environment. But it is really, really difficult to imagine how and why that is the case. And let’s not forget that the proof-shoe has to be worn by everyone in this discussion. It is not enough for the skeptic to say, “Prove to me that there is a God.” The skeptic must also turn that question on herself and say, “Where does this longing for something more come from? How did this sense of meaning and purpose that pervades – even defines – human beings arise? And what of our attraction to beauty? Can these really be explained by natural selection?”

Of course, we can understand how an attraction to certain traits of physical beauty could have arisen in our collective psyche. We can see how these might really have been biologically advantageous. But, if we really are “an accidental collocation of atoms,” how then does the attraction to beauty connect itself to a sense of meaning and “rightness” in us? How does a piece of music make us feel more alive, or more right?

But if there is a personal God, and if He created us in His image – with passions and longings for things that are right and beautiful and true – and if He created us for a reason and purpose, then all of these longings make perfect sense. In fact, this would mean that our unfulfilled desires point us in the direction of the reality of God. This does not prove God’s existence. As an argument it can be resisted, of course. But taken as a clue, it becomes quite compelling.

1. Think back over your day. What kinds of things did you long for today? Take a moment and try to be aware of them.
2. Look back at Psalm 27:4-5. Repeat this back to God tonight.

   (4) One thing I ask of the LORD,
         this is what I seek:
         that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
         all the days of my life,
         to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
         and to seek him in his temple.

   (5) For in the day of trouble
         he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
         he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
         and set me high upon a rock.

   Psalm 27:4-5

3. End your day by praying this: “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”
4. Lights out!