Argument from the Violence of Nature

We hold people to a different standard than we do animals. That’s a no-brainer, right? If a shark attacks a person, we say it is only doing what comes naturally. No personal guilt is attributed to the animal, though it may be destroyed to prevent future attacks. A tiger may be labeled a “man-eater,” and considered dangerous, but it is not considered anything other than being true to its nature. It is not seen as worse than any other tiger. This is the natural food chain.

But if a person attacks and kills his fellow man, we have an elaborate, expensive, and often fallible system to mete out “justice” to the offender. We say that person is wrong. This sense of what man ought to do is one of the human beings unique qualities. It illuminates something invisible that exists, - as CS Lewis would say, an “ought to.”

Manhattan Pastor Timothy Keller speaks of the argument for God from the violence of nature, in his excellent book, The Reason for God. Is nature violent? Isn’t that the core of survival of the fittest? Reality is a contest for survival according to Darwin.

Keller tells of writer Annie Dillard who spent years living by a creek in Virginia to “be inspired and refreshed” by the purity of nature. Evidently, Dillard came to the conclusion that nature is ruled by one overriding principle, “violence of the strong against the weak.”1 Dillard wrote, “There is not a person in the world that behaves as badly as praying mantises. But wait you say, there is no right or wrong in nature; right and wrong is a human concept! Precisely! We are moral creatures in an amoral world…”2

Man is judged by a different yardstick than animals. He is held to an invisible code of morality. A “homicidal” praying mantis is just being natural, but a Muammar Kaddafi is considered by right-thinking people to be a monster for his role in the Lockerbie mass murder.

So there is an unseen something, a code of conduct, of what ought to be, that permeates human existence. Something exists, something that we all recognize, beyond what is seen. It’s recognition is unique to man.

In the Bible, Paul says it this way of those who did not accept the Jewish law. “… the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”3

Yesterday I saw a video that talked of the trillions of stars in the known galaxy. Many are not visible, but no credible scientist would deny their existence. We accept this as fact on the word of scientists. Something invisible, but real.

The violence in nature also tips us to something that is invisible, and yet real.




1- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, (New York, Riverhead Books, 2008) 161
2- From Chapter Ten, “Fecundity,” in Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (Harper-Collins, 1974)
3- Romans 2:15 (New International Version)

The Quiet Invasion

D-Day, Normandy, June 6, 1944. 160,000 soldiers came ashore in the largest and loudest invasion in history. 5000 ships with nearly 200,000 personnel were in support. 24,000 paratroopers had landed hours earlier.

Recently, I have been reminded of another, much larger, but more quiet invasion. That was the American expansion that displaced and dominated the American Indian tribes, forcing them into land no one wanted.

In roughly a century and a half, American settlers, businessmen, adventurers, missionaries, politicians, fortune seekers, and soldiers pushed across the American continent, settled in it, and claimed lands long occupied by the Indian tribes. It was a massive, quiet invasion.

Today criticisms about American expansion are rampant from commentators like Glenn Beck who on his website claims Andrew Jackson was “… the guy who went in and just started slaughtering the Indians,”1 to prominent Christian writers, like Shane Claiborne, who highlight our injustice to the Indians. (“Forgive us Lord, for stealing the land: Have mercy and set us free.” 2)

Was it really that bad? After doing some reading, I make these observations:

- It is true that the settlers did the Indians wrong. Time and again our forefathers mistreated them; for example the displacement of the Cherokee nation, -- "the trail of tears," which had elements we would associate with the Bataan Death March of 1942.

- Often the greed of the common man, government officials, commercial interests, corrupt Indian agents, or biased legal decisions violated agreements. Treaties were constantly broken and new ones made.

- The colonial population of 4.5 million at the end of the Revolution jumped to 12.5 million in 30 years, thus creating conditions where “the westward pressure for more land was enormous” 3
But it is also true that…

- The Indians were largely nomadic, hunters with relatively few people claiming vast territories; their culture was different from the European, farming, and individual plot of land mindset. As often happens today, the two cultures missed each other.

- Extensive efforts were made to treat the Indians fairly. The US government generally espoused policies respecting Indian rights and land ownership

- There was a core of Americans who felt the Indians should be treated justly and generously. Among them were Christians like Episcopalian Bishop Henry B. Whipple and government appointed Indian agents like William Bent (Left and second from left).

- There were Indians who bucked the system and sought peaceful co-existence with the whites, like Black Kettle of the Cheyenne

But what do we do with the reminders that we stole the land? How does it help us to see a past President and American hero as evil? Should I apologize to an American Indian? Maybe. It wouldn’t hurt.

Human history has been interwoven with invasion and conquest. The Europeans who subjugated the tribes of North America had themselves been conquered earlier.

Is it better then, to forget what happened to the Indians? Turn off Beck and Claiborne? No. I don’t think so.

As a nation, like an individual, remembering our sins can help or hurt us. Remembering helps when it humbles us, stirs us to want to change, warns us not to repeat those things, and when it makes us realize our need for God. Remembering hurts us when we can only see how bad we are, and when there is no hope of redemption.





1 - http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/48248/
2 - Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enuma Okoro, “February 8.” In Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010) 137
3 - Ezra Bowen, Edit. The Indians. (New York: Time-Life Books, 1973.) 157