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by Julie Gundacker

Evolution at its most basic is the process by which a species puts barriers between itself and extinction. Anytime a species finds a way to increase its individual organisms' ability to reproduce, it has put a little extra distance between the species and total annihilation. For example: the peacock's elaborate tail, which ensures his success in propagating his genes, also makes him an easy catch for predators. One might imagine that the peacock could simply have invested in a foreign sports car to attract the opposite sex.

I was 15 the first time I made my own blood run. I was sitting in the crowded closet, feeling that iron-in-my-stomach sensation that had been with me more and more since my grandmother had died, since my father had started screaming so much, since my feelings for school had gone from run of the mill adolescent angst to extreme boredom, frustration, outrage over the absurdity of it all. I would sit some nights like a toddler in the darkness of my closet, morosely rehashing my grievances against life, lost in a forest of sweaters and skirts. I would brood, and think and will myself not to cry until the effort became too great and I'd give in and wring my hands and rain tears on my sneakers and sandals and sensible dress shoes in silence until the iron had dissolved enough that I could stand straight again.

The Hebrew's relationship with God starts out as extremely simple and extremely personal. God chooses his favorites with frightening randomness, picking otherwise unremarkable second sons to succeed their morally ambiguous, but also chosen, fathers. God's actions in Genesis are often inexplicably random, even petty. God forbids his first human creation to eat a certain apple, and then puts a whole tree full of the forbidden fruit right in front of them. When they finally give in and taste test what they shouldn't have, Adam and Eve are banished from paradise and consigned to death. God's actions here seem cruel and unfair, or at the very least, unfathomable to human minds. We can't help but feel a little outrage and confusion over the events of Genesis. Why wasn't Lot's wife allowed to look back (19:26)? Why did God just up and slay Er (38:7)? How could Cain be allowed to live after killing his brother (4:15), when God was willing to kill all the children on earth with one gigantic flood in order to cleanse the earth of sin (6:13)?

If the figures of Genesis have similar questions, they (or their ghostwriters) keep them quiet. God's justice may be frighteningly unpredictable, but it is also inexorable. God has a habit of just popping in, through his angels, and reminding people that He is watching. Sometimes, when ordering Abraham to sacrifice his only son, for instance, He would even give the command himself. Without skipping a beat, Abraham collects his son and heads to Moriah to slay him (Gen. 22:2-3). We imagine that Abraham desperately does not want to kill his beloved Isaac; but when the orders come directly from a personally experienced, ever present God, what is a man to do?

Evolution works a bit like this: imagine you have to walk somewhere in a downpour and your only boots are full of holes. Aha, you spy an impromptu patch kit and cut your raincoat to shreds, leaving your feet dry but your torso exposed. Consider, for instance, the giraffe, which over centuries of evolution has acquired an exceptionally long neck enabling it to exploit the leaves of tall trees as a food source. But the architect Chance who designed the giraffe failed to take into account that water does not grow on trees. To drink, the giraffe must either stoop down splay-legged or kneel on its forelegs. In this awkward position, the giraffe is little more than a snack for any passing lion.

But this night, I was too angry to let them make me cry; the iron sat there in the pit of my heart. I heard crackling static buzzing in my forehead; I felt a strange hot pressure welling up in my chest, in my throat, behind my eyes. There was nausea; there was an internal ripping sensation; there was the unbearable frustration that comes from being silenced or being kissed. I sank my teeth into my wrist to brace against a scream-and bit down until the blood ran. It hurt; I gasped; and the static stopped. Converted to fleeting physical pain, my frustration and mental turmoil leaked its way through the ragged tear in my skin. This was infinitely better than crying.

By the opening of Exodus, the Israelites' numbers have increased significantly from 70 to thousands, and a personal appearance by God hasn't been reported in years. Each of these many Israelites has inherited Abraham's covenant with God, but not necessarily the staunch faith and obedience that comes of personally being there when the deal was made. Like Bette Davis in her later years, God has retired to his celestial mansion leaving nothing but his reputation to ensure devotion from his fans. A little distance has made God's frightening irregularity fade, and when He does appear as a "dark cloud," the Israelites are unwilling to return to the terrifyingly close relationship their forefathers enjoyed with God. Unwilling to converse face to face with God as Abraham had, they instead beg Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not let God speak to us or we shall die (Exod. 20.1809)." Moses, therefore, replaces God and His angels as the visible mouthpiece for divine will. Somehow, however, the people find it more difficult to obey orders when they're given through Moses, especially when the prophet isn't around as a reminder: the people "not know[ing] what has become of him," immediately construct a golden calf, breaking their promise to avoid idolatry (Exod. 32.1). Therefore, straightforward rules and regular rituals are established to make sure the people keep their minds on God and God's commands. Since the people are fickle, however, Levite priests are chosen to channel God's wrath and execute the rituals that will shelter the Israelites from the unpredictable workings of a majestic God (Exod. 28.43). The people are now even further removed from God, and no one seems to mind. Life is simply safer and easier that way.

Evolution is about putting distance between the species and extinction-building whatever wall necessary to survive for one more round. In building the wall, however, evolution may have cut down enough trees to leave the species vulnerable to an attack from another angle. Such is the strange case of the puffer fish, which frightens off would-be predators by taking in water and expanding to twice its normal size. If, however, the predator is not deterred by this display, the puffer fish is lunch-bloated as it is, the puffer fish in unable to maneuver out of harm's way. In fact, many a diver has amused himself by tormenting the puffer fish, chuckling godlike as he triggers the defense mechanism that prevents the creature from progress in any direction.

By the end of sophomore year, the ritual had become more advanced. First, I would sit crosslegged, back against the wall, eyes shut to more clearly remember the multitudes of little anguishes that I hadn't yet had time to feel. Then, I would pull the secret weapon, my brother's misplaced wood chisel, from its hiding place in the back of the closet, grit my teeth and slowly draw its blade short ways across my forearm-not too deep, just deep enough to hurt. Then again. Then again, faster and faster until I was too tired to think anymore. When time allowed, I might admire the way the blood drizzled down my arms and settled in the creases of my wrist, or scrawl stitches, staples, safety pins or slogans across my mangled skin. Finally, I'd yank down the sleeves of the thick black hooded sweatshirt I wore to cover the evidence. The ritual was a wall between me and my terror and heartache; substitute one pain for another, concentrate all the suffering into one half hour each night and get through the day. Above all, I couldn't let the thought of some other, greater ache enter my head, or the process of taking it all in might split my sanity in two.

We certainly can sympathize with the Israelites' attempt at fitting God into a safe, ritualistic box, like blanket-clad children checking seven times under the bed for monsters every night. The instinct of imperfect humans must surely be to take the truth watered down like absinthe, to think that the God drug is only safe when diluted and distilled through a safety net of formulas and requirements and "a hereditary priesthood of all time" (Exod. 40.15). Every required prayer that is said, every annual rite that is successfully executed, is another hedging backward step away from a frightening God. As the safety space between the people and the Lord increases, however, so does the necessity of the distance. A far off deity, a God experienced only through legend and from behind a wall of ritual, is doubly frightening: all powerful and capricious, but also mysterious and unpredictable. It's frightening enough to see the size of the tiger's teeth; it's another type of terror entirely to hear the tiger growling menacingly from behind a rickety fence.

Sometimes adapted traits cause such other vulnerabilities that they lead to extinction. Consider the curious case of the dodo of Mauritius. Because the dodo's environment was virtually free of ground-dwelling predators, the dodo over time lost the ability to fly. Since less food energy was devoted towards wing development and flapping about, the dodo evolved into a large, heavy creature. When European settlers arrived on the island, the graceless dodo's cumbersome size and lack of speed made it the obvious choice for dinner every night. Within a century, the dodo was extinct.

At first, the ritual made my problems disappear. I didn't live in the same terror of going crazy, of losing myself in the hurt, of perhaps some day dragging a blade across my wrists in earnest. I didn't have to stumble about dully, eyes welling up at the slightest provocation. I didn't have to break out into hysterical crying fits all the time or alienate the masses by ranting in my histrionic outrage over fighting parents, absurd high school bureaucracy, snotty bourgeois classmates, semi-fascist teachers and administrators. Instead of accepting and tackling the reality of my discontent, instability, unhappiness, I could choose to replace those feelings with the feeling of cold metal on my wrists. Instead of making what I considered a spectacle of my frustration, I could grit my teeth and focus my eyes somewhere just behind the vice principal's head while he lectured me about wasted potential and cut classes. I could stoically nod and agree with him, while I viciously jabbed the meat of my hand with the pink safety pin from my grandmother's sewing box in silence. I didn't have to acknowledge the unsettling depths of my anger and unhappiness. It was much easier to lock myself in a closet and pretend that my anger only ran as deep as the scratches on my wrists. The longer I went without conceding the existence of a purely emotional pain, the more unspeakably frightening the idea of that pain became. In a strange reversal of the laws of proportion, the more distance I put between myself and the truth, the larger it loomed at my heels. The further I ran away from the disturbing possibility of a wound that wouldn't go away with a little salve, the further I felt I had to run.

By the time of Isaiah, the people are almost completely estranged from a too-majestic God. The ritual that was meant to structure and thereby ensure their devotion, has only obscured the object of their worship. The establishment of written laws and standardized rites has led to empty ritual and literalism; men have given up navigating the terrifying mysteries of the Lord's unfathomable nature and unpredictable requirements to hide under the simple literalisms of proscribed foods and prescribed rituals. It's much easier to accept the petty arbitrariness of a forbidden meat than to wrap the mind around the arbitrariness of disease and death which a just and merciful God allows to exist. At the same time, centuries of avoiding the question makes it even more frightening, more impossible to address. The rituals replace true worship, which must be based on acceptance and not denial of complexities, and God loses patience. Tired of being ignored in His own Temple, "The Lord. . . strip[s] Jerusalem and Judea of every prop and stay" (Isa. 3.1). He breaks down the people's defenses, and brings them back into instant and direct contact with His terrifying wrath, His awesome power, and His role as both punisher and comforter. Before the fall of the Temple, the Israelites were able to hide from God's daunting complexity in ritual; once no hiding places remained, they were forced instead to acknowledge and stare at those complexities as an all powerful, all knowing, and yet supposedly all good God punished them. The people who had once tried to hide from the awful dualities of a just and merciful God, were forced instead to hide in them, acknowledging without reconciling God's dual nature as retaliator and consoler, worshipfully and lovingly returning for solace to the cause of their grief.

Sometimes the adaptations that allow a species to survive ultimately outlive their usefulness. For instance, the human appendix, which may once have assisted in digestion, now serves no function at all. Nevertheless, this remnant of earlier days can continue to affect the body, becoming inflamed, and threatening to cause death if not removed. In a sense, every one of us has that land mine buried within us, a useless vestige of a former way of life, likely to explode if only the circumstances are someday right.

Geographic distance is an escape as well. I wasn't happy where I was, and so at first opportunity, I scuttled, fleeing to college, to the city, to anonymity and a quieter world. I put the ritual aside about 6 months ago, and have only rarely been tempted since. At first, I used activity and the false friendliness of the getting-to-know-you act to convince myself that the horrible specter of unquenchable angst was gone; but as time went by and life settled down, I again began to feel the panic that my problems were about to catch up with me. Sometimes, when frustrated, I would find myself unconsciously digging my nails into the fleshy part of my wrist, leaving tiny scarlet crescents where bloody sunbeams used to dance. As time has passed, however, I've lived unflustered long enough to begin to stare anguish down. When panic starts catching up with me, I sit in my familiar eyes closed, cross legged, back to the wall position. Instead of fending off my hurts and insecurities with literal weapons, however, I sit stock still and straight, waiting and ready for hurt and insecurity to attack. Images of failure float through my head; I let them. Memories of ugliness past flicker somewhere just behind my eyes; I watch them play and then let them go and I'm afraid of them and I'm hurt by them but I'm not beaten by them. When I've had enough, I unfold myself and go to bed, or write a paper, or read a book, or call a friend, or take a walk, accepting without wallowing in the remnants of my discomfort. In running, in wall building, I magnified the menace of an already serious threat by making it a mysterious opponent with surprise on its side. In acknowledging the unpleasant realities of history and undesirable uncertainties of the future, I sap them of some of their strength and, having sized up my antagonist, I enter into a fair fight. I diffuse the danger by appraising it from within striking range; better understanding has even allowed me to dismantle and defeat some of those once terrifying enemies. Yes, the fight is uglier with my eyes open, but running blindly from one threat can only lead me head first and full speed into another. And yet, so long as the danger exists, so does the temptation to run.

The process of evolution is cruel to the individual, but kind to the species. In order to weed out useless and harmful traits, natural selection must kill off their carriers. The process is also far from foolproof; no directorial board looks ahead to anticipate the possible consequences of unforeseen environmental changes on a very long neck, an elaborate tail, a flightless bird. Humans, in fact, are the only creatures with the ability to look ahead and outsmart evolution by removing the appendix. Nevertheless, modern man has failed to confront all of his old-accustomed limitations; he still behaves as a territorial scavenger. Something, maybe the inertia born of great mass, maybe fear or lack of will, has prevented human cultures from overcoming the once necessary adaptations of greed and jealousy and violent clannishness. Nothing prevents the individual, however, from saying "I will not settle for mere survival," keeping his or her eyes open and escaping the boundaries set by millennia of adapt-survive-repeat. In that sense, every person is his or her own species, encompassing the many incarnations of self that must arise over a lifetime for him or her to evolve. A particularly optimistic person might suggest that, as in classical natural selection, if those aware, evolved individuals can proliferate, then the entire human species can change over time. Perhaps enough people can keep their eyes open and their courage up to build a human race without aggression, selfishness, and cruelty. A very remote perhaps.

Isaiah was correct, and God's wrath was not assuaged. The Israelites were attacked by foreign invaders and eventually dispersed. They were ripped from their homeland and their priests were "flogged and put to death (Jer. 52.27)." Their temple, the seat of all ritual and the box in which they had tried to contain The Lord like a dangerous yet necessary beast, was plundered and destroyed (2Chron. 36.19). During decades of suffering in exile, the Israelites were forced to face as Adam and Abraham had before, that God was unpredictable, and uncertain, and sometimes wrathful and sometimes gentle, and always beyond human comprehension. They repented, turned back to God, confessed their sins, and promised this time not to forget (Ezra. 8.7-8). In reward for reestablishing their brutally punishing relationship with God, they were sent back to Canaan.

In less than seven months, however, they had set about rebuilding the temple (Ezra. 3.1).

Works Cited

The Oxford Study Bible. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

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