Christian Egotism

While listening to a song by a Christian band today, I was struck by the egotism I found in the Creationist argument as described in the lyrics. The major implied points were:

A) Man is really special, different from everything else, and light years better.
B) The stars and Universe were put there simply to entertain us. There's nothing else out there.
C) If you don't believe the first two, you don't believe that God loves you.

Whoa, Nelly. When I was 18, I sat on the couch and looked at my hand and realized I am made of the same stuff as everything else. Big deal, right? Everyone assents to being a created entity in word, but I don't think everyone's knowledge and heart align with that simple idea. When people talk about Free Will, they are often clinging to a belief that they are somehow autonomous and can function outside of Creation as an independent agent. That's Egotism 1 right there: Believing that your decisions are made with something other than the brain/heart/etc. that God created. He made all your decision-making pieces. You can't make a decision without using only that which God originally made.

There's also this ancient concept that everything was made independently of everything else. Man was formed of the dust of the earth, not of mammals. How crude would making man from animals be? Evolution must be false, because we are special and better than everything else. This sort of egomaniacal thinking leads to planet-destroying industry, ozone layer holes, carcinogen-related cancers, and all sorts of tomfoolery that disrespects God's created world because we are somehow different from it. Egotism 2: Man is special, therefore the physical world is his toilet. Not so. "The Dust of the Earth" ain't really all that pretty. We are a part of this world and must take care of it in order to take care of ourselves.

The third concept I'm going to bother with today is that of the stars in the Universe. People would like to hold onto some primitive notion that there can't possibly be anything out there. They would say that God made the earth special in the Universe as the only place that could produce life, souls, etc. That idea first came around when people thought the earth was flat and that the sun and moon were two discs of light that traversed a dome that covered us, and that there was nothing outside of that realm but heaven and hell. Well, heaven and hell, maybe. I don't even think they were sophisticated enough to think that God lived outside of their realm. Just read the Tower of Babel story and see that they were trying to build a tower to where God lives. Shoot - digression! Egotism 3: Anything, like outer space, that is beautiful must have been created simply for entertainment purposes for humans. I don't know what the function of the Universe is - no one does - but it's a bit silly to think it's all about me.

These aren't really hard concepts and can probably be challenged pretty easily by the right sort of thinker. That's not the point. I'm more interested in the process of examining ways that traditionally defended Christian modes of thought can be unintentionally egotistical. I hope you see this as an encouragement to pursue truth. This blog didn't quite go as deep as I would have liked, but I try to keep 'em short so you can digest a little something then move on to more internetting.