Equality: What it is & where it comes from
In the United States equality is at least expressed to be important. Its importance is seen in people’s views and policies on political participation, education access, views on employment and pay, and disability rights. The Civil Rights Movement has shown that equality is valued by many but not all.
What does equality mean and where did the concept of equality come from? It means the state or quality of being equal. Are there good reasons for believing in equality?
The Assumption of Equality is An Assumption
Naturalism, the belief that no God exists, gives no explanation or reason for equality. People who don’t believe in God or the relevance of God might believe in equality but the belief for them is not based on any foundation. The idea of equality is accepted as true without proof or a solid reason to believe it.
Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and author who received a PhD from the University of Oxford and is a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I appreciate his candor in this quote from his book Sapiens:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently.’[1]
So, Harari rewrites the famous line from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.”[2]
For the naturalist, equality isn’t really a thing. It is a dream wish. Perhaps maybe pleasant make-believe.
Christians have a Foundation for Equality
The Bible teaches the equality of all humans by saying all humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). It also explains that we are all equally fallen. That is, we all sin and do wrong things. Lastly, it says that salvation is freely offered to all through Jesus.[3]
In Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, Tom Holland argues that Christianity has profoundly shaped Western civilization, influencing core values like human rights and equality. It may not be consciously recognized but many Christian beliefs our embedded in society. As Harari has said, we “got the idea of equality from Christianity.”
The belief in human equality and rights, equality of men and women, love for foreigners, and care for the poor, weak, and marginalized are specifically Christian beliefs. History shows us that it was only as Christianity spread that these believes became generally accepted. The ancient Greeks and Romans would have laughed at them.[4]
Christian Equality has a lot of Explanatory Power
“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” Sirius Black said this to Harry Potter in one of their last meanings. Humans have complexity as J.K. Rowling is so adept at showing. The Bible agrees. We are complex beings. We are all equally made in the image of God, fallen, and redeemable.
The Bible says we all stumble in many ways (James 3:2). We are all broken. Christians are no less complex. Christians are simultaneously sufferers, strivers, sinners, and saints. So, “The line between good and evil is never simply between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The line between good and evil runs through each one of us.”[5] Or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in prison in Nazi Germany, “Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves.”[6]
Therefore, in one sense, Christians should be “culturally wary because they know that evil is real, that everyone is a sinner, that no one is beyond a stumble or a scandal, and that human beings are capable of some devious deceptions and horrific thoughts, words, and acts.”[7] Yet, in another sense, Christians should also be cultural optimists “because they know that no matter how grim and hopeless sin makes the world or how wretched sin makes an individual or a group, it does not define us at our deepest level, and it is an imposter that has no ultimate claim on anyone, whoever they may be and whatever they may have done.”[8]
Christianity gives a realistic and complex picture that explains the paradoxical nature of people.
If we lose Jesus, we lose our bases for Equality
I appreciate how Rebecca McLaughlin says it:
Even if historians agree that our moral building blocks came to us from Christianity it’s tempting to think we can keep the values we cherish while gently removing the claims about Jesus Himself. Like easing out a bottom layer Jenga block, perhaps we can build our moral tower higher without belief in God at all. But extracting Jesus from our moral structure isn’t like gently sliding out a Jenga block. It’s like pulling the pin on a grenade. In the resulting explosion we don’t just lose morality, are sense of meaning blows up too.”[9]
This is the case because if Jesus is not real and right, the next most plausible explanation is that of Harari or Nietzsche.
Conclusion
Secular culture assumes equality but gives no basis for it. Christianity, and specifically Jesus, gives a solid footing for equality. Without Jesus equality is on a shoddy structure and is destined to fall. In other words, if Jesus is make-believe so is equality. On the other hand, if Jesus and His ethic are real, we can’t mix and match to our liking. He is either a liar, lunatic, legend, or the Lord. But if He is anything other than the Lord, His emphasis on equality evaporates with Him.
Notes
[1] Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 109.
[2] Harari, Sapiens, 110.
[3] See Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, 116.
[4] Rebecca McLaughlin, Is Christmas Unbelievable?
[5] N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 38.
[6] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 10 as quoted in Biblical Critical Theory, 128.
[7] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 168
[8] Ibid.
[9] McLaughlin, Is Christmas Unbelievable?
Photo by Jacek Dylag
What are humans?
What are humans?
Are we mere mammals, slightly more evolved than monkeys? Are we ourselves divine, known or unknowingly gods ourselves? Or are we made to know and reflect the Creator God? Are humans nothing more than evolved hydrogen? The chance outcome of random processes with no significance?
Do humans have spirits that go beyond or are we merely matter in motion? Simply an ocean of cause and effect?[1] Do humans have a choice and a voice or are we just in a cosmic Ping-Pong game?
What explains the nature of humans? What are we and why are we what we are? Why are humans capable of almost unbelievable feats of both good and wickedness? What explains our dignity and degradation?
The philosopher Blaise Pascal lamented, “What sort of freak is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe!”[2]
Nick Bilton said, in an article about the eccentric and amazing Elon Musk, “when we eventually end up on another planet, humanity is most likely to do there what we’ve done here: destroy whatever wonder we have built. Nowhere is that more on display than with Musk himself. Humans are capable of great things. Every once in a while, a human comes along and propels us forward by leaps and bounds. A human like Musk. But, at the same time, those humans are imperfect, even if we don’t want them to be.”[3]
So, once again, what explains humanity’s propensity and desire for perfection but yet our inevitable and abysmal imperfection? What view of the world or philosophy makes sense of this? What hypothesis explains the conflicting nature of humans?
There seem to be three main options. We’ll look at each. You can decide which view you think makes the most sense.
Are we divine?
One view of the world is that “we are saved not by trusting a transcendent God who reaches down to us in grace but by realizing that God is within us, that we are God. Salvation is not a matter of recognizing our sin; it’s a matter of raising our consciousness until we recognize our inner divinity.”[4]
There are a number of people and sources that say that we ourselves are divine. Shirley MacLaine, for instance, asserts: “You are everything. Everything you want to know is inside you. You are the universe.”[5]
This type of view often posits that there are no ultimate distinctions. When it comes down to it there is no true differentiation. All is one. Everything is divine. You too are divine.
This brings up a few questions.
If we—each and everyone—are divine, why do we all not know of our own divinity? What accounts for our cosmic amnesia?[6] “If, when I was asleep I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, how do I know when I am awake, I am not a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” How can one distinguish between fact and fantasy?
Is the tragedy of the human race that we have forgotten that we are divine? Is that what’s wrong with the world?
Also, if distinctions, whatever those distinctions are, are illusions, then how do we know what is real? Further, how can we actually say that there is right and wrong? We can’t. There is then “no basis for human dignity and meaning… No basis for morality. If God is in everything, God is in both good and evil; therefore, there is no final difference between them.”[7] Helping and healing and maiming and murdering would all be the same.
Can we take seriously a view of the world that denies the existence of good and evil? That does not distinguish between death and life, between pain and pleasure? Can we do away with scientific discoveries so easily? Can we sore 35,000 feet in the air while googling arguments in favor of vegetarianism on our iPhone and also say logic has no real bearing on life?
How do we know we are divine? We cannot reason our way to this conclusion because it is beyond reason. Therefore, it would seem clearly unreasonable to hold this view, would it not? There can literally be no reasons or arguments in favor of this position.
I get the appeal of the view of enchantment that we are all gods. I get the appeal of spirituality without the ties of restrained morality or doctrinal commitment. But, are there actually legitimate reasons to believe the view that we are all gods? That question is often not asked.
We also have the question of why humans pivot towards perfection in one area and then revert to a pale and poor reflection of what we could be in other areas. Perhaps it’s because we just randomly mutated into our present form?
Are we evolved?
What can “explain the phenomenon of mind, consciousness, reason and value?”[8] Where did consciousness come from? Do we inherently matter or are we just matter?
There have been countless books arguing for and against the claim that humans are merely evolved matter. Various topics could be considered. It is not the place here to go into the merits of those arguments; although, I encourage you to check out some books on those topics.[9]
Here, instead, I want to ask what follows if we are evolved? What implications does it have for us if there is no enchantment? No beyond? No meaning?
If we’re evolved and we just follow our inner urges because that is what made us fit to survive does it mean there’s any meaning in what we do?
Yuval Noah Harari is a naturalist and popular author. In his book Sapiens he says there is no meaning if we as humans are evolved. “As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose… Hence any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion.”[10]
Is there a basis for morality? Is there a basis for logic? The late William Provine, once historian of science professor at Cornell University, apparently didn’t think so. He said, “no inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life.”[11]
If we are merely evolved then that perspective seems correct.
“If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by Homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. Human beings are just accidental by-products of nature that have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time.”[12]
If we are no more than evolved animals, is all life no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again?[13]
If we’re not magnificently divine is it right to say we’re merely dirt? What explains the complexity of the human character? Courageous and caring conquers and quivering and cranky cowards? Why the walking talking contradiction called humans? What explains our glory and gloom?
If we’re merely evolved how can we account for the fine-tuning of the universe? For example, why is the earth we inhabit inhabitable? Like Goldilocks’ potage why is it not too hot or too cold but just right to allow for life (also consider gravitation, the nuclear force that binds proton and neutrons, and the electromagnetic force)?[14]
And what about the existence of matter? Where did it come from? Doesn’t it make sense to say that everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence? And hasn’t it been shown that the universe had a beginning? What is its cause for existence? How did it happen?
Are we created in the image of the Creator?
What explains what seems to be the dual nature of humanity? Humanity is simultaneously great and wretched. What explains this paradox? We all innately sense it, but why is it here?
Christianity teaches that humans have dignity because they are made in the image of God but that they also can be devilish because they are rebellious (humans don’t always live and love according to God’s good design). “Our being made in the image of a personal and good God enables us to affirm objective goodness and reject evil.”[15]
As much as we are great, we bear God’s image. As much as we are wretched, we bear Satan’s. Human greatness split the atom; human wretchedness uses the same to kill millions of people. A great, though wretched, leader, Adolf Hitler, will lead a nation to slaughter millions. A great leader, Winston Churchill, will lead a nation in their defense. Ashok Gadgil,[16] with his intelligence, will fight for cures; others will inject poison.
Humanity is fallen, however. So we cannot neatly divide the line between good and evil. We cannot say all the bad people on the left and all the good people on the right. We’re all mixed together.[17] We are made in God’s image and thus can do fantastic things and fantastic good but we have been marred by the Fall and often reflect Satan so we can also do acts of unbelievable wickedness.
Thus, sin is not good because it wreaks havoc on our greatness, our image of God, and distorts it to evil ends. How sad that we who are capable of exploring the limitless expanse of the sea, the mind, space, and biology so often content ourselves with razing and rioting. How sad that though we as humans are capable of such good, there is such grave injustice. I’ve read, for example, that a woman born in parts of South Africa is more likely to be raped than to learn to read.[18] This surely should not be!
The world is a weird place. And, if the Christian view is the correct view, it must account for the weirdness of the world. It must best describe “the contours of the world as it actually exists.”[19]
Again, the world is a weird place. Did you know it’s not just the Christian scriptures that say the first humans were made out of mud?[20] Also, the Bible isn’t the only account that explains the origin of diverse languages connected to a huge tower.[21] Why is that?
Why is the world so strange? And what accounts for that strangeness? And why are humans so conflicted?
One hypothesis alone makes sense of who we are: “creation in the divine image followed by the fall, explains our predicament and, through a redeemer and mediator with God, offers to restore our rightful state.”[22] Sin, resulting in the fall, explains humanities wretchedness and yet greatness.
The Bible does not teach that we are gods but that we are to be like God. We image God.[23] For the Christian, “Everything is not the result of the impersonal plus time plus chance, but that there is an infinite-personal God who is the Creator of the universe.”[24] The Bible gives us a reason for believing in a lot inner in us. And a lot out there in the otter world. So, if you sense you have a lot of untapped ability, if you sense that the world is enchanted and spiritual, you’re correct.
It’s hard to consider these questions without also asking whether or not God exists. So, it’s important that you consider that all-important question: does God exist?
in X 