I am getting older but I am pretty sure I am becoming bionic. My eyesight is getting better, my hearing is getting better… and just wait until you see the resurrected me!
There is no doubt that I am getting older. I was at the barber yesterday and while she is cutting my hair all of a sudden she says to me “Where is all this silver coming from?” Silver is the pastorally sensitive way of saying gray. If it were really silver I’d melt it down and be rich. I know she wasn’t lying because I caught one (and exterminated it) in my beard the other day. I blame this new phenomenon working with Jr. High kids all these years without my church allowing me to carry a Taser. Life is changing no doubt.
I also though can’t say that I think that it is a bad thing either because as I age I seem to be getting better. I mean I don’t want to go all Barney Stinson on you or anything but we have to look at the facts.
When I was 14 I was told I was nearsighted needed to wear glasses because. The new glasses looked really nerdy on my already nerdy face. Needless to say I locked them away and I never wore them. I recently went to the optometrist and was told that I now have 20/15 vision.
As a kid I had horrendous problems with my ears and my hearing. I had to have tubes put in my ears twice. I used to go to the ear doctor and it was awful. The closest comparison I can think of is the scene in the X-Men series when they engraft adanantium into Wolverine’s body. It seemed like a torture chamber to me. I had more weird metallic instruments put into my ears then most can comprehend. Yet recently, I went to the ENT and was diagnosed with “exceptional” hearing.
And hopefully, after endless years of schooling and stretching my brain in different directions, hopefully I am a bit wiser for the wear.
Even recently I’ve started unexplainably losing weight; I can now for some reason run several miles at a time (I haven’t been able to for years); and I have even taking up surfing. Watch out Lee Majors and Captain America…
Who knows, maybe my silver hair is actually an adaptation to help me to blend in better in my denomination? See, my wit is even getting sharper!
Yet, I have developed a theory over time (and after watching a ton of Battlestar Gallactica) that maybe everything we experience is already technology, God’s technology. What I mean by this is simply that maybe our technology is so primitive still that we haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that the created/biological world is simply an advanced form of technology.
After all word technology comes from Greek τεχνολογία (technología); from τέχνη (téchnē), meaning “art, skill, craft”, and -λογία (-logía), meaning “study of-“. So when we study creation – aren’t we just studying what God has crafted?
Now let me preface the following comments by saying that, while I understand evolutionary theory to be extremely important to the scientific community and while I value such scientific contributions personally – how God created the universe is not a salvific issue for me personally or as a pastor. I think that it is actually quite ludicrous for Christians to openly fight about whether the Earth was formed in six literal days or 20 billion years. If God is really all powerful then at least philosophically God could do it anyway God wants right? I wasn’t there so I can’t speak to exactly what went down. In my opinion, Christians fighting and enforcing their beliefs (well informed or otherwise) publicly about such things does less for the credibility of the church than it does to help it.
All that being said, I think that with my recent personal advancements and with a good look at Scripture the best argument for evolution is actually shown to us in humanity’s future. When Jesus is resurrected he walks around on earth for 40 days before he ascends into heaven. In is resurrected state he has a body with flesh and bones (Luke 24:29) and he is even hungry (resurrection apparently really takes it outta-ya) but it is much different and improved version of the body we have now. Jesus can become unrecognizable (a kind of shape-shifter maybe?) and he can disappear into thin air – Poof* Gone. (Luke 24:1-36.) He can walk through locked doors. (John 20:19). I don’t know about you but even with my awesome vision, supersonic hearing, keen mind and Presbyterian camouflaging hair and wit-astic spark I still cannot do these things.
It seems to me that the resurrected Jesus is people 2.0. It is the evolution of humanity towards/to what God created us to be.
To me this is Good News because even when our body begins to fade in this lifetime… if we follow the way of Christ – we ultimately, as creatures, get better with age.
