Living in America, I have encountered many dichotomies whose sides seemed to demand my allegiance. In some cases, I chose the old “Ethiopian” way and lived as a stranger in a strange land. In others, I chose the new “American” way and changed. Some of these choices were conscious and deliberate, while others were subconscious. None, however, has been more deliberate, more difficult, or more deeply contemplated than the question of evolution. I am still contemplating it.
My relationship with evolution has been dynamic. As a child, I thought of it simply as a lie ultimately from the devil. I even imagined, somewhat paranoidly, that perhaps the devil had placed bones throughout the earth to deceive people away from God. Later, after accepting the archaeological and biological evidence, I thought evolution did not matter much. It seemed like a prehistoric fact, amusing and distant from the spiritual questions of ordinary life. I held this view for a long time.
Then I came to a third view: evolution does matter. It is not merely a fact about the distant past. It is a reality operating in front of us now. This shift became part of a broader change in my worldview, one that I did not fully understand at first but have slowly begun to articulate. The moment evolution sank deepest for me was around spring 2015. It became all-consuming to my worldview. I came to accept that mutation and natural selection are overwhelmingly real. Fossil records were useful, but my most salient lessons came from observing human and animal behavior. Evolution was not only written in bones; it was written in social life, desire, suffering, competition, exclusion, and survival.
My central difficulty is not that dinosaurs are absent from the Bible, nor that the earth may be millions of years old. My deeper problem is that evolution seems to place us squarely as cogs in the machinery of nature. It appears to suggest that we are not exceptional, at least not individually, and that we are not meaningfully made in the image of God. It seems almost by design that we do not ultimately matter as persons, rather than this being merely the result of a great original calamity, what Christians call the Fall. For me, evolution is problematic mainly not because it suggests we have primate ancestors, but because as a mechanism it insinuates that God is not good, or at least that humans are not important to God.
One troubling example is how physical traits can become deeply socially and psychologically consequential. Certain traits may carry stigma, lead to economic or social disadvantage, and become connected with emotional suffering. Correlation is not causation, of course, and one must consider confounding variables such as childhood stress, illness, trauma, or malnutrition. Still, the broader point remains: people suffer through processes they did not choose and for traits that are not moral failures.
In my mind, the person with albinism did not commit any sins to have albinism, nor is he the descendant of some cursed people whose ancestors committed a grave sin, as has been believed by some about Black people and/or Jews. In my understanding, albinism can arise through inherited biological variation, while the suffering attached to it comes from a world in which biology and environment can turn unchosen traits into burdens (i.e. natural deselection). In other words, evolution is the immediate cause of his suffering.
But then we can ask: what causes evolution?
Evolution depends on the ability of some individuals to pass on their genes before death, while others do not. The key word here is death. In my understanding God never intended for death to come through Adam, and without death there cannot be evolution, because natural selection would not cut off certain branches. Death is a necessary ingredient of evolution. Even where the mechanism is not literal death, but permanent infertility or isolation, I would still understand this theologically as belonging to the wider domain of death. If individuals are immortal, then “fitness differences” in the usual Darwinian sense start to blur, because any lineage can eventually reproduce at some point in the indefinite future. In conclusion, evolution is ugly and real, but not ultimate. Evolution through death makes us products and by-products, but not God.
This is where the theological problem deepens. If God did not intend death to enter through Adam, then how can evolution be built on death? One Christian answer is human free will and sin. In other words, we may be more culpable for the very system in which we find ourselves than we would like to admit. The “game” in “don’t hate the player, hate the game” may itself be the player's fault.
Some would push back and argue that parts of the grand system we find ourselves in, including some aspects of evolution, are pre-Fall features of reality rather than consequences of the Fall. This leads me to another question: what is fallen, and what is simply or innocently evolutionary?
For example, love does not always inspire love, but hate often inspires hate. Openness does not always inspire openness, but concealment often inspires concealment. Is this the result of a fallen world, or is it an inherent feature of an evolutionary world? Perhaps what theology calls “fallen” and what biology calls “adaptive” sometimes describe the same reality from different angles. Or perhaps adaptive “street smarts” would have existed even in Eden. I tend to believe the former.
Some Christians argue that natural selection itself is not fallen, while mutation is. Natural selection, they might say, is God’s mechanism for maintaining the viability of species, while mutations are products of a cursed world. This answer may seem acceptable at first, but it raises further questions. What qualifies as a mutation in this view? Are all undesirable traits mutations? Are all differences on which natural selection works caused by the Fall and would we have an entirely different set of differences before the Fall? Would there have been variation among offspring in the Garden of Eden? If yes, would there also have been selection? If no, what kind of created life are we imagining? Perhaps the final answer there is that we cannot imagine the world that could have been.
Evolution may be easily tolerable if one thinks of God merely as a utility, something that makes life easier or better, or if one is essentially a deist. But for actual believers in a personal God, the question remains: how can such a personal God seem so laissez-faire in the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives?
The machinations of life that cause it to self-select and continue are, ironically, dead. They are lifeless procedures that ensure survival. They are not only lifeless; they are also deeply impersonal. When a human being says “nothing personal,” it is meant to reduce tension, to signal lack of malice. But if God says “nothing personal,” that does not comfort me. It threatens the very basis of worship.
Capitalism, as a natural extension or amplification of evolutionary competition, intensifies the problem. In socialism, where there is at least some sense of basic dignity and care for the poor, the darker implications of evolution may be partly clouded. But capitalism often makes the evolutionary message more explicit: compete, adapt, win, or be discarded.
From my vantage point, evolution is not just a collection of facts. It is an insinuation about the character of God. And yet, with this question still present, I have chosen to trust Jesus Christ.
There is an analogy a priest told me that helps me: when you are working on a puzzle and reach a difficult part, sometimes you move to another section and continue there for now. That does not solve the hard part, but it keeps you from abandoning the whole puzzle. Perhaps this is where I am. Evolution remains a hard section of the puzzle. But I continue to work elsewhere.
At the same time, I do not believe evolution fully reduces human beings to reproductive strategies. Humans are genuinely special. If I had the option of having many children from many women, all healthy and comfortably provided for, I would still prefer to meet and remain with one soulmate for the rest of my life. Even from an evolutionary perspective, human beings do not live by bread alone. We cannot bear to starve indefinitely, but we also become shells of ourselves when we live a soulless life. A purely optimal reproductive strategy without soul, love, and meaning may not ultimately be “fit” for human beings at all.
For any proposition, there are two sources of resistance: incentive and reason. Romans 1:18–25 suggests that human beings resist God not merely because of lack of evidence, but because of immoral ulterior motives. I recognize this in myself. In moments of what I would call cowardice, I sometimes prefer not to believe in God so that I can do what I want. I suspect this phenomenon is not unique to me.
One biblical figure I wish I were more like is Thomas. Many people know Thomas as the disciple who doubted the resurrection of Jesus Christ and later changed his mind when confronted with solid evidence. But the story that makes Thomas an inspiration to me is another one. When Jesus decided to go to Judea to raise Lazarus from the dead, the disciples understood the danger because Jesus’ enemies had recently tried to stone him there. Thomas did not think everything would be fine. He anticipated that calamity awaited them. And yet, when Jesus chose to go, Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). Thomas did not believe things would work out, but he went anyway. That is the kind of Christianity I wish to have, and perhaps that is the only one I can afford with the little faith that I have.
And so I remain in the tension. Evolution is real at least as a way of life. Evolution is ugly. But evolution is not ultimate. It may explain mechanisms of life, but it does not exhaust the meaning of life. It may show us death and impersonal selection, but it does not have the final word over personhood, love, or the image of God.
