Dogs, Evolution, and the Body of Christ(1)

I watched an animal show with one of my grand-daughters recently.  It stated that dogs evolved from wolves.  That is an outdated genetic distinction.²  However, the point was that domesticated dogs proliferate our world while wolves do not.  The reason is not due to survival of the fittest, but due to survival through cooperative relationships that happened as dogs became domesticated.  Interestingly, cooperation is actually found on many levels of biological organization down to single-cell organisms that join together for greater survival.  It is one explanation given for the emergence of the specialization of cells in multi-cell organisms.  In evolutionary biology, a cooperator is someone who pays a cost for another individual to benefit.³  

This biological notion of cooperative relationships at a cost to the individual got me thinking about this principle is true for the Body of Christ along two lines.  As is well known, Paul uses the body metaphor quite seriously.

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ….¹⁵ Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be….  God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.  (excerpts from 1 Cor. 12:12-26 NIV).

The first point, then, is that we are called to pay a cost not to think of ourselves first, but to “have equal concern for each other” (12:25).  Our gifts, talents, time and effort are not first for ourselves, but first for the purpose of serving the Body of Christ.  The Church does not thrive by capitalistic principles or by operating on a business model.  It runs by cooperatively submitting oneself and one’s abilities to service in the Body.  What would that look like for me?  What would that look like in my local church?  

My second thought was that the growth of the Body of Christ through evangelism also should operate by cooperative relationships that come at a cost to the individual.  Is not that what Jesus was indicating when Jesus called his disciples together and said:

⁴²  “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. ⁴³ Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴ and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. ⁴⁵ For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45, NIV)

 When Christians become slaves to all people, they are creating cooperative relationships at a cost to themselves for the benefit of others.  That is when people are attracted to Jesus and the Body of Christ grows in number.  I wonder what that would look like for me?  I wonder what that would look like in my local church?

 Is it not interesting that the principle of cooperative relationship that promotes the thriving of life from the lowest biological level to the most complex, is also true spiritually?
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¹ In order to make a comment on evolution in a “devotion,” I will quality where I stand based on the history of the issue of science and the Bible.  When Darwin’s theory of evolution was presented, some of the best British Bible scholars and theologians, had no problem with it (e.g. B.B. Warfield, James Orr).  In their understanding of biblical inerrancy and reliability, which undergirded classical evangelicalism, the Bible was not to be read as a science text.  Some of them went on to write essays on returning to the fundamentals of the faith, essays that led to the start of Fundamentalism.  (So, too, the late Billy Graham said that if God used evolution as a mechanism in creation, it would not threaten the purposes of Scripture.)  Ironically, “creation science,” which seeks to read the Bible scientifically, was birthed in the 1920’s when Fundamentalists ignored their own founding essays and formed a strange alliance with Seventh Day Adventists who wanted to defend the visions and teaching of Ellen White on creation with “science.”  I agree with Warfield, Orr, Billy Graham, and a host of good Bible scholars that the Bible, specifically the introductory Genesis texts, should not be read as science.
² Dogs were once classified as Canis familiaris and wolves as Canis lupus, but now dogs are recognized as within the same species, Canis lupus familiaris.
³ Martin A. Nowak, “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation,” Science, Vol. 314, Issue 5805 (Dec. 8, 2006): 1560-1563.  *https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279745/