My theme for this talk is the question of human origins. Where do we come from?
When a Christian starts to talk about the human race and how the Bible tells us that God has made us, then we can sometimes hear an incredulous response along these lines: "How can we all come from one just couple: Adam and Eve?"
And such people often assume that science backs them up in their assertion. They know that many thousands of years ago there was a group of creatures who were the forefathers of today's human race, and those creatures themselves had come from a whole line of other living organisms flowing down through millions of years of change. There was no first couple because evolution says so!
Well in this talk I want to respond to that view. I want to do so not by reeling out a stream of scientific arguments. There are plenty of books and websites, where you can read up on those. I want simply to talk about Adam and Eve. First of all, I want to tell you why Christians believe that there was an original couple called Adam and Eve, because I think we have some good reasons. Secondly I want to talk about how this belief relates to the world around us, making sense of things.
Firstly, then, why do Christians believe there was a couple named Adam and Eve? Well it's because we've learnt this from Jesus Christ. So I'm going to ask two questions. Number one: what did Jesus believe about Adam and Eve? Number two: why do Christians believe that he got it right?
We have four important bits of evidence which help us to know Jesus' thinking.
Firstly, throughout the gospels Jesus consistently shows that he considers the Old Testament, in the Bible, as true, reliable and authoritative. He regards the words of the Old Testament as the very words of God.
Secondly, in Matthew chapter 23:35 Jesus talks about the criminality he sees in the Jewish leaders of his day and he describes how down through the ages God's followers have been murdered by such criminals. But where does he begin this list of murdered people? He begins it with Abel – the son of Adam and Eve. Jesus regards Abel as a real-life human being
Thirdly, in Matthew 19 the Lord Jesus is discussing divorce and he shows that originally God designed human beings to be married for life. The basis for his teaching is what happens in Genesis chapters one and two. Jesus regards that as a real event: there really was a first man and woman.
Fourthly, the first Christians - who had learned their thinking from Jesus - spoke of Adam and Eve as real people. For example, here is the apostle Paul writing in Romans chapter five: death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses.
So if you bring those pieces of evidence together, then it is clear that Jesus considered Adam and Eve to be real people - the first members of the human race as we know it. But was he right?
Christians believe that Jesus was right, because he - uniquely - is able to know the truth about this. That is because he is not just a man but also God. But how can we know that? Because that's what the evidence tells us about him.
Jesus lived 2000 years ago. Not millions of years ago - just 2000 years ago. In evolutionary timescales Jesus lived in astonishingly recent history. So in terms of time, the evidence about Jesus is very accessible to us. And what is the evidence like? It is excellent.
Firstly, we have documentary evidence: things written about Jesus and in particular that means the New Testament. Compared with other figures from that period of history, the documents we have about Jesus are amazingly good. The shear numbers of manuscripts we have and their quality and age is remarkable. Then we have other writings which back them up. And then when you actually look at these documents the consistency of the way in which they describe Jesus is stunning. We have very good evidence for what Jesus said and did.
Secondly, we have the evidence of people. In every generation since Jesus' time, there have been people who have trusted and followed him. They have done so claiming that Jesus is alive and that he has changed their lives in a way that nothing else could.
So we have two lines of good evidence – documents and people – which say this: Jesus is God. So if he believed that Adam and Eve were real people, then we have every reason to believe the same thing.
However, maybe somebody would say "But surely evolution has disproved Adam and Eve, so your view of Jesus must be wrong." But I don't think it is as simple as that.
As I understand it, evolution is concerned with two things. Firstly, it is concerned with observations made of all the living things of the world – whether currently alive or fossilised dead ones. Then secondly, evolution moves on from the observations to suggest mechanisms which may explain why things have come to be the way they are. Now in its observations evolution finds that there are links between all organisms – the world isn't full of individual, disconnected living things. So despite our outward differences, we also have such underlying similarities that it seems right to say that every living thing is connected.
Furthermore, it is observed that human beings are all related to one another through a common human ancestry: we are part of the same family tree. That doesn't prove that there was an original two people who produced the rest of us but it seems to me that it doesn't prohibit that idea either. And even if there once was a whole group of human creatures who had evolved, and from whom we come, that doesn't prohibit the idea that God selected two of them to enter into a special relationship with them. It seems to me that Adam and Eve are at least possible under an evolutionary scheme.
I'm not saying things did happen this way but I don't see that evolution, by itself, can be used as evidence to contradict Jesus.
But now let's come to part two of this sermon. How does this belief in Adam and Eve relate to today's world? Well it helps to explain it very well. Let me give you four examples.
Number one: the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve is that they were a couple created never to die but that rather their deaths were a result of rebellion against their creator. Death is abnormal.
And I think this matches with human experience. If death were nothing more than a natural process which plays its part in the ongoing cycle of existence, then we would have no reason to think of it in the way we all do. It is quite understandable that we are frightened of death due to a desire for self-protection and survival. But we don't have just that sort of fear of death do we? We find death abnormal and we feel it's unfair.
So when one human being kills another one, we don't just say "oh well, I guess he was just stronger". We rage against it; we want the killer punished. When we see a little girl in a far-off land starving to death, we feel sympathy for her and we want to help her; it tugs at us. Why? After all, she's obviously just not adapted to her environment. So her environment is killing her off and other living creatures will survive there instead. Why should I care about her? Yet it doesn't feel that way.
We get angry about senseless loss of life. We send off money to save the life of people, who if they stay alive will theoretically take resources away from us. We stand by the grave of a loved-one and it all feels so "why does the world have to be like this?" We find death abnormal.
And the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve says "You're right to feel that way. Death is an intruder. When God created Adam and Eve to live in relationship with him, he created them to live and live. But that's been lost." Adam and Eve teach us that death is abnormal. That's why we have all these strange ceremonies which surround it; and endless theories about it. That's why human beings can't simply accept it despite all this time living with it. Adam and Eve explain why we feel that way.
Number two: the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve is that they were a couple created to live in paradise who were then expelled from there. Human beings do have a dream of a perfect world. An idea that somehow "things ought to be better than they are now".
It's a strange idea when you stop and think about it. Surely the world just is what it is and creatures adjust themselves to that? Yet we don't think this way. We say things like "this must never happen again" and "it shouldn't be like this. It's not right." Something in us wants to compare life now with an ideal which exists somewhere, and try to create it. We chase after dreams of happiness which vanish away in our hands.
And the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve comes along and says to us, "You're right to feel this way. We did once have paradise and it was lost. There is a distant memory within us of a perfect place where we were always happy. But we threw it away." Adam and Eve explain the way we feel.
Number three: the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve is that the human race should be a single family. And human beings cry out, at times, that things should be like this. Doesn't matter where people live or what colour they are. We are one great family.
Yet we have an astonishing capacity to do the very opposite. We find it easy to hate the people next door to us. Families have feuds. Nations living on one another's borders have torn each other to shreds. There is no limit to our capacity to hate, hurt, torture and kill each other.
And the Bible's picture of Adam and Eve explains this. We are one family from one couple and we should treat one another with justice and love. But we don't because we've rejected God and in rejecting him, we've become insular and protective and selfish. The reality of the human race is described perfectly in the story of Adam and Eve.
Number four: The Bible's picture of Adam and Eve is that they were a couple designed to know God. The human race has a deep desire and longing for meaning. All over the world people have invented religions and philosophies to explain life; to make it seem more than just biological mechanisms turning over. There is this sense that there is more to life than chance processes working upon materials. When we think of right and wrong; beauty and ugliness; love and hate, then we feel that there is something personal behind all this.
The story of Adam and Eve says, "You're right. We were designed to know God. But we've turned our back upon him, leaving an aching void within". Adam and Eve explain what we are like.
Go and read the story of Adam and Eve. It makes sense of the world. Then go and read the story of Jesus. He makes sense of the world. Adam and Eve will tell you the problem. Jesus will tell you the solution.