Start at the End

This week I will write about The Sacredness of Creation. I might begin with a definition of Creation, but then you would stop reading right here, wouldn't you.

I know someone who often begins a book by scanning the last few pages. With a bit of imagination, you can sketch out the plot if you know where it finishes, and that gives you an idea whether you want to read the rest of the story. That same sort of imagination generated the origin stories that parents told their children around the campfire thousands of years before the tales were written down. The story tellers knew the current chapter because they were in it. They made up the rest based on their experience of how the world worked, and the stories they had heard from their own parents. 

Children want to hear such stories because they are curious about why things turned out as they did. Parents have other motives. They want children to be good so they stay out of trouble, and they want their children to persevere when things get difficult so they will survive. Every satisfactory origin story will do three things: it will account for the way things are, it will have a moral, and it will invoke hope about the future. If it doesn't do those things, it will be forgotten and some other story will be told in its place (according to me with no evidence whatever).

Origin stories are important because they influence our choices. Collectively we have made some choices that threaten the survival of civilization, the stability of the biosphere, and our viability as a species. This is where we find ourselves in the current chapter of the story, which might be the last chapter. Perhaps we can rethink our origin story and discover reasons to act differently. 

Can we agree that the appropriateness of origin stories may be questioned? I could write a book or two but I won't. To make a long story short, I list three issues below. If you are interested, you can follow my thinking (which is sure to be controversial and naive) in this blog. Please explain to me (by commenting to this blog) how I am wrong. When you post a comment, I get a chance to look at it before it is published, so there will be a time lag while I make sure you have told me how I am wrong, as requested.

How often do you get an invitation to be disagreeable? Give it a try.

Problems With Origin Stories:

1) We can't say for sure how things began unless somebody was there observing and taking notes.

2) The moral of a story is contingent upon culture, which continues to evolve.

3) Hope improves the odds of a desired future, but success is not guaranteed.