In thinking about the goal of evolution (namely, the preservation and improvement of species), it struck me recently how self-destructive Christian Love is in such a world. Christianity's goal of Love toward God and people (as the Bible expounds it) is certainly odd in a world that is improved by survival at all costs. In a world where self-preservation is the goal, self-denial is self-destructive.
Christianity's goal is not ultimately to survive, but to Love as long as one does survive. In fact, believing the gospel rightly will have exactly the opposite effect that believing evolution will have: the more you believe the Christian gospel, the more you will be inclined to let go of not only possessions but also your life. The promise of Christianity is not that competition with other species will secure more for one in this life, but that competition with one’s own unbelief in the gospel of God will free one from the struggle with other human beings for survival and will free them instead to lay down their possessions and their lives in love for the improvement of other’s lives.
Christian Love is inexplicable in a world explained by evolutionary models of human origin. Yes, we fight, but not with our enemies; we fight with our own unbelief and we labor in love so that others may overcome their own unbelief. The fact that so many professing Christian lives do not look like this surely betrays the fact that they have not believed the gospel very much. One need not be born again in order to love money, sex, power, or comfortable life styles. One must, however, be born again before one will love God more than money, sex, power, and comfortable life styles, and therefore be able and willing to let them go for the sake of others (though they are good and can be used in good ways).
If I'm a Christian, sacrifice is love; if I'm not, I'm a mercenary, receiving wages for my sacrifice in the form of a good reputation, status as "humanitarian", public or private praise, or even (especially in the West) media coverage and its attendant fame (which is growing shorter and shorter these days). No doubt, my humanitarian efforts bring signficant good to those who receive it, and they will be thankful, but it is of no redeeming value in eternity, nor will it bring God the honor he so rightfully deserves as the One from whom such good things ultimately originate. That honor I will have taken upon myself, and in so doing I will have distracted people's attention away from God. And in distracting people from God, I will have placed myself in the Savior Spot-light, and I can do nothing to save people from the wrath of God that is coming against their sin, no matter how many people I feed or educate or rescue from disease or war-ravaged country-sides. As good as these are, I will have only postponed their own eternal destruction, and even denied that it is coming. And that is not love.
Of course, if you don't believe that such a reckoning is coming, you won't understand love the same way, and you will hold up a different criteria for what it means to love people. In the end, one must ask oneself, "How do I know what love is?" Be careful, though: to ask is not enough. One must find an answer if one is to actually love. If you think you are loving me, but you are really killing me (as euthanasia's proponents are literally doing), you may think well of yourself - but I won't. I might wish that someone with a better vision of love had found me before you did. Don't make those in need more miserable than they are: discover what Real Love is: God himself, in Jesus Christ, reconciling humanity to himself and turning them into people who can love to the death - their own.
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