By Mike Leno

Things are not what they are supposed to be. The truth, which we all recognize in one way or another, is that human beings are in a predicament. Even if you subscribe to the “this is all there is” sort of belief, life continues to present what we call “big questions” regarding our nature and function.

In the previous article I utilized concepts from computer function, genetics, and brain theory to illustrate ways of understanding human nature (See “What Did Jesus Have to Prove? http://mikeleno.net). I also applied these concepts to the nature of Christ in order to show how difficult it is to be specific and meaningful about the effects of sin on humans generally and the person of Jesus specifically. I concluded that regardless of how or to what extent we as humans suffer from the effects of sin that Jesus’ life was in no way a competition with ours. It was, rather, part of a rescue operation in which God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Such an explanation, however, raises more questions than it answers; which I hasten to add is not a bad thing. But in answering the big questions of human nature, we inevitably find ourselves attempting to go beyond what we know. All knowledge progresses beyond what is already known. But the questions regarding human nature have proven particularly resistant to definition. All I can hope to do here is attempt some sort of introduction to thinking about the problem.

As I noted in the previous article, human nature includes something we call mind. I also mentioned consciousness, which is associated with the mind but is not precisely the same. Consciousness is particularly fascinating because it enables us not only to think but to know that we are thinking. It even allows us to think about thinking and to purposely think about one thing rather than another. It is a little like hooking a video camera up to a monitor and then pointing the lens at the screen. You will see an infinite regress of images, and if you have the sound turned on you will also hear the audio portion of the feedback. Perhaps this illustrates at least in a small way what consciousness does. There is a feedback loop in the way the brain functions that allows us to watch ourselves think and even watch ourselves watching ourselves think.

I have pointed out that a simplistic explanation of sin that involves either genetics or brain function remains inadequate. Yet, as computers become more and more complex, we experience the inevitable truth that greater complexity usually creates a greater likelihood of errors. Perhaps that is a characteristic of broken human nature. But what sort of errors would we expect to find in the human operating system?

Brain injury remains the most obvious source of dysfunctional thinking. In 1848 a railroad worker named Phineas Gage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage ) accidentally blasted a 3.5 foot steel bar through his cheekbone and out through the top of his head. Although he eventually recovered from his wound, his friends and family found him to be a different personality; more profane and less caring than the man they knew previously. Although some still debate whether his personality changes were accurately reported, subsequent scientific examination of brain injury cases confirms that damage to the orbitofrontal cortex may leave victims otherwise normally intelligent but without the capacity to be embarrassed, unable to understand social cues, and insensitive to the suffering of others. In other words, this type of brain injury can produce a kind of psychopath.

Anyone who has spent time dealing with the mentally ill knows that errors in human thought processes do occur. How these errors come about remains somewhat mysterious although we know some of the factors, including genetics and physical disease that remain relevant. But I doubt if the kinds of errors resulting from brain injury and mental illness can account for the big issues of human nature. Certainly they play a part. But they do not tell the whole story.

In order to address the basic question of human nature—why are we the way we are?—we need to look for something global, and persistent. We are looking for something that is normal to humans yet accounts for the existence and persistence of evil. And at the same time, we must account for the existence and persistence of great good.

It has been popular in some theological circles to regard humans as “totally depraved.” This view of humanity as completely void of worth certainly explains why humans need saving. But it fails to account for any inherent good in something created by God. In scientific terms we often find evolutionary explanations particularly negative because they reduce the existence of humanity to a survival of the fittest. According to these explanations human motivations remain selfish at their core since the ultimate purpose is to obtain and pass on to the next generation the best resources for survival, even if that has to be done at the expense of other humans.

In both theological and scientific thought, however, an emphasis on human goodness has become more evident recently. Total depravity seems to have fallen out of favor, or at least common usage, by both conservative and liberal theologians. And even evolutionary understandings of human nature now acknowledge that selfish motivations cannot account for the entire range of human thought and experience. The phrase “survival of the kindest” has even been used to describe the emergence of noble motivations and selfless acts. (See Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life by Dacher Keltner, 2009.)

C.S. Lewis pointed out that if human thought was simply the result of random chance events; one could hardly trust it (Miracles p. 21). Thus if a purely naturalistic form of evolution was responsible for the emergence of the human mind, the resultant thinking about evolution would be inevitably suspect. And the situation for total depravity theologians remains no better since the output of a totally depraved mind could hardly be trusted either. Without some kind of confidence in our reasoning capabilities, we have no assurance that we know anything about anything. So whether by traditional theology or by evolutionary science, the results of our thinking about thinking are not likely to mean very much.

The fact that we can think at all, that we can watch ourselves think, and furthermore the fact that we can evaluate to any extent what constitutes good or bad thinking, even if we are not always right, gives us a strong clue as to our ultimate origin. Originally, we were created Imago Dei, in the image of God. Our human nature, however obscured or broken, remains the enduring legacy of a divine creation. The question remains, however, what exactly was broken?

Before exploring the effects of brokenness on the image of God, we must acknowledge another dimension of human thought and experience. We normally assume that human thought takes place within a person’s head or brain. And while such an assumption remains scientifically valid and a vast improvement over ancient assumptions regarding various organs of the body; it is not altogether adequate. If we think of thought processes as communication between brain cells, and if we in turn expand that definition to include communication among two or more processing units that are made up of brain cells, we thereby expand our definition of thought to include what goes on between human beings, not just within human beings.

Recent work in human behavior gives expression to this enlarged definition of human thought. In simple terms human beings do not exist as separate entities. They exist in relationships with other human beings. And relationships are complex interactional systems characterized by behavioral/communication feedback loops. If two people, for example, are in a close relationship, two things are true at the same time: they have individual brains; and in a sense they share a mind. Mind, in this case refers not to an individual’s mind but to a shared experience composed of the sum total of all the social interactions between the two people. Thus relationships, especially in couple and family units may be said to have their own consciousness. It may also be proper to refer to broader forms of social consciousness that extend to the community and even national and global levels.

I suggest that we should understand the concept of sin, the broken condition of humans originally created in the image of God, primarily within a social context, rather than an individual one. The image of God includes not only the characteristics of intelligence, consciousness, creativity and free will; but more importantly, the ability to relate to others. God created people with whom he could relate. And this is precisely where the moral properties of humans take their meaning. Sinful behaviors, after all, are not problems with individuals. They are social events which derive their meaning and moral worth, from the social context.

The story of Adam and Eve can illustrate this. According to Genesis, Eve first took the forbidden fruit and then gave it to Adam. This in turn caused both of them to be banished from the garden. Many long standing jokes and even sexist explanations exist regarding this story. Men blame Eve and by extension all women for the troubles of the world. And women point out that blaming the woman remains characteristic of Adam and all males. But both explanations err by concentrating only on the individuals. I suggest that the sin of Eve, however you define it, was a property of the relationship between Adam, and Eve. Thus Adam and Eve were both responsible for the first sin. That may be reading modern assumptions into an ancient story. So I present it cautiously. But anyone who has ever done any marital counseling, tried to unravel the origins of unresolved issues and determine guilt and innocence, knows what I’m talking about. Behaviors are both the cause and the effect of the state of a relationship.

We might hypothesize a number of conditions that resulted from the fall of Adam and Eve. We might, for example, assume that sin caused some sort of genetic mutation or brain injury that was passed on to succeeding generations. Such physical mechanisms, however, fail to appear reasonable in light of what we know about the problems of inheriting mutated genes and acquired traits. Evolutionary theory at least has huge amounts of time in which presumably anything can happen. It remains possible, however, that some sort of physical de-evolution took place after the fall of Adam and Eve. Yet that cannot be the whole story and remains speculative at best. The only physical effect of the fall noted by Genesis is the curse of mortality. Of course that is a rather significant effect. But we should note that immortality had been conditional from the beginning and that the expectation of death was not the result of a physical event but rather a symptom of a broken relationship. The story of Adam and Eve and subsequent generations of sinners is at its core a social history. It is a history of the broken relationship between God and his people. This is why sinful behaviors are always social acts. They only have meaning within the context of a relationship; either between people or between people and God.

If the brokenness of sin exists primarily within a social context, is there still individual responsibility? Of course. Just because a marriage is dysfunctional, for example, does not excuse abusive behavior on the part of either spouse. But the ramifications of a social definition of sin may go far in explaining how sin is passed on from generation to generation. It may also help explain what sin really is and why it took the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to provide a remedy. Theologians have long analyzed the story of Jesus to determine how God solved the sin problem. Beginning with the New Testament, the role of Jesus has been variously described as a shepherd, a physician, a judge, a warrior, a priest, and a fellow human being. But one very simple factor remains consistent throughout all of those descriptions. Jesus came to restore trust in God. He came to restore a relationship.

Trust, or “faith,” as it is also translated, is at its core a social dynamic. And trust goes to the heart of the human dilemma. The amount of trust a society exhibits affects the ability of people to get along and settle disputes without resorting to violence or law-suits. Interestingly, individual countries may be characterized by the level of trust people have in each other. The United States, according to one survey, appears in the middle of the list. At the top, the Norwegians and then the Chinese seem to exhibit the most trust. At the bottom, with the least trust in each other are those in the Philippines and Brazil. (See Paul J. Zak. "The Neurobiology of Trust." Scientific American 298, no. 6, June 2008: 88-95.) Why this is so is not entirely clear although blood levels of oxytocin and social context appear to be major factors. But we should not make too much of the comparisons. They are useful simply to show that trust remains variable and does affect our social consciousness. But the problem belongs to the human race generally, not just to certain nations. We all have a trust problem, especially in our relationship to God.

Ever since the fall, humanity has been in a broken condition primarily because of a broken relationship with God. This brokenness was associated with separation and a lack of trust which in turn required a survival of the fittest sort of mentality. Human history may be seen as a series of cycles, which exhibit both trust and survival behaviors. Occasionally it appears that the human race is improving such as when people peacefully reconcile in spite of radical differences of race, culture and beliefs. Other times it appears we regress to our raw instincts for conquest and survival as when we kill, torture, and marginalize people who are different from ourselves.

Jesus interrupted these cycles. His presence within human history provides the divine social intervention necessary to start the healing process. He willingly took on all of our weaknesses in order to get close to us. Yet in a fundamental way he was different. He was able to choose his own parents for one thing; something no other human can do. But more importantly, until his death, he did not experience any brokenness in his relationship with the Father. He never had to be reconciled. Instead, he came to reconcile us to God (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Eph. 2:15, 16; Col 1:20-22). He could restore our trust in God because he is God. Through him we regain what Adam and Eve lost, that essential close relationship with the divine. He is the way, the truth and the life. And the ultimate rescue at the Second Coming will be the great reunion of people and their God. Then our brokenness will be completely healed. For only in the presence of God will our trust be fully restored and our relationships completely healed.