Creation Is a Killer

Ars gratia artis.  Art for the sake of art.  This expression, which surrounds the roaring lion's head at the beginning of all MGM movies, suggests an ancient idea, that art need have no other purpose than for itself.  Yet even this statement says something about purpose.  Art either serves the purpose of the artist toward himself or it serves the purpose of the artist toward others.  It must, however, have a purpose in one direction or the other.

I recently posted about the onslaught of negative response to the Indiana senate's passing of a bill that would allow the teaching of creationism in public school science classes.  I suggested in that piece that the reason for such acrimony was that creationism is equated in the public mind with Christianity.  I would like to revise that to say that it goes much deeper.

The idea that a being created the universe ex nihilo is repugnant to the modern person because it challenges his assumed license to live life as he pleases.  If universe is the random chance production of basic material that has always existed, then it has no purpose, and I can do with my life whatever I want.  I am as much a random chance production as is the moon.  On the other hand, if the universe was in fact created by a creator, then that creation had a purpose.  It may have been nothing more than ars gratia artis, an act to please the creator, but it had a purpose of some kind.  If this is so, and I am a part of that creation, then I have a purpose, too, which means that any notion of complete license in how to live my life vanishes.  Free will exists, for I have the ability to follow that purpose or rebel against it, but the idea that I am utterly free to do as I please, that whatever I do is okay, becomes nonsense.  In short, if the universe is the creation of God, then the very fact of that creation kills the narcissistic concept of complete license.

We abort our children because they infringe on our perceived right to complete license.  A Jewish friend of mine was asking about English idioms regarding the word "soul" because he was translating a Hebrew song for some of his students.  We talked about the fact that at one time, we used the word soul in more casual conversation, as in "There are five hundred souls aboard the ship."  We do not do this now, because such talk would remind us that there is more to a person than his mere physical presence and his base, animal impulses.  We can kill babies in the womb because we say they are not people, physical and spiritual entities.  A pregnancy is about an it.  It is a medical condition, a burden, and to some even a disease.  We can think this way because we have come to believe that there is no purpose to life other than the one each individual gives to it, and we have come to believe this because we have jettisoned any idea that there is a God Who has designed creation to a specific end, and that we have a role to play in His grand story.