Chasing The Dragon

Before science, mankind had little explanation for the natural events that occupied our lives.

Brilliant civilizations which held fantastic insight into human philosophy and deep generational wisdom had laughable ideas about things like the sun, the stars and life around us.

The ancient Chinese screamed at the sun during solar eclipses because it was taught that the darkness was a dragon coming to eat the light. Ironically, the same traditions in time that brought about the profound wisdom of Confucius while simultaneously managing to scientifically calculate the correct 365 day/year would hand in hand yell at the sun to come back!

Some eastern traditions hold we exist on the back of giant turtle!

Buddha taught that we were all once beings of pure radiant light (subsequently giving birth to every new age religion on the planet) and as he later wrote in the Agganna Sutta, we became the prideful, self absorbed, mortal beings we are by gorging ourselves on earth, mushrooms, rice and turnips (yum) each having a particular negative effect.

So why is this story of creation any different than the Judeo-Christian story of Adam and Eve, told by God not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil “lest we surely shall die”?

The one thing that most of these stories hold is a unifying moral theme. As Buddha stated, humans do indeed gorge themselves on physical delights blinding us to spiritual truths.

And like the Bible’s story it should be revealed that everyone one of us will follow the example of Eve and pull away from God’s lead into rebellion.

(It’s interesting to note that Satan used the desires of her mind, body, and soul to lure Eve. First her mind by assuring her that by eating it her “eyes would be opened” and she would be wise, so then her body as she noticed the fruit “was good for food and delightful to her eyes” and finally her spiritual temptation and fall as she succumbed to apostasy and self exaltation to be “like God” and claim her prominence.)

But is this a story that actually happened or an important insight or metaphor?

A talking snake is as ridiculous as an entire nation yelling at the sun but at one time so was the account Moses gave of the universe’s creation.

So uniquely and completely different is Moses’ account of creation from everything he would have learned growing up in Egyptian privilege, that explaining how it’s even possible that a story so at odds with Egyptian narrative sources and influence is a mystery for historians.

But what is even a greater mystery is how accurate Moses’ account resonates with what scientists have discovered in the modern age.

When the theory of the Big Bang first revealed that the universe had an abrupt and violent beginning it was outright opposed by many scientists as an impossible fraud.

The records of the science community’s attacks are harsh.

The universe is supposed to have no end. It exists and has always existed and would always exist. But now we had a theory straight out of the bible that all of the sudden “Let there be light”!

In fact the Universe isn’t really that old. Trillions of years? Hundreds of Billions? Try almost 14 billion.

Relatively old to be sure but we’ll get to that later.

Moses wrote vividly of his encounter with God and began to reveal God’s nature to man and that nature is order, righteousness, and love. We learned there was an order to everything. Order to the universe, order to biology, and order to our lives. This order gave birth to science and it is no surprise that the great thinkers and scientists throughout history were often devout and prayerful Christians.

Atheists might say that back then nearly everyone was a "theist" but that’s not true. Even the bible records atheist musings in Psalms 14:1 and 53:1. And men like Isaac Newton were fervent Christians to be sure.

But Moses revealed much more.

He revealed that the world was once dark and void and unable to view the sun and the moon in the sky. Eventually waters parted and clouds as thick as Venus’ separated and fell giving way to earth, seas, and vegetation. Soon our own lights were revealed, and from earth’s perspective we see our seas bursting open with life and plants producing seed. We see creeping things and small animals begin to crawl the world and then finally and lastly man. And what’s amazing is that all this coordinates with what most modern scientific thought teaches about earth’s creation order.

Remarkably rational when compared to the creation myths that circulated over 3,000 years ago.

How tempting it was for every other ancient culture in the world to put man always first and foremost, to say countries, kings, or pharaohs were the very beginning of existence.

Religions often included our small perspectives and petty differences as our created "gods" battled and destroyed each other all the while enslaved to similar passions and desires as us. Gods were petty and lustful, greedy and hungry.

Indeed we have something far different in the Bible.

Though skeptics try to tell the world that there are similar foreign stories of creation, floods, and even resurrections none of these biblical accounts are singularly impressive, but collectively special when they are grounded in the historic, scientific, and philosophical truth of the Bible, especially when cast against the far greater differences of the giant turtles, dragons, and salad hungry ghosts haunting the world’s other religious texts.

But there is another claim to the word of God that adjusts the accounts of Moses, Elijah, Peter and Paul. Another religion that professes the inerrant scripture is but a revelation of a deeper religious insight.

Yes there was a time when I had a chance to befriend a few Muslim adherents and I too held the Qur’an in my hands and asked myself

“Is this the final expression of Yahweh’s righteousness?”

“Is this what Jesus died for?”

“Did the Holy Spirit inspire this account?”

What I found surprises me to this day.