Adam and Eve, because they secretly ate of the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” had their eyes opened; they knew that they were naked, so they covered themselves with fig leaves. When God discovered that they had come to know shame, He knew that they had eaten the fruit of wisdom and discerned good and evil, and therefore punished them by casting them down into the mortal world to become human beings……
This is the Bible’s account of the origin of humanity. It is very uninteresting to talk about the conflict between the Bible and evolution; let us instead look at the profoundly thought-provoking metaphor the Bible offers us about the root of what it is to be human in this story:
Eating the fruit of discerning good and evil—gaining wisdom—coming to know shame and covering oneself—the birth of the human being…… In Genesis, this is a set of practices with direct causal connections. What do these connections mean?
Genesis suggests to us: discerning good and evil, wisdom, shame, human beings—these four concepts are linked!
What is human nature? This has been a topic countless philosophers have pondered and debated from ancient times to the present. What, after all, is it that makes a human being human? When Christianity is mentioned, we often think of its view of “original sin,” and know that Christianity says “sin” and “evil” are human nature. This is certainly not wrong, but if we look at Genesis’ revelation concerning the origin of humankind, is it not too simplistic merely to summarize the implication of this chain of associations as “because one sinned, one became an adult”? Let us unfold the concrete plot of “sin” and look again: the suggestion of Genesis is actually this—because one discerns good and evil, wisdom arises; because wisdom arises, one knows shame; because one knows how to cover one’s shame, therefore the human becomes human!
What is it that distinguishes humans from animals, and humans from God? Some say that only humans have souls while animals do not; under modern science such as evolution and neuroscience, this view has not much persuasive power left, nor can it yield any meaningful inference. Others say that only humans can make tools, only humans can communicate through language, only humans have social structures, and so on. These views all have some basis, but none of them can establish a decisive boundary between humans and animals. More importantly, apart from making people arrogant and self-righteous, these views also yield no meaningfully profound conclusions!
Thus many, when reflecting on the idea of presumptuously placing human status above all beings, have swung to the opposite extreme: completely eliminating human transcendence and sanctity, and thereby interpreting human nature as the other extreme of animality—even saying that selfish, greedy human beings are not even as good as animals, and would be better off vanishing from the earth as soon as possible! Although this kind of talk has an element of self-reflection, it too yields little in the way of constructive conclusions, beyond making humanity abandon itself and sink willingly into depravity.
The modern civilized conception of human nature is a blending of these two extremes: on the one hand, it is an unbounded praise of human technical power, holding that human beings have every right, as a matter of course, to conquer nature and enslave all living things; on the other hand, it is a complete denigration of the nobility of the human spirit, holding that greed is human nature and the driving force of human society, and that humans, like animals, are merely “selfish genes” existing for their own survival and reproduction. Greed, lust, plunder, and conquest are all human nature—why should one feel ashamed of them?
Those people think they are liberating human nature; little do they know they are going a thousand miles astray. Please listen seriously to the hint of Genesis!
Humanity does indeed possess wisdom that stands above all living beings, but what is the essence of this wisdom? It is certainly not the wisdom of making tools, exploring all things, and conquering nature! The most fundamental and crucial “wisdom” that makes a human being human is “discerning good and evil” and “knowing shame”; this is precisely the special ability by which humans surpass animals and deserve praise! “Food and sex are human nature” is certainly not wrong, but that is merely animality, not humanity. To imagine that releasing human greed and lust is to liberate a person’s true nature—that is an utterly absurd idea! The truth is just the opposite: human nature is to know shame—to know to cover one’s sexual organs (as symbols of desire) with fig leaves, to know to hide in the bushes after committing a crime……
The Chinese hold that “compassion, shame, deference, and a sense of right and wrong” are the four “sprouts” of humanity. The Chinese take this matter of “shame” seriously, knowing that both the sense of right and wrong and the sense of shame are human nature, and thus Chinese moral thought has developed with great richness and depth. In fact, within the Christian tradition as well, the same philosophy of human nature is hidden there; it is by no means something that can be summarized merely by the word “sin.”
December 6, 2005
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply