Killing the 100th Monkey

For a period of over 30 years scientists studied the Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, in the wild. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists provided monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant. An 18-month-old female named Imo solved the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by several of the other monkeys. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes. The exact number is unknown, but when the practice of washing sweet potatoes reached that certain amount of monkeys, the culture suddenly shifted. 

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes leapt the geographical confines of the island to cross the sea. Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated unconsciously from mind to mind. Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

The hundredth monkey phenomenon refers to a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when an allegedly "critical mass" point is reached. The idea of the hundredth monkey phenomenon comes from Dr. Lyall Watson (1938-2008) in his book Lifetide (1979). 

As in the case of these primates, repeatedly throughout history the same things have been invented by different people in different parts of the world at the same time without any connected knowledge or relationship to one another. The telephone is one common example as are many social movements where several people seemed to have thought of the same thing at the same time. I have noticed the same thing occurring in Church history with theological developments and social movements. In charismatic circles we refer to it as a move of the Spirit. These moves have accounted for events such as revivals, egalitarianism, and abolitionism. Today we see it more prevalent in social justice and equality movements. As believers we understand these movements as Spirit driven and vehicles of social change towards justice and equality. Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious. David Wilcock called it the source field. We invoke its noetic power with a phenomenon we call "prayer."

But today we pray to be right, rather than pray for truth. We don't want truth if it shakes our worldview or causes us to alter our preconceived notions or modify our theology. We would rather kill that 100th monkey than let the collective consciousness work towards the evolution of our ideas, worldviews and social constructs. We would rather cling to nonsensical arguments than commit to the necessary work involved in reassessing the idea and fixing what is broken. 

We idolize institutions and ideologies at the cost of our compassion and care for people. We spew hateful rhetoric instead of acknowledging that our limited ideals may have created the problem in the first place. Christ's teaching dealt with caring for and serving others, not bowing to institutions. In fact, he taught against the bigotry of pride and discrimination with parables like The Good Samaritan and The Prodigal Son. As Pope Francis says, "It is a serious illness in the Church, this of ideological Christians." It causes us to dismiss those with whom we do not agree. 

I have many friends currently writing on LGBTQ issues, both for and against. And while we disagree on a great many things and our views span a wide variety of opinions, we agree on one central issue: we do not exclude from worship or bar the way to the cross. That is a sin greater than any other. My greatest concern in this debate is the matter of method. How we formulate our arguments and the consistency and accuracy of our rhetoric. A friend of mine frequently asks me to review his work for methodological accuracy, coherency and/or inconsistencies. We don't agree on everything, but I provide him with the tools he needs to make his arguments sound. Blasting incoherent arguments back and forth is futile and counterproductive towards reconciliation. Yesterday he wrote a careful response to a flippant post by Christianity Today on Tony Campolo's support for the inclusion of gay christians. He quoted me in the fourth paragraph and when I asked why he said, "because you say smart stuff." Good! I'm tired of people saying stupid things. And I'm really tired of ideological Christians excluding those of us who do not fit their molds from worship.  

For a while I dreaded walking into a church because it always felt like people would want to fix my situation. "You shouldn't be a single mom," was the message I received. Shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame. Political rhetoric was no different. Conservatives, of which I am one on some issues, kept telling me I was a burden on society.  They harped on the inefficiency of the single parent. Well yeah! You keep telling us we're not worth anything and a drain on society. What do you think is going to happen? I had a friend tell me recently that the ideal way to raise a family is with two parents. Of course it is. That's just simple mathematics. Three incomes would be even better! Or four! The more contributors the merrier. Oh no wait - that's socialism. No my friends. That's the Church. That's community. We take care of each other. We foster an environment where people don't have to be afraid to say, "I'm hurting. I'm in need. Can you help me get back on my feet." The problem within the Church is that we are running it like a government. It was never designed to be a government, people! The Church was created to be a social minister of healing to the world. And when the Church fails at her job, the government steps in to pick up her slack. That's the real role reversal about which we should be concerned.

Now as it pertains to the LGBTQ community, here are the issues I would like to see us work out a little better:

1) natural law;
2) gender;
3) reproduction; and
4) marriage. 

Here's how the arguments are currently failing. 

We have no idea what gender is. We try to cram our notions of male and female into compartmentalized roles that have no bearing on the majority of society. These constructs are realistic for only about 1 percent of the world's population. We base our case studies on socially constructed ideals and then claim that this is the way things are. Boys are blue and girls are pink. What we end up doing with these polarized boxes is creating confusion in people outside of the box. I like blue. If you convince me that blue is only for boys then I am going to begin to question whether or not I am a girl. Of course I have girl parts, but am I a boy inside? My daughter and I watched an episode of brain games together on the battle of the sexes. In all of the examples given both my daughter and I identified with the "male" brain. So from that we must logically conclude that we are male. Right? No. I'm a female. End of story. I'm sorry folks, but our meticulously crafted constructs of gender are what is damaging our understanding of who we are. If I bought into everything the Pipers, Grudems, and Driscolls tried to tell me about the difference between men and women, the gifts we bring, or the roles we play, I'd assume I was a man too. Because I don't fit the mold. My insides don't fit my outsides. So please stop telling people what their insides should look like to match their outsides. If you want to formulate a theology of gender then it must begin from above. God created humans in His image as male AND female. That's where the discussion needs to start. 

When it comes to reproduction, the argument for the child centric nature of marriage was tossed out long ago by all but a few extremists we typically refer to as the "full quiver" movement. This is a very small percentage of Christianity. Most Christians today practice some sort of birth control both in and outside of marriage. We no longer view children as a necessary byproduct of copulation. I am not saying the idea is right or wrong; I am saying we have thrown that argument out. So in order to use this argument against the LGBTQ community our past decisions need to be revisited. You cannot say on the one hand that children are integral to the notion of marriage and then in the very same breath say that they are not. We need to seriously revisit that one, because it is inconsistent. We alienate the barren, the elderly, the single wishing to adopt, the single parent, the couple wanting to get married yet with no desire to have children. Is this our intent? The argument is broken and we sound silly presenting it. 

Families happen whether there is marriage or not. I'm not married, yet I have a family. A beautiful family. And we rely heavily on our community for emotional, spiritual, mental and physical support. We are not an independent little island. That's rather ridiculous. I don't sew my own clothes, spin my yarn, spool my thread. I don't grow my own food or milk my own cows. We live in an interdependent society, yet try to function under an ideological illusion. Families don't all live in close proximity. We're spread all over the globe. So we make new family - we make a community. We are not related by blood or marriage. We're connected through commonalities - location, purpose, demographics, culture. We come alongside one another and help each other out. I may be, by definition a "single parent," but there's nothing single about my life. I'm very much living in community.  

Nancy Pearcey is quoted by The Family Project as saying the following: "The biblical concept of marriage as a covenant is that it is a pre-existing social institution built into our very nature. We don't create it so much as we enter into it. The relationship of marriage is a moral entity that exists in itself, with its own normative definition. That means it confers on us certain moral obligations such as fidelity, integrity, and so on."

Oh. You mean like a social contract?

To suggest that marriage is built into our very nature as preexisting is to suggest that marriage is integral to the definition of what it means to be a human. This is false for several reasons.

1) Marriage will not exist in heaven and yet we will all still be human.

How is this possible? Or will we cease to be human? Well, we'll have glorified bodies. But we won't be human, right? Because to be human is have the pre-existing social institution of marriage hard-wired into our very nature. Is it essential to what it means to be human? Tell that to the happy single person. But singles aren't happy. Well yeah, you keep telling them there's something wrong with them! I wouldn't be happy either. What Ms. Pearcey did was make an ontological assertion that is, quite frankly, not defendable. We sabotage ourselves with these arguments. (For more on my thoughts about marriage see here.)

2) Marriage is not a prerequisite for humanity.

Humans are created on a daily basis outside of marriage. In fact the first two humans in the Bible were created outside of marriage. What they did have though, is a necessary relationship between creation and Creator that is the only essential ingredient to humanity. Scripture after scripture makes the claim that all things are created by him and through him and without him nothing exists. When Christ came and died on the cross he did not restore marriage; he restored the relationship between creation and Creator. That, people, is the gospel! Not our theology of family and marriage. Galli in his Christianity Today article previously mentioned refers to marriage as "the most intimate of covenant relationships." It is not. The most intimate of covenant relationships is the one we have with God, followed by the one we have with our fellow believers in the unity of the Spirit. These relationships are eternal and therefore, the most intimate. Marriage is temporal and not eternal and cannot be the most intimate.

This way of thinking, where marriage is how we view God, is a bottom up approach to theology. And while it is difficult to avoid this method since we live "down here" and essentially all our theology starts at the bottom, it is important that a top down approach to our theological constructs arrive at the same conclusion, otherwise they are inconsistent. And I'm afraid this argument for marriage just doesn't do that. I have nothing against marriage. I think it's wonderful. But it's not perfect. And it's not divine. The only divine relationship we have access to is that between the Creator and the created and the unique bond of fellowship that exists between those who believe in that Creator. With that in mind, a bond can exist within a marriage between two believers, but it is not a mystical bond that exists because they are sexually active together. It is a bond that exists because they are one in Christ just as we are with all believers. Everyone thinks about sex too much and unfortunately, they think a little too highly of sex.

Sex is great! Don't get me wrong. But every living, reproducing species on the planet has sex. It's not uniquely human. But now we come back to the debate of the reproductive nature of sexual relations. And while I hold a very "natural law" view of that dependent relationship, I'm afraid the Church threw out that argument decades ago as well. The reasoning is broken. So I resort to a let go and let God approach to the whole matter and guess what? We're back at the relationship between sex, marriage and reproduction being a matter between the Creator and the created. God comes to us. We do not come to Him first. We are incapable of such a gesture. Our beliefs and views on marriage and sexuality do not define God. That is impossible. God is outside of and beyond our social constructs. But because He came to us and initiated with us, the relationship we have with Him defines all other relationships. Do you see the difference? Nothing we do to the definition of marriage is going to change who God is or who He is in relation to us. Stop arguing about the unimportant things and focus on the gospel - the relationship between God and humans. Our theology of family will not get us to heaven. Think through your arguments. You are not parrots. Don't repeat arguments you have not worked through yourself. It is irresponsible. Think critically.

Ultimately, I think what we're all after is what we've always been after - a return Eden. We desire to be in a place where we can be naked and unashamed. A place where there is acceptance and love. Where we do not take advantage of each other. We do not spew hateful words. We do not attack, kill, or claw for power. The Church is a place where we should be laying open our wounds and hurts. We preach a utopia but we're so dead set against anything that would move us closer. We preach a better way - a better world.  And yet we resort to fear tactics and teach absurd outcomes that speak no love as if we have not read the end of the story.

I'm not convinced of what's going on yet as a movement. All I know is that there is a strong collective voice leading us away from harmful institutions and ideologies that have objectified and hurt people and I don't think that's a bad thing. We have abused one another for far too long and something is changing. Is all change good? No. Yet when a flood of realization sweeps through the collective consciousness, everything gets swept up with it. I'm a progressive in the sense that I want us to always be moving forward, growing and changing. People may or may not look back on my writing and know the issues we struggled with in the 21st century. I'm an ever-growing daily participant in church history. Someday maybe seminarians will look back and study my ideas. They may not know my name, because I may be one of the 100 monkeys. I do not have to be the loudest voice, or the strongest, or the most well articulated. But I may very well be the 100th that causes a social breakthrough.