Our Desire for Perfection and Evolution
Two men sit next to one another in a bar. The first man is feeling lightheaded and sits back on his stool.
“I’ve had enough,” he says.
His buddy slaps him on the back, orders him another drink, and says, “C’mon, be a man!”
We’ve all seen such incidents, but I doubt that we’ve considered a deeper meaning that this type of situation presents. Let’s analyze, for a moment, exactly what has happened here. The second friend wants to manipulate his buddy into drinking more than his limit, right? To get his buddy to do this, the friend uses a familiar line-”be a man.” The first man responds because he wants to be a “man.” He has an ideal in his head about what makes a perfect man-in this case, a man can hold his liquor and not be affected.
We all have ideals in our head about what makes a real man and a real woman. A real man, in the modern American context is strong and brave and has control of his world. A real woman is beautiful and powerful. These ideals are pushed upon us by culture, to be sure, but if you consider these ideals in the light of Darwinian evolution, they begin to defy explanation. If you and I evolved by purely natural means, why do we always feel as though we are less than perfect? Why do we always strive to be something that we are not?
One might argue that this is further proof that evolution is still occuring; these desires are simply biology’s way of making us better. However, I find this explanation incredibly limiting. If you and I are the peak of evolutionary biology, why do we feel like we are not something that we want to be? Shouldn’t we be “the man” instead of always striving for that goal and feeling like we miss out on it?
I think the answer lies in the fact that instead of simply evolving, you and I were created by Someone greater than us. Perhaps He has placed those ideals in our minds to remind us that we need Him. Perhaps the reason that we all feel like we’re not living up to the standard of perfection that we all strive for is that God programmed us to be insufficient so that we would find secular explanations for our world equally insufficient.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Good point.
The phrase “be a man” is interesting… it’s funny that to “be a man” in the world’s view is to follow other men and their carnal desires. In contrast, I always think of these verses in the Book of Mormon, that seem to define “being a man” as something altogether different:
13 O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth.
15 But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.
16 And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statutes and the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning.
17 My heart hath been weighed down with sorrow from time to time, for I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever;
18 Or, that a cursing should come upon you for the space of many generations; and ye are visited by sword, and by famine, and are hated, and are led according to the will and captivity of the devil.
19 O my sons, that these things might not come upon you, but that ye might be a choice and a favored people of the Lord. But behold, his will be done; for his ways are righteousness forever.
20 And he hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.
21 And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that my heart might leave this world with gladness because of you, that I might not be brought down with grief and sorrow to the grave, arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity;
22 That ye may not be cursed with a sore cursing; and also, that ye may not incur the displeasure of a just God upon you, unto the destruction, yea, the eternal destruction of both soul and body.
23 Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.
(2 Nephi 1:13-23 http://scriptures.lds.org/en/2_ne/1/13-23#13)
So according to this definition, to “be a man” is to have the courage to turn from worldliness and instead focus on eternal things: to be strong and brave, as you say, but this proven by turning from reliance on self, to reliance on God, and turning from the world’s pressures.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Insightful. Bookmarked.