Looking Up, Not Down, for Answers
EVOLUTION teaches that a series of changes gradually fashioned us into a higher form of animal. On the other hand, the Bible says that we started off perfect, in God’s image, but that shortly thereafter, imperfection was introduced and mankind began a long downhill ride.
Our original parents, Adam and Eve, began this descent when they sought moral independence and wounded their consciences through willful disobedience to God. They deliberately drove, as though in a vehicle, through the protective guardrail of God’s law and plunged down to where we are now, suffering sickness, old age, and death, not to mention racial prejudices, religious hatreds, and horrible wars.—Genesis 2:17; 3:6, 7.
Animal Genes or Flawed Genes?
Of course, the Bible does not explain in scientific language what happened to Adam and Eve’s perfect bodies when they sinned. The Bible is not a science book, just as a car owner’s manual is not a textbook on automotive engineering. But like the owner’s manual, the Bible is accurate; it is not myth.
When Adam and Eve crashed through the protective barrier of God’s law, their organisms were damaged. Thereafter, they began a slow descent toward death. Through the laws of heredity, their children, the human family, inherited imperfection. Thus, they die too.—Job 14:4; Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12.
Sadly, our inheritance includes a tendency toward sin, which surfaces as selfishness and immorality. Sex, of course, is proper in its place. God commanded the first human pair: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) And as a loving Creator, he made fulfilling that command a pleasure for husband and wife. (Proverbs 5:18) But human imperfection has led to the abuse of sex. In fact, imperfection touches every facet of our lives, including the function of our mind and body, as all of us are aware.
But imperfection has not stamped out our moral sense. If we really want to, we can grip the “steering wheel” and avoid life’s pitfalls by fighting the tendency to veer off into sin. Of course, no imperfect human can fight sin with complete success, and God mercifully takes this into account.—Psalm 103:14; Romans 7:21-23.
Why We Don’t Want to Die
The Bible also sheds light on another puzzle that evolution does not satisfactorily explain: the normal human unwillingness to accept death, even though death may seem natural and inevitable.
As the Bible reveals, death was triggered by sin, by disobedience to God. Had our original parents remained obedient, they would have lived forever, along with their children. God, in effect, had programmed the human mind with the desire for eternal life. “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men,” says Ecclesiastes 3:11, according to the New International Version. Their condemnation to death, therefore, raised an internal conflict in humans, a persisting disharmony.
To reconcile this internal conflict and to appease the natural yearning to live on, humans have fabricated all sorts of beliefs, from the doctrine of the immortality of the soul to belief in reincarnation. Scientists peer into the mystery of aging because they too want to ward off death or at least put it off. Atheistic evolutionists dismiss the desire for everlasting life as an evolutionary trick, or deception, because it clashes with their view that humans are simply higher animals. On the other hand, the Bible statement that death is an enemy harmonizes with our natural yearning to live.—1 Corinthians 15:26.
Well, then, do our bodies give any clues that we were meant to live forever? The answer is yes! The human brain alone dazzles us with evidence that we were made to live much longer than we do.
Made to Live Forever
The brain weighs some three pounds [1.4 kg], and it comprises 10 billion to 100 billion neurons, no two of which, it is said, are exactly alike. Each neuron can communicate with up to 200,000 other neurons, making the number of different circuits, or pathways, in the brain astronomical. And as if that were not enough, “each neuron is a sophisticated computer” in itself, says Scientific American.
The brain is bathed in a chemical soup, which influences the way neurons behave. And the brain has a much higher level of complexity than even the most powerful computer. “In every head,” write Tony Buzan and Terence Dixon, “is a formidable powerhouse, a compact, efficient organ whose capacity seems to expand further towards infinity the more we learn of it.” Quoting Professor Pyotr Anokhin, they add: “No man yet exists who can use all the potential of his brain. This is why we don’t accept any pessimistic estimates of the limits of the human brain. It is unlimited.”
These staggering facts fly in the face of the evolution model. Why would evolution “create” for simple cave dwellers, or even for today’s highly educated, an organ with the potential to serve a million or even a billion lifetimes? Truly, only everlasting life makes sense! But what about our body?
The book Repair and Renewal—Journey Through the Mind and Body states: “The way that damaged bones, tissues, and organs patch themselves up is nothing short of miraculous. And if we stopped to think about it, we would find the quiet regeneration of skin and hair and nails—and other parts of the body as well—profoundly astonishing: It goes on 24 hours a day, week in and week out, literally remaking us, biochemically speaking, many times during the course of our lives.”
In God’s due time, it will be no problem for him to keep this miraculous process of self-renewal going indefinitely. Then, at last, “death [will] be brought to nothing.” (1 Corinthians 15:26) But to be truly happy, we need more than everlasting life. We need peace—peace with God and with our fellow humans. Such peace can be realized only if people truly love one another.
A New World Based on Love
“God is love,” says 1 John 4:8. So powerful is love—especially the love of Jehovah God—that it is the underlying reason why we can hope to live forever. “God loved the world so much,” says John 3:16, “that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.”
Everlasting life! What a marvelous prospect! But since we have inherited sin, we have no right to life. “The wages sin pays is death,” the Bible says. (Romans 6:23) Happily, though, love moved God’s Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our behalf. The apostle John wrote of Jesus: “That one surrendered his soul for us.” (1 John 3:16) Yes, he gave his perfect human life as “a ransom in exchange for many” so that we who exercise faith in him might have our sins canceled and enjoy everlasting life. (Matthew 20:28) The Bible explains: “God sent forth his only-begotten Son into the world that we might gain life through him.”—1 John 4:9.
How, then, should we respond to the love that God and his Son have shown for us? The Bible continues: “Beloved ones, if this is how God loved us, then we are ourselves under obligation to love one another.” (1 John 4:11) We must learn to love, for that quality will be the cornerstone of God’s new world. Today many have come to appreciate the importance of love, even as it is emphasized by Jehovah God in his Word, the Bible.
The book Love and Its Place in Nature noted that without love “children tend to die.” Yet, that need for love does not end when people grow older. A leading anthropologist noted that love “stands at the center of all human needs just as our sun stands at the center of our solar system . . . The child who has not been loved is biochemically, physiologically, and psychologically very different from the one who has been loved. The former even grows differently from the latter.”
Can you imagine what life will be like when all on earth truly love one another? Why, never again will anyone harbor prejudice because a person is of a different nationality, is a member of another race, or has a skin color different from his own! Under the administration of God’s appointed King, Jesus Christ, the earth will be filled with peace and love, in fulfillment of the inspired Bible psalm:
“O God, give your own judicial decisions to the king . . . Let him judge the afflicted ones of the people, let him save the sons of the poor one, and let him crush the defrauder. . . . In his days the righteous one will sprout, and the abundance of peace until the moon is no more. And he will have subjects from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. For he will deliver the poor one crying for help, also the afflicted one and whoever has no helper. He will feel sorry for the lowly one and the poor one, and the souls of the poor ones he will save.”—Psalm 72:1, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13.
The wicked will not be allowed to live in God’s new world, even as is promised in another Bible psalm: “Evildoers themselves will be cut off, but those hoping in Jehovah are the ones that will possess the earth. And just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more; and you will certainly give attention to his place, and he will not be. But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.”—Psalm 37:9-11.
Then, the minds and bodies of all obedient humans, including those raised from the grave by a resurrection from the dead, will have been healed. Eventually, everyone alive will perfectly reflect the image of God. At long last the great struggle to do what is right will be over. The disharmony between our yearning for life and the present harsh reality of death will be over too! Yes, this is the certain promise of our loving God: “Death will be no more.”—Revelation 21:4; Acts 24:15.
May you, therefore, never give up in the battle to do what is right. Heed the divine admonition: “Fight the fine fight of the faith, get a firm hold on the everlasting life.” That life in God’s new world is what the Bible calls “the real life.”—1 Timothy 6:12, 19.
May you come to appreciate the truth expressed in the Bible: “Jehovah is God. It is he that has made us, and not we ourselves.” Appreciating that truth is a vital step toward qualifying for life in Jehovah’s new world of love and righteousness.—Psalm 100:3; 2 Peter 3:13.
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Life in God’s new world is what the Bible calls “the real life.”—1 Timothy 6:19
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Humans have broken through the guardrail of God’s laws, with disastrous consequences
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Humankind, under the rulership of God, will enjoy a new world of peace