“Pardon me while I endeavor to evolve.”

      This past Tuesday, while I was parking the car at the Big East Fork trailhead in the Pisgahs to begin a daylong hike, I noticed the rear of another car papered with bumper stickers, lots and lots of them.  I thought to myself:  “So many urgent messages, so little space!”  The owner of the stickered car is, evidently, some sort of believer.  How do I know?  Because his “creed” is small enough to fit on a bumper:  “I believe in God spelled N-a-t-u-r-e.”  Not only is he a believer, but an amazingly courageous one; for myself, I can only say that I am not brave enough to worship something so cruel and uncaring as is N-a-t-u-r-e.  For I ask myself, to whom does one pray when the avalanche of snow is rushing directly towards you down the beautiful mountainside ski slope or when the rhythmic rise and fall of the surf at the lovely, peaceful beach suddenly turns into a tidal wave?  A mountain lion or bear is beautiful... until it hungrily attacks the hiker.  N-a-t-u-r-e, it seems to me, blesses and blasts us rather indifferently. 

      Perhaps, though, such a “religious” awe of N-a-t-u-r-e (meant here as “the world of living things and the outdoors”), especially in its cruel aspect, helps explain another sticker, which read, “Keep abortion safe, legal and accessible.”  Now I’ve actually heard people defend procured abortion by reference to “natural abortion,” the argument being, I suppose, “If N-a-t-u-r-e does it, why can’t we?”  Well, I don’t think it wise to try to try to effect an earthquake around L.A. or orchestrate the flooding of Memphis, or, for that matter, imitate the eating habits of a starving black bear.  To capture the sense of my analogy, though, one has to do something rather unpleasant, and that is bring to mind what we already know about the procedure of abortion – that it is rather like the dismemberment of the poor trekker by the hungry panther, the real difference being that at least the big cat has the excuse of lacking reason. 

       “Free Tibet,” we’re commanded from the right corner of the bumper.  But what if it is only natural that Tibetans be subjugated by the Chinese, after the pattern of rabbit by hawk, gazelle by lion and the human body by disease or old age?  “Iraq now, Iran next” blurts out another sticker.  But what if whole cities of Iranians have now to face the fact that their time is up as it will be for some of those cities perched on or near the St. Andreas Fault?  You know, let “N-a-t-u-r-e take its course.”  After all, N-a-t-u-r-e, as the bumper sticker means by the word, does not command or even remotely illustrate the command, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

      Significantly in the center of the bumper is the exasperated demand “Oh, Evolve!”  Into what?  “Pacifists” who kill unborn babies?  Are those, who think that the ripping apart of a child in the womb is beastly, not “evolved” enough to see the “rightness” of it?  What defines the status of being “evolved” anyway?  That all “evolved” people have the “right” sort of bumper sticker on their cars and think God is

N-a-t-u-r-e, who think that killing unborn humans should always be considered legal, made safe, and provided for liberally and that launching another war is bad but can’t really substantiate such a moral claim by reference to their own “law of the jungle”?  I mean, really, if N-a-t-u-r-e is God, then our world can be nothing more than a dog-eat-dog world.  For N-a-t-u-r-e never teaches us the doctrine of just and unjust war; that had to be annunciated by the Church, who makes a stark distinction between God and the nature He created and who reminds us that this God challenges us to rise above nature:  we are not meant to be merely natural but truly godlike, not in terms of power but in goodness.  N-a-t-u-r-e never commands, “You shall not kill,” but God does.

       As my hiking buddies and I made it to the highpoint of our trail, we met there a Russian couple, who were also out enjoying the beauty of our mountains.  But they had gotten lost and had spent far more time on the trail than they intended.  It was a blistering hot day, and they had long ago run out of water and were parched.  Taking note of their dire predicament, we could have listened to the “voice” of N-a-t-u-r-e – “survival of the fittest” – or to the unction of the human conscience and the admonition of Christ – “Whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward” and “Give to those who ask of you.”  I’m quite sure the thirsty Russians were very glad to have come across human beings not under the thrall of the “morality” of N-a-t-u-r-e.

      How is it that the “evolved” can denounce an unjust war without the standard of just war doctrine articulated by the Catholic Church but rather do so by reference to the “great outdoors” which they identify with “God” and in which there is hardly ever a break from war?  What is it in N-a-t-u-r-e, then, that teaches us that such wars are wrong?  How does one who is “evolved” make coherent the two demands that Tibet be freed and that abortion be kept widely available? 

      Actually, there is little or no coherency here at all.  The “evolved” have kept enough of the shreds of our traditional morality so as to be able, from at least a semblance of a moral perch, to denounce certain things that we know are wrong – unjust war, for example – but no longer have anything to appeal to as a standard that rationally defines right and wrong.  Instead, we have “positions” on issues – duly announced on the bumper – that we no longer even bother to try to connect into a coherent whole.  And so the moral debates racking our country go on and on, shrilly, interminably, because there is no means left of resolving differences.  Positions are, well, just defended, by sloganeering and yelling them.  “Proof” of correctness is in the intensity of emotional adherence to one’s selected stand on this or that.  This is not merely my summation of the matter, but the thesis of Prof. Alasdair MacIntyre’s insightful book, After Virtue, which, in closing, I recommend to you.