Human Evolution and the Christian Call to Love

Abstract

This article will examine the Christian call to love as an invitation to participate in an ongoing evolutionary transformation of humanity. This interpretation recognizes that the ability to love others is both a product and driver of evolutionary change. Through natural selection, humans evolved the neurological capacity to benefit from the cooperation generated by empathy. Additionally, these evolutionary origins have created constraints on altruism such as the tendency to favor members of one's own group. Christianity and other religions are well-suited to encourage the specific behaviors and cultural conditions that allow humans to overcome these constraints. Religions can provide consistent reinforcement of the symbolic and behavioral information that establishes empathy as a desirable trait and steers human evolution in a prosocial direction. Also, religious concepts such as the kingdom of God and Teilhard's Omega Point can inspire cooperation by associating even small acts of kindness with the evolutionary transformation to improve the human condition.