Reversing the Order

Reflection for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time by Fr. Earl Allyson Valdez

Image from Splainer.

The survival of the fittest. That was how we understood Charles Darwin’s principle of natural selection, as he described that the process of evolution happened because the species who survived and multiplied were those who endured different conditions that threaten and challenge life, whether in the form of natural disasters or the threat of other species.

However, I wonder whether he also thought of this as a principle of life that applied to varying aspects and dimensions of human life. What was once a descriptive theory of evolution has now become a principle that governed our own living. The strongest, the more affluent, and the most efficient were rewarded with more, while the weakest link and the faulty were discarded and regarded as unimportant. 

Thus, most of our years in which we live actively are shaped according to this principle. Do you want your basic needs covered? You have to work double, triple even. Do you want a life that is free of responsibilities as you age? Then you have to be productive now to avoid any financial difficulties. Do you want to be “the best”? Then do it in the most inhuman way possible, and work beyond what your body and mind can afford you. Do you want to be the “most influential”? Then make sure that others would have no voice around you, or is as insignificant as the many others. You have to come up on top. 

Photo from Ritu’s Weblog

Otherwise, if you are weak and worthless, you don’t have a place. If you have committed faults, no matter how grave they are, you deserve to be punished; in fact, you don’t deserve to live. And if you’re incapacitated enough, then you’re not worth an ounce of attention. These may sound as harsh words, but the truth is, one way or another, this kind of savagery becomes the language of our body and mind. 

In other words, we live in a world that would squeeze life out of us, ironically, if we spend it for the sake of gaining something. And if you don’t meet those standards, then one should just be content with living in the margins, or being called “average,” or worse, being discarded altogether.

 Fra Angelico, “The Crucifixion," Image from the The MET.

However, our Christian faith reverses all of this, and tells us that the only way to be truly human is to go against this principle. Instead of relying and building human life along natural selection, our Christian faith tells us to approach those who are left behind. Instead of remaining within the principle of staying on top, our faith tells us to remain close to each other as we build a kind of life where all of us are headed toward genuine growth in relationships and in a community. 

After all, that is what it means to be truly human: that we are the reversal of the natural order, because we live in a completely different one, as shown to us by the Lord. It is an order, a way of living, in which we see each other according to the way God sees our lives. It is an order that pays attention to those who are unfortunate enough to not be able to make the cut, and walk with them in their sufferings and struggles. It is an order, most of all, in which our way of understanding and sympathy is greatly extended especially to those who have nothing and, in the eyes of success and survival, are practically nothing. 

Image from Faith and Leadership

With this reversal, we ask ourselves: What is our standard of living? Do we still believe that we have to be the fittest to survive? Or do we become the ones who set and define the standards of surviving, the fittest according to the faith, that is, the one who is willing to lose our lives for others to gain theirs? What hindrances do we experience in making this shift, in a faith that is clear in our heads and hearts but not through our hands that should give and raise each other up?