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 Mutation Theology – Learning from e-coli
Summary:
Most people get plenty of encouragement to live a status quo life, but it's harder to find encouragement for stepping outside the standard boundaries. Thoughts on e-coli bacteria, unicycles, and the value of society's margins
Excerpt from Straight Into Gay America:
My unicycle continues to be my metaphor—the edge of the road in tension with the center lane. My dad keeps wanting me to get to the center, “those are the people who make our country what it is,” he tells me. Pedaling in those fast lanes I risk collision and death. One Wheel doesn’t match a speeding SUV.
But if I pedal on the shoulder of the road, in my glow-yellow vest, with my helmeted head, those SUV’s pull over and stop. People step out with cameras in hand and questions to ask. Then we’re all off the road together, standing in the same graveled pullout. Sharing stories. The life and death of calculating safe passage ceases while we speak. For at least these moments of our encounters, we stand still in the same place, seeing and hearing the same things.
When our conversations end, the vehicles accelerates back to 60 miles-per-hour and I resume my pedaled pace. We return to the friction between the speeding mainstream and the slow edge as we share the same road.
I think of Poetry Man questioning me about God. Yes, I could tell my story with Jesus’ words, how he’s a traveler himself, a wanderer who stops for stories, who lives in tension with the rabbis and the synagogues and the politics of his time, that inertial mainstream that needs to exist, but which makes his passage dangerous even to the point of death.
Still, I resist Jesus language, because this outsider experience has been so co-opted by advocates of power and status quo. How can a person read the Bible and see Jesus as an advocate for the mainstream? I don’t get it. Crucifixion is not a mainstream experience.
Suddenly I’m remembering back to my campus pastor days. Richard Lenski and I are eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant across the street from Michigan State University. I’m arranging a science and religion lecture for the community as part of my campus ministry work. Instead of nailing down conference details, I keep asking about Professor Lenski’s research on e-coli bacteria.
“We’ve raised 12,000 generations of e-coli,” he says. “By changing the environments for different groups of cells we can see how bacteria adapt. Over many generations we can observe their evolution.”
Lenski’s explanation of mutation opens a new world for me. “Most cells are standard,” he explains. “They do what’s expected of them. Don’t disregard these cells. Without them there is no culture.”
I eat more rice with my chopsticks as he tells me the role of gene mutation. “Every culture has mutant genes, and the rate of mutations is constant.”
“Most of these mutations die,” he continues. “Most mutations have no effect on the whole culture. But, every once in awhile a mutant bacteria affects the whole culture, and the culture evolves into something new.”
Lights start turning on for me. I’m already thinking about Jesus as he concludes, “Don’t disregard the mutant genes. Without them the culture would never adapt to changing circumstances and it would eventually die.”
Jesus is the mutation. He tells his story from the mutant side. His voice made a difference. He made the whole standard culture shift.
After lunch I spend the rest of the day walking around campus, trying to make connections, wishing I’d studied biology to go along with my theology. Jesus as a mutant gene unlocks a whole new world for me.
Mostly what I’ve heard about Jesus is the story of his uniqueness, the only Son of God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Savior of the World, so different from humanity. We’re told we should try to follow Jesus’ example, but then we’re warned we are all standard cells, no one can be Jesus.
I feel as if scales are falling from my eyes. Back in seminary we talked about Jesus being fully human and fully God, both at the same time. But out in the real world the human side, the vulnerable side, gets much less attention than the almighty, all-powerful, all-judging characteristics of Jesus as God.
E-coli culture tells me Jesus is being created all the time, a mutant gene. Being Jesus isn’t the unique thing. What’s unusual about Jesus is he’s one of the mutations that has a visible effect, that changes the whole culture. Being heard, mutating the standard cells, making a culture-shifting difference, that makes Jesus unusual.
E-coli culture lets me see Jesus as a mutant who had a message for his time, a gift that found a home. When Jesus gets asked about his family, he points away from his mother to his disciples, “These are my family,” these who have given up everything to follow Jesus, these who have traded standard existence for the mutant edge. |
