One clue that explains the need for the existence of the survival mode…is given to us in The Sermon on the Mount…when Jesus says: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Mt. 5:6)…italics mine.

Another strong clue is voiced by Samuel the prophet: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” (1 Sam. 15:23)…italics mine.

Rebellion and stubbornness can only occur in an environment having the built-in momentum of effort in the universal direction of survival…in this case of human beings possessing free-will choice amongst a sea of multiple competing options.

It would be hard for any of us to keep our sanity in a room full of two-year olds day after day…their going through the difficult development phase of the terrible two’s…of recognizing and insisting upon their newly discovered independence by saying “no” to everything suggested by an adult.

If life had a red-carpet rolled-out in front of us…providing an easy entrance…a wide, smooth, and open access to everything we desired…then our drive in pursuit of the basics for survival…much less the motivation to achieve great things…would fall flat.

Using examples from the Bible…if Abraham does not want descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky…if Joseph does not want to actualize his innate leadership abilities…if Moses does not want to perfect his perceived destiny…if David does not want to serve God as king in Israel…if Hannah does not want to provide her loving husband with children…if Esther and Mordecai do not want to save the Jews exiled in Persia…if Ezra does not want to rebuild the Temple…and if Nehemiah does not want to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem…then we would not have the inner drive that propels us to find answers to the big questions involving purpose and meaning.

Continuing on in the Bible…if Peter does not want in his heart of hearts to become a “fisher of men”…if Saul/Paul is not a seeker after truth to the radical extent that he is on his way to the city of Damascus to arrest Christians…then we again would never be motivated to discover the real truths about ourselves and the eternal Word of God…about the principles of peace and good-will in the kingdom of God…articulated by Jesus Christ in The Sermon on the Mount.

This is a reality of life that needs a better explanation…than it simply exists because it had to…that it somehow self-assembled itself out of nothing…entering dead-center into the middle of purpose and meaning…from a program of naturalistic materialism that has no purpose or meaning.

Equally important…the living natural world could not be seen as existing in a life-of-ease program driven by animal instinct…side-by-side humans encountering the challenges of life in the survival mode…utilizing cognitive thought processes.

The natural living world had to have the survival mode consistent in animal instinct…and in human reasoning.

Darwin enlisting the obvious reality in the natural living world of the survival-of-the-fittest…in his theory of macroevolution…by assuming it as a key factor without explanation…does not address the brilliantly insightful thought behind its central inclusion in the reality of existence itself.

The idea that everyone in heaven is floating around on clouds while playing harps…is false. The Intelligent Designer of the universe has not missed a thing…has included every detail…into the purpose and meaning of our world.

The survival mode keeps us on our feet and moving forward…incapable of living in an easy state of inactive lethargy…and in the case of Christians engaged in a journey of faith…hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

Finally, the only thing in all of human experience that can introduce into our lives some measure of the perfection of moral character articulated by Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount…is a God-composed journey of faith life-script.

Romans 4:3 says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” The blood that Jesus shed on the cross…and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the spiritually born-again believer…closes the gap between our imperfection and the perfection of God.

God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts…as patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…create a context of events and circumstances in our lives…energized by the innate, motivating fuel of the survival mode…for God to give to us some measure of His divinely unselfish love…actualized in a narrative for our lives that we could not dream up in our wildest imaginations.

This is a good point…in this book…before going on…to unpack what God displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts…might look like in the modern world.

Suppose a Christian young man or young woman, part-way through undergraduate studies at a university…and coming from a family with enough money to support their education…is planning after graduation to attend law school.

Through high school and college…this young person has discovered a part of their personality that has the natural gift of excellent people skills…who has the communications facility to be able to easily interface with a broad and varied group of people…who has the quality to attract a wide circle of friends amongst fellow college students, faculty, and people back home.

What if God…through speaking to this young person in the Spirit…reveals to them that after finishing law school…He wants this young man or woman to return to the small town they grew up in…enter into politics by running for the city council…with the eventual goal of becoming the town mayor.

In the biblical narrative…this leading of God will turn-out over time to be exactly what will fulfill this person…will connect with and satisfy the deepest longing of their heart…even when and if they do not completely understand this end-point discovery at the time they first start-off on this journey.

This is different from the secular version of recognizing an innate talent and pursuing it…because this scenario matches-up the created abilities of this young person currently attending college…with a future life-script narrative coming from the God who possesses divine foresight and a Creator’s inside knowledge about what talents and abilities He placed within that person.

This is where the individualistic self-autonomy of going our own way “misses the boat” entirely.

The mindless and unguided version of the God-created survival mode…does sometimes identify our innate qualities and abilities…but this only matures into the righteousness that Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:6 in The Sermon on the Mount…when faith like that of Abraham is blended with the motivating fuel of the survival mode.

This is the explanation…in my opinion…of the survival-of-the-fittest reality enlisted brilliantly but incorrectly as an unexamined assumption into Darwin’s theory of macroevolution…having no reasoning behind its existence other than to support a materialistic worldview for the origin of the diversity of life.

A much better explanation for the existence of the survival mode is as a fundamental part of the grounding of reality itself…an existence that only God is capable of bringing into being…and that only God is capable of crafting, shaping, and channeling into the biblical narrative stories of faith…and into the lives of new covenant believers today…as an integral part of the biblical narrative in a modern world.

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:13).

This cannot happen…without the dynamic push-and-pull impetus…the forward leaning, directional momentum…of the survival mode in operation.