Chapter 5 Formalist∙Hypocrisy
When we see a lazy person, we are told to emulate the diligence of an ant. But are ants really industrious? Not only ants, but most animals are not very industrious. An emerging field in biology is sociobiology. Ants are the animals that provided the foundation for the study of sociobiology. Based on the theory of sociobiology and ants, I'm going to take a look at the people of Pilgrim’s Progress-Presumtion, Simple, Slothful, Formalist, Hypocrisy-as we talk about the Lord living in me.
Unburdened, Christian found three women standing at the bottom of the hill. Their wrists were shackled, and the names of each of them were Simple, Slothful, and Presumption.
Presumption(l.), Simple(m.) and Slothful(r.)(2022)
"Hello, if you like, I can try to untie your shackles." Christian looked at the three pilgrims and tried to help them out of their frustrating state: "I don't feel any danger or anything, it's just a nice life just the way it is (Simple), " "I think I'll just rest here and chat a bit (Slothful), " "Everybody gets on with their own lives. Why don't you stay out of their business and mind your own business (Presumtion)?" Christian tried to help the three pilgrims, who were in a very dangerous spiritual situation, but the response was apathy, laziness, and irritability. As Christian was about to say goodbye to them, he saw two people jumping the fence on his left from the other side of the narrow road. "Where are you two coming from, and where are you going?" he asked, one out of courtesy and the other out of Hypocrisy. Christian approached them to have a conversation.
Formalist and Hypocrisy (2022)
"We are from the city of vain glory, and we are on our way to Mount Zion to find honour" (Hypocrisy) "There is a gate standing at the head of this road, why do you not enter through it but go over the wall? Don't you know that it is written in the Bible that whoever does not enter by the gate but goes over the wall to another place is a thief and a robber?". "It is not only us, but the people in our town, who say that the way to Zion through the gate at the entrance is too long and difficult, so they all take a shortcut and come over the wall like us" (Formalist)."Isn't it a sin to take such an illegal and easy way, to act in a selfish way, against the will of the Lord of the heavenly kingdom, which we are now seeking?"(Christian).
"There is no need for you to make a fuss about such a thing; it is a custom that has been practised by the people of my hometown for more than a thousand years" (Formalist ). "I am acting in accordance with God's law, but aren't you acting as you please? God, the master of this road, declares that anyone who crosses the wall is a thief". "When it comes to laws and regulations, we are just as conscientious as you are, so there is no difference between you and us in that regard" (Hypocrisy).
As they walked along in dialogue, Formalist, Hypocrisy, and Christian came to the foot of The Hill Difficult. Formalist and Hypocrisy hugged the Hill to the left and chose to turn back, a path of danger. As the name suggests, it wasn't a straightforward path, but a complicated one that splintered into many different belief systems. Once up the slope, Hypocrisy decided it was going to be a lot more work than he thought, so he took the path of destruction to the right, which was also not a straight path, but a thousand and one forks, following different faiths and social philosophies. But Christian took out the scroll he'd been given at the cross and began to read, and with his mind made up, he set out again on the path the evangelist had taught him.
Spirituality from ants
John Bunyan's characterisation of people as mere Simple, Slothful, Presumtion on the Christian pilgrimage is his ingenious way of telling a story to point out the spiritual laziness of the people of his time. In the original text, his ideas can be read in his commentary on the Bible, which tells us to "go to the ant, you sluggard, and learn from what he does" and "prepare your food for the summer, and gather it in the harvest" (Proverbs 6:6-8).
Before we had the discipline of "sociobiology, " we were exhorted to learn wisdom from animals like ants. I, too, before studying animal behaviour, thought that all animals were industrious, except for those whose names give them away, like sloths. But when you observe real animals, you see them resting all day, except when they're hunting. Nowadays, animal documentary filmmakers wait all day, or even several nights, to get a shot. I, too, often felt bored as a researcher when I travelled to an uninhabited breeding island called Hongdo in Gyeongnam Province with a documentary film crew to study the communication system between gull mothers and their chicks.
Professor E.O. Wilson, who first pioneered the field of sociobiology with his research on ants at Harvard University in the United States, passed away in December last year (2021) at the age of 92. I participated in the Korean translation of his voluminous book 'Sociobioloy, the new synthesis'.
I couldn't help but admire his 'unified biological insights that apply consistently from lower organisms to higher social organisms and human groups'. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his sociobiology went beyond the realm of biology and influenced sociology, cultural anthropology, ethics and moral philosophy. Perhaps he could have been my colleague, and I was both envious and proud of him as a colleague.
Today, scientists have discovered that ant societies have distinct professions, just like human societies. Among other things, ants communicate mainly by olfactory cues. In their society, there are scavenger ants who take out the garbage. They spend their entire lives doing grunt work. Worker ants that take out the trash smell like trash. Other ants smell it and act aggressively. Even if a garbage disposal ant secretly wants to do something else, it can't because of the smell of garbage, because as soon as the other ants smell it, they'll scurry off to the garbage pile. There are also undertaker ants in the ant community, which are particularly sensitive to the smell of oleic acid from dead bodies. They don't check for breathing or a heartbeat to confirm life or death like humans do - they can tell you're dead purely by smell. Scientists do an experiment that may be a little gross, but it involves smearing oleic acid on the body of a living ant. When that living ant smells oleic acid, it's dragged straight to the cemetery by other ants.
Ants (2021)
Humans have only been on this planet for about three million years, but ants have been around for over 140 million years. Ants aren't just getting old; they've been around for over 100 million years, so they've had a lot of time to accumulate experience and build a civilisation of their own. People have identified 14,000 species of ants on this planet, and scientists estimate that there are probably many more than that. They have occupied every part of the planet except Antarctica and the Arctic, so long before humans, each group has been living a civilised life, adapting to the soil and climate of the planet. They know how to use their caterpillars to make thin cloth, they know how to use worker ants to provide food, they know how to turn worker ants into living refrigerators, they know how to breed aphids to squeeze out their secretions, and they know how to grow alcohol, grain flour, and mushrooms.
When you climb a mountain, you can see the beauty and mystery of nature in the sky and on the ground. You can't help but marvel that there is a strange providence at work in this creature with a brain no bigger than a mustard seed, and the mystery of this tiny creature will continue to be revealed as scientists explore the land. As a former natural scientist, I try to be a little more cheerful today. When I feel these creatures struggling to get by, I shout out loud that God is the one who made a world without end long before people walked this earth.
An ant society that worships humans as gods
Could Professor Wilson have been influenced by reading The Ant? In The Ants, French novelist Bernard Werber describes a section of ant society that believes in humans as gods, with themes that might appeal to anti-Christian readers, such as Formalist and Hypocrisy: 'When an expedition is organised against the humans, No. 103 joins it. The expedition is subsequently wiped out by an unconscious attack by humans, and he returns to Belocan alone. The only survivors of the expedition are three ants, 103, 9, and 23. He then poses as a prophet and leader of a fanatical religious group that worships humans as gods. He spreads his gospel to the ant society, spreading the symbol of their religion, the "finger", and leaving them helpless. 103, the new queen of Bellocan, is just as disdainful of religion and slaughters the ants who believe in God. Finally, she is worshipped more than any other queen ant in ant history, and many of the Finger Gods are willing to sacrifice themselves to help the prophet ant, Ant 23, escape. When a giant earthworm stands in her way, she digs a small hole in its flank and places herself and her followers inside. The worm, which feels little pain, emerges to the surface, where a giant chickadee eats it and ascends to the heavens. Eventually, No. 23 and his followers die and ascend to the land of the gods." This is a fascinating story from the imagination of an ant novelist and a natural scientist.
One gets the feeling that this is demeaning human beliefs by introducing the ant society, but when you're actually observing ants, it's easy to imagine. I'm up on Mount Inwang, looking out across the vast expanse to the towering skyscrapers of Yeouido, the Namsan Tower, but the ants at my feet can't see it. It's not that they're blind; their eyes can only see objects at close range as contrasts or silhouettes. There was an ant at my feet, on a quest to find me. As I bent down and grazed the rocky floor with my fingernails, the ant turned around and scurried away. With the vibration-sensitive hairs on its legs, the ant must have suddenly felt thunder and lightning descending from the sky, which is why the novelist's imagination of humans as gods in the sensory world of ants has become a best-seller in our society.
Man of the Ants (2021)
My colleague, Professor Wilson, is not religious.Why are my ideas about God so different from Professor Wilson's? In Lee's book, "Will Believing in Jesus Make Me Happy, " he tells a story of a man who sees a beautiful flower and explains to his daughter that if she wants to know his name, she can keep calling it and it will answer: "If you want to know the name of a flower, ask it, 'What's your name?' ' Then one day the flower will tell you its name". The daughter didn't believe her dad's story. But one day, he was walking down the street and squatting with his child in front of that flower. A group of people walked by him, looked at the flower, and said out loud, "Lily of the valley is so pretty." It was only then that he learned the flower's name. Wilson never knew the name of that flower, and I'm the one who squatted in front of that flower all my life wanting to know the name of that flower. As I was squatting in front of that flower, someone walked by me and told me the name of that flower.
The Apostle Paul gave me the name of that flower of life: 'I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20).
