Maybe you can relate with this. Metropolitan John Zizioulas write:
We need to insert a large parenthesis at this point, because one cannot speak of the dogma on the Creation of the world and Man, without referring to modern Biology and especially to the Evolution Theory – Darwin’s theory (*) – which, whether we like it or not, is the one that currently prevails in Biology. When the Evolution Theory made its appearance, Darwin caused panic in prevalent Theology. Darwin’s theory (*) created this panic, because up until that time – and even to this day for many people – the characteristic that discerned Man from the animals was considered to be the logical element, thought, conscience, and self-awareness most of all, and Darwin in his “Origin of the Species” (*) demonstrated very convincingly that all these characteristics are also found in animals, except that animals possess them to a lesser degree and consequently, the difference between man and the animal –with regard to these characteristics- is not, as he stated, a difference in kind, but a degree of difference. He demonstrated that animals can also think, have a conscience, create a civilization, possess technology; furthermore, many things of which Man boasts are not lacking in animals; they too organize their lives etc., and, just like that, in a moment of time, we found ourselves in a dilemma as to whether or not to accept that Man is also an animal, or to review the entire issue of how Man differs from the animals.
Contemporary anthropology has now located the difference elsewhere. I repeat, that many people still persist on the idea that the difference is found in the characteristics that we mentioned and that they naturally consider Man to be an advanced animal species. To locate a radical difference that will be a difference in kind –as Darwin said- and not a difference in degree, we must not resort to logic or conscience; not even to self-awareness, science and technology, perhaps not even to something that is very popular nowadays –especially in Britain– i.e. communication, because things are not quite clear there either, as to whether animals have languages – not languages in the sense of uttering cries to communicate, but in the sense of structured sentences, of composing meanings etc.. All of these are characteristics of Man; however, not everyone is convinced of this. Thus, the single characteristic that anthropology today is inclined to accept as a difference, I believe now renders Darwin’s (*) theory entirely innocuous for Theology, provided Theology takes the appropriate stance. This characteristic is, as we mentioned earlier, freedom. An animal, any animal, even the more advanced kind, possesses the ability to adapt to the environment, to the existing world, to Creation; however, it will never consider denying its environment, annihilating it and then creating its own world. An animal cannot create a world of its own; only Man has this tendency. You notice a tree. The same tree that you are beholding is also beheld by a cat. As a scientist, you can analyse that tree, you can become a perfect botanist, create an entire science and will, in this manner, be one step above that animal, but you will not be of a different kind. During the course of evolution, you may have once possessed less knowledge as a biological being and acquired more knowledge with the passing of Time; this is understandable and it creates no problem. Consequently, as regards the knowledge of that tree, you do not differ as a species from the animal. But when you say “I will draw this tree; I will make my own tree, I will make a world with trees which are not these, but my own trees”, from that moment on, you have proved you do not belong to the animal category. An animal can never consider making its own world. It adjusts itself to the present world, but does not create its own. Therefore the animal cannot develop artistically. One could say that to a certain elementary degree, it can create science. Quite often however, it is more than an elementary degree; quite often, we discover things that have already been discovered by animals. Science therefore is possible for an animal or for Man (as a superior kind of animal), but it cannot create art. The fact that it cannot draw is not simply a matter of not being able to pick up a paintbrush and draw. It can be taught to do this. But to reject the existing world and create a world of its own, which will bear its personal stamp, is a characteristic of Man, and this characteristic is observed –as modern psychology has indicated- from Man’s very first steps.
Psychology today –especially with Freud- has observed that when a child, an infant, takes any raw material into its hands, it will shape it, thus imposing its own personal stamp on it. This reflects man’s tendency to create his own world; it is his way of showing he is unwilling to admit that the world that was provided for him is something that he has to adjust to, whether he likes it or not. He wants his own world. Art, therefore, as a creation of a new world, is an exercising of Man’s freedom, which however conflicts with its created status. Why? Because Man cannot create anything from nil. No matter what he does, he is forced to rely on given images, given materials, in order to create it. How can he create? That is where he stumbles. That is why genuinely “creative” Art – like the Art of our time, which developed under the influence of one’s conscience, in a climate that basically existentialism and the modern philosophies in general have nurtured – why modern Art has this tendency (which many find annoying) to fragment given forms. Michaelangelo constantly complained that the greatest impediment in his art was the marble, and the need to be rid of the marble in order to create something. Picasso and many other contemporary artists also fragmented their forms. Why? Because they too felt that given forms hindered their freedom. When this table here has a given form, it is not a work of creative Art to represent it the way it is. This was the olden concept of Art, which was more reminiscent of photography. You take this object, and produce an exact replica of it. Art is not about copying the given world. Nor is it what the Romantic Era held it to be: i.e., “Art” means to extract from the given creation – from Nature – its spirit, its meaning, its beauty, etc. But these do not have any freedom, nor any creativity. Art bears inside it that restlessness regarding freedom, hence its desire to fragment the given forms and freely create whatever the artist desires. However, you can see that what the artist wants is something so arbitrarily personal, that no-one else can recognize it. He creates something and calls it a table, but it doesn’t have the appearance of a table, so that I too can recognize it as a table. This is why this kind of art form is so difficult to comprehend and why it is rejected by us; why we call it weird, surrealistic, etc. Or, let’s take a poem for example: even in poetry today, words are also fragmented; i.e., traditional words, with their traditional meaning, are now an impediment in expression, in creation.
I mentioned all the above, so that you might see how much Dogmatics is linked to Man’s existential quests, and how –consequently - the dogma on the creation of Man as a free being points in this direction. It points towards a being, which, inside God’s given world, does not desire to accept it and preserve it the way it was delivered to him; instead, he desires to place his own personal stamp on it, and this commences from a denial, through to a stance. In other words, he can either destroy it in order to prove his freedom, or, he can accept it and then vouchsafe it again, of his own free will. Of course there are various in-between stages; however, the being that we call “Man” moves within that region. From the moment that we ask Man to forsake his freedom, we demote him to the status of an animal.