The GeoChristian

Good oak

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.

To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.

Quote from Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, “February”

(andirons — metal supports for firewood on a hearth or fireplace)

Grace and Peace

October 2, 2008 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | Leave a comment

Earth Day 2008

Earth Day is coming on April 22nd. Here’s a quote to get us thinking Biblically about our stewardship of the Earth:

“There is one ultimate owner in the universe, God. All others are trustees.” –John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, p. 89

Grace and Peace

April 18, 2008 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | Leave a comment

Pollution and the Death of Man

I recently finished re-reading Pollution and the Death of Man by Francis Schaeffer. If you read only one book on why Christians should care about nature, this is the book. It is short, and fairly easy reading (by Schaeffer standards). It is not a book about “50 ways to be green;” rather it lays the Biblical and philosophical foundations for taking care of the Earth. Even though it was written almost forty years ago, it is still relevant to the environmental issues we face. Unlike many conservative Evangelical leaders, Schaeffer was willing to admit that we face an ecological crisis.

The book has seven chapters:

1. “What Have They Done to Our Fair Sister?”
2. Pantheism: Man Is No More Than the Grass
3. Other Inadequate Answers
4. The Christian View: Creation
5. A Substantial Healing
6. The Christian View: The “Pilot Plant.”
7. Concluding Chapter by Udo Middelmann

The book also has two essays as appendices. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” by Lynn White, Jr., and “Why Worry About Nature.” by Richard Means. These were two important essays of the late 1960s; the first was written to state the case that the environmental crisis is Christianity’s fault, and the second was written to present pantheism as the answer.

I gave a long quote a few weeks ago: “I looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness.”

Here are some more quotes:

Near the end of his life, Darwin acknowledged several times in his writing that two things had become dull to him as he got older. The first was his joy in the arts and the second his joy in nature…. The distressing thing about this is that orthodox Christians often really have no better sense about these things than unbelievers.

Our agreement with Means [an advocate of pantheism as the solution to the ecologic crisis] at this point centers on the fact that the hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too, a long, long time ago, before the counterculture ever came onto the scene.

Again, a pantheistic stand always brings man to an impersonal and low place rather than elevating him. This is an absolute rule…. Eventually nature does not become high, but man becomes low…. In the Eastern countries there is no real base for the dignity of man.

Far from raising nature to man’s height, pantheism must push both man and nature down into a bog.

A poor Christianity is not the answer either.

Much orthodoxy, much evangelical Christianity, is rooted in a Platonic concept. In this kind of Christianity there is only interest in the “upper story,” in the heavenly things—only in “saving the soul” and getting it to Heaven…. There is little or no interest in the proper pleasure of the body or the proper uses of the intellect…. Nature has become merely an academic proof of the existence of the Creator, with little value in itself. Christians of this outlook do not show an interest in nature itself.

We should treat each thing with integrity because it is the way God has made it.

The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real intrinsic value. But for the Christian, there is an intrinsic value. The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it.

But we should be looking now, on the basis of the work of Christ, for substantial healing in every area affected by the Fall.

But Christians who believe the Bible are not simply called to say that “one day” there will be healing, but that by God’s grace, upon the basis of the work of Christ, substantial healing can be a reality here and now.

Here the church—the orthodox, Bible-believing church—has been really poor. What have we done to heal sociological divisions? Often our churches are a scandal; they are cruel not only to the man “outside,” but also to the man “inside.”

The same thing is true psychologically. We load people with psychological problems by telling them that “Christians don’t have breakdowns,” and that is a kind of murder.

On the other hand, what we should have, individually and corporately, is a situation where, on the basis of the work of Christ, Christianity is seen to be not just “pie in the sky,” but something that has in it the possibility of substantial healings now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall. First of all, my division from God is healed by justification, but then there must be the “existential reality” of this moment by moment. Second, there is the psychological division of man from himself. Third, the sociological divisions of man from other men. And last, the division of man from nature, and nature from nature.

One of the first fruits of that healing is a new sense of beauty.

We are to have dominion over it [nature], but we are not going to use it as fallen man uses it.

Man is not to be sacrificed…. And yet nature is to be honored.

Christians, of all people, should not be the destroyers. We should treat nature with an overwhelming respect.

Most Christians simply do not care about nature as such…. These are reasons why the church seems irrelevant and helpless in our generation. We are living in and practicing a sub-Christianity.

If we treat nature as having no intrinsic value, our own value is diminished.

To just list quotes does not do justice to the stream of reason that Schaeffer develops in this book. If environmental issues are important to you, this is a must-read.

Grace and Peace

January 19, 2008 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | Leave a comment

“I looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness”

A story from Pollution and the Death of Man, by Francis Schaeffer:

Some years ago I was lecturing in a certain Christian school. Just across a ravine from the school there was what they called a “hippie community.” On the far side of the ravine one saw trees and some farms. Here, I was told, they had pagan grape stomps. Being interested, I made my way across the ravine and met one of the leading men in this “Bohemian” community.

We got on very well as we talked of ecology, and I was able to speak of the Christian answer to life and ecology. He paid me the compliment (and I accepted it as such) of telling me that I was the first person from “across the ravine” who had ever been shown the place where they did, indeed, have grape stomps and to see the pagan image they had there. This image was the center of these rites. The whole thing was set against the classical background of Greece and Rome.

Having shown me all this, he looked across to the Christian school and said to me, “Look at that; isn’t that ugly?” And it was! I could not deny it. It was an ugly building, without even trees around it.

It was then that I realized what a poor situation this was. When I stood on Christian ground and looked at the Bohemian people’s place, it was beautiful. They had even gone to the trouble of running their electric cables under the level of the trees so that they couldn’t be seen. Then I stood on pagan ground and looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness. Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take into account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.

(quote from chapter 3 — Other Inadequate Answers)

What do “pagans” see when they look at us? Do they see people who place value on the creation and its creatures because God places value on them? Do they see people who use the Earth’s resources wisely because God has called them to be good stewards? Do they see people who create or people who destroy? Do they see people who live in contentment or people who are caught up in the destructive consumerism of our society?

Another way to ask the question: Do they see beauty or do they see ugliness?

Schaeffer stated that Christianity has failed to take into account two things in regards to ecology: What is our responsibility toward the creation? and What is our proper relationship to the creation?

How should we then live?

Grace and Peace

January 1, 2008 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | 2 Comments

For the Beauty of the Earth — Chapter 7

In Chapter 7 of For the Beauty of the Earth, author Steven Bouma-Prediger gives ten arguments for why we should “worry about spotted owls and the Pacific yew.” All of his arguments have validity to some degree—the author points out weaknesses of some arguments—but I’ll focus on the ones that I think are strongest for me as a Christian.

• The intrinsic value argument: Nonhuman creatures have an intrinsic value, because God created them. I think this is a real strength of the Christian argument for creation-care, as opposed to secular or non-Christian arguments. The secular environmentalist can assign value to nature only in an arbitrary or self-centered way. To the Christian, nature and its creatures have value simply because God created them. They were valuable before we came on the scene, and are not valuable just because they are useful to us.

“Unlike the animal rights argument, this argument hinges not on the fact that certain nonhuman creatures have rights but rather on the fact that humans have duties to… sentient life, organic life, endangered species, and even entire ecosystems.”

“A focus only on human use—even if wise use—is a stunted viewpoint that fails to acknowledge intrinsic value in a world not of our making.”

“It does not necessarily follow from the intrinsic value argument that we have the same kind of duties to dogs or sequoias or rain forest that we have to humans.”

• The earth community argument: or the we’re-all-in-this-together argument. This is similar to the land ethic of Aldo Leopold, but Bouma-Prediger modifies it to a Christian form. We, as humans, are a part of a much bigger biosphere, and what we do to the biosphere turns around to have an effect on us. This is not an appeal to self-interest, but rather an acknowledgment that what is good for the environment is good for us.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” — John Muir

“The creatures of the natural world are not there for the sake of human beings. Human beings are there for the sake of the glory of God, which the whole community of creation extols.” — Jurgen Moltmann

• The divine command argument: or “because God says so.” Bouma-Prediger bases this on his interpretation that the earth-care mandate given in Genesis 2:15 (“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” ESV) means that we are here to serve and protect the earth, not to do whatever our sinful desires would have us do.

• The image of God argument: or “because God’s concerns are our concerns.” God cares for the creatures of the earth, and as his viceregents—created in God’s image to rule in his place—we are to show the same care.

Given an acknowledgment that God is concerned about more than just humans, and given that we are called to image or represent God, it follows that we should care for more than just our own kind or our own place.

Care for the earth should never be construed as somehow anti-people.

Conclusion: 1. Nature has value in and of itself. 2. We are connected to the rest of creation. 3. God tells us to take good care of the creation. 4. God has made us in his own image, so we have certain responsibilities and obligations.

So how do we live as individuals? How do we live as a church?

Grace and Peace

December 22, 2007 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | Leave a comment

For the Beauty of the Earth — Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of For the Beauty of the Earth by Steven Bouma-Prediger is “What kind of people ought we be?” In this chapter, the author develops seven ecological virtues:

1. Act so as to preserve diverse kinds of life.

Biodiversity is an intended result of God’s wise and orderly creative activity.

Creatures exist to praise God and are valuable irrespective of human utility. From this theological theme comes the ethical principle of intrinsic value.

We have an obligation to protect our watershed not only to preserve safe drinking water for the people who live there but also because we have a direct duty to the trout and herons and muskrats who inhabit that watershed.

We are obligated to preserve nonhuman species except when other moral considerations outweigh or overrule this duty. And since such species cannot exist without their homes, we are also obligated to preserve habitats.

There are many practical reasons to preserve biodiversity that Bouma-Prediger doesn’t go into here. Instead, he focuses on the moral and theological arguments.

2. Act so as to live within your means.

We have a prima facie duty to preserve nonrenewable resources and conserve scarce though renewable resources.

The author doesn’t advocate austerity, but rather discipline and self-restraint, as individuals and as a society.

3. Act cautiously.

We are to act cautiously in our relationship with the creation both because we are finite and because we are faulted. Because we are finite, we don’t understand all of the implications of our activities. Because we are faulted—fallen into sin—we are “alienated from God, other humans, ourselves, and the earth.”

4. Act in such a way that the ability of living creatures to maintain themselves and to reproduce is preserved.

It is God’s will that the whole of creation be fruitful, not just people. — Calvin DeWitt

We are permitted to use the fruit of the earth, but we are not allowed to destroy the earth’s ability to be fruitful.

Ecologically speaking, foolishness is the disposition to act as if the earth is endlessly exploitable and expendable.

5. Act in such a way that the creatures under your care are given their needful rest.

In the ten commandments, the command for sabbath rest doesn’t just apply to humans, but to their livestock as well.

6. Act so as to care for the earth’s creatures, especially those creatures in need.

Dominion does not mean domination but responsible care.

To till (‘abad) means to serve the earth for its own sake, and to keep (samar) means to protect the earth as one caringly guards something valuable. In Aaron’s benedictory blessing, in which God is called upon to bless and keep his people (Num. 6:22–26), we catch sight of what it means to be a keeper. We are to serve the earth for its own good and protect creation as God protects us.

It is not enough merely to refrain from doing harm; in certain cases we are morally required to do good.

7. Act so as to treat others, human or nonhuman, fairly.

It is not that animals are equal to humans, but that we have certain responsibilities toward them because of our position over them.

In the face of ecological apathy, ignorance, and fear, it takes courage to persevere.

Grace and Peace

December 3, 2007 Posted by geochristian | Environment, Quotes | 2 Comments