A Brief Response to "The Culpability of Christianity in the Destruction of the Natural World"

Here are some brief theological implications from Christian teaching that inform and guide this gentle cynic on a recovery path to becoming a faithful human steward of Creation.

My own search for theological insight emerged partly from Wendell Berry’s indictment (voiced by the conservation movement): “the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world and the uselessness of Christianity in any effort to correct that destruction.”

The following reflection focuses on three areas: 1.) a creaturely contemplation, 2.) a descending dominion, and 3.) a life of holiness.

A Creaturely Contemplation

For most of my adult life, I, along with many in the Christian tradition, have given little attention to how our modern view of nature and its resulting praxis affects the rest of creation, e.g., animals and the environment. Over time, my indifference has become my sin, a gaping void that thankfully is slowly being filled with human wholeness in every aspect of life through the embodiment of Jesus Christ. The beginning of this conversion has included, along with reading from various Christian perspectives, spending almost five years intimately connected to the outdoors and experiencing what Eugene Peterson, calls “the only adequate launching pad for exploring a spirituality of creation”—wonder.[2]

Most recently, I have been silenced again during the season of Epiphany, a celebration of the manifestation of God in the midst of the world of humankind. In the Eastern tradition, Epiphany is “the season of silent mystic contemplation.” It is an occasion for wonder. God is openly present within humanity; and is to be found in the material things of life; i.e., in the space between you and me when we deeply care for one another within the everyday stuff of life.[3]

Tradition instructs us that silence is a necessary discipline that helps open our eyes to the presence of God in the created world and order. McClendon reminds us that Christian prayer imagines the reality of God’s presence in the “created cosmos in which prayer occurs.” He cites the “Disciples’ Prayer” as a way to illustrate the ancient practice of grounding ourselves theologically in respect to a holy God who is deeply involved in the created world and order with a nurturing presence. Furthermore, the Disciples’ Prayer with its various petitions declares “the divine creative purpose” and looks to God’s sustaining presence “for created and creative wholeness in our earthly journey.”[4]

A Descending Dominion

One of the challenges many Christians have to sort out is how we think about ourselves as creatures in relation to our view of creation. For Berry, the prominent concern of this enquiry is ecological; and it is rooted in the recognition that God calls humans to care for the earth and its resources in responsible and just ways.[5] McClendon rightly calls for a view of creation that replaces the old, worn, and destructive vision of human dominion that is so often inclined toward the primacy of consumption which leads to corruption and destruction of natural resources.

To “have dominion” (a translation of Genesis 1:26) derives from the same root as “to descend.” This latter meaning helps to orient the human steward in its rightful place: a representative of God faithfully upholding divine principles of law and justice, and promoting peace and prosperity for the nature (ecology) put under their care.[6] It may well be that this command corresponds with the New Testament model of servant-leadership, which appears upside down in relation to the domineering or “ascending” management behaviors we experience and find so often in history. We could say that servant-leadership is to the church what proper stewardship is to ecology, or to our “economics” as defined by Berry (connecting religion with the way we live). Berry is right about the destruction of nature through our lording over it. “It is flinging God’s gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them.”[7]

To “descend” is to affirm our place in Creation, rising above the Platonic dichotomy that pulls us apart and in competition with the material gifts and blessings of God’s abundant creation while seeing ourselves as “members of the holy community of creation.”[8] On one hand, I am made in the image of God; on the other hand, like the animal, plants, and environment, “I face something that is like myself.”[9]

Moreover, to “descend” is to respond appropriately in deep-awe “rising from the immeasurable gap that separates Creator and creature.” Thus, our sense of “creatureliness” lays any conceived crown of dominion before the One who sits on the throne depicted in Revelation 4, as a rightful response to the “all embracing rule of God.”[10] Instead of acting as independent agents on a crusade to master a turbulent world, we find ourselves radically dependent on God, who “is one who contains all things, works richly in them, gives them their individual places within the whole, and thus bestows harmony on all things. The human creature likewise is at home in the creation, not a stranger and pilgrim in an alien world.”[11]

A Life of Holiness

Berry calls for a clear distinction between what the Bible instructs about Creation and the actual behavior of the instructed. Essentially, it is a call to holiness, a comprehensive and far-reaching “holiness of life.” He reminds us that “holiness” is not only possible in our Christian activities and behaviors practiced at church and the seminary, but in every day life at our places of labor, at home, our communities, and beyond.[12] To practice this holiness of life means making shifts in the way we live, subtle changes that are built on what Brueggemann calls “creation faith”; i.e., a “declaration of truth that makes a decisive difference in the public life of the world.”[13]

In the Northwest coastline, there is a place called “Salmon Nation.” It is not outlined by political boundaries, but by its coastline and by the rivers that reach deep into its lands. Salmon Nation’s geographical boundaries are simply defined as “anywhere Pacific salmon have ever run.” Salmon Nation is real, made up of a community of caretakers and citizens, a community that stretches across arbitrary boundaries and divides. They bring new meaning to the word cooperative, communitarian “with unusual alliances of tribes, fishermen, farmers, ranchers, loggers, and urban-dwellers working together to improve their neighborhoods and watersheds.” Salmon Nation is a gift. The prosperity of Salmon Nation is based on mutual trust and not special interests. It is an economy that nourishes the human spirit and conserves the natural resources.[14] It is an illustration, which begs our attention as we seek to live holy in an effort to correct the destruction of the natural world.

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[1] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 93-94.

[2] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2005) 52.

[3] Jay Rochelle, The Revolutionary Year: Recapturing the Meaning of the Christian Year (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), 26.

[4] James Wm. McClendon, Systematic Theology: Volume II, Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 155-156.

[5] McClendon, 156.

[6] Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary: Volume I, Genesis 1-15 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 33

[7] Berry, 98

[8] Ibid, 106.

[9] Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1970), 51.

[10] McClendon, 148.

[11] Ibid., 158; here quoting Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology.

[12] Berry, 100.

[13] Walter Brueggemann, “Creation” in Reverberation of Faith (Louisville: Westminster, 2002), 42.

[14] Salmon Nation official web site, http://www.salmonnation.com.