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Profaning creation
Q: The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a widening environmental, economic and political crisis. Is it also a moral crisis? How does religion influence our use and abuse of the natural world? Does religion help or harm the environment?
The natural world is sacred according to the biblical book of Genesis. Genesis helps us see that the world is meaningful and valuable, even in the face of threatened chaos. Genesis also points out to us that the relationship between human beings and nature is royally messed up. If ever there were a time when we needed to heed all the lessons of Genesis, this would be the time.
"When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath was hovering over the waters..." This astonishing translation of Genesis 1:1 is by the brilliant scholar Robert Alter. This rendering is Alter's attempt to correct what he calls the "heresy" of modern biblical translation, namely that newer translation is too literal in its rendering of the original text. It is in the poetry and in the sound of the words strung together that meaning is found, not made.
Faced with an unparalleled ecological and humanitarian disaster created by the failure of corporations to treat the creation and the creatures as if they are of sacred worth, we could do worse than re-examine Genesis. Alter has tried to expose deep meaning of the Hebrew, meaning normally hidden in the English text. One of the Hebrew words in Genesis 1:1 means "emptiness" or "futility" and in some contexts is associated with the trackless vacancy of the desert. The other Hebrew word means chaos, confusion or disarray. Alter thus renders this "welter and waste." For a desert people in a vacant landscape the chief question is the question of meaning--meaning as attached to this seemingly chaotic existence and unpredictable landscape. Looking around at the threatening and hostile desert, these early Hebrews chose nonetheless to see the world as God's creation, and good.
Six times in the early verses of Genesis God calls the creation good. The question for any human being about the fact that we exist in nature is not whether these "days" were literally 24 hours long, it is always, what does it MEAN? For these desert people in a harsh and unforgiving environment, it is a huge step to believe that the fact that we exist in nature is a good given by God.
The physical world and human existence within it is not always seen as good in ancient times. The physical world, as the Greeks were quick to point out, is the source of all human suffering--as soon as we are born we begin to decay and die. Humans, plants, animals all do so and often in ways that are astonishingly brutal. To live is to suffer, said the Stoics, and the best you can do is try to ignore it as much as you can. For the Gnostics, a Greco-Roman sect that influenced some forms of Christianity, this world is the work of a bad god, indeed the physical stuff of creation is evidence of the work of the bad god and the enlightened soul will try to journey back out of physical existence into a world of light and truth beyond the bad creation.
This physical world is the source of a human existential crisis--and a great deal of our ambivalence about the created order is channeled not into the care for the world, but a contempt or even fear of the natural order. In the face of the waterless, trackless wastes of the desert, therefore, it was somewhat staggering for the early Hebrews to affirm that God creates meaning out of meaninglessness, order out of chaos, and blessing out of what many think is a curse, that we live under the physical conditions of nature.
Now immediately the Genesis text goes on to offer an explanation of the fact that despite God's original intention for harmony in creation and harmony between humans and nature, things are really screwed up. The Garden of Eden represents that explanation. Again, the point is not that there were two people literally hanging around in a Garden wearing fig leaves, but that somehow we know that this relationship with the creation that we now experience is not the original intention of existence and things have gone very wrong in this relationship. The great Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, when asked if the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden was literally true, shook his head and said, "No, it's truer than that." It is a deep truth of existence in nature that we do have a contentious, even fractious relationship with the natural order. The good news is, of course, that the bible presents this as sinful and wrong--so at least we ought to know it's not God's intention that the soil is "cursed" and it will sprout "thorn and thistle" instead of just lovely fruit.
Human beings are made of earth--When "the LORD God fashioned the human, humus from the soil," and placed the human in Eden, God also "caused to sprout from the soil every tree lovely to look at". Gen. 2:7-8. The Hebrew etymological pun says it all, 'adam, human, comes from the soil, 'adamah. Despite the lyricism of the first verses of Genesis and the repetition of the divine attribution of good to the whole of the earth, however, Genesis reflects the human existential crisis in relationship to the whole created order and to the human itself. The consequence of the expulsion from Eden is enmity not only between the genders, but also between the human and the soil, between the human and plant and animal life. This is the case, though its cause is the rejection of God's intention.
We see the consequence of this alienation today in the fact that the earth is hurting, wounded, literally bleeding into the Gulf and this wound was caused by human carelessness, even contempt for the planet and for the risks to its well-being by such risky drilling. We hope this is not a mortal wound for the delicate ecosystems of the Gulf, and for the livelihoods of those who depend on the Gulf's viability, but it is a wound totally caused by human activity that has set in motion rapid and destructive environmental changes. There is no question, from a biblical point of view, that these human actions in deep-sea drilling without adequate safety measures are profoundly sinful and wrong, and the consequences are there for all to see--more alienation between human beings and the planet.
Unless we consciously work, with all our religious and secular sources combined, to try to overcome the alienation between humans and the planet, human beings will continue to try to commit "planetcide" through greed and stupidity. The choice for humanity, and for the planet that supports human life, is clear. Stop profaning the planet or it will no longer be able to sustain life.
By
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
|
June 1, 2010; 5:21 PM ET
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Posted by: areader | June 6, 2010 10:05 PM
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God is within every sister, brother and all Creation,
His ways are not your ways and Her thoughts are not your thoughts
Dominion never meant to rape and plunder, but to nurture, care and love
And if you have not love, you have nothing at all!
And on that final day we all will stand naked before The Creator
And we have been warned that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth
by those who were so sure they were in, because they are the ones left out.
WAKE UP and hear the wind begin to howl.
For every misunderstanding, every condemning thought, every negative vibration, every tear torn from a heart, every time one grabbed and wouldn't let go, and they only did it because they did not know:
The Divine is within all creation and within all women and men.
And every tiny kindness you have ever done, every gentle word spoken, every time you held your tongue, every positive thought, every smile freely given, every helping hand that opens, helps bring in the kingdom.
And the kingdom comes from above, and it comes from within.
Imagine a kingdom of sisterhood of all creatures and all men.
Eileen Fleming,Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Posted by: eileenflemingWAWABLOG | June 6, 2010 9:51 AM
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I'm not a Christian, but I do believe that this huge tragedy has a very important moral and spiritual effect on lots of people, whether they're aware of it or not.
For me it is almost heart breaking to see the carelessness and the cruelty of it all. Realistically, we need to act personally to use a lot less fossil fuels - that means our cars, air conditioners, airplane trips. Even a moderate saving is better than giving up.
Aum.
Posted by: jmsmusic | June 5, 2010 1:24 PM
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test
Posted by: mono1 | June 4, 2010 11:34 AM
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test
Posted by: mono1 | June 4, 2010 11:22 AM
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SusAN
I found your comments very interesting and thought provoking. You are right that the tragedy in the Gulf is a wound, hopefully not mortal. Some responders to your post have challenged your choice of descriptive words, and I might have chosen some others.
The point of your post, however, is right on target. We are dependents on this Earth, yet we take it for granted, we treat it badly, we are careless, and as our technical powers increase so does our ability to inflict serious, perhaps mortal wounds. All such behavior is seriously immoral.
Thank you for you views on Genesis. As one preacher correctly said, "You can't take the Bible literally, but you should take it seriously."
Don't be discouraged by your critics.
Posted by: cecil4 | June 4, 2010 8:20 AM
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"Why only ask a professor of Christian theology? Why not ask a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Wiccan?"
Starhawk, the token Pagan commentator, is probably busy in Louisiana cleaning oil off of wildlife. She was in New Orleans after Katrina, helping to bioremediate the contaminated soil. I would not be surprised to see her out there cleaning off sea turtles or pelicans.
Posted by: Athena4 | June 3, 2010 6:04 PM
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Why only ask a professor of Christian theology? Why not ask a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Wiccan?
But the bigger question is why ask anyone of "faith" to comment at all? At best, you'll get a poetic response, at worst, nonsense derived from centuries of deluded mumbo-jumbo.
Posted by: quistuipater | June 3, 2010 1:59 PM
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Susan,
You can take your bible quotes and shove them where the sun don't shine.
Posted by: kenk3 | June 2, 2010 4:15 PM
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The Earth is certainly sacred. Can one profane an inanimate thing though? What does it mean to profane a rock?
No, we must decide that the earth is a living spiritual entity before we can claim that someone is profaning it. I am afraid that represents a pantheism that is not biblical.
If moral value is finally only measured by salvation (v condemnation to an eternal hell) and salvation is certain through group membership, then morality is simply with us or against us, nothing else. If moral value has meaning beyond group membership then group identity is merely a signal of moral compliance, yet the identity makes the savior irrelevant for the identity must then be internal.
hariaum
Posted by: Navin1 | June 2, 2010 1:13 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
"The consequence of the expulsion from Eden is enmity not only between the genders, but also between the human and the soil, between the human and plant and animal life."
As the story goes, it was man that was expelled from the garden; not a disobedient nature wrested from an obedient man. The Garden was a gift from God and the enmity that ensued was due to man's hubris, not natures. It is that very hubris that manifests itself as man's inability to work in balance with nature and his willingness to 'manhandle' and destroy God's abundant and glorious garden.
I am VERY distressed by the wholesale and unmitigated pillage and damage of our earth garden. It is no less than appalling to witness this hubris and it is more rational to me that we might suffer enormous consequences of our carelessness.
I have heard my 'gospel-schooled' friends often bandy Genesis 1 and 2, 'that man shall have dominion over the earth' and ‘subdue it’ as a rationale for our desecration of earth. As if careless and wanton destruction were ordained by God of His divine creation. Such indifference and dissonance to the nature (character) of God can only end in our own destruction.