Page 5 - Presbyterian Connection

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SUMMER 2021
Connection
CARING FOR CREATION
Protecting God’s Creation: Where is the Church?
PRESBYTERIAN
5
By Brian Merrett, Montreal photographer and elder, the Church
of St. Andrew and St. Paul in Montreal and member of the PWS&D committee. In 1970, Brian designed and illustrated the geodesic EcoDome, a travelling information booth for STOP, Montreal’s Society to Overcome Pollution, ©2004.
In 1973, acting on the recommen- dation of the 98th annual General Assembly of the previous year in a move to address the then nascent awareness of environmental issues, the Board of Evangelism and Social Action of The Presbyterian Church in Canada prepared two papers. One was A Theology of Ecology, the other, A Policy Statement on Ecology. Gen- erally based on UN guidelines estab- lished at the Stockholm Convention of 1972 and updated over the next couple of decades, they are, in them- selves, good documents. But the question should be asked: Were the findings and principles disseminated to the country’s pulpits and Sunday Schools? If they had been, perhaps Canada would not have become the world leader in per-capita garbage production.i
Where does the environment fig- ure in the agenda of meaningful is- sues for the church today, given that it is challenged on numerous fronts? While the topics of dwindling attend- ance, homosexuality and same-sex marriages are important to contem- porary church life, in the bigger pic- ture, they might be secondary con- cerns when compared to the survival of human life on the planet. Could the environment have relevance in con- temporary worship? Could we find significance in the teachings of Jesus on another level?
Our environmental actions and responses seem to be at the whim of interest groups and big business. We seem to be caught in the midst of confusing arguments about what we could be doing to protect the environ- ment. We are manipulated by hear- say and emotion. An example: We are told that we shouldn’t eat certain
soy products because the rainforests were destroyed to make way for soy- bean plantations. Another voice says that the rainforests are new things, planted not that long ago as refor- estation projects.
If we have no idea what our way of life is doing to the Earth, if we think that we can continue to greedily take what we call resources from the land and return wastes in their stead, then we had better be forewarned that the Earth could reply to our negligence in the most overwhelming fashion. She could easily wipe us from her face and go about renewing herself the way she began—over eons of evolution. Some ecologists have all but given up on finding a solution to our behaviour; they say that we have passed the point of no return.
Consider these four statements.
• Environmental issues seem to be too huge, too overpowering, for the average person to be able
to comprehend and act upon.
• Personal addiction to greed, excess and individual self- importance seem to dominate the media, popular culture and the actions of big business and
governments.
• Family cohesiveness is reach-
ing a new low as North Ameri- can youth find their “values” on television, the Internet and in shopping malls, rather than from multiple generations at the dining-room table and in the community of Christ.
• Organized religion seems to be alienating more people than it is attracting, while more people seem to be searching for their spirituality.
These seemingly unrelated facts of North American life are real, pre- sent and very linked to each other. Wouldn’t it be a revelation to hope that we could bring a new together- ness to today’s troubled families as we learn about God’s plan for Earth and our place on it, all the while turn- ing our actions into positive steps to save the planet? By reaching young and questioning 21st-century minds with tangible guidance on issues that have immediate relevance, we are taking the first steps in introducing to our youth the rest of the teachings of Jesus.
In his book, The Machinery of Nature,ii Paul Ehrlich says, “I am convinced that such a quasi-religious movement, one concerned with the
need to change the values that now govern much of human activity, is essential to the persistence of our civilization.” The “such” refers to the Deep Ecology movement that was also born out of the 1972 Stockholm Convention. Its proponent, Arne Naess, sought to dispel the idealistic notion that by just fighting pollution and resource depletion (i.e., “shal- low ecology”), all our environmental problems would be overcome. Naess felt that, “Today’s human thought patterns and social organization are inadequate to deal with the popula- tion/resource/environment crisis.”
It’s true. What is needed is a movement that will teach all of Earth’s guests that we have been in- vited to the table to join in the bounty, but also that our duty is to return the table to the way it was before we sat down. This movement may already be defined in the teachings of the Bi- ble. Its teachings can be applied to all of creation and not simply to human- ity. It could be that no other source of information on Earth has such cred- ibility.
And it must be adapted to current conditions. This is not to say we must change our church to fit the times, but currently, Love Thy Neighbour extends to me planting genetically modified feed corn far enough from my fence line so as not to contami- nate the organic sweet corn growing in my neighbour’s fields.
Consider this:
In The Greening of Religion by Roderick Nashiii, the author quotes medieval historian Lynn White. “God planned all of this explicitly for man’s [sic] benefit and rule; no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s [sic] purposes... Christianity is the most anthropocen- tric religion the world has seen.” White states that Jews and Christians traditionally believed that the rest of creation existed solely for human benefit.
(White also suggests that Saint Francis of Assisi [1182–1226] be appointed “a patron saint for ecolo- gists.” White calls Saint Francis “the greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history” because of his forthright challenge to Christian an- thropocentrism.)
And this:
In Liberating Life: A Report to the World Council of Churchesiv under the heading A Theology for the Lib- eration of Life, it states, “It is now our
“Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away” (Hosea 4:3 NIV).
opportunity and our duty, by God’s grace, to be restored to peace and justice both in our relations to one another and in our relations with the rest of creation... Only a society or- dered to the regeneration of the earth will attain peace and justice.
“Within the message of Jesus we find a profound deepening of the importance of our treatment of one another and especially of the weak and oppressed. ‘Truly, I say to you as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40). Primarily this refers to our treatment of human be- ings but on the lips of Jesus, who speaks of God’s care for the grass of the field and the fallen sparrow, these too are included among ‘the least of these.’
“Without constant attention to the latest developments in the sciences, Christian theology will become irrel- evant to those who strive to preserve peace, justice, and the integrity of creation.”
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15).
We read in Genesis how God ex- horts humanity to rule over or have dominion over the Earth. Let us un- derstand that to mean, “have stew- ardship over,” just as a responsible steward does not squander the treas- ure that is in his or her control nei- ther should we squander the Earth. It bears considering that we ask ourselves at the end of each day not
only how we have served the Lord that day but how we have helped to safeguard and heal God’s creation.
“Lord, thy call we answer.
Take us in thy care.
Train us in thy garden
in thy work to share.”
(The Presbyterian Church in Canada,
hymn 370)
Human greed is destroying our
planet. In the 12 chapters of the Gos- pel of Luke Jesus gives us the Par- able of the Rich Fool who builds big- ger barns in which to hoard worldly treasure. Jesus warns us, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
The church must take a leadership position in environmental issues. It would be easier to go with the flow and deny the problem, but going with the flow is reserved for things that are dead. To be alive, to quote Ches- terton, is to fight upstream. To not fight the flow could deny not only the church but humanity itself a future.
FOOTNOTES
i. Statistics Canada – Canadians now
produce over 21 million tonnes of
waste per year.
ii. Paul Ehrlich, The Machinery of Nature
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986) iii. As quoted in Roger S. Gottlieb This Sa- cred Earth / Religion, Nature, Environ-
ment (London: Routledge, 1996.)
iv. 1991 General Assembly in Canberra whose theme was “Come, Holy Spirit,
Renew the Whole Creation”