He's got the whole world in his hands...

Happy Earth Day everyone. I'm not really all that sure how I feel about observing an "Earth Day"-- either as a red letter day (too pagan?) or as a way of addressing environmental issues themselves (too superficial?). But I do think a lot, as a Christian, about environmental issues and the way our Faith might speak to them. For my final research project at Briercrest I undertook a ministry related study on the intersections between ecology and Christian faith. 112 pages later, I was quite convinced that the Gospel speaks a powerful word of hope and healing to this issue, if Christians could but hear it and respond.

In keeping with the tenor of the day, I offer here some of the more erudite moments from my project.

On Gospel and Ecology:
...the over-arching Christological themes of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension each address us with God’s fundamental claim on and affirmation of his creation. In these leitmotifs we hear strains of hope for the groanings of the creation: the Creator has indeed pitched his tent in the mire of its dust and clay (John 1:1-14); he has staked his reconciling claim on its most broken, man-forsaken sufferings (Col 1:20); he has comforted it with a fore-taste of its renewal (1 Cor 15:20ff); and he has given it an earnest pledge of consummation (Acts 1:8-11). There is no room at the stable for dualism—nor at the cross, nor in the empty-tomb, nor on the Mount of Olives—for to say that Jesus is truly “God-with-us” in any of these places is to say also that our matter fundamentally matters to God (1 Tim 4:1-6). Second, and further to this, we pause to hear again the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the good news about the Creator’s immanent reign through him over a newly-constituted humanity, about a reconciliation with God completed in his obedient life and atoning death, about the new-creation shalom and healing made possible through his poured-out Spirit—for in the rays of light refracted by the multi-faceted gem of the Apostolic kerygma, we find the motive, the impetus and the spiritual resources for a healed and healing relationship with the rest of the creation. To quote Francis Schaeffer: “[On] the basis of the work of Christ, Christianity… has in it the possibility of substantial healings now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall. … God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature—just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality—is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.”


On Ecology and the Kingdom Ethic:
‘Blessed are the meek,’ Jesus said, ‘for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5).” Resisting the tendency to over-spiritualize the earth-inheritance that Jesus promises his meek followers here, we listen instead for 5:5’s allusive reference to Psalm 37, with its promise that the hopeful, the meek and the righteous will inherit Israel’s promised land of covenant blessing. And in sympathetic harmony with these echoes, we hear the reverberating strains of Israel’s ancient prophetic tradition, which insisted that when Israel dwells in the land of her inheritance, the whole creation will flourish as the Creator intends (e.g. Lev 26:1-13; Amos 9:11-15, Joel 2:20-27, esp. Isaiah 41:17-20, 51:1-4, etc.). Thus the call of loving, neighbourly meekness that echoes throughout the Sermon on the Mount brings with it an implied promise of blessing on the land. And by our authentic, humble response to that call, as it is extended, perfected and made available to us in the life of Jesus Christ, we truly become future heirs of a healed earth, participating now with Christ in the Creator’s covenant promise to bless and renew it.

...it is here—in the concrete Kingdom ethic of neighborly shalom—that Christology speaks most practically to ecology. Indeed, this summons to neighbourliness both implies and requires a transformed environmental responsibility, for, as Stephen Rand points out—and this cannot be over-stressed—“Concern for the environment is inseparable from true and authentic love for our neighbours.” I cannot genuinely love my neighbors, local or global, without seriously considering the impact of my actions on the environment which supports their way of life: “We read of global warming, then turn up the thermostat and drive to the supermarket … Meanwhile, millions build their homes on land vulnerable to flooding, work in an atmosphere filled with chemical pollution, or stare at the sky searching for the sign of rain that will bring life back to their land and their families.” Here we observe, too, the cyclical relationship between poverty and the environmental crisis, where poverty is caused by environmental degradation, and environmental degradation is exacerbated by poverty. Thus, whatever else our response to Jesus’ call for mercy to the poor includes (cf. Matt 6:2-4; Luke 6:20=Matt 5:3), it must include an environmental ethic. In this regard we might recall the very Law that Jesus claims to have radically fulfilled: Deuteronomy 24:19-21 prohibits overtaxing and exploiting the land precisely because it is un-neighbourly to the poor, the oppressed and the alien. Likewise the Sermon on the Mount: we answer the call of 7:12 (in part) by being environmentally responsible, and in answering its call we will inevitably become environmentally responsible.

On Resurrection and Ecology:
The implications of the resurrection become clear as we trace the “groaning in travail” motif that haunts this text [Romans 8:18-30]. The creation travails (sustenazō), Paul tells us in v. 22, because its own redemption from decay is dependent on the full redemption of the human creature (the glory of the children of God, v. 21); and the human creature, having glimpsed its inheritance in the resurrected body of Jesus, and having received the living pledge of the Holy Spirit, travails (stenazō, v.23) in anticipation of its own bodily redemption; but where our endurance in travail fails, the Spirit itself travails unspeakably (stenagmois alalētois) on our behalf, longing in us, through us and with us (vv. 24-27) for our transformation into the likeness of the resurrected Son, “labouring” for the full restoration of the image of God (eikonos tou huiou autou v. 29) and thus for the full liberation of the decaying creation. And here—in the promise of a liberated creation that God makes us in the resurrected Christ—we discover the necessary spiritual resources for a genuine response to the groanings of the earth, for the Spirit that leads us and “groans” in us, groans not just for our own redemption, but for the redemption of the whole creation. To the extent that Romans 8:18-30 binds the ultimate redemption of creation to our own redemption in the resurrected Christ, our present (albeit limited) experience of that redemption must translate into hope and healing for the creation.