The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:20-25).

Hope has been around for a long time: From the moment of mankind’s Fall and the consequent curse on the land.  When there is perfection, as in the original Garden, there is no need for hope.  As this passage asks: “Who hopes for what he already has?”  Hope implies that the circumstances of the present do not satisfy the yearning of the mind, heart, and soul.  Something vital is missing, but a word from God is there to give us hope that what’s missing will eventually be provided. When mankind was banished from the Garden of perfection, he was not banished without the promise of a rescuer—which we know from the proto-evangel, the “first gospel” in Genesis 3:15: “From now on [, serpent], you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (NLT).

Throughout every bleak judgment—Fall, Curse, Flood, Israel’s multiple captivities and scourges, Israel’s rejection of Messiah, and the coming judgments on all mankind—Scripture gives us hope of rescue, redemption, restoration, and peaceful rest (shalom) to come.  However, because the vast majority of these promises are made to the creature who sinned (man), many Bible scholars have had a hard time with Paul’s revelation here that the entire creation has hope of rescue.  The idea that even the non-human creation will be redeemed and restored is still not accepted by many evangelicals today.  Nonetheless, this was considered to be true by the early church fathers and then later by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley.

But belief in nature’s redemption more or less disappeared with the Industrial Revolution and the colonial conquests of the “New World,” movements which emphasized the human domination of nature and mankind’s “right” to use its “natural resources” any way he saw fit.  For generations, then, believer and non-believer, churched and unchurched, alike plugged their ears so as not to hear nature’s agony.  One modern theologian who has pulled off our “groan-cancelling” headphones is Jurgen Moltmann.  Moltmann sees in Paul’s treatise this reality:

The presence of God’s Word and Spirit in the church of Christ is the advance radiance and beginning of the presence of God’s Word and Spirit in the new creation of all things.  From its foundation and by its very nature, the church is cosmos-oriented.  It was a modern and a dangerous contraction when the church came to be narrowed down to the human world.  But if the church is cosmos-oriented, then the ecological crises of earthly creation is the church’s own crisis, for through this destruction of earth. . . the church is destroyed.

When the weaker creatures die, the whole community of creation suffers.  If the church sees itself as creation’s representative, then this suffering on the part of the weaker creatures will turn into its own conscious pain in public protest.  It is not just our human environment that is suffering; it is the creation which is designed and destined to be ‘God’s environment.’  Every intervention in creation that can never be made good again is sacrilege (The Source of Life, p. 118).

Could the BP oil rig explosion and consequent environmental disaster be just such a sacrilege?  Moltmann concludes with this:

Anyone who wants to talk about God’s activity in the world now, in the present, must have this purpose in mind: God preserves those he has created for their perfecting.  His preservation of creation in itself already prepares for that perfecting.  Every act that preserves creation from annihilation is an act of hope for its future (The Source of Life, p. 119).

May God help those who are working to contain the oil spill—doing their part to preserve “creation from annihilation.”  They are committing “an act of hope for its future.”  But just how many sacrilegious interventions in creation will it take for us to finally become attuned to its groaning?  If we are an integral part of creation’s hope, as this passage says we are, how are we showing it?  James Nash suggests an important first step: “The only appropriate response to God’s ecological judgments against ecological sins is, as usual, ecological repentance” (Loving Nature, p.124)