Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:18)

In my last post I quoted some respected voices from the past about the negative impact of our materialism on God’s good creation—and our lack of concern about those impacts.  I’d like to share some more—moving on from T. S. Eliot, who C. S. Lewis eventually came to appreciate, to Lewis himself and some of the Inklings: his cohorts in defense of the faith and wise guides in considering Christian behavior.

Lewis himself was a great lover of nature and animals, and the entire body of his writings developed in thousands of Christians a great respect for the physical world—God’s general revelation.  The Narnia series in particular had an obvious Edenic feel where animals and people interacted with each other in respect and worship of the lion Aslan, a type of Christ, whose death provided for the redemption of all creation (Romans 8:18ff).  His science fiction trilogy also had strong Edenic symbolism with its final volume, That Hideous Strength, depicting animals, people, and even the planets joining together in defeat of the cruel naturalistic, atheistic, technological “machine” that had taken over the educational establishment and sought to circumvent the government.  It is a striking picture of the “abolition of man” in which man’s power over nature eventually results in nature’s power over and eventual destruction of evil man (Romans 1:18ff).

Lewis’ fellow Inkling Dorothy Sayers wrote several essays touching on both materialism and the abuse of the material world.  In pleading the case for a return to an authentic Christianity not burning with the fever of consumption, she quoted T. S.  Eliot:  “A wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God, and the consequence is an inevitable doom.”  Sayers went on to warn us:

So long as the Church continues to teach the manhood of God and to celebrate the sacraments of [The Lord's Supper] and marriage, no living man should dare to say that matter and body are not sacred to her.  She must insist strongly that the whole material universe is an expression and incarnation of the creative energy of God, as a book or a picture is a material expression of the creative soul of the artist.  For that reason, all good and creative handling of the material universe is holy and beautiful, and all abuse of the material universe is a crucifixion of the body of Christ.  The whole question of the right use to be made of art, of the intellect, and of the material resources of the world is bound up in this.  Because of this, the exploitation of man or matter for commercial uses stands condemned, together with all debasement of the arts and perversions of the intellect.  If matter and the physical nature of man are evil, or if they are of no importance except as they serve an economic system, then there is nothing to restrain us from abusing them as we choose—nothing, except the absolute certainty that and such abuse will eventually come up against the unalterable law and issue in judgment and destruction.

One wonders if Dorothy Sayers was indicating (perhaps unaware) the prophecy of Revelation 11:18: The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great—and for destroying those who destroy the earth.

Sayers also she took on, with no euphemisms, an economic system based on greed and covetousness inflamed by modern advertising [This was during World War II]:

That system as we know it thrives upon waste and rubbish heaps.  At present the waste (that is, sheer gluttonous consumption) is being done for us on the field of war.  In peace, if we do not revise our ideas, we shall ourselves become its instruments.  The rubbish-heap will again be piled on our own doorsteps, on our own backs, in our own bellies.  Instead of the wasteful consumption of trucks and tanks, metal and explosives, we shall have back the wasteful consumption of [radios] and silk stockings, drugs and paper, cheap pottery and cosmetics—all the slop and swill that pour down the sewers over which the palace of Gluttony is built. . . .  It was left for the present age to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title which it could carry like a flag.  It occurred to somebody to call it “enterprise.”  From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has gone forward and never looked back.  It has become a swaggering, swashbuckling, piratical sin, going about with its hat cocked over its eye, and with pistols tucked into the tops of its jack-boots.  Its war-cries are “business efficiency,” “free competition,” ” get out or get under,” and “there’s always room at the top.”  It no longer [scrimps] and saves—it launches out into new enterprises; it gambles and speculates; it thinks in a big way; it takes risks.  It can no longer be troubled to deal in real wealth, and so remain attached to work and to the soil.

I have to confess that at times I feel a bit of anger toward my own forebears for their failure to listen to such voices and begin to change their ways, but the history we cannot deny: Instead of listening and acting, they perpetuated the same economic evils she saw when I was an infant over sixty years ago.  I wonder how angry my own children and grandchildren will be if we do not change our ways.

Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:18)

With new Bible-based books on caring for creation coming from Christian publishers virtually every month, one could easily conclude that creation care is a new fad for the church—and one that some folks would like to see be replaced quickly by something else.  It really makes us uncomfortable to keep hearing that we may need to change the way we live so that we become more “creation friendly” by “reducing our carbon footprint.”  Certainly the carbon fuel companies would like to see it go away!

“What does any of this have to do with Christianity and the church?” is a question on the lips of many church-goers.  “And why are we hearing about all this environmental impact stuff now?”  The truth is that there have been voices speaking out for creation care and against environmentally destructive materialism from the time of Jesus, who said that we cannot serve God and money because we will hold to one and despise the other (Matthew 6:23-25).
[Dollar flag photo source]

In modern times, however, say just the 20^th century, there have also been voices we probably heard but did not listen to.  Even the venerable 1917 Scofield Bible, the Bible of choice for Dispensationalists,  contained this note on Romans 8:22: “Even the animal and material creation, cursed for man’s sake, will be delivered by Christ.” I wonder what would have happened if Dispensationalists actually believed that and lived with its truth in mind.

And for those more amillennial in theology, there was this jeremiad against private property “rights” by Abraham Kuyper:

Does not a voice in your innermost self tell you that such a disposal of land on which bread for the hungry must be grown cannot, as a matter of principle, be good, and that the lumping together of land ownership with individualistic ownership must run counter to God’s ordinances?  In the Lord’s lawgiving for Israel you find a whole set of special regulations for the ownership of land. The fruitful field is given by God to all the people so that every tribe in Israel might dwell on it and live from it. Any agrarian regulation that does not reckon with this explicit ordinance ruins land and people. . . . Under God we have no right of rule except in the context of the organic association of mankind, and thus also in the context of the organic association of its possessions. . . .  An absolute community of goods is excluded everywhere in Scripture. However, Scripture excludes just as completely every illusion of a right to dispose of one’s property absolutely, as if one were God, without considering the needs of others.

While his modern pre-conversion poems made many dislike T. S. Eliot (C. S. Lewis for one), his post-conversion poems and some of his essays took dead aim on materialism and its many negative effects.  Consider these lines from his 1934 poem “Choruses from the Rock” [the Rock being Christ]:

O weariness of men who turn from God
To the grandeur of your minds and the glory of your action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,
Binding the earth and water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred,
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

Or these:

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?  Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” What penetrating questions those are for those of us who feel we’re being blown to bits and bytes by the “information explosion.”  Later in the poem he indicts our age with this pronoucement: “And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people:/Their only monument the asphalt road/And a thousand lost golf balls.’”

When you begin to remove the litter of just 20^th century history from the gems of admonition buried there, you find that there have been many articulate voices that the church could have paid heed to—even the progressive humanist president Woodrow Wilson spoke of the damage caused by free-market capitalism that had lost its moral foundation.  “Heartless” was his term for it:

Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.
(Woodrow Wilson, First Inaugural Address, 1913).

“The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.” Doesn’t that line sound chillingly like a voice from the grave in reference to the recent Wall Street and banking fiasco?

My purpose with this post, and perhaps the next two, is to point out that the idea of creation care and sensible, sustainable living is not a new fad.  It’s a call for returning to a responsibility that’s always been ours: stewardship of God’s good earth.  I hope that many readers of the material on this website will purchase and read some of the excellent new books being published on the theme of Christianity and creation care.  A good place to start is examining the lists provided by the Evangelical Environmental Network and Flourish.

God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.” So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease” (Genesis 8:15-22).

Fall is the spicy season. It officially arrived last week, but for weeks now I’ve sensed the coming of autumn—especially after rain. In the northern climes of the US, goldenrod, ragweed, wild asters, sweet everlasting, boneset, Joe-Pye weed, peppermint and spearmint all begin to release their evaporating essential oils to create an atmosphere that speaks of harvest and then rest. Chlorophyll is fading fast, turning what was cool green into warm reds, oranges, burgundies, tans, browns, and even whites. It’s probably this colorful brilliance plus the spiciness of fall exaggerated by rain or the heavy morning dew that makes it my favorite season.

But for other sensory and sentimental reasons, spring also becomes my favorite season when it comes, signaled first by snow make brown with the dust, dirt, and pollution carried by the air and by car and truck tires from oily and muddy roads.  In that brief ugly time that seems entirely too long, my nose begins to search for the special smell of soil just uncovered and ready to thrust up new life.  Spring smells earthy—until it brings forth the sweet blossoms and their floral aromas. These fragrances almost overwhelm the senses on a warm spring morning after a nighttime rain leaves the asphalt and cement covered with earthworms that stayed too long in their mating.

If I were to give a name to the aroma of summer, I would have to make an adjective out of the noun verdure—the odor of green. Can something have a sunny odor? That would fit too.

Then there is winter with its white odors: first the white frosty fringes on fallen leaves and dying vegetation. Then the total white of a covering snowy blanket. Fresh is the name I would give to the smell of winter. It’s the subtle odor you sense in the middle of a heavy, hushing snowfall.

But for odors, I think fall wins. Besides the ripened wild flora, there are the special farmland smells: harvest dust wafting above cascades of golden grain, corn, and soybeans pouring into storage bins, the sweet and sour odor of silage creeping from silo doors, and the fragrance of freshly cut apples or newly pressed cider. No wonder it was felt that Thanksgiving should be a fall holiday—the truly Christian “earth day” when we give praise to the Creator for His promise of seasons never-ending—with spring and fall both given names in Genesis that relate to the never-ending cycle of life on earth: “seedtime” and “harvest.”

Wherever you live on this globe, whet your senses—because right now it’s either spring or fall, seedtime or harvest. Celebrate it by spending time in God’s great outdoors. There are treats out there for the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the hand. The senses give awareness to the human soul which needs exercise as much as the body.

[Click on the photos to see them larger]

The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land (Leviticus 25:23-24).

Several years ago I thought long and hard about what would be the practical implications of every Christian land owner treated his or her land as truly belonging to our Creator.  Over the course of some twenty years the following list of proposed principles has undergone a number of revisions.  They are based on the biblical worldview and on core understandings about ecology and wise land use.  Curiously (or maybe not), when I have proposed these to Christian land holders and real estate agents, they have mostly been met with silence.

Ponder these when you get few moments and then share your reactions in the comments box.  I’d love to see a good discussion take place regarding them.

1. Being created in God’s image, I have a wonderful capacity to utilize the land for great benefit—for God’s glory, for my needs and those of my family, and for my neighbor in need. Yet I do not truly own the land; it belongs to God, and I am merely the land holder or steward of His property.

2. If I deliberately diminish or destroy the land’s capacity to fulfill God’s purposes as I have come to know them, there is a good possibility I am acting sinfully. One of those purposes is for the land and all that is on it to offer up praise to God. This is done in part by allowing the land to carry out its own work in maintaining the natural order—the God-created order that guarantees life and health to all the earth’s living creatures.

3. I must recognize that the land is a vital part of a vast and complex ecosystem that keeps all land healthy and productive. If I alter its function and nature without carefully considering its impact on the surrounding ecosystem, I am acting irresponsibly.

4. God expects me to use the land to meet not only the needs of my own family, but also the needs of its other inhabitants and of those who will be its stewards after me when I am gone.

5. I have a responsibility to care for and respect the living things that occupy the land. If I act without considering their needs and purposes, I am acting irresponsibly. Remaining ignorant of the ecological characteristics and importance of my land to excuse irresponsible behavior is not Christian.

6. I must not knowingly use the land in a manner that deliberately diminishes my neighbor’s landholdings and/or his livelihood.

7. As much as I can control the factors, I have no right to deliberately pollute or degrade the air that passes over the land or the water that passes through or under it.

8. If the previous tenants abused the land, I should consider doing all I can to restore it to its highest purpose for the glory of God.

9. I recognize that no use of the land is 100 percent sustainable, but understanding my responsibility to consider future generations and to avoid wastefulness, I must seek to keep the level of matter and energy loss on the land at a minimum.

10. While the idea of the rigidly ritualistic Sabbath seems to apply specifically to Israel in Old Testament times, there is a “Sabbath Principle” that goes back to the Genesis mandates regarding the need to cease work every seventh day—for my spiritual benefit and for the material benefit of the land. Land must not be pressed beyond its capacity to remain fruitful.

11. I must never let the land become a god to me. It is not the land I worship, but its Creator. My relationship with the land is brief; my relationship with the Creator is eternal.

If you’ve been a traveler along with me on this website for a while, you know that the thoughts of George MacDonald have long been a motivating factor in my seeking to live in accord with the biblical worldview and stay attentive to the Spirit.  In one of his novels, one of MacDonald’s more godly characters said this about the desire to own land: “The true possession of anything is to see and feel in it what God made it for, and the uplifting of the soul by that knowledge is the joy of true having.”

God did not make the land merely for human use and does not preserve it just for human use.  He takes joy in all His creatures and provides for them out of the same environment that gives us life and health.  As population and technology pressure on the land increases, we must become more caring and more creative in preserving the health of the land for all its vital creatures—including even the sparrow, which is watched and cared for by its loving Creator.

[If you follow this link, you can read a PDF version of a longer article I have written on these principles---plus the principles of land development.]

[You can click on the photos to see them in larger size.  I took these in Lancaster County, PA, a few years ago and used PhotoShop diffusion filters to give them a more artsy feel.]

God] alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted (Job 9:8-10).

The first time I remember seeing it, I could hardly believe my eyes—truly. It was on a visit to Yellowstone about 5 years after the great fires of 1988. The college group I accompanied was studying the ecology of the park and noting the mostly beneficial effects of the fires. As they went about their research, I stopped at a mountain stream to do some photography. Motion on the opposite bank caught my attention, and I focused in on a rather nondescript dark gray bird bobbing its tail wren-like on a rock that inclined into the torrent. I’m sure my mouth must have dropped open in disbelief as the bird simply walked down the rock into the water—and then went under the water, stayed there for what seemed an impossibly long time, and then bobbed up a few yards upstream.

I stayed as long as I could to delight in what I soon learned from the biology professor was the American dipper. Here indeed was one of those “wonders that cannot be fathomed.” One who used some 6000 words to muse on the American dipper was John Muir, who devoted an entire chapter to the bird in his book The Mountains of California. Here is how Muir characterized what a century ago was called the ouzel or water thrush (cinclus mexicanus) [Photo source]:

He is the mountain streams’ own darling, the hummingbird of blooming waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all mountain birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,—none so unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily, independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in sure accord. . . .

Such then is our little cinclus, beloved of everyone who is so fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the most precipitous torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the other; not fearing to follow them through their darkest gorges and coldest snow tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, echoing their divine music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives interpreting all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the utterances of torrents and storms, as only varied expressions of God’s eternal love.

I don’t think we really grasp the immensity of the cosmos and truly understand how rare life is within its vast reaches. If we did, I believe we’d all soon have the powers of observation that John Muir had. Life is a gift of God’s goodness and His love—a point that Muir made in nearly everything he wrote. How long has it been since you stopped to really observe and marvel at the common backyard creatures that you typically take for granted? Maybe you could take some time this week and emulate John Muir: grab a pen and notebook, go outdoors, and write out a word picture of one of God’s wonders that you hardly even give a second glance to. Then thank God for the gift of life—even life of the humblest sort.

[See a Nat Geo video of the "ouzel" here]

[Illustration source: whatbird.com]