I’ve enjoyed outdoor hobbies for as long as I can remember, and apparently even longer. (My first camping trip was at a mere 3 weeks old.) Some of my earliest memories are of exploring the “woods” next to our home in Clarksville, Michigan, with my brothers. Many of those experiences are as clear in my mind now as the moment they happened, and the memories bring with them the same emotion that accompanied the original experience.

It’s strange, the types of responses that our experiences in the outdoors can elicit. I can’t think of a single emotion I haven’t experienced in the outdoors. I’ve felt awe and fear and everything between. Oddly, I have never gazed at a sunrise or a sunset (or a mountain or the plains); seen the power, skill, and beauty of a wild animal; or thought about the delicate balance we know exists in every ecosystem, and concluded, “There must be a God who created all this.” The analogies are old and well-worn: the watch and watchmaker, the painting and the painter. If something is (particularly something complex), there must be someone who made it. But like I said, I have never thought that about the world around me.

Before you quit reading and write me off as a scientific naturalist, let me clarify. Psalm 19 and Romans 1, among other passages, assert that creation provides evidence that God exists. I’m not saying that creation doesn’t prove a creator; I believe with all my heart and mind that it does. I am merely saying that, for me, the existence of a creator has never been concluded, deductively or inductively, from the evidence of creation. God’s existence and role as Creator has never been in doubt; for me, it’s a foregone conclusion. I don’t wake up every morning and wait for evidence that there is air. I don’t even take a test breath, I just breathe. Air’s presence is a foregone conclusion.

What creation does is show me, as Romans says, much of what God is like. I don’t expect or require creation to convince me that God is. It reveals Who He is and what He is like. Those times, when my knowledge of God deepens because of what He has made, are the times that elicit the proper response from me—worship.

Creation speaks of the Creator. Are you listening? When you are faced with the grandeur, power, and beauty of creation, does your vision linger there or do you follow the sign to the object? Are you nearsighted, focusing solely on the beauty in front of you instead of on the God behind the beauty? And when you do see Him, how do you respond?

Consider Psalm 104: After writing 32 verses celebrating the work of our Creator, the psalmist gives us his response:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord.  (Psalm 104:33-34).

 Post by J.R. Hudberg

It was in preparation for this post that I first saw the amazing parallel between Psalm 148:1-6, 11-13 and  Revelation 5:5:11-13.  Each passage offers hymns of praise to the Creator—the Psalm written almost a thousand years before the first coming of Messiah and the Revelation envisioning a celebration in heaven as Messiah (“the Lamb who was slain”) is honored before His coming back to earth to reign forever as Lord of the universe.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise Him in the heights above. Praise Him, all his angels, praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all you shining stars. Praise Him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He commanded and they were created. He set them in place for ever and ever; He gave a decree that will never pass away.

Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and maidens, old men and children.

Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens (Psalm 148:1-6, 11-13).

I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:11-13)

Each passage also has a simple two-part structure:  First the beings of heaven (who have always been intimate with the Creator/Savior) offer up their praise.  Then the creatures of earth—elements, animals, and people (who have often spurned intimacy with their Creator/Savior)—offer their praise.  Central to it all is the recognition that the Lord is above both heaven and earth.

But how do the cosmic elements and animals praise their Creator?  Theological tradition says they do it by carrying out their God-given functions within the creation.  That’s probably true; but is that all the truth?  In the Revelation passage we see more than mere utility in the non-human creation.  There we see content and some level of consciousness in nature.  By all appearances, all things created have within their different natures some capacity to respond to their Creator.  This was also alluded to by the apostle Paul: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For 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” (Romans 8:19-21).

There is expectation and hope in the non-human creation, expectation and hope tied directly to people—those who were made to be creation’s stewards, guardians, rulers, and keepers.  Forty years ago, Francis Schaeffer encouraged us to be involved in a “substantial healing” of all the rifts created by the Fall—including the rift between people and nature.  How have we been doing?

For those who are familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia and The Cosmic Trilogy, it does not come as a surprise to understand that Scripture in many ways hints at the reality behind these works of fiction so artfully crafted by C. S. Lewis (and more complexly by Tolkein): the evil and the good of human behavior are tied directly to the state and temporary fate of the creation.  Creation’s ultimate fate, however, awaits the coming again of Messiah, who will ensure that justice once again reigns on earth—justice not only for those people have given themselves faithfully to the cause of love, goodness, and stewardship through the power of the Holy Spirit and have accepted the atoning sacrifice of the “Lamb who was slain,” but justice for all His creatures who have suffered at the hand of those who have not been given to love, goodness, and faithful stewardship.

Take courage, His people.  Take courage, His suffering creatures.  As the excited hosts of heaven already know, justice and reconciliation is on the way!  (Colossians 1:20)

[You may want to read a PDF article on this website related to this devotional: The Lion, the Curse, and the Evangelical.]

I have a theory about the curse in Genesis.  Here’s the passage:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
To Adam [the Creator] said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Think it through with me as I try to squeeze a lot of theology, philosophy, and sociology into a short space. One of the most significant aspects of man’s fall into sin was our Creator’s curse. Because we know that God works out all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, and because we know He loves the creature made in His image, we can believe this curse had an ultimately beneficial purpose and was an act of tough love.

It is pretty obvious that while the curse made a great impact on the natural order, nature itself did not sin. Man is fallen, not nature. Nature is cursed, but it is cursed to discipline sinful man.  God sent him out of the Garden where the living was easy and life perpetual into the wider world which would now resist his efforts to wrest it to his own glory, selfishly hoard it, and destroy its fruitfulness. Sinful, self-centered man having perpetual life and easy access to all the fruit of the earth was a disaster in the making; so God did two other things to protect His creation from the evil of sinful man: He closed the Garden and prevented re-entry with His armed angelic host, and He took away our access to the tree of life: daily sustenance that would give mankind unending life (and which, praise God, we will once again have access to according to the last chapter of the Bible) .

Here’s my theory: God said we will make our living by hard labor being reminded of our sin by facing a natural world that would in many ways be hostile to us; and we said “No way.” So immediately we put our creative powers to work to make “labor-saving” and “time saving” devices. The rest is history, as they say.

We have saved so much labor by our cleverness that we’re now destroying the earth with it:  Creating chemicals that are a lethal influence in our environment; burning fossil fuels to run our powerful engines each doing the work of hundreds or thousands of people and fouling our air, fishing out our oceans, and wiping out our forests; creating huge machines that do the “gardening” for us and turning them over to irresponsible corporations motivated primarily by monetary profit, while we cocoon ourselves in our cities with purblind eyes that do not bother to see what is happening to our soil; making appliances that keep families out of the kitchen and keep us from working side by side with those we love to make our meals and wash our dishes. We leave these wonderful kitchens, where family life was once centered, and take our children to restaurant chains the purpose of which is to make money for stock holders and which waste millions of pounds of food and paper every day (not to mention the growing evidence that most of that food is not good food).

And what have we done with the labor and time saved? Where to find clues: Facebook, sports, entertainment, TV, video gaming, perpetual travel, shopping temples, and . . . .

I’m going to leave that there for now—just to keep your mental gears in motion. I’d love to have many readers of WOC take up this idea and start a good discussion on this post in the comments box. Do you think that we have become a fat and loveless culture in part because we have spurned the love of our Creator, who was wise enough to know that our avaricious nature needed the discipline of the curse that we have worked so hard to overturn?

While spending a few days thinking through the meaning of Nicolai Berdyaev’s declaration that “beauty will save the world,” I bought Joel Salatin’s new, guilt-inducing book Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World. I bought it in part because Joel was speaking at Calvin College’s January Series yesterday—a lecture I was pleased to have been able to attend.

Much of what Joel preaches has major implications about how we vote, how we live, and mostly how we eat. (He calls himself a “Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist farmer.”) This, of course, is not a forum for endorsing particular politicians, policies, or products; so we won’t go there. But what Joel teaches about “normal nature” is certainly apt for discussion here. His view, in a nutshell, is that in countless ways modern living, farming, manufacturing, doing business, and eating has gone a long way away from the way nature works—the way God made the earth and human bodies to function. His plea is for us to understand exactly how God made the natural world to function and live in accord with that understanding.  We need to know what is normal in God’s world and live by what is normal.

In my contemplating Joel’s words, an enigmatic statement made by Henry David Thoreau finally became clear for me: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” First, we need to recognize that by the word “world” he (and Berdyaev) means the natural world—the earth, not godless society. Second, we need to know the common primary definition of the word “wild”: “Occurring, growing, or living in a natural state; not domesticated, cultivated, or tamed.” This means the way God made the natural world to function on its own—normal.

When we live in accord with “wild” nature—nature as God created it—we help to maintain its integrity and its capacity to sustain us all. When we destroy that capacity by foolish farming, by over-consumption, and by nature-wasting and nature-twisting industrial and commercial activity, we are in a sense telling God that we know better. We are listening to the serpent. We are continuing to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are eating what will kill us. We become pro-death, not pro-life.

“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” We need to think long and hard about this statement as well, which, if you can believe it, is the motto of the state of Hawaii! Righteousness means right behavior toward both people and God’s good, living earth.  I suppose an appropriate summation of Joel Salatin’s message is an earnest, non-sarcastic “Get a life!”

KEY SCRIPTURE:
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).

[Joel Salatin image source]
[Hawaii motto image source]

Earth theology. That phrase likely makes many conservative Christians uncomfortable.  It shouldn’t.  Whose earth is it anyway?  Does it belong to the New Agers?  Does it belong to the secular humanists?  To the pagans?  To the pantheists?  No it does not.  “The earth is the Lord’s”!

You’ll find that I’m writing with a bit more emotion today. Here’s why: I’ve been thinking lately about how I came to be involved in the creation-care movement while working for Mission India (which was then Bibles for India) in the mid-80s.  I was inspired in a negative sense by Shirley MacLaine, who was making headlines in the early 80’s with her New Age, Hinduistic preaching, book-writing, and film-making.  She and her pantheistic friends were so influential at that time that even the Sierra Club and Audubon Society were beginning to preach the same Eastern philosophical understandings.

These big conservation organizations felt they had to convince their constituents to love the creation spiritually in order to save the earth—and if the social trend was toward New Age spiritually, then they had to get on the bandwagon.  Out of that apparent mentality, the Sierra Club published the book Well Body, Well Earth: the Sierra Club Environmental Health Sourcebook, which gave readers, among other things, advice on transcendental meditation and praying to Gaia, the “spirit of the earth.”  It was full of New Age propaganda. And I was angry about that. But thank goodness, the Sierra Club finally came to its senses, in part because some Christians in the creation-care community helped to convince them that all they needed to do was give us good science, and let each religious tradition decide for themselves how it applied to their beliefs.

Please don’t get me wrong: I was not angry with Shirley MacLaine and the New Agers.  I grieve for them.  I’ve prayed for Shirley and others like her that they might be introduced to the Savior who is also their Creator.  They don’t know Him, and they are deceived.  That should concern all Christians and lead us to compassion for them.

But it should do even more.  It should compel us to inquire why we have failed to preach the good news about creation’s coming redemption.  It should make us wonder why non-Christians care about and for the earth more than we do.  It should bother us that neo-pagans and earth worshipers want to be in community with each other, want to be more humane toward animals, want to understand the spiritual aspects of human existence, want to live far less materialistically, want to live more simple lives, want to plant gardens, want to experience the wild outdoors, want to celebrate the mystery in the creation, and want to see the beauty in nature and be inspired by it to express themselves creatively in art, crafts, music, and literature. [Gaia image source]

What if these people, who are made in the image of God just as much as you and I, are closer in practice to the Kingdom than we are?  And what if we began to live more like they do and thought more about the spiritual meaning of the earth—and at the same time determined to share with them the good news about creation redeemed by the Cross and Resurrection?  What if we showed them from the Scriptures that all nature will be refreshed, restored, reunited, and reconciled to the one true God?  Is it possible that our preaching such a “well-earth gospel” might, in the power of the Holy Spirit, create another Great Awakening?

I believe it is a possibility.  But we can’t just wish it.  We have to start believing again that God cares for His earth—and then start showing those who don’t know Him that we care for suffering nature, not only because our Master made it and holds it all together, but also because we love these nature lovers.  Are they not our neighbors?

[Jesus as Creator and Sustainer image source]
[Oiled pelican rescue photo source]