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?

Few people fail to be touched by a stunning photo of natural beauty or a gripping verbal description of natural events.  But that’s not enough for our souls.  To allow creation’s meaning to touch us deeply, we must experience it. Wild nature highlights our finitude, vulnerability, and our utter and complete dependence upon the creating and sustaining power of God. He becomes large; we become small.  In places where we more or less “run the show,” that order is reversed.  We are often creatures with swollen heads and shrunken hearts.

John Calvin called the natural world the “theater of God’s glory,” but it is even more than a theater; it’s a cathedral.  And awareness of the sacredness of God’s handiwork occurs only when we enter it with the right spirit.  The word “cathedral” comes from the Latin term for “chair”: cathedra.  Traditionally a cathedral is the sacred place where a church bishop has his chair of authority—his throne.  While human church leaders should have always kept us mindful of our stewardship role in the created order, too often the trappings, traditions, and troubles of men hinder our capacity to hear the “still, small voice” of God in our church buildings.

For that reason, it’s important for us to preserve and treasure the cathedral of the wild where we see that God, the ultimate authority, is clearly on the throne and where His wordless revelation can still be clearly seen and understood (Romans 1:20).  When truly attentive people enter the wild, they immediately recognize the signs that this is holy ground—a place where to them a flaming autumn maple is no less evidence of God’s miracle-working power and presence than the burning bush was to Moses.

Also important is for us to recognize that in the wilderness sanctuary we’re not alone in the impulse to worship.  God’s other creatures worship there as well.  As the prophets Isaiah and David remind us, all created things in their own nature respond to God—even trees, rivers, and mountains. (Isa. 55:12; Psa. 98:8)  This amazing truth from the Old Testament is echoed in the Revelation where all God’s creatures are seen as worshiping the One who died in order that the cosmos may be redeemed: “Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb [Jesus Christ], forever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13)

Let this wonderful hymn, penned by the psalmist some three thousand years ago, resound in your heart whenever you worship in creation’s cathedral:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven (Psalm 148:1-13).

 [Photos from Wikimedia Commons]

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]

When I started working as director of communication for Mission India in 1982, it was felt that for my writing I needed to experience India as soon as possible; so by mid-autumn that year, I found myself in that fascinating land for two weeks.  I know it’s a cliché to say the trip was “life-changing,” but that’s the best way to describe it.  It was an adventure from beginning to end, and since I was also the photographer/videographer, what I saw and experienced is vivid in my memory.

Being the cameraman, I sat in the front of the bus with the driver and got to ask him all sorts of questions: Q: “Why do taxis have lemons hanging  from their front bumpers and shoes hanging from rear bumpers?”  A: “Those are religious symbols for good luck.”  Q: “Why are there swastikas on vendor carts and booths?”  A: “It’s an old Sanskrit symbol asking the gods for financial success.”  So the questioning went—for the whole trip.  And our Sikh driver seemed to enjoy educating me on the religious significance of everything we saw.

When we got to the city of Agra, of Taj Mahal fame, and were approaching the famous structure, I saw that several hawking vendors had spray-painted their donkeys: crimson, purple, lime green, fuchsia—a whole palette of eye-catching neon colors.  So, of course, I had to ask him what the religious significance was of that. A: “It’s not religious; what a man loves he decorates.”

“What a man loves he decorates”!  It struck me then and strikes me now that such would be an awesome theme for a coffee-table book.  And from that time on during our trip, my eyes kept catching loved things made lovely: children in the churches we visited dressed in beautiful, frilly, white dresses, wives and mothers in stunning silk saris (some even with gold thread), trucks with gaudy designs and Christmas-like ornaments strung from front to back, multi-colored chalk designs artfully sifted into intricate patterns on newly swept, hard-packed dirt in front of primitive homes and temples, and the very icon of India: the breathtaking Taj Mahal—perhaps the world’s best-known, most lavishly decorated monument to love.

The bus driver’s comment explained a lot of things I saw in India—and lots of things I see in creation.  In the last post I commented on how the Bible tells us that the creation fresh from the hand of God was not only good, but also pleasing to the eye: it was beautiful.  In so many ways it remains beautiful.  Every time you see a beautiful butterfly, a bird with stunning plumage (or even a sparrow), a regal tree, a blazing sunrise, a spectacular mountain range, flaming flowers, towering clouds illuminated by raw electricity, or a newborn baby with “skin so soft,” remember also that what our Creator loves He decorates.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. All your works praise you, LORD; your faithful people extol you. They tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might (Psalm 145:9-11).

Some time ago one of my WOC posts ended up in the nether world of cyberspace where it got bounced around by some art lovers who rankled at my statement that “if I saw a Picasso in nature, I would know it was not from the hand of God.”  As George MacDonald emphasized, God’s creative hand, wherever it does its work, produces beauty.  My conclusion was considered by these aficionados to be that of an art ignoramus.  And I do have to confess that there is a lot I don’t know about modern art.   [See Picasso article and image source here]

Nonetheless, I subsequently ran across a 1914 essay by Russian Orthodox philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev on his first encounter with the work of Pablo Picasso.  Here is his first sentence:  “When one enters into the Picasso room in the gallery of S. I. Schukin, one is seized with a feeling of subtle terror.”  He had entered the Picasso room from the room featuring the idyllic and dreamy world of Gauguin.  Berdyaev goes on: “After this golden dream one is roused wide awake in the room of Picasso. Cold, gloomy, frightful. The delight of an embodied and sun-bright life has vanished. A wintry cosmic wind has torn away veil after veil; all the blossoms have faded, all the leaves, the skin of things is stripped away, all the coverings, all the flesh, manifest in forms of imperishable beauty, has fallen away.”      [Picasso postcard source]

Berdyaev’s revulsion at the work of Picasso is a lot deeper and classier than mine!  I more or less think most of it is ugly.  It is true, though, that Picasso was a talented craftsman with the brush and other art media.  Berdyaev confesses: “Picasso is a remarkable painter, profoundly agitating, but in him there is no attainment of beauty. He is all transitional—all crisis.”  Beauty is important to Berdyaev—so important that in another essay he said, “Beauty will save the world.”

I still have a lot more pondering to do to grasp the whole philosophical meaning of that statement, but the first thing that strikes me is the place of beauty in works of God.  In Genesis 2 we discover that the first thing said about the trees of the Garden in Eden is that they were “pleasing to the eye”—they were beautiful.  That statement comes after we learn that God’s creation is good.  Goodness is beautiful. Beauty is good.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9).

I think that’s why few things anger me more than seeing God’s creation defaced.  For instance, industrial forestry that leaves mere destruction in its wake raises both my ire and blood pressure.  I understand the importance of speed and efficiency to the making of profit, and I even understand that there may be some ecological benefits to clearcutting if done carefully.  But to leave a once majestic forest ripped and bleeding its soil is the epitome of ugliness.  If there is no provision to restore its health and beauty as quickly as possible, such “industry” becomes a beast reminiscent of Tolkein’s Mordor. [Image source].

Berdyaev felt that much of Picasso’s painting is a vision of deconstruction and destruction that offer no hope of the recovery of beauty: “Picasso is not the new creativity. He is the end of the old.”  As a Christian, Nicolai Berdyaev looked forward to the coming of Christ and the Kingdom and the restoration of a new beauty that would surpass even the old beauty reflected by the art of Leonardo DaVinci and other classical artists.  My assumption is that that understanding comes close to the meaning of “beauty will save the world.”

Followers of Christ would emulate the Creator in being beauty savers, beauty lovers, and beauty dreamers—taking our inspiration from the wonder of creation (which includes people) and looking forward to the coming of the Source of goodness and beauty when all once again becomes  “pleasing to the eye.”

["Mount Washington painting by John Frederick Kensett  "Information reproduced from the Web site White Mountain Art & Artists authored by John J. Henderson and Roger E. Belson.  Visit their Web site at http://whitemountainart.com/."  ]