Over the last few decades climate
scientists have been warning us with greater and greater levels of alarm about
the potential dangers of human created climate change. While the exact outcomes
of a warming world will always be a matter for debate it seems to be more and
more clear that whatever the eventual effects, worse-case or best-case, this is
a problem that we need to take seriously and to which we need to find
solutions.
In our modern world the realms of
science and religion have entered a quiet truce. Post-modern science has become
less sure of its own certainty, while mainstream Christianity has become less
strident in its truth claims. The Church has been pushed, or retreated, to the
margins of many areas of public dialogue. In the eyes of most in our society
Climate Science is principally seen as a scientific problem to be solved with
scientific and technological solutions; religious salvation is an individual
and private spiritual matter.
Such a worldview is very modern.
Ancient cultures did not think in such compartmentalised ways. For many of our
ancestors it was quite natural to believe that a bad harvest could be the
result of having displeased God, or that a medical illness could be the result
of a human conflict. Ancient people had a much more symbiotic view of different
elements at work in our world. We moderns have thrown out many of these ideas
as mere superstition, and perhaps rightly so in many cases, but we need to be
careful that in throwing out this old bath water we do not lose older wisdom
that might now be needed.
Is to understand Noah’s flood as
a punishment for human sin (Genesis 6:7) that much different from attributing
increasingly violent weather to our having burnt too much coal? Or is to
understand the drought during Ahab’s reign as a consequence of idolatry (1
Kings 16:31-17:7) so much different from accepting that human caused climate
change is causing the increased desertification of North Africa? Perhaps the
stories we read in our bible about climate chaos and human action contain
deeper truths than might be apparent from a simplistic reading. Many of our
biblical stories are parables or vignettes which were edited and refined by
generations of oral tradition before being committed to writing. The way an
ancient less-scientifically educated people made sense of the world is very
different from how we might, but that does not mean we should ignore their
experience.
In Genesis 2 the first human is
created by the combining of both the earth and the breath of God[1]
(Genesis 2:7). Thus humanity is the fruit of a sacred union between God and the
earth. We are dependent on both, called to be attentive our dual nature. We are
images of both God and the natural world. In genesis (Genesis 2:15) humanity is
asked to garden till the soil and to take care of the earth; these are words
which come from the realm of agriculture not politics. We are placed in a
relationship of inter-dependence, the earth relies on us and just as equally we
rely on the earth for our welfare.
It is significant that the
breaking down of humanities relationship with God involves an alienation from
the earth and expulsion from the garden, the snake and the soil are cursed by
God (Genesis 3:14,17-18). Perhaps in this ancient story we can read a warning
as to what happens if we commodify and functionalise the natural world, seeing
it as existing only that we might exploit it. We are called to be part of a
partnership, not to dominate and subjugate for our own short-term benefit.
As the biblical narrative
advances we are told stories of nature asserting itself against humanity.
Noah’s flood (Genesis 7-8), the famine predicted by Joseph (Genesis 41), the
ten plagues (Exodus 7-11), Ahab’s drought (1 Kings 17) and Jonah’s storm (Jonah
1) are all example of this narrative.
For the bible the salvation
offered by God is rarely a matter of individual redemption but of fullness of
life offered to all of creation, the restoration of the original Genesis 2
partnership between God, humanity and the natural world. This restoration
involves a three way process of healing, the healing of our relationships with
each other, with God and with nature.
So perhaps it is time to listen
more carefully to the words of Job, “Ask the animals, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and
they will teach you.” (Job 12:7-8). Isaiah 35 speaks of the wilderness and dry
land being glad, natural phenomena responding to divine deliverance. Ezekiel 36
paints a picture of renewal as abundant fields and fruit laden tree (36:29-30).
In the New Testament, Paul tells us that salvation is not just for humanity but
for all creation which waits with eager expectation for the coming of Christ (Romans
8:19-23); in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus (like Job) encourages us to take our example
from the birds of the air and the lilies in the field (Matthew 6:26-29).
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