Caring for creation
Care for Creation by Dr Josh Findlay
We’ve talked a lot about what is needed, at all different sorts of levels, for us to take creational care seriously, so I wanted to shift the focus today to thinking about how we think about creation.
Jack D. Forbes was an indigenous American historian, scholar and activist. In his book, Columbus and Other Cannibals, he writes: “I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than my so-called body. What is my real body?”
Every time I read those words, I’m reminded of Jesus saying to men that it would be better to cut off their arms and gouge out their eyes than mistreat women. Better to be separated from my hand than perpetuate harms that cannot create a community of shalom – of peace. Yet as much as the church claims to critique an individualistic culture, so rarely are we offered a genuinely counter vision. What I love about Jack Forbes’ words is the clear, honest reflection on what sustains us. So dependent are we on a wider creation that such honesty reveals the weaknesses of worldviews that overstate even the reality of the individual.
The word sustain means to “hold from below”. “Su” means below, and “stain” means hold. “Abstain” means to “hold from”. To concern ourselves with creation, means to learn what it is that sustains us; what holds us from below. To look at all that creates us.
In a just world, that’s beautiful. In an unjust world, for those who benefit from systems of oppression, it’s almost unbearable to look at. In the modern world, very little of our lives involves interacting with most of what creates us. Instead we are interacting with stories we tell ourselves about creational reality. And typically we prefer stories that do not remind us of the problems. Whether that is greenwashing advertising or packaging, or even our own religion and spiritualities. These can all help us to block out creational reality with a story that makes us feel more comfortable as a consumer. If I sit down at a plate of food and say, “Thank you God for giving this to me”, I am showing gratitude, that’s good. But I am also creating a new, simpler and more pleasant narrative than I would live in if I described the actual processes by which the food comes to my plate. These can commonly involve unsustainable agricultural practices, despicable treatment of animals, exploitation of human beings, plastic, non-recyclable packaging with harmful chemicals, and a large carbon footprint as its transported around the world. I bestow divine validation on my choices in the process, and affiliate God with the processes of exploitation that lie on the other side of my simple story. Is it any wonder that Christianity so often produces a god that is violent and erratic and every bit as oppressive as the systems we keep attributing to God.
It's easy to worship wealth and power, including in our imagery of Christ, exalted on a throne. We’ve all seen this weekend how easy it is to worship someone on a throne. It’s harder to worship Christ the homeless, Christ the exploited worker, Christ in creation, because even when we do, we are reminded of every way in which we don’t. But care for creation in the 21st Century requires nothing less than radical realism, vulnerable exposure and intimate integration.
Looking at the problems is how we solve them. Acknowledging the ways the story is not true, is how you engage with the brokenness that the story papers over.
If Christ is in creation as Alan suggests, then I am answerable to creation. Cast off any image of a judge’s courtroom, in which we give account to a power that crushes us. We who have any power are accountable to that which we destroy, not that which can destroy us. Answerable to the ecosystems, including people, that give us life, and will only stop if we unceasingly take the lives that give us life. Christ in creation says that a sister or brother in Christ is anyone who tends to the earth with me, who defends the earth with me, who repents of its desecration with me. “Whoever isn’t against us is with us”, whatever story they tell or language they use to express the value and sacredness they practically place on that which sustains life.
What does Creator God require of us, but to abstain from that which cannot be sustained? To hold from ourselves that which cannot be held from below. This is an ethic of creation and of gender, racial and class justice. In a world where the richest countries produce the greatest costs, but whose costs are experienced by the poorest, it difficult for me to see how an ethic for the global North could be premised on any other kind of consciousness. It’s hard to encapsulate how much hopeless legalism and pointless, harmful rules premised on logic-free dualisms need to be thrown off for the church to find its way to this kind of ethic. An ethic that cares for something and is answerable to something that matters. It is, at least, beautifully simple. An ethic that is clear about what it values and reorients its practices to serve what it loves. Underlying the injustice is a creational abundance to be enjoyed. But centuries of pro-colonial Christianity have formulated much of our Western Christian worldview and ethics as a giant screw you to a fast-depleting earth and to the people forced to toil on it.
Ellen Davis writes that in the Old Testament, “land degradation…is a sure sign that humans have turned away from God. Conversely, the flourishing of the land…marks a return to God. In short, the Old Testament represents the condition of the land as the single best index of human responsiveness to God”. Well, the results are in. We have been unresponsive to God. And have called all manner of unsustainable injustices God.
But guess what! When we actually talk about the bad news, we can talk about actual good news! Looking at the bleak reality of the world is hard. Meditating on the contradictions within ourselves is difficult. But honesty is ultimately healing. Truth sets us free. Humility is vulnerable but liberating. And doing whatever it takes to bring about the flourishing of the land will mark our return to God!
Last week, as we stood in Fletcher Moss park, we soaked in and described our surroundings – a flourishing wildlife. Alan described how the place in which we were standing had been a waste tip only a couple of decades ago. We were standing in a resurrected creation.
The weekend before last, I joined with about 60,000 other people over four days in London in protest against inaction on the climate crisis. So encouraging to see what others are doing. So inspiring. I can chat more when we’re together about everything that was going on. The movements for salvation are at work. They are being built through connection, community, solidarity, love, learning, struggle, service, sacrifice – all to bring forth, just maybe, resurrection.
