For the last two weeks I have been speaking at my Church on how Christians should understand our place in relationship to “nature” or “creation” from a renewed look at the biblical perspective on this issue. It has been an interesting and enjoyable process, especially during the discussion time afterwords. I have been positing that as Christians living in a highly anthropocentric (human centered) world, we must re-adopt a biblical conception of the inter-connectedness of the created order — an order in which humans, while certainly understood to have a special place (created in God’s image, commanded to “subdue the earth”), are not by virtue of that place, all that matters to God.
Throughout this series and some other reading, it has become evident to me the tension in modern Christian discourse over how we are to, on the one hand, appreciate the neccessity and privelage to be responsible for the health of the natural world, and on the other hand, to recognize the way in which the very term “nature” is loaded such that to speak of caring for the health of the natural world is really to some extent to speak without making any clear referece as to what we are really speaking about.
What I mean to say here is that in some sense, there is great uncertainty as to what actually consititues “nature” and whether or not what some people understand as “nature” is worth fighting to protect or fighting to “overcome”. For example, some ecologists or environmental activists seem at times to want to posit a conception of “nature” that is overly romantic and that does not deal adequately with the fact that, as humans, to some extent, we must do damage to nature if we are to construct a world for ourselves to live in. This may sound offensive to some ears, but I think it is fairly easy to see that this is the case.
When we build cities, we damage “nature” — nature here understood as wildlife, grasslands, lakes, and the list goes on. Now, surely there are less “nature-damaging” ways to build cities; this is not what is at issue. What is at issue is that no matter how we avoid or reduce the damage done, to some extent, we must “damage” or “uproot” the previous environment in which nature would otherwise have taken over. The idea of a comprehensive symbiosis is just simply far fetched. On the other hand, it is also completely wrongheaded, in my humble opinion, to take the view of some Christian conceptions of eschatology that say that God’s ultimate plan for the “creation” will be one of destruction, while the disembodied souls of human beings are raptured up to a blissful, heavenly dwelling.
What do you think? As human beings in an inter-dependant relationship with “nature” or “creation”, what is our role? How can we adequately speak of caring for the earth while also adequately dealing with the clear tension of the impossibility of total symbiosis? Furthermore, how can we be empowered to speak well about such issues when terms like “nature” or “creation” contain such ambiguities? Thoughts?
