Stumbling Towards Eden
Insanity, Hope, and Ancient Thinking
In my journey through American Christian culture and as a Christian myself, I’ve found talk of stewardship for God’s Creation largely absent. I have never heard a sermon about loving and stewarding God’s natural Creation. I’ve heard sermons about loving humanity, but they haven’t included animals, land, soil, air, microbes, or waterways. I’ve even encountered the attitude that dismisses environmental stewardship as incongruous with Biblical doctrine. I’ve heard some Christian communities proclaim that salvation is an escape from this earth – that God’s plan for the world is oblivion – and so, our responsibility to care for the earth doesn’t matter. Such a callous approach to caring for our home has always puzzled me. Don’t we all want to breathe unpolluted air? And swim in healthy rivers and lakes? And eat seafood from uncontaminated waters?
We Care for the Work of His Hands
If God made the world from love, in love, and through love, then should we not also love his Creation? In the book of Genesis, God repeatedly called His Creation good. The gospel of John states that God so loved the world. God loved Creation so much that He became flesh and physically dwelt among us because Christ reconciles all things, on heaven and on earth (see Colossians 1:19-20). All things means not just humanity but all the rest of Creation as well.
Jesus told those seeking wholeness to “Follow me.” To do so, He pointed to the greatest of all commandments: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love God is to love what God loves, which is the whole of his Creation! Since he made all of Creation in love, and we are made in the Creator’s image, we are to love all of Creation. In return, we gain hope, nourishment, enchantment, and a more beautiful home that flourishes with a fruitful multiplicity of life.
One reason our culture doesn’t emphasize stewardship is because, in this modern age, we live vastly separated from the natural world or from “the works of His Hands,” as the Psalmists would say. We drive cars, work in offices, and spend evenings on phones. If we “go out into nature,” it’s for a few recreational hours to recharge through a weekend hike. Nature is not a necessity incorporated into our daily lives. It’s a scenic backdrop.
This is very unnatural. Considering the whole of time, humans have lived at this vast level of separation for a mere moment. Past peoples didn’t endlessly scroll through screens; they scanned the endless heavens. Before the car, transportation was in or through Creation: on foot, accompanied by an animal, or by boat and paddle, often guided by the stars. For entertainment, people didn’t consume. They created. They would whittle, cross stitch, knit, or tell stories. Instead of socializing through screens, they would commune with local neighbors and friends, making homemade music and conversation to pass the long evenings. Food was never purchased; it was always grown, harvested, and prepared from scratch. Historically, most of humanity interacted with the soil in their daily toil, either as hunters, gatherers, or agrarians. Consequently, past peoples had a more intimate and needful relationship with the rain, sun, and livestock that fertilized the land. Today, we merely purchase the fruits of the land, often trucked great distances from far-away places. We live in such a way that we don’t need to interact with Creation and, therefore, can live without truly appreciating the satiating gifts that Yahweh is ever giving.
Our Separation from Creation
Since nearly all of our daily activities are separate from the life-giving source of God’s Creation,
I have come to believe that our experience of God’s love is drastically reduced.
Because we buy our food instead of gathering or growing it, we need not notice when the maple tree sprouts buds and then blossoms into edible flowers. And in not noticing this, we materially miss out on wonder and experiencing God’s sustaining providence. Above us is a canopy of tasty elderberry blossoms and medicinal oak leaves; beside us are huckleberries and rose hips; underneath our feet are wild carrot roots and onion bulbs. Ironically, we might even wonder if God cares about us as we obliviously walk through tangible evidence of God’s living love.
Our experiential understanding of God’s love is reduced because we’re indoors, consuming take-out food encased in disposable containers while watching Netflix after commuting in a car from an office job. This separation substantially hinders fostering a relationship with Creation. Caring for Creation is difficult if we don’t know (or notice) Creation. Eve ate the forbidden fruit and passed it on to Adam; the separation ensuing from that fateful moment has been passed on ever since, with the gap growing wider and wider. Indeed, we have inherited the sins of our forebearers. We’ve long forgotten the living luminosity of a God who generously gave the first two humans all they ever needed: light and dark, dry land and water, sun, moon and stars, plants, sea and land animals, and even enjoyment and rest, all within a palpitating Garden of Delight.
Instead of inhabiting our original home in that sublime Eden, we now live in the fluorescent glare of reductionist thinking. If something cannot be measured, we assume it either doesn’t exist or it isn’t important. Our modern way of knowing doesn’t extend much further than syllogistic logic. This was not so for the ancients. They walked not in logic but in reverent awe.
The literature of the ancients shows how they viewed Creation as a living, pulsating, and shape-shifting marvel. Streams clap, mountains roar, and stones cry out. A bush is afire with God. It was not logicians who recorded the Bible or sang the Psalms. It was the inspired ancients. It is the ancients whose stories are threaded through the scriptures, told through their lens. They were still connected to the meaning-filled messages of the living world.
This Is My Father’s World
The ancients did not view life through analyzing, categorizing, deducing, or accepting and rejecting hypotheses. They viewed Creation through the mythic lens of God’s glory.
Job, one of the ancients, and a man of the soil lived intimately with Creation. Because he knew the sacredness of the universe, he could hear the hidden songs of the world.
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.
(Job 12: 7-10)
Job understood that God nestled all life in His hands and breathed into it all. This way of knowing – not logic – enveloped Job’s awareness. And so, Job could experience non-human members of Creation teaching him.
I once heard an indigenous belief that something cannot fully be known unless it is known intellectually, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. When did a science teacher ever teach students to know photosynthesis spiritually? I was actually taught to pfft! and chah! at such thinking. I was taught the mechanical steps of photosynthesis and then required to fill out a worksheet to prove my “understanding.” When we begin to understand photosynthesis spiritually (i.e., through the lens of God’s glory), our emotions weave into our comprehension. A spark of wonder captivates us, and Creation shimmers. Tell a young child that for food, plants gobble up the sunlight. Then, talk about how we eat animals, who munched the grass that gobbled the sunlight. Tell how His hands sprinkle the rain tumbling upon the terrain to water the grass seeds. Tell them that in the unseen world of soil, plant life emerges from seeds to beautify and nourish the marvelous community of life He Created! And then, watch their spellbound awe. The words of the old hymn All nature sings and ‘round me rings the music of the spheres become experiential. (Or, you could go down the reductionist thinking route and teach a child the scientific steps of photosynthesis. Have them do a worksheet. I bet they’ll be so bored they’ll want to throw a rock at you).
To the ancients, the world permeated with supernatural meaning. Birds were revered because they were believed to carry wisdom and to have the ability to foretell the future (after all, they could soar to great heights and see extraordinary distances). The curious verse in Ecclesiastes (10:20) starts to make sense now: "Do not curse the king, even in your thoughts; do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may carry your voice and a bird of flight may tell the matter." It reminds me of a hilarious Coast Salish tale about how the fountain of water squirted by clams means they must be gossiping about you – so be careful what you say; a little birdie (or clam) may reveal your secrets!
The mythology from indigenous tribes and the ancient wisdom from the Bible scriptures seem to stem from a similar perception. A perspective where Creation is not mechanistic or reductionist but living, enchanting, and interconnected. This thinking raises awareness that our lives are dependent on Creation and, thus, humans must endeavor to preserve Creation for another seven generations, or “That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:3).
Through the lens of ancient thinking, the laws of the Old Testament begin to make sense. They are not random or superstitious but rather practical, sustainable, and essential. It would be unwise to eat shellfish in a desert environment where proper refrigeration is unavailable. It would also be foolish to breed animals of different types (see Leviticus 19:19), resulting in sterile creatures such as mules that cannot serve a regenerative future. These practical laws exist for reasons the ancients understood much better than we modern folk do. They comprehended the sensibility in such rules because the ancients intimately knew Creation. They had to in order to survive. Even the OT law about mixing fibers makes sense, considering what the ancients had to know about natural fibers in order to be clothed. I’m sure they needed a sturdy garment that would not quickly wear out. Garment making involved the extensive labor of growing, harvesting, processing, spinning, and weaving raiment out of the natural materials available to them. The OT laws are not only about living in harmony but also about living sustainably: “that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth” (Deuteronomy 11:21).
The ancients empirically knew their lives depended on the earth. Our lives still essentially depend on the earth; however, awareness of this dependence has atrophied. In our negligent ignorance, we desecrate Creation, destroying what feeds, clothes, and shelters us. To bite the hand of the earth that feeds us is insanity.
The Psalmist speaks truth: “He makes rivers into waste places, and springs of water into a dry land; He makes a fertile country into a salt waste, because of the sins of those who are living there” (Psalm 107:33-34). Formerly pristine rivers are now too contaminated for us to swim in or drink from. Potable, precious, and oh-so-rare freshwater is used to flush toilets and then turned into toxic sludge. Seafood that once fed the landless poor is now a costly delicacy. We compromise our food security by pouring chemicals on the fields that ultimately sterilize the soil. We support carbon-emitting shipping from Paraguay to North America by buying cherries in January. Such unnatural purchasing is not only unreasonable but unseasonable. Yet, this is the normalized insanity in which we are immersed.
Grasping the Hand that Feeds Us
In all this insanity, there is reason for hope. The answer is not money. Rather, the answer is authentically, really, and truly caring. The answer is love. This is good news for most of us will not be endowed with great financial sums, yet we are all endowed with great capacity to love.
This man gives me hope. He stewarded a bald, desertified land back to life because he cherished his home and wanted the land to flourish. The miraculous transformation came about from listening not to expensive environmental consulting firms but to the wisdom of the elders who still knew the songs of the land. No piece of technology beyond an excavator was required. He made God’s Creation more beautiful, healed, and alive – this is what it means “to glorify God.” The result of this man’s love is life fruitfully multiplied – and healing for all members of Creation.
The earth is being healed right now. Joel Salatin's family moved to a denuded farm in rural Virginia in the 1960s. Unsustainable farming practices abused the land so much that it lacked sufficient topsoil even to anchor fence posts. Through nurturing, human hands, the topsoil has regenerated by 12 inches in just 60 years! Without loving, human stewardship, Mother Nature would have taken 500 years to build a mere half-inch of topsoil. There is now an Eden in the Shenandoah Valley. Once-barren land now produces an abundance of provisions.
In 1913, people constructed the Elwha River Dam, in Washington state, to generate power. The river’s salmon numbers plummeted because the fish could no longer swim upstream. In 2011, concerned citizens were finally able to remove the dam. The following year, the count for redds – gravel nests made by female salmon to protect and incubate their eggs – was just 209 for the entire river. Two short years later, redd counts increased to a whopping 1,349! When humans live within the design of Creation, all life flourishes, including ours! Let us feast! There is enough delicious salmon for all!
It is when we become aware that earth is God’s shining glory that we begin to stumble our way back to wonder. Wonder is the whispering of the Holy Spirit, saying, “I made this for you. For your delight and enjoyment. For you to love, cherish, and steward because my love for you knows no bounds.” When we begin to truly know that we are treasured, that God has given us everything, and when we begin to see God’s tangible gifts… Yes, when we have comprehended all these things, we will feel our angst dissipate as a deep peace makes its home in our hearts. And hope cannot help but dwell in such a place. Hope tells us what is possible, and healing is possible. Rejoice, for we have encountered the blessing of participating in the earth’s redemption! Through our God-given love and desire to reclaim our Edenic roots, we will see miracles as the topsoil grows, the birds return, the waters flow, and the salmon spawn. Hallelujah!
Let us remember that this is a precious world that, by His standards, is a world worth dying for. May we love God by falling in love with what He so loves. May our prayers align with God’s good and gracious will: harmony, healing, joy, life abundant, and peace – the peculiar kind – the kind that passeth understanding.
Welcome to Divine Nature.
Divine Nature is intended to heal, inspire, and cultivate hope—thus, it is given freely.
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Beautifully written dear cousin and I too have struggled with what you wrote here for as long as I can remember: "I have never heard a sermon about loving and stewarding God’s natural Creation. I’ve heard sermons about loving humanity, but they haven’t included animals, land, soil, air, microbes, or waterways. I’ve even encountered the attitude that dismisses environmental stewardship as incongruous with Biblical doctrine." Thank you for speaking to this and giving those of us who love creation with our whole hearts a sense of hope that we are not alone.
I've just found you and deeply appreciate the words in this essay...the reminder that God breaths through all nature, that this world is still beautiful and our Father loves it. Thank you!