When I was a young kid I used to lie in the soft, green grass and watch the leaves of the tall trees in our yard flutter in the gentle summer breeze. I’m not sure what it was that fascinated me so much about them, but I loved everything about my natural surroundings – the feel of the warm breeze, the aroma of the grass and flowers, the sound of the rustling leaves interrupted, now and then, by the soft buzzing of bumble bees, and the sight of tiny ants working so hard to do heaven knows what. I loved all of it, and, strangely, felt both part of it and yet also removed from it. Inwardly, I felt something stir within me – a combination of joy and appreciation for God’s goodness in making everything as it was. I still experience those same feelings when I take the time to be still, enjoy my surroundings and know that God is there.

  Somehow we adults get caught up in our tasks and responsibilities, though. Our natural surroundings and the world around us seem to fade – and God too – into the background of our own self-consciousness. Nature and God seem to become only a backdrop – a film set for the drama of our lives, and when that happens they also become objects of our own aspirations.

  It calls to mind that brief scene from the film comedy, "The Great Outdoors". As they sit on the porch of a cottage overlooking the lake and forest beyond, the character played by Dan Ackroyd turns to his brother-in-law, played by John Candy, and says, "What do you see?" He replies, "Trees." Ackroyd’s character responds, "No one could ever accuse you of having a grand vision. What I see is land to be developed into housing lots, hotels and possibly a biomedical waste site."

  We can relish nature and see ourselves as part of it – all part of God’s grand and well integrated scheme. Or we can see its resources merely as objects to be acquired, developed, profited from and consumed.

  Americans have become masters of the second approach – of what I’ll call opportunistic consciousness. That’s served us well over the decades since the industrial revolution. We didn’t get to be the richest country in the world from nothing. But times change, and the effects of our consumption have taken their toll on God’s good Earth. American Christians, all too often, have ignored any concern for God’s Creation. Many have actually cast aspersions on those who do care about it, labeling them New Agers, as if they were some kind of modern-day witches. And yet concern for Creation should be as much a priority for Christians as interpersonal conduct. It’s as much a part of our tradition as prayer. It’s just that Christianity in modern day America has blissfully allowed itself to follow our singularly economically based culture in an unbalanced way. It’s as if Christians have allowed themselves to compartmentalize spiritual life and moral conduct on the one hand and our treatment of God’s Creation and social justice on the other hand. Many seem to think that God began to create the universe – millions or even billions of years ago – merely as a backdrop for our own personal redemption and eternal life. It’s as if some of us actually think that God only wants us to prosper materially in this life and to enjoy Heaven too. I heard the author of the "Left Behind" series say, in an interview, "God didn’t make us for the Earth, but the Earth for humans." That’s awfully anthropocentric. I wonder what Bible he’s been reading.

  The Bible tells us, in Genesis 2:15f, "The Lord God took Man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and care for it." Our first purpose for living was and is to care for God’s Creation. We’re just stewards of what belongs to God – resident caretakers. Like the character in the third book in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – the steward – humans have come to think that what they were made to tend really belongs to them – to use for whatever pleases them. Like so many who-done-its, in which the butler is thought to have murdered the master – living in all the splendor of God’s Earth can cause us stewards to become envious and to want to make Creation only our own. That was the first – the original – sin, as I see it – not a sexual sin as many have been taught, but sin against Creation and the Creator, who made and owns it. The story of the Fall, taken literally, is a sin of misuse – a sin of failure to obey God’s naturally mandated boundaries. Adam and Eve consumed what God had commanded them not to consume, simply to satisfy their own appetites and aspirations. They wanted what belonged to God.

  While it’s been popular, of late, to emphasize only certain parts of the Torah – Leviticus and Deuteronomy – as always, the sexual stuff, there is much about how to care for nature in it that’s never even mentioned. That’s probably because paying attention to how to care for plants, animals, and the land is too threatening to economics – which is what really frightens people.

  Jesus honored God’s Creation. Many of His parables were taken from nature – to point out how God made things work and how to live accordingly in relation to God.

Furthermore Celtic Christianity emphasized the importance of seeing God in every component part of Creation, as St. Francis did. I believe that’s why Francis has found such modern popularity and why there’s been a resurgence of interest in Celtic Christianity. Other forms of Christianity have tended to go overboard in diminishing God’s presence in Creation and the sacredness of the natural environment for fear that it was too close to pagan nature religions. But that was and is an overreaction. God is in what He created, and all of what God created is interdependent. That’s the way God made things. To ignore it for short-term personal gain is both foolhardy and disrespects God.

  Creation belongs to God. It’s wonderful! God is in all of it. We can find Him when we enjoy it and contemplate it. We are, first and foremost, stewards of God’s Earth. Stewards are what we are, and stewardship is what we’re for. That’s one of the primary reasons that God made us. We’re not the center of the universe, but only part of it – an important part – but only part. Let’s enjoy and nurture the world into which God placed us. It pleases our Creator for us to do so.

Affectionately in Christ,
Phil +