On Creation Care

I was invited to offer some comments in Chapel yesterday at Calvin College, and, with just a few edits, I'll post my remarks below.  Special thanks to Steven Bouma-Prediger, for his excellent resource: For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care, (Baker Academic, 2001/2010) from which I borrowed liberally, and also learned much.

Here is the text of my remarks:

Colossians 1:15-20                  
The Supremacy of the Son of God

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.         

“The Word of the Lord”

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes from prison in Rome.  His goal is to remind believers in Colosse that Jesus is supreme – the Creator and Redeemer, and Caretaker of the universe – Jesus is the center, the origin, the One in whom all things hold together, and through whom all things are being reconciled.  It isn’t exactly a letter about caring for creation, but let’s see how this idea that Jesus is at the center helps us understand our role in caring for God’s good creation.

The first thing you should all know is that I am not an expert on creation care.  When asked to kick this series off today, I seriously considered spending my entire fifteen minutes outlining for you the many ways that I could improve in my personal life in the area of creation care.  I own a car, a house, a dog even, and I eat meat and have used up more than my share of the world’s carbon and other resources.  Just like many of you.  I decided against this strategy, but I’m well aware that I can’t live up the standard set by one of my favorite characters from John Green’s book, The Fault in our Stars, Hazel Grace Lancaster.  When asked why she was a vegetarian, Hazel replied simply, “I want to minimize the number of deaths I’m responsible for.”  

 I do know some experts though.  On creation care, I have learned a lot from students over the past ten years while working and teaching here at Calvin.  The students who work with me in the Service-Learning Center, for example, always have valuable lessons to teach me from their own experiences, or from their courses, or from things they read.  Just yesterday I received an email link to a New York Times article from a recent alum, the article telling about some creative Indian engineers starting a company that provides power to dozens of small villages in rural India, using corn husks for fuel. 

  

 This happens to me all the time.  Once, on a trip with students to Birmingham, Alabama several years ago, while we were touring the Civil Rights Institute and learning all about the important period of civil rights activism during the 1950s and 60s, I remember asking myself and some student colleagues a difficult and important question.  I wondered, “How is my life today like the lives of those well-meaning white Christians during the early years of the civil rights movement in the South?”  What will be the issue that my grandchildren will look back on and ask me how I could have been a part of something so obviously wrong?  And unfortunately, there were many possible answers, but the one that stood out to me most dramatically had to do with my carbon footprint – the way I consume the world’s energy selfishly.  I’m still working out the implications of that realization.  I’ve also learned a great deal from my friend and colleague from the Biology faculty, Dave Warners, and from our entire Biology department.  This group of faculty, and many others, do a wonderful job educating us all on the importance of our roles as Earthkeepers. I learned from Dave for example, that the word “ecology” has at its root the idea of “home” – and that caring for one’s home is an excellent analogy for creation care.  We take care of the earth to the extent that we think of it like we think of our homes – as a place where we want things to be clean, safe, and hospitable to others.   In a short article I once wrote with Dave, we tried to connect the idea that we care for that which we love, and if we love God, we will love his cosmos – we wrote that “love involves setting aside self-interest for the sake of the beloved” – this love we have for God, for Jesus his Son, and for the Spirit, involves loving what they love, and scripture makes it very clear that God loves this cosmos, his created world.  I have also learned from my friends and colleagues Gail and Ken Heffner.  Not only does Gail direct huge grants to take care of the watershed surrounding our college, and Ken plan an incredible concert and film series every year, but together the two of them arranged to have their house in Eastown powered with solar panels on the roof.  They have literally put their money where their mouths are on this issue.  I’m grateful to colleagues and friends like these from whom I have learned to care more.

So what then?  If you love God, and God loves the world, how does that translate into creation care in your lives?  There are no obvious answers, but I should warn you that any attempt to be faithful in creation care will inevitably include some major challenges.  The society we inhabit is premised on a dependence on the resources the planet provides, but at a rate that doesn’t appear sustainable.  So how might we reduce our destructive impact on this world?  Especially in a dorm room where we can’t control the temperature, or in a cafeteria where food is easy to come by and that gets grown, shipped, prepared, and cleaned up with no effort on our part?  How do we begin to act justly for the creation?

In a wonderful quote attributed to Edmund Burke, we are reminded that “no one [has ever] made a greater mistake than the person who did nothing because he or she could not do everything.”

So let’s all start somewhere.

But before that, one other question, what about the people who say that creation care is a heresy, and a distraction from the real kingdom work of evangelism and missions?  This is a serious question, and one that is worth our time.  For today, I suggest that we try to avoid simplistic responses.  There is a complex conversation happening among Christians about our understanding of our responsibility, and the Bible can inform us, and God’s creation can also be a way of understanding God, and of discerning our place in the world.  So pay close attention to what God is saying to you, both through his written word, and his general revelation in creation.

Finding ways to make a difference in caring for creation is important.  Our relationship to God and to others is deepened when we care for what he cares for.  But your context makes a difference.  My suggestion for many of you is to pay close attention this Interim to the chapels, and to the different programs around campus that are part of the Kill-a-Watt program.  This series will provide lots of ways to learn about making a difference and demonstrating a care for creation.  There are also lots of opportunities to serve God both locally and around the country – I’m biased, of course, but I think if you come into the Service-Learning Center, we’ll be able to find plenty of opportunities for you to put your interest in creation care to work – whether it is working with the Plaster Creek Stewards, or signing up for a spring break trip to do trail maintenance or to learn about mountain top removal coal mining and its effect on local communities.  And of course, pay attention in your classes – caring for creation is an area of expertise for many of our faculty.

Another important question, it seems to me, has to do with “why attempting to make a difference matters even when it doesn’t seem to make any difference?”  Is the very act of trying important in a world so big and so wasteful as this one?  For lots of reasons, I say yes it is.  Our habits and practices shape who we are as people, and the living out of our faith is not necessarily always pragmatic or oriented around results.  

Eugene Peterson’s Message version of the Colossians passage reads like this: “Christ was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.  And when it comes to the church, he organizes it and holds it together, like a head does a body.  He was supreme in the beginning and – leading the resurrection parade – he is supreme in the end.”  I love that line about how Christ is leading the resurrection parade.  A favorite line from Wendell Berry encourages us to “Practice resurrection.”  Give some thought to what practicing resurrection might mean for you, for the world around you, and then get moving.  Christ leads that parade.

To close I want to give you a list of ten reasons to care for creation, borrowed from Steven Bouma-Prediger, in his book, For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care.  These reasons build on each other, but are not all of equal value.

First, self-interest – we all need clean air and water to live;  

Second, the earth is on loan to us from future generations – we owe it to our children and their children to provide an earth with clean air and water to survive;

Third, living simply is a gift and brings joy.  The old Shaker hymn tells it with the lines, “Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free, ‘tis a gift to come down, where you ought to be; and when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.”  To critics who argue that if we all lived simply our economy would collapse, Bouma-Prediger suggests that “Christians most of all ought to question whether consumeristic materialism is worthy of allegiance.”  And the true joy in simple living rests on the space opened up for more authentic human community to develop in our lives.

Fourth,  we should care for the earth because “various forms of oppression are of a piece.  If we care for humans who are treated unjustly, then we should also care for an exploited earth.”  The existence of environmental racism requires that we connect our passion for social justice with a passion for earth justice.

Fifth, human beings have certain responsibilities to living creatures.  In other words, animals have rights, too, and these rights imply a responsibility for humans.

Sixth, a creature’s value, to God, to the earth, or to humans, generates our obligation to it, as caretakers.  Many non-human parts of God’s creation are designed to give glory to God, and in some cases, it is a human responsibility to ensure that those things can do that for which they were made.  So, for example, when a plant or animal species becomes extinct,  and humans bear responsibility for not protecting that plant or animal’s habitat, we bear the responsibility for the loss in glory to God that that living thing generated.

Seventh, our ability to flourish as citizens of the same globe is interdependent.  As theologian Jurgen Moltmann suggests, “The creatures of the natural world are not ther for the sake of human beings. Human beings are there for the sake of the glory of God, which the whole community of creation extols.”  And a reminder that God is the center of the universe, and not humans, is good for us. 

Eighth, God made humans stewards and caretakers of the earth, and we should care for creation because God said we must.  Loving God and neighbor are the two greatest commandments, and both of these are fulfilled in responsible creation care.

Ninth, since God made us in his image, we should act like God as best we can.   And since it is clear from creation and from scripture that God loves and cares for non-human creation, then we should too.

Tenth, we care for the earth because of gratitude.  The gift of this world, its beauty and complexity, its provision for our needs, and the needs of others, its natural praise of God is so overwhelming that we cannot help but connect this grace to a sense of gratitude.  The grace of God evokes gratitude in our hearts, and this gratitude leads us to care for that source of our joy.

Bouma-Prediger sums up his list of why we should care for the earth with the following words, and they are my encouragement to you as we close:  “So why care for the earth?  For many reasons – many good reasons.  Because our own existence is imperiled.  Because we owe it to our children.  Because an earth-friendly way of life is more joyful.  Because various forms of oppression are of a piece.  Because certain nonhuman creatures are entitled to our care.  Because the earth is valuable to us for its own sake.  Because it is in the best interest of the entire earth community.  Because God says so.  Because we are God’s image-bearers.  Because grace begets gratitude, and gratitude care.  Because, in sum, care for the earth is integral to what it means to be a Christian – it is an important part of our piety, our spirituality, our collective way of being authentically Christian.  And care for the earth expresses the fullness and vastness of the God whom we love and serve.” 

Pay attention to the Bible, to God’s Spirit, and to the creation.  We are each designed to uniquely respond to the beauty and the needs of this world.  Be grateful, and let’s find ways to be faithful together.