Environmentalism Part 2: My Journey with Ishmael

This post has been a long time coming, and for some reason I still feel like it's half-baked. For space and time purposes I cut out large chunks that I doubt will see the light of day, unless I can use them next week or in the comments section. Ah, well. It still needs to be said.

When I was in first-year sociology at the college I was attending, we had to read a book. Well, we had to read several books. Most of them large and expensive. The largest and most expensive of these we usually bought with someone, to be shared in the spirit of friendship and eventually fought over come exam time. The smaller ones we snapped up right away, as they were typically less expensive (except in the case of Swinburne's Providence and the Problem of Evil, which despite it's 1/2 inch thickness weighed in at an impressive 45 bucks). If you did not locate these lighter readings within the first day of getting your syllabus you were unlikely to find them at all for several weeks.

So it was with no small amount of pride that I snatched the bookstore's final copy of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. I knew that I'd made a good choice in picking this one up for myself; for starters it was cheap, and in addition to it's student-friendly price it was - get this - a novel. A novel about environmentalism and humanity. You can imagine what I was thinking at the time. We were supposed to read a tree-hugger novel for a college class? Well, sign me up.

On the cover of said novel there was a quote, one of those little soundbites that books have on their covers from famous people who had read it before it went to paperback. I don't remember who wrote the comment, it's not important now. But the comment itself seemed arrogant to me, as it read, "I will forever divide the books I have read into two categories; the ones I read before Ishmael and those read after."

When I read that, I snorted. Really. And then I laughed at it. What kind of narcissistic author puts a quote like that on his book cover? I was in serious doubt of my ability to take this book seriously from now on. In typical college freshman style I decided to go through this book and tear it to shreds. I was confident in my ability to utterly destroy any arguments and insights this self-centered author claimed to have. It was going to be great.

I read it twice in three days.

If you've never read it, I'm not sure how to describe it to you. You simply have to read it for yourself. Through a narrative form of fiction - similar to McLaren's NKOC trilogy - several simple, naturally observable truths about the world were presented and discussed. That's it. And through the course of these discussions I was changed.

It was the mental and emotional equivalent of living in Banff your whole life and suddenly and for the first time noticing the mountains. Or perhaps more accurately being a fish and observing that there was, in fact, this great vast wetness called "water" all around you, and you've never quite realized it was there. Through the conversation in the book I became aware of the influence of aspects of our culture that I had never been aware of before. I realized that the buzzing in my ears was really a cacophony of voices, all saying messages that I've been absorbing all my life without actually hearing them. In Christian terms, it was like becoming conscious of the Devil's voice in your ear, the voice of the cultural and worldly powers that had been seducing you all your life.

I'm trying to say that this book changed me. Not that it taught me, not that it gave me new ideas to think on. I'm saying that when I put the book down I was a fundamentally different person than I was before. The quote on the front no longer seemed arrogant but inadequate. Do you understand? I was no longer who I was before I read Ishmael, rather I was someone new, and going back to the way I was would simply not be possible. I can't think of any other way to say it.

I won't tell you what all occurred in the weeks that followed. I literally didn't know what to do with myself. I got into useless arguments with people who hadn't read the book, or with people who had and didn't get it. I flew into a rage at the simplest things - at someone suggesting we go to McDonald's, for example, or for talking about foreign aid policy. It was a rough month. But enough, leave it alone. It's not important now.

When I'd gotten myself as low as I could have thought, I sat up, took a shower, and decided to get on with it. I wrote my book review, got an A, then tracked down my prof and dragged him into a long, drawn-out conversation about environmentalism, the Bible, Ishmael, humanity and Christianity's place in all of the above. At around the same time I also read Genesis 3:17 (as I mentioned in part 1) and more things fell into place for me. I'm very thankful for my professor, as without him I'm not sure what I would have done.

So. It doesn't do me much good to tell you what happened to me and not tell you why, I suppose. I want to bring up three items I learned from Ishmael and how they affected me. These three points are by no means exhaustive of what the author had to say. I'm looking at them from a Christian perspective, so that "informs" them somewhat. I'm just trying to explain what affected me so deeply.

1. The world was not made for man. It's that simple. Ask anyone these days about the earth and you'll hear it, "OUR oceans," "OUR environment," "OUR oil reserves," "OUR crops." Among almost every single culture alive today there is a pervasive understanding that the world in its entirety belongs to us, so we can do what we damn well please with it. Things like pollution and environmental destruction, well, that's just because the world isn't far enough under our control. If it was, we could control the weather, repair the atmosphere, and continue squeezing every last drop of resources the world has to offer.

Or, in the "Christian" perspective, pollution et al. is a result of sinfulness. Mankind is essentially screwed up, therefore it's to be expected that the world is falling to pieces. And it doesn't really matter, anyways, because it's going to be consumed by fire and a brand new planet will be given to the faithful, one that we can't screw up. Besides, the world really does belong to us - or at least was made specifically for us to rule. We are the culmination of creation.

But in Ishmael, Quinn suggests that the very reason the planet is as bad off as it is is because we are treating it like a servant to do our bidding, or - at our worst - an enemy to be subdued. Hence our language about "natural disasters," which any scientist can tell you plain and simple have been going on for millions of years and are merely the product of a young planet. We have seen the destruction we have wrought because of treating the planet like it belongs to us. It's not ours.

2. Therefore, if the world was not made for us, we were made for the world. Humankind is a part of the order of creation. As was pointed out in the comments section last time, we are highly regarded by God - "higher than the angels" or something to that effect - and I think that's true. But I don't think that means we exist outside of the natural order.

Look at the symbiotic model in nature - the delicate balance between predator, prey, and population. It is a common enough belief that a population never expands beyond its food supply's ability to sustain them. If they did, they would starve and die off. Yet look at humanity - the only organism on the planet that exists in such a state of overpopulation. And we will go on overpopulating because we place no limits on ourselves. We are producing food for a population many times our current size. And millions are starving. Yet our first solution is "produce more food" rather than population control. We are living outside of the order that every other creature on the planet has lived under since the beginning, and we're suffering for it.

3. If man was made for the world, than in order to survive man must live according to its rules. This does not take away the "stewardship" aspect to our God-given nature - and I'll get into that more next week - but it does mean that we cannot expand indefinitely or abuse our environment. I don't think too many people will disagree with that. But what if that means giving something up?

In the movie "Instinct" with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr, they deal with many of the ideas raised in Ishmael. At one point, Cuba's character asks something to the effect of, "Well, what do we have to do to save ourselves? Go back and live in the jungle? Give up the cities and everything else?" And Hopkins responds, "In order to save itself mankind must give up only one thing: dominion."

I think that it may be especially difficult for us Christians to deal with this last part. We have grown up with "Fill the earth and subdue it" in our ears, and I don't think we're likely to give that up easily. Again, I'll deal with Genesis next week. I think it's safe to say that if we lived according to the same laws as the lion and the bird and the wombat, the earth would look alot different. Would this be positive? Is it still possible?

I know this article falls drastically short of what Ishmael accomplished. Please take any shortcomings as mine and not Daniel Quinn's. I hope that in the comments section we can flesh this out a bit more. If you have anything to add, please share it.

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@&#*^%$! (Language Warning)

I know, I know, I said I'd get the follow-up to the environmentalism post out by today. But life has a habit of doing its own thing and expecting you to keep up. I've been very silent on most blog fronts this week as a combination of work, moving and computer troubles have kept me very busy. If I seem a little disjointed or out of it today, that's why. And I don't want to ruin or rush the follow-up post as it's very near and dear to my heart...

So. Instead, I give you this: A question on foul language and Emergent Christian blogs. It was called to my attention by an astute reader earlier this week that at emergent-no there was some issues taken with a particular commenter's use of the word "bitching" (as in, "Maybe you should stop bitching about the emerging church"). There was an immediate backlash against the choice of language, and apparently there was quite the heated discussion (is there any other kind over there?). Central to this discussion was the apparently widespread belief among the critics of emergent there that emergent blogs are full of foul language - just more examples of "moral degradation" and "worldliness" in the EC. This was interesting to me for a few reasons which I'll get into here. Needless to say, there is a language warning for the post ahead.

Still here? Good. Now, about "foul" language: I've got a bit of a potty mouth myself. My wife gives me a hard time about it - and with good reason, because I'm really a stickler for language among the youth in the drop-in I work at. For me, the issue is that it's inconsistent. I can hardly get after the kids for their words when I'm cussing like a sailor myself.

Of course, my language beliefs need some qualifiers. I don't always get on the teens' cases for what they say. If a kid is talking about his parents breaking up and says it makes him "feel like shit", I'm not going to make a stink about that. How inconsiderate would that be? But if the same kid is calling his friend an asshole, I don't stand for that. Maybe it's the spirit behind the words that makes it wrong.

Of course, I think that sometimes I've used that as an excuse to give into anger. Someone once challenged me when I was at Bible college because I wore a Poppy for Remembrance Day, saying that I was "supporting unchristian wars" and "advocating violence." So I told him to fuck off. I think that I was right in being upset - it's a Poppy for crying out loud, and my family sent plenty of young men off to war. I've had it drilled into me for years that Nov. 11th is a day where you give thanks for those who gave their lives in defense of freedom. And when you've got some specific names and faces to look at, it gets really personal. So it was for a good cause. But I gave into my anger and stooped to a lower level than I could have. Hey, I'm not without my foibles.

Sometimes language is artistic expression. Go to Neal Bailey's site (on my sidebar) and you'll see plenty of language in his articles. But engage with him personally and you'll find he's not cussing every other word. For him, it appears to be expression of emotion, art and frustration (especially in his "Chronicling the Fall" section) over the pitfalls and shortcomings of society. Although I'm sure he (like myself) uses those words in everyday speech as well, I don't think he or artist like him are necessarily doing something wrong when they write like that.

As far as the Bible goes, the book of James is pretty clear (in ch. 3) that the tongue must be "tamed," that it should be used for praise and not cursing. But that kind of cursing isn't the same as saying "fuck" is it? I'm pretty sure that what James was talking about was actual biblical cursing, like wishing someone ill or whatever. Or is this just splitting hairs?

We all know the commandment "thou shalt not take the name of the LORD in vain." I was always taught that this meant not saying"God damn" or "Jesus Christ" when you were upset. But an examination of the text show us that what it really means is swearing by God's name - as in taking an oath you never intend to keep. Although I'll admit there is still something that bothers me when a close friend of mine says, "Christ up a tree!" when he's upset. Perhaps this is more of a respect issue, with showing proper respect to God being the issue at hand. Does there even need to be a command for that?

Anyways, back to the emergent blogs. Is there alot of foul language in them? Someone tell me if that's true. I know that this post will offend some, but I have to admit I haven't seen any EC-er's blogs full of bad language. Am I totally missing something here? Jordon Cooper, Andrew Jones, Jamie from Voyageurs, Robby, I haven't seen a single expletive among the lot of them Where are they getting this apparent epidemic from?

That's all from me for today. If anyone who reads/comments at E-No cares to fill us in on where these foul emergent blogs are, that's be great. Because after running in these circles for most of a year I can't find anything like what they're complaining about - although I never have been able to before...

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Environmentalism: Do the Trees Hug Back?

Warning: This is a loooooong post.

Once, at the youth centre I run, there was a cockroach. Not inside - we're a bit too clean for that - but out on the pavement, wandering around, doing his/her little cockroach thing. I watched it for a minute, fascinated. Bugs usually fascinate me, except for spiders. Can't abide spiders.

Anyway, I watched it for a bit longer, then decided to strike up a chat about nature with some of our teens (as most drop-in workers will tell you, any conversation that isn't about cars, music or video games are always a treat). I then pointed it out to a nearby teen. "Hey look," I said. "A cockroach."

Someday, I'll have to apologize to that cockroach. Wherever he is.

Within seconds an impromptu war party was formed with a singular purpose: the systematic hunting down, torture, and destruction of said cockroach and any of its family that had the misfortune to be in the immediate area. The next 45 minutes were spent (by me) frantically trying to herd local wildlife away from the drop-in, while echoes of stomping feet (by the war party) echoed in the distance. A few minutes after Our Friend the cockroach had been sent to an untimely and decidely two-dimensional end, some of the other youth decided their newfound martial skills could be put to use against squirrels, birds, stray cats, etc. Needless to say, this was a time of high stress, for me as well as the unfortunate local fauna.

In the midst of all this, one of my volunteers - an older gentleman with a great sense of humour - jokingly called me a "druid," due to my efforts to protect what little nature surrounded us. Now, I'm not a druid - at least, not it the long whiskers and moonlit ritual sense, nor in the D&D "True Neutral" sense (props to anyone who understood that). And I'm not a druid in the contemporary sense, aligning myself with the pagan movement (which Wanderer will know much more about than I, I would assume). But despite that I still feel a great deal of care towards the Earth and her creatures.

I was really spoiled growing up. Not in the sense that I got anything I wanted, though. No, I was spoiled because my parents had a cabin at a lake near West Hawk in Ontario. It was a 2-hour drive from our house to the main dock, then a 15 minute boat ride to the cabin itself. And then... And then, you were surrounded by the Canadian Shield, with nothing but bush for miles. This might be a cause of stress to some, but to us it was Heaven.

I spent long days and weeks there during the summer. I hiked through the bush, I went swimming and exploring. I sat and read against an oak tree. I climbed the cliffs that were on either side of the lake and watched the sunset from above the trees. I walked past a stag - easily a 14-pointer, with a chest as broad as you've ever seen - as he stood on a rock shelf above me, watching me pass, and I felt strangely humbled and honoured in that moment. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have that place. It is a "thin" place, as my Celtic ancestors would call it; that is, the veil between myself and God seemed translucent, as though we were closer there than anywhere else.

I spent alot of time reading when I was there. Not just the sci-fi/fantasy novels that awkward teens like me often read, but books on biology, natural science, and several articles by David Suzuki, the Canadian environmentalist. I even read some work by the original Grey Owl, if you can believe that. That greatly shaped my understanding of the world, and when I later became a Christian I often regarded with perplexment the doctrine that the Earth was "fallen."

I simply did not understand. How did the Fall of Man - the effects of which were plain for anyone to see in human nature - suddenly make the whole world go bad? I had an older Christian man explain to me that before the Fall, no animal harmed another and everything ate plants. This I was quite skeptical about. Why did some animals have claws and sharp teeth, then? For especially troublesome plants? And why then would plants have built-in defenses, like thorns or poison, if they were meant to be eaten? Or did all of these features appear the moment the forbidden fruit was taken? Wicked raw deal if you were the antelope grazing peacefully next to the lion when his claws appeared. It simply didn't add up.

I said so to this gentleman, and he told me to look for the signs in nature. "The natural world is Chaos," he said. "Anyone with the Discovery Channel can tell you that. The Fall brought Chaos into God's world of Order."

This too I was skeptical of. Having spent my share of time learning about nature and biology, I knew that the world was not as chaotic as it may seem. What looks to us like disorder is actually an incredibly delicate balance, held together by a law so basic and irrefutable that any economist would recognize it instantly: supply and demand. When there is an abundance of food, whatever group that eats that food will grow until the food source is exhausted or cannot support them any longer. Then, the consumer will dwindle until the supply is rekindled. Again and again on millions of levels of the food chain this balance is played out and preserved.

Other aspects of nature that seem strange and chaotic are not so as well. The bloody chases and deaths that nature shows have been so fond of make it out to be a desperate struggle for survival, with death around every corner. But there is another law that governs Earth's creatures, and that law seems to say that creatures will only take what they need to survive. You won't see cheetahs slaughter a whole herd of antelopes, or the antelopes chase down and kill all the cheetahs. Sometimes after they've hunted the predators eat their prey quietly while the antelope herd stands just a little ways off, occasionally even with the eating cheetahs in their midst. And the animals are not at war with each other. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, they only kill to eat, or to keep from being eaten.

After telling this to my friend, he sat down and pulled out the Bible. Pointing out Genesis 3, he read me the story of the Fall. "So you see," he said, "God said that because of the Fall the natural world was cursed. God said it, that should settle it for us."

Well, it did for me for a long time. And I accepted a great many other teachings that naturally followed from this - that humankind was given the Earth to rule in God's stead, and we were sinful so it obviously wouldn't turn out ok. But still it was ours to control and abuse, because hey, Jesus is coming back soon and we'll be raptured away and not have to deal with the consequences. Right?

Not so much. I was sitting years later and chatting with a theologian friend of mine about the very same topic, and he pointed something out to me: the kind of language God uses to "give" the Earth to humanity is the same kind that a King would use when asking his nobles to look after the kingdom while he was away. Not saying, "Here you go, do what you want," but "Look after this for me, because it's mine and I'm making you my steward." That made a huge difference for me. We still had an obligation to treat the world well! But this didn't sit very well with me if we were looking after a chaotic, self-destructing planet that had no chance of recovery short of the end of the world. Did it still make Biblical sense that this world was a fallen place because of the actions of Adam and Eve?

I re-read Genesis 3. And stopped cold at verse 17: "... and cursed is the earth because of you." Something clicked when I read that again. That sounded different, somehow, than how it had been read to me before. It almost sounded like it was not a curse from God to the Earth, but a prophecy/warning to Adam. "cursed is the earth because of you." Now this is something I'm not entirely sure on, but is it possible that God was saying that because of Adam - because of us - the world was in for some serious hurt? That it would be us who brought a "curse"
upon it, through our actions and attempts to subjugate what we perceived as chaotic?

I know many people have quoted Romans 8: 19-22 in defense of a "Fallen Creation" theology: "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now." Is it possible that we are the ones who subject creation to "futility," not because of a curse from long ago but because of our sinfulness, manifested in pollution, waste, and overpopulation? If this is possible, what is our responsibility in terms of response? How does this affect our mission to the world? What are we as evangelicals/emergents/whatever called to do?

I intend to write a follow-up post next week based largely on the conversations that happen after this post, assuming any do happen. If you have any insights or comments, please share them.

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This isn't my real post...

Due to an insane work schedule and a throat infection I've been negligent in getting my "serious" post out this week. However - my goal is to have it finished by thursday. So. In the meantime, here's a question that's been baking my noodle.

I've been hearing all kinds of speculation about God lately. Everyone has their opinions, and I respect that. But almost everywhere - mostly in emergent circles, but also in other circles as well - I've been hearing one thing in particular - that God is "unknowable."This gives me a great deal of confusion.

Sure, I'd agree with the statement if it said, "God is mysterious and we don't understand his ways," or "Certainty about God is impossible, hence the need for faith." But God as unknowable - that just doesn't jive with the Bible.

I actually went to a friend of mine, a theology professor named Tim, and asked him about this phenomenon. He agreed with me that it wasn't a scriptural idea.

"If," he began, "Jesus is 'fully God' - that is, if the Character of God is revealed in him - and he is 'fully man' - if he was actually a human being during his life on earth and wasn't just God 'wearing a human suit' - then not only is he knowable to us, but intimately so. Because we can know each other as humans, be able to build relationships with each other - and, therefore, with Christ. And, through Christ, we come to know God."

That certainly made sense to me. But then where does this idea of God as unknowable come from?

Don't get me wrong; I think that Emergent is doing well to encourage people to accept some things as mystery, to allow that we don't have it all figured out. But I think that when we begin to classify God as distant, unknowable, we do a grave injustice to the Gospel - which, if I'm not mistaken, was about bridging the gap that sin caused betweeen us and God.

Any thoughts?

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