Can we destroy creation? Hubris and self-destruction

We can't destroy creation. Alpha Centuri is going to be just fine, climate change or not. We can't even destroy the planet. It's survived meteors, tectonic upheavals and ice ages. It's a pretty durable lump of rock.

Nonetheless, I frequently see people claiming that it is arrogant to think that tiny little humans are having such a large impact of the functioning of planetary-scale systems as is implied by the mainstream science of climate change, ocean acidification, soil degradation, biodiversity loss and so on. Sometimes this objection has a dose of piety injected: God is in charge of the world; we can't damage it (at least, not more than superficially or locally).

But isn't it arrogant (and historically ignorant) to think that our capacity for destruction does not extend to wiping out entire ecosystems? We have done so on colossal scales in recorded history. Vast forests have disappeared in the face of the axe and bulldozer; seemingly endless prairies have all but disappeared under the plough. Haven't we grown to seven billion and rising, spreading into every continent and visibly altering huge tracts of the earth's surface? Why would we be surprised at anthropogenic climate change or ocean acidification or biodiversity decline when we consider our collective effects in a wide range of areas? Aren't our nuclear arsenals capable of obliterating the vast majority of life on earth at a moment's notice? Haven't we fundamentally altered the appearance, behaviour and distribution of species through millennia of domestication and exploration? Haven't we sent thousands of recorded species (and likely tens or hundreds of thousands of unrecorded species) extinct? Haven't we damned and/or diverted the majority of the world's great rivers, and even (almost) dried up what was previously the fourth largest lake in the world? Haven't we flung craft into orbit that can monitor many of these changes in astonishing detail?

If human civilisations (even ones who considered themselves Christian) have risen and fallen in the past, why would we assume that ours will be immortal? And if human actions have contributed to historical collapses, why would we rule out such influence today?

If we have done all this, then if we have also dug up and burned over 300 billion tonnes of fossil hydrocarbons, might not here, as in so many other places, our capacity for altering our surroundings be manifest? If we have changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans in measurable and statistically significant ways, might not these changes have far-reaching consequences and implications for life (human and otherwise) throughout the atmosphere and oceans? If we can measure the changes in radiation that occur as a result of these alterations, if we can measure shifts in the timing of flowerings, growing seasons, hibernations and migrations, observe massive and alarmingly rapid alterations to the frozen places of the planet, notice systematic and unprecedented shifts in humidity, precipitation, temperatures over land and sea (and in the waters) and rising sea levels - if we can observe these changes occurring and have an excellent theory that accounts for all the data and which has withstood every criticism levelled against it, seen off all competing explanations and gained the acceptance of every single relevant scientific body of national or international standing in the world, then what is to be gained by withholding judgement? And if we have good reason to be deeply concerned about the already manifest and likely future consequences of the observed, modelled and projected trends, if these consequences threaten the habitability of the planet and its ability to provide sufficient food for our societies and habitat for all our fellow creatures, if our neighbours are deeply vulnerable to these changes, if the most vulnerable are also those who have done least to contribute to the problem (the poor, future generations and other species), then might not Christian discipleship embrace humble acceptance of our predicament and an earnest search for responses that express repentance, care and prudence?

Furthermore, if many of the social and personal changes required are not simply consonant with, but already actively required by, Christian discipleship due to the rejection of idolatry, greed and consumerism, if the infrastructural changes are both affordable and viable, if those most vocally opposed to these changes have a history of engaging in less than honest advocacy and have a business practice that currently kills millions of people annually, then might we not have a strong case for prophetic witness in defence of the goodness of the created order, in pursuit of justice for the suffering, in the hope of wise care for our children's future?

Scale of the universe

There is a Hasidic saying that each of us should carry around two pieces of paper, one in each pocket. One piece of paper, to be read when feeling proud and puffed up says, "I am but dust and ashes". The other, to be read when feeling useless or ashamed, says: "For me the world was created."

Alternatively, one could regularly visit a website like this.

Augustine and Barth on humility

"I was not humble enough to conceive of the humble Jesus Christ as my God."

- Augustine, Confessions VII.18

This quote reminded me of this great Barth quote, and also of this one:

What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this [humility]. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble.

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 159.

We can become unwitting idolaters by thinking God is in our box, just another version of the best (or worst) in ourselves. Yet we can also worship a false god if we think God is so distant and different as to be entirely unknowable, or simply too important for the likes of us.
Twelve points for the Sydney location in the picture.

Merton on humility against despair

      Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.
      In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. But because our own resources inevitably fail us, we are all more or less subject to discouragement and to despair.
      Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.
      But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 108.

One command or two?

Loving God and neighbour

      When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
      “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
      He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

- Matt 22.34-40 (cf. Mark 12.28-34)

I used to think love was a zero-sum game. To love God more, I had to love other things less. To love any created thing too much was to threaten my first priority of loving God. And so all horizontal loves had to be kept partial, conditional, hedged by constant vigilence, lest I get too attached to a secondary good and so distracted from the highest good.

But Jesus' affirmation of the first and greatest commandment from Deuteronomy 6.5 will not allow such an understanding. God is not simply to be loved with more of my heart than anything else, but with all. There can be no love, no loyalty, no joy, no delight and affection for anything but God. This command is totalising. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether love can be commanded at all, this is a shock to human pride. No longer can I feel quietly confident of having more or less kept God number one, and kept other things back down at least as far as second in my affections. This is a command I cannot keep without a new heart, undivided and unalloyed.

This command makes Christianity an offense, for the God of which Jesus speaks is not any old deity according to how we might prefer to imagine a higher power. He is speaking of the one he calls 'Father'. The one his people identified as Yahweh, who brought them out of slavery in Egypt. It is this God that Jesus demands we love with all that we are: heart, soul, mind and strength. Not four different kinds of love, but a fourfold repetition of all of us.

But, and this is crucial, Jesus doesn't stop there. Incredibly, after the universe that is the first and greatest command, he says that there is a second. What room is left? What love is still available? What has not been claimed and owned for all time by the first commandment? This second commandment he says is 'like' the first. Like in what way? "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Like the first, it is taken from Israel's Law (Torah), this time from Leviticus 19.18. Like the first, it is demanding and difficult: how can I be as concerned for the needs of one whom I don't always see, whose thoughts and needs I often don't know? But I'm not sure that this is how the second command is like the first.

I wonder whether it is like the first because it is a translation of it, a paraphrase, an explanation, a gloss? I love God not in competition with loving our neighbour, but precisely by loving my neighbour. In 1 John 4.20 we read Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The visible manifestation of our love of an invisible God is to love what we can see. Wholeheartedly. The one love embraces both objects simultaneously. Love is not a zero sum game. The commands do not collapse into one, but they are mutually interpreting. I am to love my neighbour more in order to grow in love for God. And the converse is also true: unless I am also loving this God, then I am not really loving my neighbour.
Ten points for the country in which the original artwork is located.
Some readers may have been confused by the final paragraph of my previous post Thanks. It was missing a link to Ben Myers, which is now fixed.

Volf on echoing God's forgiveness

      For any single wrongdoing between two people to be forgiven rightly, all wrongdoings between them would have to come to light, and all forgiven. But that's clearly impossible in the here and now.
      All our forgiving is inescapably incomplete. That's why it's so crucial to see our forgiving not simply as our own act, but as participating in God's forgiving. Our forgiving is faulty; God's is faultless. Our forgiving is provisional; God's is final. We forgive tenuously and tentatively; God forgives unhesitatingly and definitively. As we forgive, we always wrong the offender by inadequate judgment and pride; God forgives with justice and genuine love. The only way we dare forgive is by making our forgiving transparent to God's and always open to revision. After all, our forgiveness is only possible as an echo of God's.

-Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, 219-220.

I mentioned and highly recommended this book earlier. One of the real highlights is the careful and insightful way Volf explores the similarities and differences between how God gives and forgives, and how we do so. We are to imitate God, but we are not God.

      We should forgive as God forgives, but we can't forgive as God forgives! Earlier, in discussing giving, I suggested that the adverb "as" in the phrase "as God gives" doesn't designate identity but similarity. Because we are human, we cannot give exactly as God does. But because we are created to be like the God who gives, we should give similarly to how God gives. The same applies to forgiveness. We cannot and should not forgive exactly as God does. But we were created to be like the God who forgives, we should forgive similarly to how God forgives. We don't replicate what God does. We imitate it in our way, mindful that, as the great church father Augustine said, the dissimilarity between us and God is greater than the similarity.
      Important as it is, however, imitation is not the primary way in which we relate to God. We don't just watch and learn from God, as a toddler watches and learns from his mother. A toddler and his mother are two separate people, acting independently of each other. They have two distinct bodies that occupy different spaces, and they have two intellects and wills operating independently from each other. But as we have seen throughout this book, we are not independent of God in that way. God is not absent from the space we inhabit, and our intellects and wills are carried on the wings of God's presence and activity. When we give, it is God's gifts that we pass on and it is God who gives through us. By giving, we are instruments of God's giving. The same is true of forgiveness.

-Volf, Free of Charge, 164-65.

As I said before: highly recommended and worth pondering (and giving away!). An excellent example of mixing theological rigour with stylistic accessibility.
I received no free publisher's copy for these comments. I just liked the book.

Free of Charge

Highly recommended
What is a gift? What does it mean to be a giver? How can giving be more than a business transaction? How ought we to forgive? Does repentence need to precede forgiveness? How can we forgive? Is it possible to be a little bit like God in our giving and forgiving?

Crotian theologian Miroslav Volf (author of the highly stimulating Exclusion and Embrace) wrote a popular level book for Lent 2006 called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Jessica and I have been reading it slowly over the last couple of weeks and have really appeciated the straightforward ways he lays out the connections and distinctions between giving and forgiving with both theological depth and a light and accessible touch. These two basic modes of interpersonal interaction are at the heart of what it is to be Christian because they are very much on God's heart. Whether or not you're a believer, this book will gently stretch you and invite you into a way of life and of the heart that gets beyond the destructiveness of revenge and taking, even beyond mere justice and earning, all the way into giving and forgiving.

Revenge multiples evil. Retributive justice contains evil - and threatens the world with destruction. Forgiveness overcomes evil with good. Forgiveness mirrors the generosity of God whose ultimate goal is neither to satisfy injured pride nor to justly apportion reward and punishment, but to free sinful humanity from evil and thereby reestablish communion with us. This is the gospel in its stark simplicity - as radically countercultural and at the same time as beautifully human as anything one can imagine.

- Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, 161. More on this book.

Heaven: not the end of the world VI

Citizens of heaven
This series has been investigating the common assumption that at the heart of Christian hope is a future spent in heaven with God, whether this is immediately upon death or is the longer term destination of the faithful. For many people, belief in a heavenly destination is found in Philippians 3.20-21:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

A common way of reading the phrase 'citizens of heaven' is that Christians are in exile from our homeland, waiting to go home. I will deal with the theme of exile and being aliens in a future post, but for the moment let's take a closer look at these verses.

What is the logic of Paul's little narrative found in these two verses? The idea of being a citizen of Rome would have been very familiar to his readers in Philippi, which was a town settled in order to house veterans from the Roman army, heroes of the empire, who have served for twenty-five years and were then rewarded with land and houses. However, rather than returning to Rome (or going there for the first time - many legionaries were from conquered lands, and military service was a way of long-term social climbing), the empire would simultaneously reward its servants and avoid congestion in the already over-crowded captial by sending its citizens to specially designated colonial outposts, such as Philippi. These were cities with a special status, since their citizens were citizens of Rome and so enjoyed all the benefits that brought. Not only was there not room for more population growth in Rome, but this policy had the positive effect of expanding the empire through having loyal citizens scattered throughout its length and breadth.

The outcome of being citizens of Rome was not ultimately to return there at the end of one's days. Instead, on the one hand, citizens were to be part of the grand project of civilisating (so it was thought) the world under the benefits of Roman rule ("What did the Romans ever do for us?..."). On the other hand, if the city were under threat, their special status guaranteed a swift response from Rome in protection of its citizens. Philippians therefore could have proudly boasted that they were citizens of Rome and it was from there they expected a saviour, Caesar the Lord, if trouble ever appeared.

Paul's message takes this Philippian pride in Roman citizenship and subverts it with a new citizenship, a new source of hope. Again, this is not the hope of returning (or going) to heaven in the end, but the confidence that comes from knowing that a mighty Lord will arrive to bring vindication and final security to his subjects. We are citizens of heaven, an outpost of heaven's own colonial project - not the expansion of an aggressive empire of exploitation, but the liberation of an earth for too long held by enemy occupying forces of sin and death. Just as Philippi was meant to bring a little of Rome to Greece, the church is to bring a little of the life of God, a heavenly life, into our local area. We are citizens of heaven, and it is from there that we await a Saviour.

Indeed, to follow this passage to its end, the final goal is not going to heaven, but the consummation of heaven's rule on earth ("Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."), where the last enemy, death, is overthrown in resurrection life.

Resurrection, not going to heaven, is the Christian hope. The return of Christ is not to take us off somewhere else, but to make his home here, and where he is at home, so are we. It is to this we will turn next.
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI. Ten points for the town in this pic.
PS Ancient historians, please correct any details re Roman citizenship.

Blogging generously

Ever noticed how when bloggers comment on a blog, we make sure we slip in a reference to something on our page, but without explaining it? I guess the goal is to seduce other readers away from reading whatever obviously second-rate production is currently occupying their eyeballs and into one's own house of delights. Pride? Greed? A pastoral concern that continuing to read aforementioned second-rate blog (ASRB) will lead other poor readers astray? A pastoral concern that continuing to read ASRB will not lead others astray as much as one's own edgy and heterodox creation? Why do we do it? Can we blog generously?
PS Sorry to have already resorted to blogging about blogging. I won't do it again. Too much.