March 23 2022.
THE LOST GOSPEL.
“How do we know God?”
“Who cares?”, you might say. True, we may flip out the odd OMG, but that’s often the closest we come to God.
To be honest, most people don’t give a hoot about God. How can they love God and Christ – the perfect image of God – when they see those who claim to love God, despise and mutilate and murder and demolish and disfigure God’s creation?
I know and believe that God created an orderly world. With the South Pole, the Antarctic, 40C above normal; with the North Pole, the Arctic, 30C above normal, that’s not orderly, that means chaos! Scientists warn that the events unfolding ‘up there’ and ‘down below’ are “historic”, “unprecedented” and “dramatic”.
I believe that soon ‘the weather’ will crowd out the bad news in Ukraine, with an even greater death toll, and even greater fire and wind damage than what the poor people in Eastern Europe experience. Yes, gloom and doom are my second and third name.
You know why these events, wars, death, destruction, horror, happen? We lost the Gospel of the Earth! That’s why.
True, some church confessions mention that the Earth belongs to God, the Belgic confession especially. In answer to the question, ‘how do we know God’, it states: “First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe which is like a beautiful book”. But, in practise, in real life, in our day-to-day actions, we usually ignore these very fitting words.
Bonhoeffer put meat to that statement, when he said “It is specific to the Christian faith that God and the world are one.” Just think about that: By harming creation, we cause God to suffer. While we call the Bible Holy, we refuse to call Creation Holy.
Enter Tom Hayden.
Tom Hayden, a California Politician, some 25 years ago wrote, ‘THE LOST GOSPEL OF THE EARTH.” He examined Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism, and concluded that in all three faiths, tribal, native, aboriginal, nature-based mysticism was replaced with human-centred theologies that de-sanctified the earth and taught people to see themselves as dominant over nature.
He wrote, “A backlash has been underway in the name of God; one that asserts the absolute rights of human beings to help themselves to nature’s bounty. As the backlash proceeds, as more of our forests and wetlands disappear, as more of our rivers and estuaries are degraded, as more of our cities are congested and polluted, I envision an even stronger environmental outcry arising once again”.
To declare creation holy, to see it as God’s Primary, Direct Word, in contrast with the Bible, God’s Secondary, Indirect Word, would require a total change in church priority, preceded by a radical change in human behavior. Actually, sermons, without any reference to Creation, are like engines without power.
Eons ago.
An earth-shaking change took place thousands of years ago. Jacques Ellul, Professor of the Law Faculty of the University of Bordeaux in THE MEANING OF THE CITY, placed the blame on Cain. Cain? What blame?
The Bible relates how Cain, Adam and Eve’s son, killed his brother, Abel, and through that act “Cain broke the relationship between humanity and the earth”. Writes Ellul, “The city is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and of his refusal to accept God’s protection. ….The city is opposed to Eden…..So civilization begins with the city and all that its represents.”
Ellul concludes that, “The City has a spiritual influence. It is capable of directing and changing one’s spiritual life”.
Don’t think for a minute that today living outside the city’s boundaries, means a return to EDEN. No, today the city is everywhere. Our (highly polluting) automobile is a product of the city. Our TV is a product of the city. Our government and its largesse are products of the city, and the list goes on.
How then shall we live?
That is the perennial question. It is no accident of history that Jesus, God’s Son, died on a tree. The tree was the first to receive his flesh and blood. Trees are LIFE. Trees can live without us: we can’t live without trees. His blood next fell to the earth, as ‘earth we are and to the earth we shall return’. Both trees and the earth are holy, sanctified by the blood of Jesus.
We lost the gospel of the earth. Johan Herman Bavinck recognized this, when he wrote: “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal”. In other words, ‘my salvation and the salvation of the cosmos go hand and hand.’
“How do we know God?”
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1: 20)