CO-OWNING THE EARTH
February 2010
In front of me, on my messy desk, I have a pile of books – let’s see,1, 2, there are 14 of them – all having one theme in common: Christian Stewardship. The writers are from the diverse crannies and crevices of the church: Roman Catholic- Father Thomas Berry; Lutheran – Larry L. Rasmussen; Christian Reformed – Calvin College sponsored; United Church of Canada, Presbyterian, and so on. One of the writers is Tony Campolo, who titles his book: ”How to rescue the Earth without worshiping Nature.”
You know by now that I am quite the opinionated old man, so it may come as no surprise to you that, in my, at times, not so humble opinion, all these men, and one woman, Sally McFague, no two, Aileen van Beilen worked on the Calvin project, miss the point. Dr Campolo’s book title already suggests that we can be the victor in fighting pollution. So no wonder that he writes that “with some help from St Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, we just might make it.” Make what? Learn to live so that Jesus does not have to return to’ make all things new?” In his concluding remarks he writes that “The environment has an awesome resilience if we just give it a chance.” Granted he wrote these lines 20 years ago. Maybe today he has a different view.
In EARTHKEEPING, Christian Stewardship of Natural Resources, ( also an ancient book) all by people of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship with such writers as Calvin De Witt, Loren Wilkinson, Aileen Van Beilen and others, I detect a similar optimism. Here is what these good people conclude: “Yet Christians have the power in Christ to redeem the human character from its perversity and lead it into a new life in which stewardship, husbandry, and nurturing vulnerability is ‘natural’….. Only then can we hope to become good and just stewards of the creation which God has placed under our care”. Don’t we believe in ‘original sin’ anymore? This sounds very much like Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and also a geologist, and taught that humanity is in a continuous process of evolution toward a perfect spiritual state. His writings were later banned by the Vatican.
I wonder “Do the Calvin people mean that all of earth-dwellers will become One Hundred Percent Green- Christians? Or do I read this wrong? Since this was written I have often heard Calvin De Witt speak, and have questioned him closely, as recently as two years ago at a conference at the University of Minnesota. He still leaves the impression that human action can safeguard the future.
So how does a Roman Catholic Priest view all this? Father Thomas Berry has written The Dream of the Earth, a book of which Dr Donald B.Conroy, President of the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology, says that “This volume is quite possibly one of the most important books of the twentieth century”. In some ways Berry reminds me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in his essay Creation and Fall: “In my entire being, in my creatureliness, I belong completely to this world….God, brother and sister and the earth belong together,” except that with Berry God is not included. Berry and Campolo openly base their optimism on Teilhard de Chardin who has had a tremendous impact on many people, including the former PM Paul Martin, even though the Roman Catholic Church declared him a heretic.
Some of my other books are: Caring for Creation; The Earth is the Lord’s; Project Earth, Preserving the World God created; Cherish the Earth: The environment and Scripture; Earth Community, Earth Ethics; God as Nature sees God; Cherish the Earth; Life Abundant; God is Green. They all offer good tips how to live as Christians, but strikingly, none point explicitly to the New Earth under a New Heaven, so vividly described in Revelation 21. Campolo hints at it, but, it seems to me that the Heaven thing is still uppermost in peoples’ mind.
No wonder: I too was spoon-fed on heaven. Already in Kindergarten I sang “Sluit U aan, Sluit U aan, wie mee wil naar de hemel gaan,” “Get in line, Get in line, then follow the ‘to heaven’ sign.”
What I miss in all these books is “The Kingdom” concept.
Only two writers make this the centre of their thinking. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed by the Gestapo days before the end of World War II, in his “Thy Kingdom Come,” wrote that “The function of the church is to witness to the resurrection of Christ from the dead……and to the power of God in the new Creation.” I find that theme also in Dr J.H. Bavinck, who said, “The Bible shows on every page that the meaning of creation is focused on the one overriding theme: that creation is dominated by one marvelous motif, the motif of the Kingdom of God…It is in the End Time, in the Great Day that is coming, that Yahweh will reveal His kingly-powers when He will forever banish all influences which have had such destructive and ruinous effects on His beloved world.” To me this means that “Where there is no Kingdom vision, the people perish.”
Bert Hielema lives in a solar passive house, with 10 active solar panels. See https://www.hielema.ca/. Comments to bert@hielema.ca.