HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?
“How Should We Then Live” is the title of a book written by theologian Francis A. Schaeffer, published in 1976. At that time, I found the book’s title attractive. Then as now for me ‘how to live’ was a daily struggle, quite convinced that, because of ‘habituation’, we had grown accustomed to a thoroughly unchristian lifestyle, for the simple reason that our cosmos-destroying existence was killing the very world which God loves so much.
So, yes, ‘how should we then live?’ was always uppermost in my thoughts, so much that, in 1975 I built an energy-efficient home, passive solar, 2 storey and large windows on the south, one storey and a small window on the north, mostly heated by wood, super insulated, of course. And a large vegetable garden.
So, what did Francis Schaeffer recommend?
Francis Schaeffer and his wife opened in Switzerland a retreat called l’Abri. There, devotion to Christ and the reality of prayer formed the nucleus of daily life. In essence life was seen as a spiritual journey with heaven as its goal. In 1975, when the book appeared, I was in full accord with these goals, until……..
Until I no longer was. In 1991 I bought a thin book – only 150 pages – with the intriguing title TENDING THE GARDEN, essays on the Gospel and the Earth. In it I found an essay by Paulos Mar Gregorios, head of the Indian Orthodox Church, in which he outlined the three principles that ruled his life. For the first time in my life my pious existence got a jolt. His first principle shook me, serious believer, to the core: Human redemption can be understood only as an integral part of the redemption of the whole creation.
Yes, read that statement again. Human redemption can be understood only as an integral part of the redemption of the whole creation.
I greatly admire Bonhoeffer. To me he was, what today Aleksei Navalny is: a martyr for Freedom. Just as Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1939, abandoning a promising position at Union Theologian Seminary, to a certain death by Hitler – he was hanged a few weeks before War’s end – so too Navalny went back to Russia, knowing full well his predicament. Bonhoeffer, in his book, A Testament to Freedom, writes – and his words, written in 1932 (90 years ago!) were truly are prophetic – “We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism, I mean pious, Christian secularism. Not the godliness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth…This pious secularism also makes it possible to preach and to say nice things…(However) The function of the church is to witness to the power of God in the new creation”. When did you hear that message?
How do non-Christians see Christianity?
Carl Safina is one of them, a non-Christian who has closely studied Christianity.
In his fascinating book, Alfie & Me, this author/ecologist, convincingly demonstrates that the outcome of Christianity is actually based on Greek philosophy more than on the Bible, which, in John 3: 16 expressly states God’s ultimate love for creation, yet almost unanimously Christians believe that eternal life will take place in heaven, while the earth is disposable. He clearly demonstrates that Plato, this revered Greek philosopher, moved the sacred away from the body, from Earth, from LIFE! And, tragically, the church did the same!
What is ‘Christian’? You decide. Is Safina Christian? His book is all about caring for an injured owl, Alfie.
In his epilogue, Safina writes, “What will we do with our one wild and precious life? Perhaps the answer can be easy: to care fiercely without apology (for the earth). If there is a final exam at the end of life, and its sole question is “Did you care”, I hope I might at least pass the course.” Yes, Dr. Safina, yes there is a final exam. Yes, the question is: “Have you cared for creation and her creatures?”
When Dr. Safina asks that question in his epilogue, we know that he ardently cares for planet and people, for birds and biosphere. He does not like the Christian Religion, of which he has a good grasp. On various occasions he quotes the Older Testament, which does have an anti-creation bias, emphasizing exploitation and dominion. On page 198 he writes, “The man who has been called the most influential evangelical, anti-environmentalist in the United States, Calvin Beisner, told an interviewer in 2016, that people should be concerned of the state of their eternal souls – not about the state of the merely temporary planet.”
This is exactly what Francis Schaeffer saw as being ‘Christian’. That’s what Plato recommends, “we must get rid of the body’. The majority of church people still echo this sentiment, under the enduring influence of the Late Great Planet Earth, written by Hal Lindsey.