The ten commandments of the creation caring Christian

Recently a friend of mine and thoughtful ecotheologian, Byron Smith, had an article posted on Eternity News, an Australian based Christian news site. It highlighted ten ways his family tries to love the planet, all grounded in the good news that God is incarnate in Jesus.

Oftentimes the comments can be 'disappointing.' One response I found curious, if not somewhat enigmatic. One Christian identified the ten commandments as their source of ethics. Did they mean to say that Byron's list was not useful, or biblical, or were they simply looking past the need to care for creation by returning to what they saw as a solid biblical handle for individual ethics? I don't know, but it did inspire me to think a little more deeply about the ten commandments and the creation.

Firstly, it is always worth remembering that the Law was given to Israel, so we have do some work to make it applicable for the church, a) because we are not members of God's one people within a national boundary (despite what some people think about manifest destiny) and b) we live the other side of the cross. Secondly, the ten commandments were addressed to a nation, not just individuals. It is about public and private, corporate and individual. And thirdly, love sums up all. 

And now to the commandments. This is pretty rushed, but you get the picture.

You shall not steal

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

God is a saving god. We see in the plagues in Exodus the gods of Egypt powerfully defeated. In them, the Lord is shown to be redeemer, but in mastering the forces of creation, God is also seen to be creator. Genesis 1 for example makes this clear, and indeed in the Garden narrative we see a link between creation, human vocation, sin, punishment, and the need for the undoing of curses between humans, God, and creation. It's this story that moves through Genesis to the genealogy leading to Abram, which then comes down to the Exodus through his family. The calling of Israel then is not just 'to be saved' but to be the agents of blessing to the nations of the world, and working against the curses, including that of the Earth.

A word on caring for creation then. Often it is said that 'the environment' becomes a god for some Christians. Yet clearly throughout Scripture, to care for creation is to honour the God who made it, and will redeem it, and to fulfil the human vocation.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them

Christians concerned about caring for creation can be accused of making the environment and idol. Yet I have seen full time Christian ministry held up as the highest calling for Christians. An idol much? When you question the doctrine of the church or the opinions of someone's favourite scholar or preacher. An idol much? When you suggest that 'Western civilisation' has some issues with a racist and colonial past but you are being 'unAustralian.' An idol much? When you show that behind western capitalism is the idol of greed, and that this is a major driving of environmental destruction, the ruination of God's good creation, but you are making an idol of the environment? Calvin said the human heart was an idol factory, but this apparently only applies to those who worship the creator by considering the creation of high value!

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Attaching God's name to things that are our own agendas is a misuse of the divine name (this isn't just about cursing here). C S Lewis warned about 'Christianity and' and it is a warning we must take clearly. But this isn't exclusive to ham-fisted attempts to combine environmentalism to Christianity. Digging into the bible reveals a deep vein of valuing the creation. Same can't be said for the white supremacism that has been attached to the missionary movement in days gone by, Western colonialism, capitalism, Constantinianism, etc, etc. Christians often covet being at the centre of power, are happy the Lord's Prayer is recited in parliament while the same parliament vandalises creation, works hand in hand with crooked coal barons, and locks up innocent asylum seekers indefinitely. But saying the Lord's Prayer makes it all right and 'Christian.' Everyone has an agenda for God's name. Don't think that those who care for creation are the only ones at risk.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

The rhythm of life is grounded in a seven day pattern of creation. Human beings and domestic creatures rest from toil on the seventh day. Reliance on divine provision runs counter to the culture of endless work and acquisition, the very forces driving the destruction of the planet. Our desire to consume is killing us and everything else. This destroys the family. This destroys our mental and physical health. This destroys our planet. If you worship the creator, you don't run it all into the ground in the pursuit of what the world chases. That's idolatry.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

The value of family is central to Jewish and Christian thinking. I wonder if we honour previous generations if we trash the planet they enjoyed? Do we honour them if we pass on blindly their traditions and ideas of the good life that are ruining creation? To honour is not simply to follow blindly. And yet when previous generations (like my parents) remember rationing during war, maybe we honour them when we learn those lessons of frugality, self-control in the face of dire challenges, and the need to avoid conflicts at all costs, conflicts climate change might make possible. 

You shall not murder.

Australia has seen years of TV ad campaigns against drink driving. Sure if you kill someone because you were irresponsible you might get off on manslaughter, but they died because of your alcohol fuelled lifestyle right? So if people are dying now and will die in droves now due to our fossil fuelled lifestyles, where's the difference? Plenty you say? But do you really understand the interconnectedness of the global economy and the planetary system? Australia's contribution is small? Not per capita. We are part of a culture of death – and need to change it and ourselves. Want to be pro-life? Be pro-climate, pro-conservation, pro-trees.

You shall not commit adultery.

Ok, I'm struggling to make this one fit. Social cohesion. Truthfulness. Faithfulness. All good and transferable. But here's one. We have been fruitful, and multiplied. Remember the animals are given the same blessing in Genesis 1. So we can stop being so fruitful – those in the west with the most highly consumptive lifestyles go first!

You shall not steal.

Dig it all up. Burn it all. Make the planet unliveable. Stealing from our children's future. Somethings are lost forever. You are stealing food, clean air, drinkable water, beauty to enjoy. Oh and in destroying it by land clearing, climate change, pollution, we are also stealing from the creator. Tell me again about having no gods before God or no idols?

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

I have lost count of the number of times Christians who don't understand the science bear false witness against climate scientists, who don't know the heart of those who care for creation but label them as heretical or brainwashed or lefties or any other slur of false witness. So many convenient lies about others because the truth of what we are all doing, particularly the privileged and powerful is too painful to face. 

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Ignoring for the moment this commandment treats women as goods, the whole edifice of advertising seeks to make us dissatisfied. Social media can drive the same thing. Covet. Want. Consume. God wants to bless you materially with money, social influence (but oh it's really for the gospel), etc. And this system is killing us and the creation (see above). 

Hope that demands action

A sermon on Romans 8:19-23 preached by Dr Mick Pope at St Andrew’s Uniting Church, Brisbane, April 7 2019.

Introduction

I’d like to begin by thanking you for the invitation to speak to you this morning. But I also have to have to brag at your expense. For those who follow Rugby Union, the Melbourne Rebels were up here a couple of weeks ago and beat the Queensland Reds. There is something else Victoria beats you at, although I am less proud to speak about it.

We had our hottest summer on record, along with four other states. However, as a consolation prize it was your hottest January on record, with rainforest damaged by fire, and record breaking rains in Townsville. All of this consistent with long term warning trends, and the warmest Australian summer on record. Now I know that some in the churches are unwilling to accept that climate change is real, but I want you to suspend your disbelief if that is you and come along on a journey with me.

Recently, roughly 150,000 Australian school kids participated in the school climate strike, and I attended during my lunch break in support. I was very proud of them. The strike is an expression of their anger at politicians on both side of the spectrum, whom they believe are not delivering enough on climate change. This generation is growing up in a different climate to the one you and I have, and they have fear and anxiety about the future.

When I went home, a friend of mine who writes for Eternity News, a Christian website, asked me to jump onto their Facebook page and answer some of the comments on a piece they had published. The article spoke about two Christian schoolgirls who had attended the strike. After 45 minutes of responding, I was despondent and had a stress headache. There was so much outrage, with comments of ‘fake news,’ poorly understood science, and poor theology.

What would you say to the youth of today? Particularly those within the church? Do you respond with denial, or simply say that God is in charge and not to worry about it? How does the church become more pro-active and less ­re-active on climate change?

Our text for this morning reads

²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Straight off the bat, Paul is making two big theological statements that say ‘God is in charge’:

1.       God has subjected creation to futility

2.       God will set it free

So doesn’t that wrap it all up? Can’t you say ‘Mick, there’s no more to say, just sit down?’ We I think that this passage begs three questions.

1.       What is the nature of this futility?

2.       How will creation be set free?

3.       Is there anything we can do?

So let’s look at each of these questions in turn.

1. What is the nature of this futility?

It is best to start at the beginning. If ever like me you have tried to read the bible from cover to cover, you would have started with Genesis. We learn about the beauty of creation and its great blessing, and human responsibility in Genesis 1-2. In Genesis 1 we learn that to be made in the image of God means to be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the earth, which means to engage in agriculture and feed ourselves. In Genesis 2 and verse 15, we learn of our vocation to care, tend, and keep the earth. We have an intimate relationship with the soil, the pun from the Hebrew being humans from the hummus. And then in Genesis 3, it all goes pear shaped, or better still apple shaped. Our relationship with the soil becomes cursed. We see the same thing at end of the book of Deuteronomy where Moses warns the people of Israel to remain faithful. Human disobedience leads to broken relationships with the soil.

So the subjection to frustration in Romans is due to the fact that God has let us run it – and what a fine job we’ve done of polluting the air and water, cutting down trees, warming the climate, and killing all the animals (60% of all living things in less than 50 years).

In Rome, Paul could also see the devastation that human misrule brought. He could see the regular silting up of the Tiber River because all of the trees had been cleared, and it needed to be dredged regularly. Although Paul and the ancients did not understand this, this swampy ground was the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. In 452 AD, those brave Huns were afraid to enter Rome because of the bad air, or malaria. There is evidence to show that malaria was one of the factors that was involved in the collapse of Rome. The air quality was also poor. Philosopher and Senator Seneca (4BC – 65 AD) wrote that

“No sooner had I left behind the oppressive atmosphere of the city and the reek of smoking cookers, which pour out, along with clouds of ashes, all the poisonous fumes they’ve accumulated … I noticed the change in my condition at once.”

Paul was making an observation then not in the abstract, but in the particulars of how Roman misrule produced damage to the world around him. In Romans chapter 1, he identifies the root of these problems, that we make idols out of things like wealth and power. Reformer John Calvin identified the heart as an idol factory, and Paul would agree, and link that idolatry to damage to creation.

In our day, Pope Francis notes in the encyclical Laudato Si’ that “the present ecolog­ical crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity.” In other words, the worship of progress, technology, consumerism and individualism, which may have once been done in ignorance, is now done in full knowledge of the consequences for our world, God’s good creation. This is recognised both within and outside of the church. Environmentalist Gus Speth says “The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy … to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation … we scientists don’t know how to do that.” But we in the church do! We know about repentance. What is needed by the church is to join the dots between sin and repentance with issues of the environment.

2. How will creation be set free?

The answer to my second question, how will the creation be set free, is found in verses 22-23.

²² For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Creation is suffering now in birth pains, but that suffering will one day give way to joy. Any woman here who has carried a child will know what this is like. I can remember watching my own wife with her distended belly, it getting hard to get comfortable at night. But the suffering is all worth it when a child is born. What Paul is saying is that creation is longing for the resurrection of the dead like a pregnant woman groans for the baby to come out. Renewed humanity at the resurrection means a renewed relationship with the Earth, and not the abandonment of it. Christianity is not just about going to heaven when you die like some Christians believe. Anglican theologian Tom Wright has said that heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world. The future of us and the future of the creation are entangled together.

What this means is that we have a message of hope to offer the world. But what does that mean for the here and now?

3. Hope comes with responsibility

My last point then is that hope comes with responsibility. We might ask that if God has subjected the creation to frustration under our sinful misrule, and God will save it, why should we do anything? If the present state of things is God’s will, how can we contest it? Paul has addressed a similar idea in Romans 6:1 where he asks shall we go on sinning that grace may abound? He responds with an emphatic by no means!

We know that sin, idolatry, greed, and wilful ignorance of the harms we have done will lead to judgment. In Revelation it says that God will destroy those who judge the Earth. God’s judgment on sin and idolatry leads to more environmental harms, and people suffering. Why would we not repent of this?  Why knowingly do things that hurt others we don’t know, or our children who will inherit this world, the very school children who took part in the strike?

If you knew that you were going to receive a heart transplant after a lifetime of drinking, smoking, and eating badly, would you wait until after the surgery, or would you start living a healthier lifestyle now? God is the great surgeon, but we are called upon to be good patients. Or imagine learning to drive in the old ‘family bomb.’ You are promised a new car when you turn 18 and get your licence, so you are not going to wait until then to learn to drive. What Paul is saying is that when we get the new car, we will discover that it is the old one, renovated to be even better than before.

Furthermore, we have a responsibility not only to live more gently on the earth, but to speak up. Paul wrote his letter to Christians in Rome, right at the centre of the biggest empire of the day. His letter could not avoid being political. Paul proclaimed in Romans that Jesus was son of God but Roman coins read that Caesar was “Son of God, Father of His Country.” Paul claimed creation groaned in birth pains while the Roman poet Horace said of Augustus Caesar that “Your age, O Caesar, has restored plenteous crops to the land.” A Caesar had to keep the crops plenteous to keep people filled, otherwise they might rebel. So Paul is making a statement that Rome was engaging in what we would now call greenwashing, that the emperor has no clothes. So when power contradicts truth we need to speak truth to power - including on climate change.

So the gospel always opposes powers gone wrong. We have both the right and opportunity to speak out as the church to call the world to repentance on matters of sin. Many Christians take a stand on gambling, slavery, medical ethics. Why not climate change? When leaders, those in business, etc aren’t acting to take better care of God’s creation, the church has the responsibility to speak out – and dare I suggest skipping a day of school to do so is ok?

So let me then close by asking, what are you willing to do to live faithfully as a good steward of creation until Christ returns to set creation free?

Anote's Ark

Wow, I did't realise how long it had been since I last blogged. Things have been busy, including starting a Masters degree looking at a biblical hermeneutic for the Anthropocene, and writing two books. More of that later. Last night I went to the Melbourne screening of Anote's Ark.

Anote Tong is the former president of Kiribati, a collection of coral atolls in the western Pacific. He often describes Kiribati as being the centre of the world, since the islands are located on both sides of the equator and the dateline. He has been a tireless campaigner on climate change since taking office, and afterwards, even now the new government have taken a big (and sadly poorly theologically informed) step away from his policies.

This excellent documentary shows a true statesman, who while acknowledging that even 1.5 C of warming wont save his home in the longer term, it will make a difference in the short term for his country, and in the longer term for others. This is the conclusion too of a recent IPCC report on a 1.5 C world.

The documentary also follows a young family who choose to start a new life in New Zealand under a migration program (Australia take note). Sermery leaves home to raise funds for the rest of her family to join here in New Zealand. Watching her go through six months without her children was hard to take. We have the privilege of seeing her have a child in her new home, marking a new phase in their lives, but a phase that signals the slow end to their unique culture.

As Anote reminds us, the people of Kiribati are the canary in the coal mine. If we do not act, their present will be our future. What is all the more galling for me is that Australia continues to do little for the people of Kiribati. The Prime Minister is calling into question commitment to the Green Climate Fund which is designed to help nations like Kiribati to adapt to climate change. Funny how under colonisation we were happy to take their phosphate cheaply in the past, much like Nauru. I guess Kiribati is too far away for offshore detention? Love your neighbour as yourself.

The event was put on by the Environmental Film Festival Australia. Well worth your time and patronage.

Pie in the sky? Geoengeering not a fix for our problems

Mount Pinatubo produced enough sulphur to combat a double CO2 scenario, but also declines in global rainfall.

One of the things that has been keeping me from blogging of late has been a journal article on a theology of geoengineering.

I make no secret of not being a fan. Geoengineering is planetary scale intervention in the Earth system to combat climate change. It is plan B after we have failed to take proper action. A number of the technologies have nasty side effects. None of them will work alone. The effort would be better placed into a massive switch to greater efficiency, renewable energy and restructuring our cities (which will have to move anyway thanks for committed to levels of sea level rise.

But I also think there are theological issues which address the problems that geoengineering seeks to solve as well. We've lived for too long in the bubble of our own power. Inherited from Francis Bacon, technology and science are seen as a source of power to endlessly manipulate an inert environment. This view should be collapsing in the Anthropocene, but ecomodernism pushes geoengineering. Two theological frameworks can be constructed.

1. Based on Genesis, particularly chapter 1, creation can be envisaged as a temple, sacred to God. This means humans have a priestly role of service. This is not exclusive of use, but challenges mechanistic views alone of human mastery over inert matter. The Earth is not simply a resources or a laboratory. Add to this Aboriginal theology that sees the Creator Spirit as present in the land.

2. Based on 1 Kings 16-18, technology like geoengineering can be viewed as a form of Baalism - seeking from the cause of the problem also the solution.

To read more, see the draft on Academia.edu.

Of ballet and reefs

Great Barrier Reef. (Toby Hudson, Creative Commons)

I had the pleasure of speaking at Merri Creek Anglican today, following World Earth Day. The audio will be here soon. I gave one of my standard sermons on creation, following Psalm 104 - a meditation on the beauty of creation, including in its savageness. I've written a paper on this in the EcoCare journal and blogged elsewhere.

The night before, I took my family to the Shanghai Ballet perform Swan Lake at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne. A beautiful dance production with beautiful moves and costumes in a beautiful building.

And then I was reminded of the unifying theme, that of beauty. The world abounds in beauty. Humans at their best create beauty. Art, ballet, music, poetry, literature. These things are not the frilly bits at the edge of society and theologian Tom Wright points out, but stand at the middle of what society is about. Kenneth Clark understood that art was one of the cornerstones of civilisation.

There is a meme, which is false, circulating that Winston Churchill claimed that part of the point of fighting WWII was to defend ideas like art. Why cut funding to the arts during a time of war. Churchill did however say:

“The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

This is in contrast to President Trumps cut to the arts, which occurs at the same time to savage cuts to environmental care. Coincidence? I think not.

You see, I think that capitalism at its worst is all about brutalism in reducing everything to the utilitarian or that which can be consumed (which is not to say socialism is without its faults). The art, like nature, is not consumed. These things are appreciated, related to. And theologically, both and art and nature have artists that lie behind them.

My thought then is to give the best of myself over to the contemplation of love and beauty, to living lovingly and aesthetically, to preserve both.

Beauty can save the world

The following piece made it into the final ten for a writing competition for the magazine New Philosopher and is previously unpublished.

It is becoming an accepted scientific idea that we are living in a new geological age, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is characterised by a profound disruption of the relatively stable climate humanity has enjoyed over about 12,000 years, during the period known as the Holocene. We have come to take this stability for granted; it’s the period where civilisations have arisen, characterised by structured states reliant on agriculture to feed growing numbers, writing, art, religion, trade, and the beginnings of science. Few of us can appreciate a time when summer did not follow spring, when crops were not disrupted for more than a season or so, and food was not plentiful.

This is not to say that the Holocene has been all beer and skittles. The Little Ice Age in Europe saw the rise of witch trials in politically insecure states, played a role in the French Revolution, and was a factor in the writing of Frankenstein. A prolonged change in the state of El Niño helped drive the collapse of the Mayan Empire. History is littered with such examples. But the Anthropocene is different; it involves moral agency. Not only do we remake the world in our ignorance, but we also do so intentionally. We have released enough carbon dioxide to warm the planet and make the oceans more acidic, manufactured enough nitrogen based fertiliser for agriculture to produce dead zones in lakes, rivers and oceans. We’ve filled our oceans with plastic, cleared vast tracts of land and threaten many species with extinction, maybe as many as 50% by 2050.

One could make many pragmatic arguments for protecting a natural world that gives us clean air and water, food and medicines, timber and other raw materials. But these don’t seem to work. And while an impulsive survival instinct will drive us in adrenaline driven sprint to protect what we have, it is neither sustaining nor effective. Instead, I believe beauty will save us.

For some, beauty is ephemeral, subjective, and a luxury at best, if not a distraction. Philosophy has not always done us favours. How do we approach beauty? For Kant, our experience of beauty is a “disinterested delight.” Beauty is something to be catalogued, analysed, and objectified. We analyse what makes something beautiful and miss the beauty itself. We need to transcend such analyses.

What seems to me a right reaction to beauty can be found in the writings of Alfred Russell Wallace. Wallace spent many years in the Malay Archipelago, collecting species and theorising about their origins. He was the co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution. His paper was read at the same time as Darwin’s at the royal society. Wallace’s reaction at discovering a new species of butterfly is worth quoting at length from The Malay Archipelago

“The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause.”

Note Wallace’s reactions. The experience of beauty is indescribable, i.e. it transcends his training and experience as a naturalist. It goes beyond language, and hence represents a visceral, emotive response. And yet at the same time, his expertise is what brings a certain attention to detail, a way of framing this discovery in the context of the search for true knowledge about the world. He acknowledges that to some, his strong reaction will seem over the top. Yet this is not a man who has lost leave of his senses or himself, but has discovered them in the presence of the other. That other happens to be a species of butterfly.

I’m reminded of Keats’ poem about Newton. Keats accused Newton of unweaving a rainbow and conquering mysteries. And yet any scientist will tell you that the scientific discipline will never run out of things to probe or objects yet more beautiful to appreciate. What if we understand laws that govern how light bounces around in a rain drop, or how natural selection works, do we marvel any less? Are not the grains of sand under a microscope or dark voids shown to be filled with galaxies by telescopes, all the more beautiful for our technological wizardry?

Beauty is part of the fabric of what exists, both the things that prompt our sensory, intellectual and personal experiences as Richard Cartwright Austin noted, but also the existence of beauty perceivers themselves. Beauty exists for a reason, it is true in that it exists as a quality or experience meant for creatures other than us, and is therefore is independent of humans. Beauty is also good, in that it fulfils the purposes for which it exists. Those purpose might be to warn off predators that you are protected by toxins. It does no good to die in the process of killing your killer. Beauty might be to attract a pollinator, or a mate. It might be the display of fitness that says ‘don’t eat me’ or the fleetness of foot that escapes the jaws that are also beautiful. Beauty might be the destructive power of shifting plates in forming pleasing mountains, ice sheets scraping away to produce deep lakes, forms of beauty quiet independent of an eye to see.

Beauty’s appreciation is found in the eye of female birds of paradise choosing a mate, or bower birds admiring their own constructions. It is hard to imagine that the complex mind of a cuttlefish does not in some deep sense appreciate the beautiful patterns a mate produces. And what creature does not enjoy the taste of their favourite food? Is it survival instinct alone or aesthetic appreciation also? Do humans alone make art? Do we alone appreciate the beauty around us? Surely our aesthetic senses are finely honed, but let us not miss the forest of beauty for the tree of objective analysis.

And neither let us become so reductionist that evolution explains away beauty. Am I back tracking on my disavowal of Keats’ charge? Not as such. Take for example evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson’s idea of biophilia, the contention that we find beautiful in nature that which reminds us of life in the Pleistocene on the African Savanna. Our tendency to like habitats that resemble this environment have been mirrored in observations made by Europeans new to North America and Australia, who appreciated those landscapes that made them think of orchards or an English gentleman’s garden. The flipside of this preference was the attitude toward Australian rainforests, or native fauna, and the desire to import British wildlife. We can become stuck in our aesthetics, either by biology alone or also by culture. Surely then we need to transcend either thinking we are, or being bound by our genes in what we find beautiful.

The flip side of beauty is ugliness. English theologian John Wesley preached against ugly predators because he didn’t understand them. Predation might be hard to stomach, yet the Platonic triad reminds us that what is beautiful is also true and good. In the Anthropocene, what is not good and therefore not beautiful is what we have done to planet Earth. Australian politician Tony Abbott find winds farms ugly, but polluting, greenhouse producing coal fired power stations are not beautiful, what they do is not good for any creature, and to deny this is not being truthful.

The future must be one of pursuing beauty. Humans must live and eat, we seek a good life marked by truth and beauty in our relationships. Shouldn’t our technology be more beautiful, not just more efficient? Alain de Botton says that our buildings should do justice to the land that they occupy and the creatures that they have displaced. Perhaps even more now, our civilisation can become more beautiful by displacing less, more being in harmony with its surroundings, like architect Elora Hardy’s magical houses of bamboo.

The last word must be given to love. Austin claims that ‘the experience of beauty creates and sustains relationships.’ And what are relationships founded on, if not love? Can we come to love the world, form relationships with landscape and creature and appreciate their beauty in a manner analogous to the way in which we appreciate the beauty of a lover or spouse? Surely we must, for while having an environment that allows us to survive is important, humans long for more than mere survival. In learning to love the beauty of the world around us, we will do more than survive, we will thrive.

Creation care in the country - my trip to Wagga Wagga

From time to time I get speaking invitations, which I relish. Preaching about climate change and other aspects of the Anthropocene is a passion of mine, albeit a mixed passion given the dire nature of where we find ourselves.

After a friend of a friend visited our church and heard me preach, I was invited to Wagga Wagga, a country town in New South Wales of about 30,000 people, to speak at a morning and evening service at Wagga Wagga Baptist (audio here, video here).

In the afternoon, I ran a workshop where we discussed a theology of mission in the Anthropocene (after some tech hassles) and practical outcomes. I also had the opportunity to speak to years 9-11 at the Christian school.

As the photo shows, I spent some time on a sheep farm as well, hosted by the head of their new Creation Care group.

One thing that impressed me about the church was the number of keen and capable people with a solid theology of creation care and practical skills in farming, geography, etc. They already have solar panels, and give away their savings in electricity bills to people who suffer the impacts of climate change overseas. Plans include a garden, involvement in Clean up Australia Day, and a number of other activities. They are taking to heart the suggestion that creation care ministries should be Public, Practical and Proclaiming the gospel.

I look forward to keep track of where they are at in years to come.

Partnership or enslavement? Human-bird relationships

Humans have multiple and complex relationships with all species on the planet now, as we have entered into the age of the Anthropocene. But then again, even before we reached the level where we have dominated all of the natural cycles and threaten all of the planetary boundaries that support us, we have had relationships with other animals that are complex. Take for example cormorant fishing in China.

This clip from the BBC series Wild China looks at this old practice, and describes the cormorants as slaves. Is this a fair assessment? Are all forms of domestication best understand as enslavement of animals, or partnerships? When and what the birds can eat is limited, but eat they do. In fact, as opposed to a caged bird, the cormorants get to enter their natural habitat. They are trained, and not fully wild, intelligent and able to bend the rules. 

The relationship is exploitative, but not just one way. The birds are employed to hunt for food, but are not themselves food. This kind of relationship may not extend much further into the 21st century, but it's a fascinating example of how humans can relate to non-humans in a non-consumptive fashion (except of course for the fish!)

Don't look down Donald - climate and political change

Have you ever watched cartoons where the character doesn't know that they are about to fall under the influence of gravity until they look down? I remember once watching a cartoon (I was sure it was Ren and Stimpy but can't find the episode) where the laws of gravity are held in the local court house. Someone accidentally rubs them out and gravity fails.

The equivalent of this appears to be happening in the US at the moment with climate change either being removed or planned to be removed from government webpages. This, together with planned sackings etc in the US (and indeed what has happened in Australia with the Climate Council which now is publicly funded and CSIRO) is the equivalent of trying to erase the law of gravity.

Now you might protest that climate change science and gravity cannot be equated, but hear me out.

Firstly, both may be observed by anyone. Drop a brick on your foot, or keep track over the years when flowers first open or birds migrate. Keep a record of rainfall on your farm. A friend who worked in aid and development in Nepal for many years said there were no climate change skeptics there - because they could see it.

But secondly, both need some more careful observation. When Newton said that a body continues at a constant velocity unless acted upon by a force, he knew that in the absence of air that a pound of feathers and a pound of lead would fall at the same rate due to gravity (a fact someone I once worked with denied), but this is a level of abstraction since none of us lives in a vacuum (at least in the literal sense). Likewise, careful longterm datasets help us understand how natural change cannot fully explain the warming we see.

Thirdly, while Einstein came along, and quantum gravity might yet arrive, Newton is still valid for everyday. Likewise, while we learn more about aerosols, the role of the oceans, the sun, etc in natural variability, the basics of greenhouse gases - depending on the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics and radiative transfer are also still valid. It really is warming, it really is our fault and it really will get bad if we don't act.

Trump's lies (sorry alternate facts) will not change the real facts - except they will become worse through inaction. Tell the truth and shame the devil my mum sometimes says. Or as it says in the ten commandments, don't bear false witness. Tell the truth about climate change during this era of Machiavellian, oligarchic lies.

Nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground. Adani and Australian coal

And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground

Blue Sky Mine. Written by James Moginie, Martin Rotsey, Peter Garrett, Robert Hirst, Wayne Stevens • Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

I've been a Midnight Oil fan for a number of years, and this lyric sticks in my head when I think about the issue with Adani in Australia. We know that to keep climate change below really dangerous levels - and it is worth noting with about a degree of warming already that the world is undergoing significant impacts (see for example here) - that we need to stop further fossil fuel exploration and extraction. This is a no brainer.

And yet in Australia we see a state government wanting to fast track the Adani Carmichael mine as critical infrastructure. With the previous concept, how in any reality is a new coal mine critical to anything other than wrecking the planet? At the same, the Australian Prime Minister wants to lend A$1 billion to build the needed rail links. At a time when the poor and vulnerable are being targeted, and big companies pay little tax, how does such a loan in any way support the Australian economy. 

India is also pushing ahead with solar power, set to add another 6 GW by early next year. Roof top solar is growing, with the rural poor leapfrogging coal. India is moving away from coal - so why is one rich man giving tax payers money to another rich man to fund a damaging product? And don't forget all the issues with the Great Barrier Reef. The impacts of a new port and emissions all directly impact the Reef, which is already suffering (forget Pauline Hanson's deliberately obscurantist stunt). 

A theology which sees the picture of Genesis 1-2 as portraying the Earth as a temple-cosmos (see the work of John Walton or any of the relevant talks on YouTube) is not incompatible with the idea of mining (see Genesis 2:10-14) anymore than the idea of a temple precludes use (the priests in the Jerusalem temple ate part of the meat for example), but gets us to rethink the idea of resource (a big topic for another time). Michael Northcott for example points out it was medieval neo-Platonic Christians who had an issue with mining.

My point is that a simple minded extractionist model is not suited to the world the way it is now, not in a warming climate. This mine is not needed, nor wanted by those of us who want a future for our children, this planet, and who see our care of the Earth as a sacred duty from God.

Truth tellers in a post-fact world

We really should call a spade a spade. A post fact world is one of lies, spin, hype and ignorance as bliss. While science isn't perfect (it's done by finite and fallen humans), it does reveal things about the world. The relentless pursuit of the Socratic method in a systematic way yield results about cause and effect in the real world.

I think post modernism has something to answer for in eroding ideas of truth, but plain Machiavellian political cynicism, conservatism and fear of change seem to dominate politics in the West. This means climate change is given the poor treatment we see in the US and Australia. It is an 'inconvenient truth' for Donald Trump, a pragmatic, business minded demagogue.

When we understand something to be true, anything as Paul understands in Philippians (see my blog on Philippians 4:8 here), we need to weigh up how important it is. It is true that the capital of England is London, but most of the time that isn't all that important to me. That God exists or that human beings are warming the climate are far more pressing, worldview informing truths than mere facts.

The church are meant to be truth seekers, truth speakers - not giving false testimony. It is nice to see that the US political system hasn't given up on that yet, with California Governor Jerry Brown recently saying to climate scientists:

“It’ll be up to you as truth-tellers, truth seekers to mobilize all your efforts to fight back,” the governor said. “This is not a battle of one day or one election. This is a long-term slog into the future and you are there, the foot soldiers of change and understanding and scientific collaboration.”

Christians are also committed to the future. Given the hope for global transformation then, our work now is to try and transform our politics, science, economy and ecology as we wait for that future. Don't give up on truth.

Studying Ecomission online

When I started thinking in the area of ecological concern from a theological perspective, I had no idea really where it would take me, or who would end up reading what I wrote. I'm often running into people who have heard me speak or read what I've written (well not often but increasingly so) who have kind words to say.

So imagine my surprise recently when I received an email asking if I'd like to be involved in an online university dedicated to preparing people for mission work in all walks of life - and that I would be using my meteorology and climatology background as well as the theological thinking I had done? Enter Missional University.

This organisation 'is legit' as they say. Starting up its courses in 2017, this is a long term vision of Curt Watke, to be able to train people to do mission in a variety of contexts. What is exciting is how holistic the vision is, and that it includes the idea of eco-mission - that the reconciliation of God and the world happens at multiple levels and this includes the way we relate to the rest of creation. This is a development I'm sure the late Ross Langmead of Whitley College would have been pleased to see,

So watch this space as I keep you up to date with what I'll be doing. I'll be Professor of Environmental Mission, Ecotheology & Ecomissiology Specialist in the Department of Environmental Sustainability in the School of Ecological Mission, and be part of the Department of Cultural & Contextual Theology in the School of Theological Studies.

The website is still a work in progress but check out: http://missional.university/ecologicalmission/ 

You can see my mugshot here.

How do we love our neighbours in a warming world?

The following is the text of an address that I gave at the Salvation Army Festival of Mission here in Melbourne. Thanks to sister Brooke Prentis for this action shot.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Micah 6:8 “And what does the Lord require of you. But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” For some, this passage forms a key part of their faith – that God is a God of justice and wants followers who are shaped by this. Justice should be part of the DNA of the church because it lies at the heart of God. Sadly, not all Christians see this as a priority.

I want to tell you a couple of stories, and then draw a common thread.  

I’m a TEAR rep at my church. You might be familiar with the work that they do, partnering with aid and development agencies around the world. One of the things they have done for years is the Really Useful Gifts catalogue, where you purchase a present for someone in the developing world, and give the card as a present to a friend. One of the things you used to be able to buy was a mosquito net. Malaria is a major problem in some parts of the world. There were over 400,000 malarial deaths in 2015, and yet that represents a 60% reduction in mortality since 2000.

Yet people are catching malaria in some places where they have not previously been exposed to it. Take for example the story of Nicholas Hakata. Nicholas is an elder on Han island, part of the Carteret group near PNG. He describes life in the Carterets as a holiday island paradise of fishing, checking on your banana crops, or sitting around and relaxing. However, over the past few years, life has become more difficult. Pools of fetid water left over from inundations of the island have come breeding grounds for mosquitoes. There are many more mosquitos than there used to be. All the children have become sick with malaria. This combined with irregular delivery of food from the mainland producing widespread hunger, has kept them from school.

Malaria is not just a problem in the Pacific. World malaria expert Andrew Githeko grew up in the Kenyan highlands on a coffee plantation. When he was a kid, no one in his village got malaria because there were no mosquitos where he lived. Imagine his surprise when he received a phone call to tell him that his niece had a fever that wouldn’t go away. She had been diagnosed with malaria, which she caught in the very same village that Andrew grew up in.

On a different note, William Wilberforce and the Clapham sect are heroes to some Christians for their opposition to slavery. Sadly there are now more people in slavery around the world than there was at the height of the slave trade to the Americas. In the Indian state of Assam, ethnic tension and natural disasters leads to internal displacement. In recent years, flooding of the Brahmaputra River has washed away crops and villages, caused erosion and covered rice paddies in silt.

Women suffer disproportionately in such situations, women like 16 year old Uma Tudu. After floods destroyed her village, she traveled more than 1600 km to Delhi to find a job and a new life. Instead, she found herself sold as a slave. Girls like her are deliberately targeted by slave traders after violence or floods, and can end up as domestic help, forced labour or even in forced marriages.

The common factor in all of these stories is climate change.

Rising sea levels threaten the Carteret Islanders, as well as people across the Pacific, in Bangladesh, and the Torres Strait, where people have taken to sandbagging graves to prevent them from washing away. Higher sea levels make small islands more vulnerable to erosion or inundation due to storm surge from tropical cyclones. Water left over from inundation due to a tropical cyclone that has provided the breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes. In Kenya, increasing temperatures have led to a spread in the range of malarial mosquitoes. Meanwhile, the flooding of the Brahmaputra has been caused by rising temperatures melting Himalayan glaciers.

All the justice issues that Christians are concerned about, health, education, and slavery, are all made worse by climate change. Even the huge crisis in Syria has been complicated by climate change. A five year long drought contributed to failed crops, economic hardship and internal dislocation. To preach the gospel in the modern world is to proclaim God’s kingdom of peace and justice, and to deal justly in the modern world means dealing with climate change.

The Parable of Good Samaritan is our guide for justice in a warming world. We need to recognise that we live with one atmosphere and a globalised economy. Greenhouse gases know of no national boundaries. In this world, everyone is my neighbour. So how do we love our neighbours in a warming world?

Firstly, the gospel is the ultimate message of restoration. Justice means restoring people to a place of dignity. As Eugene Cho notes, people are not projects. They are individuals made in the image of God. The Good Samaritan goes to great lengths to see that the victim’s wounds are tended so that he could be restored to full health.

In a warming world, there are many ways we can help people maintain their dignity, by assisting them to adapt to climate change. Aid works when people become involved in their own restoration and are enabled to carry on their lives as before. But aid also costs. The Good Samaritan realised that returning the man to full health might cost more than he initially laid out, and promised to return later with more if needed.

It seems that many politicians in the West are not willing to count this cost. Australia’s aid contribution is less than its 0.7% commitment, and just this year our giving was cut by $200 million. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw funding for climate change adaptation. Christians need to continue to campaign on aid and debt relief in the same way we have done for decades. There also would be more to give if large corporations weren’t given a free break, so we also need to continue to campaign for tax fairness.

It’s not a good or moral use of money to lock asylum seekers up in detention and deny them any possibility of seeking asylum in our country. The relative trickle that we experience now will become a flood in future years as drought, floods, sea level rise and political instability lead to more people being displaced.

It is a violation of a person’s dignity when they are forced to leave behind their homes and way of life because of violence or climate change related environmental disasters. We must then show refugees hospitality, not as an act of charity but as an act of justice. Our God is a hospitable God, and we cannot share the gospel of divine hospitality without ourselves being hospitable. Our approach to asylum seekers must change.

So far I’ve spoken as if all justice was restorative and we were always the Good Samaritans. But climate change should make us pause to reconsider this. The character who is often ignored in the parable is the bandit. Often we might be tempted to think of bandits as simple thieves, a foil in the story. Yet the back story is far more complicated and far more interesting.

The Roman Empire was supported by heavy taxation and slavery. There was a steady supply of goods flowing into Rome, and out to feed their vast armies which protected the borders and enforced Roman rule. Harsh taxation in an agrarian society could to lead to debt and loss of ancestral lands in Israel, with the Jewish religious elite ready to profit by buy up the land cheaply. People were left with the choice of being tenant farmers, day workers, or bandits. In addition, there was also a temple tax to pay, which benefitted the Levites and Priests. Perhaps their reticence to come to the man’s aid in the parable was less about ritual purity and more about self-preservation?

When it comes to climate change, we are not just engaged in restorative justice, but in repentance. We must recognise that we ourselves are part of a system, an empire of consumption that has produced the conditions under which other people suffer. Western economies have benefited from outsourcing the impacts of our wealth onto others; by dispossession of Indigenous people – remember, always was, always will be Aboriginal land, poor environmental and labour laws, and the impacts of climate change on the developing world and future generations.

So do we stand with empire or against it? Are we to acquiesce to the Babylonian Captivity of the church, or resist its idols? As privileged westerners, we have much power to both preach the justice of the kingdom of God and to work for it. We are near the centre of power, in Pharaoh's court. Our votes can carry power, but so can our protests. Campaigns like divestment from fossil fuels are more than just symbolic, because not only do they declare our desire to change the way in which we obtain our energy as consumers, but it should also be a statement about the whole nature of power itself (pun intended) and our relationship to it.

Our mission as the church is to proclaim the gospel and embody it. Our acts of justice as we face a rapidly changing global climate are not optional. They are both acts of restoration in respect of the dignity of others, but also acts of repentance.

E O Wilson, ecology and Christian hope

I recently received out of the blue a Facebook message from a concerned Christian mother about her daughter having to watch a video by Harvard Emeritus Professor E O Wilson. Her concern was that Wilson's views don't line up with a Christian value of hope in preserving our environment. It's question worth pursuing for a blog post.

Anyone who has read The Creation knows that Wilson grew up a Southern Baptist, but abandoned that faith. The book is an attempt to draw common ground between Christians of this tradition and related and non-Christian scientists like Wilson. I think it is an admirable aspiration. We share one planet regardless of what we believe about its origins on future fate. It is full of a biological richness which exists for both its own sake, but also of which we are a part.

Christians of course believe more than this, and we can bring more to the table than a narrative of random processes (see more below). E O Wilson is an evolutionary biologist and the founder of sociobiology, the evolution of values, ethics, etc from simpler origins, based on his work with ants. Now while I don't share his world view, when someone of his importance speaks of the need say to set aside half the planet to save biodiversity, I'm going to listen to him because of his expertise, not his world views. The same goes for when I visit the doctor; thanks to our public health care system I don't mind which doctor I see so long as they have a medical degree and a track record of not misdiagnosing, etc.

So what is a Christian hope of preserving the creation? It is articulated in Romans 8, where using the language of the Exodus, where our bodies will be redeemed (from slavery to sin as Paul talks about in Romans 7) and the creation will be set free from bondage to decay (again, slavery/redemption language). I've written elsewhere about how this is best understood as a response to the claims by Rome that "Thine age, O Caesar has brought back fertile crops to the fields".

So a Christian hope is that Christ will return, the dead will be raised and (I infer) because humans will be redeemed in their natures, so the rest of creation will not be misruled by us. This provides us with an incentive. Just as our natures are being renewed so we do not go on sinning (Romans 6:1), so given the future is one of harmonious relationships with the rest of creation, we should be getting on with this now. And if our wisdom comes from a non-Christian scientist, so be it and thank God for their knowledge as he is the source of common grace.

Now given the state of the world, the Christian hope is both a) it will all be sorted out when Christ returns and b) at least in part that people of all faiths will be faithful to our creation care task (see Genesis 1-2), but does not exclude things becoming really bad in the mean time. As Paul points out in Romans 1, idolatry, be it of idols of stone or wood, of money, success, nation etc mean we are given over to our sins. This is no less clear in the current extinction or climate change crises, to name but two.

So my own 2 cents is that regardless of what Wilson thinks about "creation vs evolution" (and this is a topic for another time, but does call us to listen critically), I think he is worth listening to on a variety of issues, cooperating with where needed on the important task of "saving the planet" (more on this another time). We share one planet, and we're called to live in love with one another on it.

Living Adventurously

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Advent is the time we remember the mystery of the incarnation. Among some people I know, it’s a time to reopen debates about Christology, the nature of that incarnation. For those of us willing to take it as a given and think about the implications, it should be a time to jump to the end of the book of Revelation and pray, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’.

Of course, there is all manner of debate and confusion over Jesus’ ‘second coming’ as there is over his first, but it’s always worth grounding the later in the former. And I mean so quite literally. We are used to thinking of Jesus as a man. And he was (is) a male human. Sadly, often in our imaginations and movies it is a blue-eyed Jesus we see, rather than a dark-skinned Galilean Jew. We can all too readily press Jesus into whatever mould we want. Scholars as well as laity are not immune from this.

John’s Gospel goes to great lengths to affirm Jesus’ divinity. More particularly, he is identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not some abstract conception of deity that might find home in the debates of philosophers, less still the rain-sending ‘Hughie’ of popular thought. For John, Jesus is the One who pitches his tent, or tabernacles, among his people, just as God did in the wandering in the wilderness. He is the Word who was present at creation, through whom all things were made. The echoes with Genesis 1 are quite clear.

For the rest of this blog piece see http://www.ethos.org.au/online-resources/Engage-Mail/living-adventurously.

Nature of Things - New Ecotheology book

Early last year I traveled across to Adelaide to give a paper at a conference at the Serafino winery on a theology of wilderness. The conference was an amazing one with a variety of speakers, an Aboriginal smoking ceremony (something I found profoundly moving) and some great views and company. The edited volume has finally been released by Wipf and Stock and is available online here.

The forward reads:

"In 2015 a conference on “Rediscovering the Spiritual in God’s Creation” was held at the Sera no winery complex in the McLaren Vale region of South Australia. The aim of the conference was not to seek consensus but to survey the landscape with a view to intentional responsible action in caring for God’s creation. Delegates were challenged to recognize their own worldviews and to widen their horizons to encompass the enormity of the transcendence and immanence of God’s presence in all creation. A group of leading international scholars and experts in the fields of science, ecology, theology, and ethics participated in a multidisciplinary conversation on the spiritual in creation, with the aim of discovering fresh horizons with regard to creation care, liturgy, justice, and discipleship within the Christian community. The chapters in this volume reflect the diversity of perspectives summarized in the Sera no Declaration, which was created towards the end of the conference. This declaration (which opens the volume) outlines a range of views relating to the presence of the spiritual in creation, views that are both traditional and radical. This volume highlights the current concern over ecological destruction and finds sources of inspiration in the deepest roots of our traditions and forms of spirituality to sustain efforts towards custodianship of the land and care for God’s creation."

The list of contributions is impressive with international names such as Paul Santmire, Celia Deane-Drummond and Ernst Conradie. There are many Australian contributors too such as Mark Worthing, Anne Elvey and Vicky Balabanski.