To the Creation Care Family,
At the end of the semester, I will
be leaving Calvin College for Montana to join the Buffalo Field Campaign, a
group working “to stop the slaughter and harassment of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo.” Before I leave, I wanted to offer some
thoughts on the floor’s question for the year: “What
further initiatives can be taken to be truly sustainable, and who can inspire
us to take these steps?”
We live in the American
Empire. In history classes we are told
of the trials overcame and the resulting greatness of our nation. In regards to the formation of the country,
we were told it was ordained by God for Europeans to spread across the
continent because of Manifest Destiny. This
was a story that was told at the time to rationalize the destruction and
slaughter of indigenous peoples and non-humans inhabiting the continent
previously. Here is another myth that is
underlying our culture today with equally unsettling results: the Myth of
Progress. This myth tells us that every
action taken by civilized people whether it is technological, economic, political,
philosophical, or scientific in nature is a part of the ascent towards
greatness and a better world. The myth
says that civilization is the pinnacle of human existence. And most Christians believe this lie.
I’d like to suggest that the
Genesis narratives offer us an alternative vision of life. In fact, Genesis offers a story of
civilization as decent, the antithesis of our delusional myth. Life in the Garden of Eden more closely resembles
the mass of Homo sapiens existence on the planet as hunter-gatherers
(anthropologist Marshall Sahlins describes this as, “the original affluent
society”) rather than modern society. God,
through the earth, provides for the naked vegans, and it is very good. When we try to “be like God, knowing good and
evil” and eat from the tree in the middle of the garden we fall into a life of
toil through agriculture. This also coordinates
with histories of human existence from anthropologists such as Marshall
Sahlins, Richard B. Lee, Stanley Diamond, and author, Jared Diamond. Once hunter-gatherers begin to rely on
agriculture and domesticated animals instead of nomadic foraging, everything
changes. From agriculture comes a
surplus of food. Ruling classes form and
require armies to protect the elites and surplus. Extensive labor is needed to work in the
fields, and slavery becomes the solution.
Violence, inequality, and oppression become widespread. We see an agriculturalist attacking a
non-agriculturalist in the Cain and Abel story: Cain, the agriculturalist kills
Abel, the pastoralist. Then Cain builds
a city, the defining feature of civilization, and historically the next step in
humanity’s decent. In the Tower of Babel
story, we witness civilized people attempting to, “make a name for ourselves,”
by developing a technology to build a “city and a tower with its top in the
heavens.” God knows, “this is only the
beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be
impossible for them,” and ends this by confusing their language. God intervenes in the exploits of civilized
people in order to stop them from becoming too powerful.
This does not sound like
civilization as ascent or the Myth of Progress.
This is civilized existence as decent and the alienation of humanity
from the living world and from God. (I
refer anyone wanting a better description of this to check out Ched Myers or
Jacques Ellul on Jesusradicals.com.)
With that said, what is it that we
are trying to sustain? And do we even want to sustain plastic,
cancer, species extinction, unmanned drones, pavement, pollution, computers, rising
suicide rates, suburbia, wage slavery, starvation, consumerism, fast food,
industrial agriculture, and bananas in Michigan during the winter? Do we want to sustain our Tower of Babel?
So who can lead us towards a new
mode of existence? God instructs Moses
through a burning bush in the wilderness (Ex. 3:1-5). Throughout 1 Kings 17, 18, and 19, the
prophet Elijah travels the wilderness doing as God directs him. John the Baptist lived out feral faith in the
wilderness of Judea proclaiming the coming of the Lord (Mat. 3:1-4). Jesus was led into the wilderness before he
could start his ministry (Mat. 4:1), then commands us not to be anxious and
offers the life of the birds and lilies as a way to live (Mat. 6:25-34). There is a trend and we’ve stopped
listening. We’ve surrounded ourselves
with glowing screens, multitasking, frantically doing little, and our re-created
environments. We can identify more
celebrities than we can plants living outside our door. We spend most time walled into sterile
environments void of life beyond people.
Even outside, instead of the rustling of the fauna and the calls of
birds we hear the distant roar of car and construction sites. This is alienation. All living things are groaning for us to
abandon this existence. We were not
created to live this way.
“For
the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;
for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will
of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free
from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the
children of God. We know that the whole
creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” (Romans 8:19-22)
Creation can care for itself, but
it cannot care for this pathological civilization we have created by believing
we can control and re-create this good earth.
We on the other hand cannot care for ourselves, and in believing we can,
turn our back on each other, our non-human neighbors, and God.
May we be holy and wild,
Brandon Lee
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