A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Creation’s travail

To hear some anti-green conservatives tell it, you’d think that nature-worship and radical environmentalism were making major inroads into our society. Of course, the opposite is much closer to the truth: the general attitude toward the natural world that underlies most of our daily activities is one that regards nature as little more than a vast storehouse of resources to be used and a vast sink in which to deposit our waste.

Still, it’s true that Christians, at any rate, shouldn’t idealize nature in either its benign aspects or its wilder and more threatening ones. There is a strain of deep green thinking that is anti-human and anti-civilization. But Christians should be a bit ambivalent about nature.

I don’t like to talk about nature as fallen, because that implies that there was a time when it was unfallen. I don’t think modern science permits us to think that, and I don’t think the Bible requires it. Instead, I’d prefer to talk about the created world as being “in travail” (cf. Romans, chapter 8). This implies that nature is good, but is on its way to being consummated by the power and grace of God. Nature doesn’t provide the standard of good and evil, but neither is it to be disregarded for the sake of human interests.

This view, not incidentally, provides a more solid grounding for compassion and justice for animals than either nature-mysticism or a purely utilitarian attitude toward the natural world. We don’t have to ignore the “red in tooth and claw” aspects of nature in order to recognize that our fellow creatures are caught in a world order that is indifferent to their suffering.

Yes, trying to intervene in the predator-prey relationship will usually cause more suffering than it alleviates, but we can at least recognize that it does cause innocent suffering and will (please God) be abolished–or at least radically transformed–in the eschaton. How much more, then, does a recognition of nature’s travail provide grounds for not adding to the suffering of God’s innocent creatures by imprisoning them in our institutionalized systems of food production and scientific experimentation?

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2 responses to “Creation’s travail”

  1. Philippe

    Great post.

    But now we need to ask ourselves how OT animal sacrifices were at one time pleasing to God. There’s nothing “scientific” or even useful about a holocaust, but for some reason God delighted in it, if it was offered with the right attitude. Do we call this “adding to” creation’s travail? Let’s think this all the way through.
    🙂

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  2. Lee

    Philippe, great point. I don’t have a settled view on this, especially since it involves a lot of complex issues about biblical interpretation, etc., but here are some points/questions that might be worth considering:

    1. Seems to me that the strictures surrounding the sacrificial system would actually have had the effect, at least initially, of moderating the amount of animal slaughter the Israelites were engaged in. Not to say that this was the intention, necessarily, but it certainly seems to suggest that taking animal life was not something to be done lightly.

    2. The OT itself seems ambivalent about animal sacrifice, with attitudes ranging from approval to (apparent) outright condemnation. Not sure how to reconcile those, but it’s at least worth nothing that they’re there.

    3. For Christians, at any rate, the resurrection of Jesus inaugurates a new age where sacrifices are obsolete. How should Christians then “live into” that new age?

    4. Our modern-day “sacrifices” are almost the opposite of those prescribed in the OT – they’re non-public, they’re not aimed at building up fellowship in the community, and they’re directed toward satisfying our own appetites rather than as an expression of worship.

    But none of that directly addresses your original point: if animal sacrifice was in some sense pleasing to God, doesn’t that mean God takes pleasure in the death of his creatures?

    I wonder if it would be more accurate to say that animal sacrifice was the natural way that people of that time and place expressed their devotion, and that’s what God finds pleasing. Later texts seem to indicate that God isn’t happy when sacrifice is performed without a proper disposition, indicating perhaps that sacrifice in itself is not what’s efficacious or pleasing to God.

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