ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<\/p>\n
This little book has been a long time in the birthing. My passion for God\u2019s good creation and for good theology in addressing the stewardship of this good creation has accompanied me throughout my career. As a result I have spoken, taught, and written on this topic in more venues than I can recall to more audiences than I can list. As I am an academic, many of these venues have been colleges, graduate schools, and professional academic societies. But many have been popular as well. Over the years I\u2019ve served on the board of Blessed Earth, attended the Lausanne Creation Care conferences, and built relationships with numerous national, parachurch and missionary organizations that are spending their lives making a difference for both the environment and the marginalized dependent on it. My dream has been to take this material, which has evolved over a decade of inquiry, and has spoken into the lives and hearts of so many (not the least my own), and place it into the hands of the everyday believer in a form that they can use. And as so many within the church simply don\u2019t know what to do with the topic of environmental stewardship, my ambition has been to put my research into a format that is as accessible to the college student as it is to his or her parents and grandparents. Between these covers is that effort.
\nAs so many have journeyed with me toward this goal, I wish to acknowledge the past publishers and organizations that have so kindly allowed me a platform to develop my thoughts on this topic. Below please find a list of all those endeavors that have found their way into print. May I also use this opportunity to thank Lawson Stone, who has so generously shared his beautiful images with me. To Matthew and Nancy Sleeth, who have offered me unending support and the best of friendships, for their organization Blessed Earth, and for allowing me to blog with them for a time. My thanks to Wheaton College, which granted Kristen Page and me the opportunity to coteach a full-semester course on this important topic to some of the finest students in the country. The Institute of Biblical Research and the Evangelical Theological Society deserve recognition for welcoming plenary and sectional presentations from me on this topic when it was still considered \u201cedgy\u201d and allowing me to reutilize my material in this publication. To Asbury University, Biola University, Evangel University, Living Faith Bible Fellowship in Tampa, Florida, and Arise City Summit, as well as the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church, who took the risk of inviting me to address this issue as an aspect of contemporary holiness to their constituencies. To Asbury Theological Seminary, which has always supported me in this quest, and to Westmont College, which has provided me the professional space to write this book, I owe my gratitude. There are many more on the list who have listened, chastened, and joined their voices as I\u2019ve developed this material. It is my great hope that, in this last incarnation of all the communications that have come before, we the church will be inspired to action. And in taking our place in this current crisis, we can do what we have always been called to do: change the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bible and American Environmental Practice: An Ancient Code Addresses a Current Crisis.\u201d In The Bible and the American Future, edited by Robert Jewett with Wayne L. Alloway Jr. and John G. Lacey, 108\u201329. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009.
\n\u201cA Biblical Theology of Creation Care: Is Environmentalism a Christian Value?\u201d Asbury Journal 62, no. 1 (2007): 67\u201376.
\nBlog posts from Blessed Earth, 2010\u20132012. www.blessedearth.org\/.
\n\u201cEnvironmental Law in Deuteronomy: One Lens on a Biblical Theology of Creation Care.\u201d Bulletin for Biblical Research 20, no. 3 (2010): 331\u201354.
\n\u201cEnvironmental Law: Wisdom from the Ancients.\u201d Bulletin for Biblical Research 24, no. 3 (2014): 307\u201329.
\n\u201cEnvironmentalism and the Evangelical: Just the Bible for Those Justly Concerned.\u201d Westmont Magazine, spring 2019, 38\u201346.
\n\u201cReligion and the Environment.\u201d In Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices, edited by Terry C. Muck, Harold A. Netland, and Gerald R. McDermott, 746\u201355. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014.<\/p>\n
INTRODUCTION<\/p>\n
Can a Christian Be an Environmentalist?<\/p>\n
The subject matter of this book is, in my opinion, one of the most misunderstood topics of holiness and social justice in the Christian community today. The topic is obviously important, relevant, contemporary, and compelling. It is an issue our neighbors (both locally and globally) care about deeply. As a result, this is a subject that profoundly influences the church\u2019s witness to the world. But as I have traveled, written, and spoken on this issue in Christian circles for more than a decade, I have found that the church is largely paralyzed on this topic. From college students to CEOs, seminarians to pastors, cattle ranchers to coal miners, Californians to Kentuckians\u2014we the church are MIA on the issue of environmental stewardship.
\nWhen I was teaching Old Testament at Wheaton College, professor Kristen Page (the Ruth Kraft Strohschein Distinguished Chair of Biology) and I won a Faith and Learning grant to launch the first-ever Wheaton course designed specifically to integrate the Bible and biology in an inquiry into environmental stewardship. Our title was \u201cEnvironmental Concern for the Christian: The Bible and Biology.\u201d As professors are wont to do, we opened the first class with a seemingly innocent \u201cicebreaker\u201d: \u201cIntroduce yourself to the class, telling us your name, your major, and why you took this course.\u201d Like most teachers, I have deployed a conversation starter like this dozens of times in an array of classroom settings. But by the time this one was over, I was stunned. Why? Because every one of our twenty-some students voiced the same testimony:<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always loved the outdoors (camping\/hiking\/bird watching\/wild ponies on Assateague\/the common dolphins in the Channel Island sound\/the beauty of the Ozarks). I have always felt God\u2019s presence and pleasure when I pursued those loves. But as a Christian, I didn\u2019t think I was allowed to incorporate that love or advocacy for those loves into my Christian identity. So I was really excited when you offered this course.<\/p>\n
Every student. Every well-educated, socially active, theologically committed young adult sitting in that classroom felt they were not allowed to advocate for the beauty and sanctity of God\u2019s creation and still call themselves \u201cChristian.\u201d And perhaps even more remarkable, the professors standing in front of those Wheaton students shared the same testimony. Why? Why has the church, historically the moral compass of our society, gotten so lost on this topic?
\nOne reason is certainly politics. Not kingdom politics, but American and international politics. I think that most would concur that the traditional political allies of the church are not the traditional political allies of environmental concern. If you are pro-life, it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. If you are a patriot, you supposedly cannot also be a conservationist. Or to be more forthright: in the United States, if you are an environmentalist, it is assumed that you are a Democrat\u2014and Democrats, supposedly, are not pro-life. If you are a Republican, it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. In other words, somehow environmental advocacy has been pigeonholed into a particular political profile and has become guilty by association. But of course, Christians are first the citizens of heaven, and therefore our alliances and our value system are not defined by American politics. Rather, our value system (aka \u201choliness\u201d) is defined by the Holy One. And as citizens of his kingdom, ultimately there is only one set of politics the Christ follower should be concerned about.
\nA second cause of the church\u2019s paralysis on this topic is familiar to many matters of social concern. We, the Western majority voice, are largely sheltered from the impact of environmental degradation on the global community. We don\u2019t see how unregulated use of land and water by big business decimates the lives of the marginalized. We have not witnessed the sterilization of the fertile fields of Punjab, India, at the hands of unrestrained industrial agriculture or the social collapse that it has caused. We have not stood on the shores of the Ganges River and seen and smelled the results of the unrelenting abuse of this immense and immensely important estuary via untreated industrial waste, raw sewage, and incomplete cremations. Our front windows do not offer us a view of the lunar landscapes left behind by mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia or the ragged remains of Madagascar\u2019s 88 percent deforestation\u2014both of which have left the marginalized without recourse. As a result, we struggle to understand creation care as an expression of concern for the widow and the orphan.
\nThird, and perhaps most detrimental, is the theological posture taught by many in the church that the created order is bound only for destruction. Subsequently, many devoted followers of Jesus have come to believe that it is ethically appropriate to use the earth\u2019s resources as aggressively as possible to accomplish what really matters\u2014the conversion of souls. The end result? The church, particularly the evangelical wing of the church, has inadvertently dismissed the issue of environmental stewardship as peripheral (or even alien) to the theological commitments of the Bible.
\nThis book is my contribution to exposing and uprooting these misconceptions that have rendered the church silent on a critical concern. As a longtime professor of biblical studies, a professional exegete, an author, a theologian, and\u2014most importantly\u2014a committed Christian, my objective in this little book is to demonstrate via the most authoritative voice in the church\u2019s life, that of Scripture, that the stewardship of this planet is not alien or peripheral to the message of the gospel. Rather, our rule of faith and praxis has a great deal to say about this subject. And what the Bible has to say is that the responsible stewardship of creation is not only an expression of the character of our God; it is the role he entrusted to those made in his image.<\/p>\n
1<\/p>\n
CREATION AS GOD\u2019S BLUEPRINT<\/p>\n
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.<\/p>\n
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE LETTERS OF TOLKIEN<\/p>\n
I gave my first public message on the issue of environmental stewardship in 2005 at Asbury Theological Seminary\u2019s Kingdom Conference. Historically, the goal of this conference has been to engage students in larger conversations regarding Christian responsibility across the globe. Standard topics have included training for effective cross-cultural communication; messages from courageous Christian cross-cultural workers (aka \u201cmissionaries\u201d); organizations such as Word Made Flesh and SEND International; and ministries committed to assisting orphans, refugees, and trafficked women. Never had Asbury\u2019s Kingdom Conference taken on environmentalism. But in 2005, under the courageous leadership of Professor Christine Pohl, the committee took the plunge. It was a tense moment for everyone. In central Kentucky in 2005, this was not a topic that \u201cthe church\u201d talked about. At least not from the pulpit. But being young and idealistic, I said yes to the event and dove into the task with a full heart. I was determined to reach my audience in a fashion that would engage and challenge without offending. And in the twenty-five minutes allotted to me, I preached my heart out. To my joy, my community responded with the same\u2014wideopen hearts. The end result? This event launched a movement at Asbury that is still moving forward.
\nWe definitely had our challenges. There was more than one accusation of \u201chippie do-gooder-ism,\u201d there were lots of questions about finances and labor, and there was one particularly telling faculty meeting in which I had to actually show my colleagues where to find the numbers on the bottom of their plastic water bottles and explain what the numbers meant! But we moved forward, and we created one of the most effective institutional recycling programs I\u2019ve ever seen.
\nThe director of custodial services, Craig Reynolds, was a critical ally in this expedition into the unknown. Although he had not been socialized into institutional environmental commitments (we\u2019re talking about Wilmore, Kentucky, here), when Craig became convinced of the moral imperative, he not only joined the team but also did the hard work of designing a financially advantageous response. Craig crunched the numbers and demonstrated that recycling our copious amounts of paper was cheaper than trashing it. He found that employing a company such as Shred-it resulted in a reduction in labor for his custodial staff. Together we found permanent solutions to our particular scenario. Then came Matthew and Nancy Sleeth (of Blessed Earth fame), who further educated the community on the topic and offered their time and resources. When President Timothy Tennent arrived in 2009, he brought the seminary to a new level, making it clear that the next phase of expansion would be organized with an eye on sustainability. As a result, after \u201ca long obedience in the same direction,\u201d this seminary has been transformed into a leading recycler in the region.
\nBut as with so many efforts toward individual and systemic reform, the Asbury community was only able to respond to this challenge because the issue was addressed via the community\u2019s own value system. In this case, Asbury needed to hear a biblical argument as to why environmental stewardship matters to the kingdom.
\nSo how does one mount a biblical argument on this topic? Like all issues of faith and praxis, to determine whether a value is biblical, it must be subjected to a survey of the biblical text. As interpreters and exegetes, we must ask the question: Do I see this particular value or precept systematically represented in the text as an expression of the reign and rule of God? Or is this value limited to a marginal representation in the Bible via the particularities of situational ethics? To make an argument that environmental concern is a kingdom value, the issue must rise to the level of the former\u2014a consistent component of God\u2019s instructions to humanity, a regular attribute of God\u2019s communicated values and affections. And as all biblical theology starts in Eden, we must start our inquiry there as well.<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
In the opening chapter of Genesis, God reveals his blueprint for creation. A close reading of this chapter demonstrates that the questions the biblical author is attempting to answer are, Who is God? What is humanity? and Where do we all fit within this cosmic plan? In figure 1, we see that the reader is offered an answer to these questions via the literary framework of a perfect \u201cweek.\u201d Here the interdependence of the cosmos is laid out within seven days of creative activity, crowned by the final day, the Sabbath. Thus, on days one through three we are offered three habitats (or kingdoms): (1) the day and night, (2) the sea and heavens, and (3) the dry land. On days four through six, the inhabitants (or rulers) of these various realms of creation are put in their proper places as well: (4) the sun and moon to rule the day and night, (5) the fish and birds to occupy the sea and sky, and (6a) the creatures who inhabit the dry land.<\/p>\n
Figure 1. The seven days of creation in Genesis 1\u20132:3<\/p>\n
As we consider the relationship between the first three days of Genesis\u2019s creation song, which designate the habitats\/kingdoms of creation, and the final four days, which identify the inhabitants\/rulers of those same realms, we find a correlation that communicates place and authority. Therefore, on day four we read that God creates the \u201ctwo great lights\u201d to \u201cgovern\u201d (or \u201cbe lord of\u201d; Hebrew: m\u0101\u0161al) the day and night (Gen 1:14\u201319). On day five we read that fish and birds are created to \u201cbe fruitful, multiply, and fill\u201d the seas and skies (Gen 1:20\u201323). On day six the land creatures are created to occupy the dry land (Gen 1:24\u201325). But as we approach the sixth day, we find that the literary structure of the piece shifts dramatically. Why? To communicate the crucial role that this stanza holds in the larger piece. Even the most casual reader can see that this day is given the longest and most detailed description up to this point. Why so much attention? Because this penultimate climax of Genesis 1 offers us the most breathtaking aspect of the Creator\u2019s work so far. On this day a creature is fashioned in the likeness of the Creator himself. On this day humanity (\u02be\u0101d\u0101m) is created in the image of God.<\/p>\n
Then God said, \u201cLet us make humanity [\u02be\u0101d\u0101m] in our image [\u1e63elem], according to our likeness; so that they may rule [Hebrew: r\u0101d\u00e2] over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.\u201d (Gen 1:26)<\/p>\n
The profound implications of humanity (\u02be\u0101d\u0101m) being fashioned and animated as God\u2019s physical representatives on this planet cannot be overstated. Both the biblical text and its ancient Near Eastern counterparts make it clear that for humanity to be named a \u1e63elem (image) is for humanity to be identified as the animate representation of God on this planet. In essence, woman and man are the embodiment of God\u2019s sovereignty in the created order. Here male and female are appointed as God\u2019s custodians, his stewards over a staggeringly complex and magnificent universe, because they are his royal representatives. Like the fish and birds, humanity is commanded to \u201cbe fruitful, multiply, and fill\u201d their habitat. But because they are the image bearers of the Almighty, they are also commanded to \u201ctake possession of\u201d (Hebrew: k\u0101ba\u0161), and \u201crule\u201d (Hebrew: r\u0101d\u00e2) all of the previously named habitats and inhabitants of this amazing ecosphere as well:<\/p>\n
God blessed them; and God said to them, \u201cBe fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth so that you may take possession of it [k\u0101ba\u0161]. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and every living thing that moves on the earth.\u201d (Gen 1:28)<\/p>\n
In the language of covenant, Yahweh has identified himself as the suzerain and \u02be\u0101d\u0101m as his vassal. Moreover, Yahweh has identified Eden as the land grant he is offering to \u02be\u0101d\u0101m.
\nThe final stanza of the creation song introduces the ultimate climax of both the week and the message\u2014the Sabbath day (Gen 2:1\u20133). This seventh day is set apart; it is sacred; it is holy. This day communicates that the universe in all of its breathtaking symmetry is finished, that the Creator is pleased, and as an expression of his good pleasure God has seated himself on his throne to revel in the beauty before him. Most important to us, the seventh day communicates that the perfect balance of this splendid and synergetic system is dependent on the sovereignty of the Creator. And as God is enthroned over all the vastness of our universe on the seventh day, humanity\u2019s installation on the sixth day announces that man and woman have been appointed as the stewards of God\u2019s vast cosmos. This message is reiterated in Psalm 8, when a worshiper standing millennia beyond the dawn of creation reiterates the wonder of humanity\u2019s place in the cosmos:<\/p>\n
When I consider your heavens,
\nthe work of your fingers,
\nthe moon, and the stars that you have fixed in place.
\nWhat is humanity that you should remember him?
\nOr the son of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m that you should care for him?
\nYou have made them [humanity]
\na little lower than the angels
\nand crowned them with glory and splendor,
\nYou have made them lord [Hebrew: m\u0101\u0161al] over the works of your hands,
\nYou have placed everything under their feet
\nFlocks and oxen, all of them!
\nEven the wild creatures of the field!
\nThe birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
\nwhatever passes through the paths of the seas!
\nO Yahweh, our Lord,
\nhow majestic is your name in all the earth. (Ps 8:3\u20139)<\/p>\n
The message in both texts is explicit. Whereas the ongoing flourishing of the created order is dependent on the sovereignty of the Creator, it is the privilege and responsibility of the Creator\u2019s stewards (that would be us) to facilitate this ideal plan by ruling in his stead. How? Like the other inhabitants of the earth, sky, and sea, the children of Adam are to \u201cbe fruitful, multiply, and fill\u201d the earth. But as the ones made in God\u2019s image, we are also given authority over all the spheres whose creation precedes the sixth day. And like any vassal who has been offered a land grant by his suzerain, humanity is commanded to \u201ctake possession\u201d of this vast universe per the instructions of his sovereign lord (Gen 1:28). In sum, humanity plays a critical role in God\u2019s blueprint for the flourishing of this majestic ecosphere in which we find ourselves. Yahweh is indeed the ultimate sovereign, but humanity has been created as his representative to serve as custodian and steward, enacting the Creator\u2019s will by living our lives as a reflection of God\u2019s image. We have received our authority from the Creator. We rule as he would rule. We are stewards, not kings.
\nGenesis 2:15 specifies humanity\u2019s task further:<\/p>\n
Then Yahweh Elohim took the human and put him into the garden
\nof Eden to tend it [l\u0115\u02bfobd\u0101h] and to guard it [l\u0115\u0161omr\u0101h].<\/p>\n
In this second creation account, the message is repeated: the garden belongs to Yahweh, but human beings have been given the privilege to rule and the responsibility to care for this garden under the authority of their divine lord. This was the ideal plan\u2014a world in which humanity (\u02be\u0101d\u0101m) would succeed in building human civilization in the midst of God\u2019s kingdom by directing and harnessing the amazing resources of this planet under the wise direction of their Creator. Moreover, as those made in the image of God, humanity is literally \u201cinstalled\u201d in the garden for this very task. Here there would always be enough. Progress would not necessitate pollution. Expansion would not require extinction. The privilege of the strong would not demand the deprivation of the weak. And humanity would succeed in this calling because of the guiding wisdom of their God. As I am wont to say in my classes, God\u2019s ever-expanding universe was offered to his children such that they might always be captivated by its profound complexity, its fierce beauty, and its fragile balance. We were designed to love what God loves, and we were commissioned to seek the stars.
\nBut we all know the story: humanity rejected this perfect plan and chose autonomy instead. And because of the authority of humanity\u2019s God-given position within creation, all creation paid the price for humanity\u2019s choice. Because of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m, even \u201cthe creation was subjected to futility [or \u201cfrustration\u201d]\u201d (Rom 8:20). In the words of New Testament scholar Douglas Moo, because of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m\u2019s choice, the planet itself has been \u201cunable to attain the purpose for which it was created.\u201d As I discuss in my book The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament, the curse enacted by humanity\u2019s rebellion is not simply a list of random penalties\u2014it is a reversal of God\u2019s originally intended blessings. Those made in the image of God and designed to live eternally will now die like the animals. The earth, designed to serve, will now devour (Gen 3:19). The act of birth will now produce death (Gen 3:16). Adam\u2019s labor, which was intended to bring security to his family, will now be undermined by the very resources designed to provide for him (Gen 3:17\u201319). In other words, the perfect balance of Eden, portrayed in the seven-day structure of Genesis 1, has been flipped upside down because of the rebellion of those who were appointed to lead. The treason of God\u2019s chosen stewards has consigned all under their authority to frustration and death. This because although Adam and Eve had the authority to make this choice, they did not have the agency to hold the cosmos in check after making it. In an instant, God\u2019s perfect world became \u02be\u0101d\u0101m\u2019s broken world\u2014full of conflict, want, death, anxiety, and violence. And because of humanity\u2019s strategic place in God\u2019s plan, not only did this twisted existence become Adam and Eve\u2019s inheritance\u2014it became the inheritance of all placed under their rule.<\/p>\n
WHAT WILL WE SAY?<\/p>\n
In my experience, the body of Christ readily recognizes the disastrous effects of the fall in the arena of human relationships. Corrupt and abusive governments, bigotry and violence, the oppression of the weak and the deprivation of the voiceless\u2014no one needs to tell the informed believer (or even most unbelievers) that these realities were not God\u2019s original intent for humanity. Nor, in my experience, does anyone need to tell the committed Christian that it is the responsibility of the church to take a proactive stand against these distortions of God\u2019s good plan. History teaches us that, at its best, the church has been among the first to identify the effects of the fall on human society and has often been the first to respond. There is a reason that most of the relief organizations, homeless shelters, hospitals, and orphanages on this planet have the words Christian, salvation, mission, Baptist, saint, or cross in their titles. As Bishop Swanson of the New York City Tract Society stated in 1859 when faced with the unbearable conditions in the urban slums of an emerging America, \u201cThe Church of Christ must grope her way into the alleys and courts and purlieus of the city, and up the broken staircase, and into the bare room, and beside the loathsome sufferer.\u2026 For she was organized, commissioned, and equipped for the moral renovation of the world.\u201d
\nThis imprint of God\u2019s character in the heart of the true believer is why the first abolitionists were Christians; why Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist preacher; and why the Union Rescue Mission (currently the largest private homeless shelter in the United States) has housed itself in the bowels of LA\u2019s Skid Row since 1891. We see the impact of humanity\u2019s rebellion and we know that we are called as Christians to be light, salt, and leaven in the midst of a bruised and broken world. But rarely, it seems, do we as Christians reflect on the effects of humanity\u2019s rebellion on the garden. And rarely, it seems, do we consider how the reality of redemption in our lives should redirect our attitude toward the same. Surely if the ultimate objective of our God is to reconcile the world to himself through us, this topic deserves to be on the table as well. (2 Cor 5:17\u201321).<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. What aspect of this chapter affected you the most? What was the most troubling, the most inspiring, or the most convicting?
\n2. In your church community, what are the main roadblocks to environmental concern and action?
\n3. In your own life (do your best to be transparent) what are the main roadblocks to environmental concern and action?<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
THE PEOPLE OF THE OLD COVENANT AND THEIR LANDLORD<\/p>\n
Failure to fulfill our obligations as faithful trustees of the gifts of God\u2019s creation will inevitably bring God\u2019s judgment upon us. The earth itself will rebel against our greedy and thoughtless exploitation of nature and our irresponsible fecundity.<\/p>\n
RICHARD BAER JR., \u201cLAND MISUSE: A THEOLOGICAL CONCERN\u201d (1969)<\/p>\n
RENTER OR LANDLORD: WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
Our next stop in our survey of biblical theology as it concerns environmental stewardship is the nation of Israel. Israel is critical to the discussion because it stands as the first model of God\u2019s relationship with a redeemed and landed citizenry in a fallen world. Israel understood that it was Yahweh who actually owned the land of Canaan. This emerged from their understanding that Canaan was a land grant, distributed to the tribes under Joshua; and Israel\u2019s privileges to that land grant emerged from their covenant document\u2014their constitution and bylaws, what we know as the book of Deuteronomy. The stipulations here are completely clear. If the nation will keep Yahweh\u2019s commandments, they will keep the land. Deuteronomy 4:40 summarizes the agreement with these words:<\/p>\n
Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time. (NIV)<\/p>\n
In this book, whose legal traditions reach back into the shadows of Israel\u2019s earliest settlement, there is a continual chorus: if the people will remember the law of God and obey it, they will live and prosper; but if they forget and disobey, they will not prosper. To obey is life; to disobey, death. \u201cSo choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants!\u201d (Deut 30:19 NASB). The incarnation of Israel\u2019s blessing of life was the Promised Land. This is the land of Canaan that Yahweh \u201cswore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to them and to their descendants after them\u201d (Deut 1:8). In the language of ancient international diplomacy, the land of Canaan was, as mentioned in the first chapter, a \u201cland grant\u201d given by a suzerain to his vassal. And, of course, land grants could be recalled. Thus, although the offspring of Abraham were invited to live on the land with joy and productivity, the book of Deuteronomy is eminently clear that, just like the Garden of Eden, the land would never be truly theirs. Rather, as the curse sections of Deuteronomy 28 unequivocally communicate, Yahweh retained the right to reclaim his land, to uproot his people \u201cfrom their land in anger and fury and in great wrath, and to cast them into another land as it is this day\u201d (Deut 29:28). Why would Yahweh, who loves his people, uproot them from their land? As Israel\u2019s story presents in graphic detail, he did so because of Israel\u2019s long-lived, oft-repeated, remorseless breach of the covenant agreement. As it was in the garden, so it was in the land of Israel. God owns the land, and it is humanity\u2019s privilege to live on it. It was God\u2019s joy to give both the garden and the land grant of Canaan to his people. It was God\u2019s intention that the land would provide for all of his people\u2019s needs. But God\u2019s people were renters, not landlords. And if they failed to remember that reality, there would be consequences.
\nIsrael\u2019s identity as a lessee is most evident in the laws of the tithes, firstfruits, and the offering of the firstborn that populate the Mosaic covenant. Here we find that the people of Israel, much like renters, were expected to pay a percentage of their income to Yahweh via the central cult site\u2014the tabernacle (and later the temple). In Israel\u2019s early subsistence economy, in which pastoral and agricultural goods were the mediums of exchange, this meant a percentage of their crops and flocks were to be brought to the tabernacle\/temple as an offering to Yahweh. And because Israel\u2019s government was theocratic (a government actually ruled by God), an offering to Yahweh was also tribute to the king.<\/p>\n
Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. Eat the tithe of your grain, your new wine and your oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of Yahweh your God at the place he will choose to place his name\u2014the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and flock\u2014in order that you may learn to fear Yahweh your God all your life. (Deut 14:22\u201323)<\/p>\n
You shall set aside each of the firstborn males that are born from your herd [cattle] and your flock [sheep and goats] for Yahweh your God. You shall not work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. Rather, you and your household shall eat it every year in the presence of Yahweh your God in the place that Yahweh chooses. (Deut 15:19\u201320)<\/p>\n
This will be the priests\u2019 due from the people: when anyone sacrifices an ox or a sheep, they must give the priest the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the stomach. You shall also give him the firstfruits of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, and the first fleece when you shear your sheep. For Yahweh your God has chosen him and his sons from all your tribes forever, to stand and serve in the name of the Yahweh. (Deut 18:3\u20135)<\/p>\n
For those unfamiliar with ancient Near Eastern culture, it is best to understand Israel\u2019s tithe as a form of regular taxation. The system of offering and sacrifice served two important functions: (1) to acknowledge Israel\u2019s position as a tenant and subordinate in God\u2019s government, and (2) to address the needs of the landless among them (Deut 14:28\u201329; 26:12\u201315). But unlike the way most of us feel about rent or taxation, the law in Deuteronomy speaks of the tithe as an act of celebration as well. Here the Israelite is worshiping by giving thanks to God with a concrete gift that supports the staff and infrastructure of the temple\/tabernacle, as well as the marginalized. As most of the meat from the animals sacrificed was returned to the worshiper, the offerings brought on this pilgrimage also provide a feast to be shared by the extended family.
\nThe law of the firstborn is quite unfamiliar to most of us. It provokes the question: What makes a firstborn special to a pastoralist? Ryan Strebeck, a past student who is currently the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Sweetwater, Texas, helped me explore this question. Ryan is a third-generation cattle rancher from eastern New Mexico and Elk City, Kansas. He has a lot of experience with firstborn calves. According to Ryan, there are no particular qualities that a firstborn calf has that following calves would not share. But what is distinct about the firstborn is the \u201cfragile nature of one\u2019s first birthing experience.\u201d Apparently (just like humans), a cow\u2019s first calving season can be more traumatic than subsequent seasons. As a result, \u201cMiscarrying, or \u2018sloughing\u2019 a calf, is more common for a heifer than [for] a five-calf cow. Mindful of this, we could probably say that a firstborn calf is more prized because of the high risk of losing that first calf.\u201d Ryan went on to explain to me that in today\u2019s market, a heifer that sloughs will likely be sent to slaughter, as she has become an economic liability. Ann Bell Stone of Elmwood Stock Farm has something similar to say about sheep. She herself is a sixth-generation family farmer from central Kentucky. Her family has kept a Suffolk\/Dorset-cross sheep herd for generations. Like Ryan Strebeck, Ann Stone told me that a ewe\u2019s first birth is usually no different from its later births. But the first birth is a strong indicator of what sort of producer and mother the ewe will be. As sheep tend toward multiple births (an economic asset), the ewe that produces twins or triplets the first time is a ewe worth keeping. In both of these testimonials we find that the firstborn is not necessarily unique in its own particularities, but it does serve as a bellwether. So a live, healthy first birth is a great blessing to any farmer and an indicator of good things to come. Moreover, as Ann pointed out, any \u201cfirstfruit,\u201d be it produce or livestock, is a product for which the farmer has labored and waited throughout a long \u201chungry season.\u201d So to give the \u201cfirst\u201d away is a sign of both great sacrifice and profound confidence, sacrifice in that the farmer and his family have waited a long time for that first lamb or tomato, and confidence in that they have no real assurance, outside their trust in God, that a \u201csecond\u201d is coming.
\nReturning to the laws in the book of Deuteronomy, note that the text states that the firstborn is not to be worked or shorn (Deut 15:19)\u2014meaning that the economic benefits that might have been derived from this animal all belonged to Yahweh. Since the goal in a region like Palestine was for the ewes to give birth twice per year (once always in the spring), and since traditionally the best meat comes from a weaned male (two to five months old), it is probable that the sacrifice at the tabernacle\/temple was of a weaned, two-to five-month-old male firstling of the flock in the fall. This particular selection would not only provide the best meat for the family feast but would cull the herd of males. The fact that the firstborn was reserved for special slaughter at the central cult site, and would need to be butchered on site for the meat to remain edible, explains the inordinately small number of bones from yearlings (sheep, goat, or cattle) recovered from Israelite villages and the large number retrieved from worship sites.
\nWhat we learn here is that Israel\u2019s worship was structured around the regular acknowledgment that nothing they had was truly theirs. It all belonged to Yahweh. Here we also find Yahweh\u2019s divinely authorized taxation system\u2014the ultimate indicator that the people of Israel were only tenants on Yahweh\u2019s land. Israel is commanded to make regular offerings of the land\u2019s produce to the divine king throughout the year because their land belongs to God. In fact, the old legal core of Deuteronomy is introduced and concluded by imperatives regarding Israel\u2019s tenant status. Deuteronomy 12:10\u201312 opens the law code with the following command to bring offerings (a form of rent and\/or taxation) to the central cult site:<\/p>\n
When you cross the Jordan and live in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to inherit, and he gives you rest from all your enemies around so that you may live in security, then you will bring to the place in which Yahweh your God will choose to place his name all that I am commanding you: your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and the choicest votive offerings that you vow to Yahweh. And you shall rejoice in the presence of Yahweh your God.<\/p>\n
And Deuteronomy 26:1\u201311 closes the law code with a reminder of the same:<\/p>\n
When you have entered the land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and live in it, you shall take from the first of all the produce of the ground that you shall bring in from your land that Yahweh your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place where Yahweh your God chooses to place his name. And you will go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, \u201cI declare this day to Yahweh your God that I have entered the land that Yahweh swore to our fathers to give us.\u201d Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of Yahweh your God. And you shall testify before Yahweh your God, \u201cMy father was a wandering Aramean.\u2026 He brought us to this place, and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Therefore, I have now brought the first of the produce of the land that you have given me, O Yahweh.\u201d Then you shall set it down before Yahweh your God, and worship before Yahweh your God, and rejoice, on account of all the good things that Yahweh your God has given you and your household.<\/p>\n
Deuteronomy, the constitution and bylaws of ancient Israel, makes it crystal clear that this good land given to God\u2019s people, as well as its produce, belongs to Yahweh. The tribes of Israel are only his tenants, who are appointed to their inherited tribal landholdings according to his good pleasure.<\/p>\n
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
Now let\u2019s turn toward God\u2019s expectations of Israel as regards sustainable agriculture. In concert with Israel\u2019s understanding that it was Yahweh who actually owned the land of Canaan, a number of laws address the longevity of the land\u2019s fertility. The essential idea presented in Scripture is that each generation of Israelites is required to maintain the land in such a way that it is as fertile when they pass it on to the next generation as it was when they received it. At the core of these laws is the command regarding Sabbath rest\u2014a mandate to humanity to regularly cease production so that the land may be allowed an opportunity to replenish itself. Thus in Exodus 23:10\u201312 we read,<\/p>\n
You shall sow your land for six years and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the needy of your people may eat; and whatever they leave the wild animal may eat. You are to do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh you shall rest, in order that your ox and your ass may rest and the son of your female servant and the immigrant may be refreshed.<\/p>\n
Leviticus 25:4\u20137 reiterates and particularizes this law:<\/p>\n
But during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath belonging to Yahweh; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Your harvest\u2019s aftergrowth you shall not reap, and the grapes of your untrimmed vines you shall not gather.\u2026 Rather, the Sabbath [growth] of the land shall be your food\u2014belonging to you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired man, your temporary resident, and the immigrants among you. Even your domesticated beast and the wild animal that is in your land shall have all its crops to eat.<\/p>\n
In other words, just like humanity, the land was to be given a Sabbath rest. In agriculture-speak, what is being described here is the practice of \u201cfallowing\u201d\u2014allowing a plowed and tilled field to remain unseeded during a growing season. Not only does this ancient practice aid the recovery of soil fertility, but it also breaks the natural cycle of species-specific pests and diseases that result when a single crop is repeatedly cultivated in the same field. David Hopkins says that early Israel \u201cundoubtedly practiced a type of short-term fallowing in which a year of cultivation was followed by a year of bare-ground fallow.\u201d And as all \u201cmixed farmers\u201d know, a fallow field serves as excellent pasturage for livestock. The remains of last year\u2019s crop provide important nutrition to this year\u2019s livestock. And in addition to aerating the soil with their foraging and hooves, these same animals generously deposit their nitrogen-and phosphorous-rich manure throughout the fields one year in advance of the next planting. In all these practices, the ancient Israelite farmer supported and enhanced the microbiology of his soil and thereby dodged the disaster of sterile land, famine, and forced relocation. Keep in mind that then, as now, such farming practices limited short-term yield. In fact, Norman Yoffee theorizes that a significant contributor to the late eighteenth-century agricultural collapse in Babylonia was Hammurabi\u2019s abbreviation of fallow law in his quest to increase short-term yield. In contrast, the Sabbath mandate in Israel\u2019s agricultural system limited short-term yield but helped to ensure long-term productivity. Then as now, long-term soil fertility protected the poor. It is very interesting to me that it was the Sabbath\u2014this \u201ctrue cessation from the rhythms of work and world; a time wholly set apart\u201d\u2014that established the posture of restrained production and moderate consumption that facilitated the long-term perspective commanded by God.
\nCrop rotation was a third weapon in the arsenal of the ancient farmer who labored toward sustainable soil fertility. As any organic farmer would tell us, and as the history of urbanization in Mesopotamia dramatically illustrates, the continuous cultivation of a single crop in the same field depletes the soil of nutrients and encourages the proliferation of pests and diseases specific to that particular crop. In contrast, crop rotation (particularly the rotation of certain crops, such as legumes) actually restores the soil\u2019s nitrogen content. The gleaning laws (which command leaving a portion of the harvest in the field for the marginalized) also contribute to sustainability. The unharvested portion of the crop ensures something agriculturalists speak of as \u201ccrop residue,\u201d which provides essential humus to the soil.
\nThus we see that Israel\u2019s Sabbath law protected the long-term fecundity of the land. The sustainable farming practices this law encouraged\u2014which limited short-term yield but helped to ensure long-term productivity\u2014were understood as \u201crighteousness\u201d in the Old Testament (see Job 31:38\u201340). Of interest is that current agricultural science is demonstrating that our modern failure to provide for long-term soil fertility is indeed leading to disaster\u2014in the form of decreased fertility, poor nutrition, and, in many parts of the world, sterility. As we will see in a future chapter, this failure also has a devastating effect on those living on the margins.
\nAlthough I would never suggest that present-day farmers return to the agricultural methods of the Iron Age, I would suggest that in Israel\u2019s fallow law we find a critical ideological principle that should continue to guide our approach to the stewardship of agricultural land: It is not acceptable for any populace to take from the land everything that it can. Rather, as the law of Israel teaches us, God\u2019s people are commanded to operate with the long-term well-being of the land as their ultimate goal. They are instructed to leave enough so that the land might be able to replenish itself for future harvests and future generations\u2014even though such methods will cut into short-term profits. Why? The answer offered in Leviticus is short and direct: \u201cbecause I am Yahweh says your God\u201d (Lev 25:17), and \u201cthe land is mine\u201d (Lev 25:23). In Deuteronomy, the answer comes from a different direction but is equally compelling: so that \u201cyou shall prolong your days in the land\u201d (Deut 5:33; 30:18; 32:47). In other words: because this is Yahweh\u2019s land and Yahweh\u2019s produce, and because Yahweh intends that his land be fruitful for the next generation of tenants. In sum, the constitution of ancient Israel taught that economic security or growth was not a viable excuse for the abuse of the land, and that true economic well-being would come only from careful stewardship of it.<\/p>\n
A CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
Industrial Agriculture and Punjab India<\/p>\n
Compare these seemingly \u201cprimitive\u201d biblical laws with one of our most perilous issues in the global environmental crisis\u2014the ill-begotten gains of what William Gaud first termed the \u201cGreen Revolution\u201d in 1968. Better known as \u201cindustrialized agriculture,\u201d this revolution was birthed in post-World War II America in response to global food shortages. The commitment was to develop and distribute high-yield cereal grains supported by synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, to modernize irrigation infrastructures, and to implement new farm-management techniques in order to increase the world\u2019s food supply. The effort was so successful that Norman Borlaug, named the \u201cfather of the Green Revolution,\u201d received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his profound contribution to ending human misery in Third World countries. But these gains have not come without a cost.<\/p>\n
Figure 2. The region of Punjab<\/p>\n
Rather, as a result of the rapid increases in the utilization of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the implementation of hybrid cereal crops, monocultural farming (the cultivation of a single crop in a single field for extended periods of time), and systemic land overuse, the same countries that hailed Borlaug a hero are now teetering on the brink of a new agricultural disaster. A prime example is Punjab, India. In September 1997, Punjab was recognized as \u201cone of the world\u2019s most remarkable examples of agricultural growth.\u201d This region had become the largest producer of grain among all the states of India, so much so that India was actually exporting grain. By April 2009, however, NPR announced that \u201cthe famed \u2018bread basket\u2019 of India\u201d was \u201cheading toward collapse.\u201d Thirty years after the revival, Indian farmers were using three times as much chemical fertilizer to produce the same amount of grain. And although pesticide use has steadily increased in Punjab\u2014demonstrated by numerous pesticide poisonings and rampant increase in human cancers\u2014the insects had become resistant. India was experiencing exactly what Patricia Muir, professor emeritus of the College of Agricultural Science at Oregon State University, states is the inevitable outcome of relying wholly on nonorganic, chemical fertilizers:<\/p>\n
Essentially, as growers add inorganic fertilizers without due attention to organics, they step onto a one-way street.\u2026 They need to add ever-increasing amounts of inorganic fertilizers to sustain their yields. It is similar to any addiction, where increasing amounts of the desired substance are required to achieve satisfaction.<\/p>\n
In addition to the impact of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the Green Revolution in Punjab created a water crisis. The hybrid wheats and rices introduced to the region required significantly more water than the traditional species. For the locals, this means that wells that once reached groundwater at thirty feet by 2009 were being drilled to two hundred feet. By 2011, 79 percent of the groundwater assessment divisions (\u201cblocks\u201d) in the region were identified as \u201coverexploited\u201d or \u201ccritical,\u201d with extraction dramatically exceeding the supply. Indeed, as G. S. Kalkat, chairman of the Punjab State Farmers Commission, offered in 2009, \u201cIf farmers don\u2019t drastically revamp the system of farming, the heartland of India\u2019s agriculture could be barren in 10 to 15 years.\u201d Barren. And unlike the crisis of the 1960s, this agricultural impasse will arrive after Punjab has exhausted its soil, killed off its native species, emptied its aquifers, and exponentially increased its population. What will happen on our planet when the nearly 1.4 billion people of India cannot feed themselves because their once-fertile homeland is barren?
\nThe drama of our current global crisis is not limited to faraway lands or international politics. Rather, as is painfully evident in the United States, the industrialization of farming has forced out small-holder farmers all over this country. At a clergy leadership conference in Mississippi in 2019 I presented on these topics. In a region of our country that traditionally would not associate the word environmental with holiness, I watched while pastor after pastor rose to his or her feet to grieve the social and economic collapse of their parishes as a result of industrial agriculture. Mississippi is proud of the fact that it is an agricultural state\u2014a major producer of poultry (\u201cbroilers\u201d), eggs, soybeans, cotton, rice, sweet potatoes, catfish, and dairy. But each of these two hundred Christian leaders, who hailed from every region of the state, spoke of their family farmers as people in crisis. Forced off their land by unsustainable economic conditions, these folks had been left with no choice but to sell off their patrimony to distant corporations, and seek a new vocation. The meadows that once supported grassfed dairy cows and local produce had been replaced by acre after acre of monocrop agriculture in which fringe forest and brush areas had been removed and riverbanks exposed. Not only does this nationwide trend mark the end of a way of life; it also marks the collapse of local economies. Indeed, throughout world history, family farms have served as a safeguard against the cycle of perpetual poverty. But in our day these stewards of the soil have been left landless and jobless from the \u201cbreadbasket\u201d of India to the delta of Mississippi. Moreover, radical increases in pesticide-related human cancers, significant nutritional loss in our food supply, and allergies connected with hybrid grains may be identified in every corner of our industrialized world.
\nA final factor in this transformation of farming as we once knew it is the enormous energy consumption required for industrial agriculture. In his 2008 \u201cAn Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief,\u201d Michael Pollan reported that the industry of farming was responsible for 19 percent of America\u2019s annual consumption of fossil fuel. In other words, what had once been the greenest industry on the planet was quickly becoming one of the dirtiest. Whereas in 1940 each calorie of fossil fuel produced 2.3 calories of food, in 2008 the ratio was 10 calories of fossil fuel to every 1 calorie of food\u2014and the disparity continues to grow.
\nAnd so we return to the moral mandate of the Old Testament. Allow the land to rest. Don\u2019t take everything you can. Take only what you need. Leave enough so that the land might be able to restore itself for future harvests and future generations\u2014even though such methods will cut into short-term profits. I dare to postulate that the implementation of this single, wise, \u201cprimitive\u201d principle would have completely reconfigured the effects of the Green Revolution. Most likely this piece of ancient wisdom could have steered both the Mississippi delta and Punjab, India, away from their current agricultural emergencies.<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. How do the Israelite laws of land care inform us about God\u2019s intentions for our relationship with creation?
\n2. If the land is actually God\u2019s, how does that affect the way you think about the land? How about your behavior toward the land?
\n3. Why do you think our churches, our country, and our government seem to be turning a blind eye toward the impact of industrial agriculture on the land, the farmer, and populace?
\n4. In a modern economy, whose job is it to protect the land? Whose job is it to protect the farmer?<\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
THE DOMESTIC CREATURES ENTRUSTED TO \u02be\u0100D\u0100M<\/p>\n
What is dangerous about the consumer identity is that a consumer will rarely ask questions about the supply chain leading up to the transaction. His only concern is getting the most out of the lowest-priced product. In fact, the clients prefer to maintain their traditional role of the ignorant buyer; they want to be invisible, anonymous, and free of any culpability. Assuming a \u201cconsumer\u201d identity is morally evasive because consumers do not feel responsible for the journey of the product. They do not ask, \u201cWho collected the raw materials?\u201d or \u201cWho put the pieces together?\u201d or \u201cHow was the product transported to the shop?\u201d It is the responsibility of the seller to worry about all this.<\/p>\n
MYRTO THEOCHAROUS, \u201cBECOMING A REFUGE\u201d (2016)<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
One of the greatest gifts of the Mosaic covenant was the Sabbath ordinance. Three months free from the tyranny of Egypt, three months into their journey toward the Promised Land, Yahweh offers the children of Abraham his covenant at Mt. Sinai. The core message of this covenant? \u201cIf you will honor me as God, your only God, I will make you mine forever.\u201d The gifts of this great covenant included a new identity as a nation, the land grant of Canaan, protection from their enemies, economic security, and Yahweh\u2019s very presence among them enthroned in the tabernacle. In any universe, this is an amazing offer. But pause to ponder who is standing at the foot of this mountain. This is a nation of slaves. These people had never known freedom. Their parents and grandparents before them had lived out their entire lives subject to their masters, laboring endlessly with no self-determination, systematically dehumanized until old age and abuse deposited their broken bodies in the ground. But in the radically different relationship offered to Israel at Sinai, a new kind of master commands his people to rest. Every seven days. Stop. For twenty-four hours, just stop. And while you are stopping, remember who you are. Stop cooking and cleaning, stop writing and networking, stop farming and building, stop. Why? In the words of Henri Blocher, because the Sabbath<\/p>\n
relativizes the works of mankind, the contents of the six working days. It protects mankind from total absorption by the task of subduing the earth, it anticipates the distortion which makes work the sum and purpose of human life, and it informs mankind that he will not fulfil his humanity in his relation to the world which he is transforming but only when he raises his eyes above, in the blessed, holy hour of communion with the Creator.\u2026 The essence of mankind is not work!<\/p>\n
The Sabbath reminds us all what it means to be creatures. It reminds folks like me who work far too much that \u201cthe essence of humanity is not work.\u201d As practicing Jews everywhere would tell us, \u201cThe Sabbath is the most precious present mankind has received from the treasure house of God.\u201d
\nBut we might be surprised to learn that the Sabbath is not just for humans. Rather, God says that<\/p>\n
the seventh day is a Sabbath belonging to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work. Not you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your domesticated beasts.\u2026 And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and that Yahweh your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm. For this reason, Yahweh your God has commanded you to keep the day of the Sabbath. (Deut 5:14\u201315)<\/p>\n
The book of Deuteronomy is the constitution and bylaws of the nation of ancient Israel. In this political and theological document, according to the mandate of the covenant established on God\u2019s gift of redemption, the Israelites were to honor their God by allowing their livestock to rest. This should arrest our attention. The Ten Commandments tell us that humanity is commanded to allow the domesticated beast to rest. Why? In the words of Deuteronomy, because you were once slaves yourselves. You know all too well what it is to labor without relief, to live out your entire life captive to the whim of another, to be disallowed control over a single corner of your own existence. You know what it feels like not to be allowed to rest.
\nJust as today, in ancient Israel farm animals were maintained exclusively to provide for the well-being of humanity. The most common livestock to be found on an Israelite homestead were mixed flocks of Black Sinai goats and Awassi (\u201cfat-tailed\u201d) sheep. Israel relied on these animals for milk, meat, cheese, goat hair (for tents, rugs, and bags), and Awassi wool for textiles of every sort. Other less obvious products of Israel\u2019s \u201csmall cattle\u201d were fat (for candles and soap), skins (containers for wine, water, and churns), bones for tools, and parchment. The flocks were mixed partly because these two animals cohabit so well and partly to ensure the economic stability of the household. Essentially, sheep and goats were the \u201cdiversified portfolio\u201d of the ancient pastoralist. Both animals were kept for their milk and meat, as noted above, but the Awassi sheep was by far the more valuable animal. This was in part because their meat was preferred over goat, but primarily because of their renowned fleece. Awassi wool was used for garments of every sort, and we have extensive records of the lucrative exchange of this textile dating back into the third millennium BCE. If life went smoothly, Awassi sheep brought their owners significant economic returns\u2014the \u201cstocks\u201d of an ancient investment portfolio.
\nThe Black Sinai goat was not as valuable. A reliable provider of milk and meat, yes, but its coarse hair was utilized only for tent curtains, bags, and other \u201crough\u201d textiles. So here\u2019s the catch. Although the Awassi sheep were the more lucrative investment, they were also the more vulnerable asset. Awassi are picky eaters, sensitive to drought and heat, and pretty much defenseless against predators. As Timothy Laniak details, they have no biting teeth or claws, they get lost easily, and they are terribly nearsighted. Awassi also panic easily. So when one of these sheep gets lost (as they are wont to do), they typically hunker down and begin to cry\u2014a very effective way to locate the nearest predator. Their only self-protective instinct is to huddle (which of course reminds me a lot of committee meetings). Also not an ideal strategy (the huddling, not the committee meetings). Black Sinai goats, on the other hand, are tough as nails. These goats have been indigenous to the region for centuries. They are quite independent and are very capable of returning to an undomesticated state if need demands. The Sinai goat has an extremely high tolerance for heat and drought\u2014these animals will eat just about anything and can consume as much as 35 percent of their body weight in water in a matter of minutes. Even during the hottest part of the season, they only need to be watered once every four days. Goats were therefore the \u201cbonds\u201d of the Israelite farmer\u2019s portfolio. Even if the market went south, the goats didn\u2019t.
\nAnother reason Israel\u2019s shepherds kept goats among their mixed flocks is that goats are smart\u2014exasperating, but smart. Whereas a sheep, when confronted by a predator, will stand there and die a slow and horrible death, a goat will fight back, run, or even climb a tree if the opportunity presents itself. A herd of sheep will follow wherever they are led (including over the edge of a steep ravine); a goat will come up with a better plan. How these realities affect our interpretation of Jesus\u2019 parable about separating the sheep and the goats on the final day of judgment (Mt 25:32\u201333) I will leave to your imagination, but from an economic perspective, these 40\/60 mixed flocks of caprids (the technical word for sheep and goats) could be found in any Israelite household and greatly outnumbered any other livestock in Israel\u2019s world.
\nBovines (cattle and oxen) were another essential member of the Israelite family\u2019s workforce. These animals were far too expensive for the common person to eat and were instead utilized for the cultivation of grain. In the small-holder farms of the central hill country, the cereal crop was fundamental to the survival of man and beast. As a result, the Iron Age farmer relied heavily on the labor of his beast for the long and arduous task of plowing his fields, moving the harvest, and extracting the precious grain from the stalks in which it grew (i.e., threshing; see fig. 3).
\nOnce cleaned and stored, wheat and barley served as the primary food source for the community. And in Israel\u2019s subsistence economy, every kilo counted. A subsistence economy is defined most simply as an economy where everyone is barely making it. Surplus is the anomaly. Israeli archaeologist Baruch Rosen has done some fascinating work in order to determine exactly what \u201cjust making it\u201d looked like in Israel during the settlement and early monarchic periods (the Iron Age I, 1200\u20131000 BCE). His data derives from the archaeological remains of the extant Iron I sites in the hill country. Working from the material remains of these communities, he calculated to juxtapose the population estimates with harvest predictions, and his conclusions quantify exactly how many calories it would have taken to sustain a typical village of one hundred souls in a normal agricultural year. To our surprise, Rosen\u2019s research indicates that the average Israelite village experienced a shortfall of fifteen million calories per year. Anticipating that the average family included five people, this shortfall would amount to sixty days of food per family per year. Although this sort of \u201chungry season\u201d is not a surprise to the anthropologist (many agricultural communities experience the same), it certainly helps the modern reader to humanize the experience of our biblical ancestors. Sixty days a year short on your family\u2019s essential food supply. Rosen hypothesizes that most families mediated this shortfall by truncating daily rations, attempting to raise and store more grain, and\/or by slaughtering additional animals from the flock. But of course more grain required more land and seed, and slaughtering an extra animal would put the farmer behind the eight ball next season. Hunting was an option as well, and Deuteronomy often speaks of the wild gazelle as a part of the Israelite diet (think Pennsylvania dairy farmers and whitetailed deer; Deut 12:15, 22; 14:5; 15:22). But whatever potential solutions a farmer contrived, the point here is that when harvest time finally came, our heroes were counting and conserving every kernel of wheat and barley coming in from the fields. Knowing these economic realities, let\u2019s pause over Deuteronomy 25:4: \u201cDo not muzzle an ox while he is threshing [the grain].\u201d I am guessing that this simple agricultural law is one very few people lose sleep over. But with the information above, I hope you are beginning to realize that when God commands the Israelite not to muzzle his eight-hundred-pound working bovine, he is talking to a man who is hungry. And the five to seven pounds of grain that an ox could consume over a single day of threshing made a difference. And what about the fact that threshing could go on for days? Yet God commands his farmers to allow the beasts who served them the opportunity to enjoy their life and work, to benefit from the fruit of their labors, to celebrate the harvest\u2014even when the farmer knew such a privilege for his beast would cut into his family\u2019s essential food supply.<\/p>\n
Figure 3. A team of oxen threshing wheat<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
Mass-Confinement Animal Husbandry, aka \u201cFactory Farming\u201d<\/p>\n
How would these laws of Sabbath rest and threshing reflect on the treatment of livestock in the United States? I speak of the billions of animals who are currently serving us on America\u2019s factory farms. Factory farming is the practice of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where the farm operates essentially as a factory whose end product is protein units. Confined animals burn fewer calories, their excrement is mass-managed (or mismanaged, as many would argue), and their fertility and gestation is fully controlled.
\nAmerica\u2019s most lucrative agricultural product is pigs. Confinement for these animate (and highly intelligent) creatures has been distilled into an exact science: twenty 230-pound animals per 7.5-foot-square pen. The metal-barred pens in which America\u2019s 74.6 million pigs are presently housed may be found all over our country systematically mapped out within enormous metal frame structures\u2014the most popular being the 40-, 60-, and now 122-foot-wide \u201cwean-to-finish\u201d buildings that confine these creatures from birth to slaughter. Here pigs live out their entire lives housed on concrete and metal-grated flooring in climate-controlled conditions, never actually exposed to the light of day. These animals are sustained in such crowded and filthy conditions that movement is difficult, natural behaviors are impossible, and antibiotics are essential to the control of infection. Sows, typically weighing in at 500 pounds, are housed separately\u2014in 7-foot-by-22-inch metal gestation crates. These animate creatures stand in the same position, shoulder to shoulder, unable to turn or lie down for the entirety of their 112-to 115-day pregnancies. The obsessive behaviors and injuries sustained from this confinement are heartbreaking. As reported by numerous animal-welfare groups, the confinement and concrete flooring produce chronic pain, foot injury, joint damage, and massive muscle and bone-density loss. When the sow does attempt to lie down, skin lesions and leg injury are inevitable. Urinary tract and respiratory infections result from constant exposure to their own feces and the sows\u2019 lack of water intake due to what most diagnose as chronic depression\/frustration. Sows are artificially inseminated to deliver an average of eight litters (2.1 to 2.5 litters per year), litters inflated by means of fertility drugs to exceed the sows\u2019 natural carrying capacity. As of 2019, there were 6.41 million head of breeding sows in the United States\u2014the vast majority of which are confined in gestation crates. One week before delivering, sows are transferred to \u201cfarrowing crates\u201d\u2014slightly larger barred enclosures that allow the sow (at last) to lie down, with an additional eighteen inches for the piglets to nurse prior to their forced weaning at twenty-one days, when the cycle begins all over again. And when the animals cannot survive these conditions? A staple of the confined hog diet is the rendered remains of their deceased pen mates. Surely, if God is offended by boiling a kid in its mother\u2019s milk (Deut 14:21), we should be concerned that dead sows (and piglets) are routinely ground up and fed to their offspring.
\nAnd what of poultry? There are two categories of factory-farmed poultry in our country. The first are raised for egg production; the second are \u201cbroilers,\u201d which are bred for meat. According to the USDA\u2019s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, \u201chatchery statistics for 2010 list 9.28 billion broiler-type chickens hatched, 489 million egg-type chicks hatched, and 281 million poults hatched in turkey hatcheries.\u201d Most of the 489 million hens hatched to provide our eggs will live out their entire lives confined in ten-inch \u201cbattery\u201d cages, stacked one atop the next, row on row, in windowless warehouses. The Humane Society reports that on average, each laying hen is afforded 67 square inches of cage space\u2014less space than a sheet of paper. Among the most intensively confined animals in agribusiness, these hens will never nest, perch, dustbathe, peck the ground, walk, or even spread their wings. Nobel Prize-winning Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist Dr. Konrad Lorenz states,<\/p>\n
The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow cagemates to search there in vain for cover.<\/p>\n
As they are immersed in their own feces (and that of their caged comrades), not only is this practice inhumane, but the implications for human health are frightening. In 1999 the European Union banned battery cages, allowing their farmers a twelve-year phase-out period, which is now complete. But the United States has not followed suit. Moreover, as federal animal-protection laws do not apply to chickens on-farm, and the government does not monitor animal welfare on-farm, these animals have no advocate.<\/p>\n
Figure 4. Egg-laying chickens in battery cages<\/p>\n
\u201cBroilers\u201d are birds produced for meat\u2014breast meat in particular. Chickens raised for meat today grow at a staggering rate\u2014300 percent faster than those raised in 1960. According to the National Chicken Council, in 1925 a chick progressed from birth to slaughter in 112 days. In 2011 a chicken went from birth to slaughter in 47 days. And whereas slaughter weight for the average chicken in 1925 was 2.5 pounds, in 2011 it was 5.8 pounds and continues to rise.
\nHow has the industry achieved such amazing (and profitable) results? One reason is the structure of the industry. Forty companies own almost all the farmed chickens in our country. As the ASPCA reports, these same companies also own the hatcheries, feed mills, slaughterhouses, and processing plants. This monopoly allows corporations such as Tyson and Pilgrim\u2019s Pride to control every aspect of production from hatching to slaughter. These poultry-processing companies provide the genetically altered birds, customized food, and select equipment to the \u201cgrowers\u201d who do the actual rearing of the animals. The growers are required to follow precise instructions and are paid on a performance-based incentive system. In other words, the farmers who most efficiently convert the issued feed into weight gain (and therefore the highest weight of birds delivered to the processing plant) are paid the most. The expos\u00e9s of the inhumane conduct that this system breeds are deeply disturbing for anyone who cares about animals \u2026 or humans.
\nAs a result, unlike the chickens our grandparents ate, today\u2019s fastgrowing birds (in particular the \u201cCornish Cross\u201d breed) have been genetically designed so that their breasts grow faster than the rest of their bodies. In addition to altered genetics, their natural habits are manipulated by continuous lighting such that they feed continuously. Thus, by \u201charvest\u201d the birds have become so top-heavy that they can no longer stand or walk. Their legs and organs cannot support their enormous, distorted bodies. As the industry norm is to pack as many chickens as possible into each pen, many of these animate creatures find themselves literally trapped in their own bodies, stranded on the floors of their own pens, unable to reach water or food.<\/p>\n
After only a few weeks, there is evidence that the birds\u2019 skeletons and organs cannot keep up: their hearts, lungs and legs strain to work under severe pressure, causing severely low stamina, shortness of breath, trouble standing and walking, collapse and even congestive heart failure.\u2026 Overweight, weak and with almost no room to move, birds spend up to 90% of their lives lying down in their litter, a combination of bedding and excrement.\u2026 It is not surprising that as birds lie with open wounds directly in their own waste, in which live bacteria is known to survive, their sores can become \u201ca gateway for bacteria which can cause \u2026 secondary infections (staphylococci spp. and e. coli)\u201d\u2014some of the most notoriously common foodborne pathogens that are often traced back to chicken farms.<\/p>\n
Not only should these realities shame us; they should frighten us as well. This genetically altered, factory-raised bird, which has spent the bulk of its existence lying in its own feces, is the standard source of all the chicken we buy, eat, and feed our children.
\nWhat is the rationale for this new version of \u201cfarming\u201d? May I say up front that I\u2019ve yet to meet a real farmer who would choose to abuse his animals. But an economy that leaves no space for humane animal husbandry can create strange bedfellows. All of these innovations make these production units (i.e., animate creatures) easier to manage, maintain, medicate, and slaughter. Thus, profit and the rapidly escalating market for meat for human consumption, in the Third World in particular, is named as the rationale for mass-confinement animal husbandry. As Matthew Scully painfully illustrates in his 2002 expos\u00e9 of the industry, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, we have seen a revolution in our country in the last several decades regarding the production and consumption of meat. We eat more meat, more cheaply, than any other generation in history. As a result, in the United States, the abuses to which domesticated animals are routinely subjected are nearly too horrific to report. I find it difficult to believe that this is what Yahweh intended for the creatures he entrusted to \u02be\u0101d\u0101m.
\nSlaughter. Consider as well the complex legal structures that accompany the slaughtering of animals in ancient Israel. God\u2019s people were certainly allowed to slaughter and eat the animals they raised, but any domestic animal had to be taken before the priest first. According to Leviticus 17, this practice ensured that the animal\u2019s nepe\u0161 (its life) had been considered. In Israel, the life of a domestic beast was not to be taken without thought or without mercy. Deuteronomic law required that even the wild gazelle be slaughtered with due care (Deut 12:15, 22; 14:5; 15:22). The Talmud (the central collection of Jewish civil and ceremonial law) mandated that the method of slaughter for the Jews of the second century and beyond be as humane as possible. In his commentary on the book of Leviticus, Jacob Milgrom states, \u201cAll of these [details] clearly demonstrate the perfection of a slaughtering technique whose purpose is to render the animal immediately unconscious with a minimum of suffering.\u201d As regards the slaughterer himself, the Talmud requires that \u201cby virtue of his training and piety, his soul shall never be torpefied by his incessant butchery but kept ever sensitive to the magnitude of the divine concession in allowing him to bring death to living things.\u201d
\nReflect on these Israelite laws in comparison with the assembly-line approach we employ in the raising, slaughtering, and mass-marketing of animal flesh in America. Few of us realize that animals used in agriculture have almost no legal protection. More than 95 percent of them\u2014poultry\u2014aren\u2019t even included in the regulations implementing the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the law that requires an animal to be rendered insensible to pain before it is killed. As regards the cattle industry, Scully reports that whereas in 1990 the typical American slaughter plant operated at fifty kills per hour, by 2002 plants were running at three to four hundred per hour. How does one go about slaughtering four hundred eight-hundred-pound bovines in an hour? As Martin Fuentes, an Iowa Beef Packers worker, told the Washington Post, \u201cThe line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive.\u201d Ramon Moren\u2014whose job is to cut off the hooves of strung-up cattle passing by at 309 an hour\u2014reports that although the cattle are supposed to be dead when they reach him, often they are not: \u201cThey blink. They make noises. The head moves, the eyes are open and still looking around. They die piece by piece.\u201d In contrast, at every juncture, Israel was constrained to consider the life of the animal that served them and which they consumed by covenant law, even though such considerations were costly in time and resources.
\nGood news. The good news is that there are organizations all over the United States working hard to get information and images regarding our current practices to the American public. Why? Because these folks believe that once we see where our eggs come from, and the gross exploitation of the animals that are providing the meat on our dinner tables, we will put pressure on the industry to change\u2014pressure from our refusal to participate with our finances and pressure through legislation. The American Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals, long focused on the well-being of pets, has returned its focus to the protection of the working animal. As a result, its website is now populated with white papers and reports exposing the inhumane practices of these industries and offering the average citizen a means by which to help bring about change. Check it out.
\nBad news. The bad news is the enormous corporate influence behind these industries and what have come to be known as \u201cag-gag\u201d laws. Ag-gag laws are a growing body of state-level legislation designed to criminalize whistleblowers who expose inhumane practices in animal agricultural facilities by photographing or videoing what is going on behind closed doors. At this point, more than half of the state legislatures in our country have attempted to pass some version of these laws, and the practice is spreading to other countries as well. As a result, in seven states it is currently illegal to take a photo or video of a slaughter plant. Why? Because images of this sort put us face-to-face with practices that are intolerable.
\nOne particularly arresting story involving ag-gag laws is of twenty-five-year-old Amy Meyer, who attempted to take a cellphone video outside the Dale T. Smith and Sons Meat Packing Company in Draper, Utah. A Draper resident, she had driven past the meat packing facility many times, but on February 8, 2013, she decided to stop. Standing on a strip of public land outside the barbed-wire fence enclosing the facility, she began filming. Her brief video shows the open doors of the facility facing the public highway and the cows being led onto the plant\u2019s assembly line. She recorded a forklift pushing a live, downed cow outside the building. Within seconds of Meyer\u2019s beginning to film the slaughterhouse and narrate the events, the facility\u2019s operator pulled up in a truck and informed her she was breaking the law. When she pointed out that she was on public land, he called the police. A few minutes later, seven squad cars arrived. \u201cThe officers would all go to Brett Smith [the facility\u2019s operator] first and shake his hand,\u201d Meyer recounts. Meyer was questioned, accused of trespassing (even though her film made it clear she had not), and threatened with charges. Eleven days later, Meyer learned that she had been charged with \u201cagricultural operation interference,\u201d a class B misdemeanor that carries a maximum six-month jail term. Lucky for Meyer, the story was picked up by the local and national media and the charges were dropped. All this for filming what is visible to any passer-by with a cellphone? I\u2019m grateful to say that as ag-gag laws have become more public, so has the opposition. It is my hope the same will happen when the practices of mass-confinement animal husbandry make it into the public eye. My question is, Where will the church be when this happens?<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
Jim Goodman<\/p>\n
One last testimony regarding the impact of factory farming is that of Jim Goodman\u2014a dairyman with forty years in the business. As I have already noted, a primary casualty of factory farming is not the animals; it is the farmer. We have reached a place in our society where the small family farm simply is not economically viable. The chicken farmer who values his charges as animate creatures cannot compete against Tyson. The dairy farmer who knows his cows by name cannot match resources with the corporate dairies that milk hundreds, even thousands of cows on mechanical carousels. (Although, according to the children\u2019s website Dairy Discovery Zone, we should all be reassured that the \u201cwholesome, nutrientrich milk\u201d retrieved via these mechanical carousels \u201cis never touched by human hands.\u201d)
\nJim Goodman launches his 2018 testimonial in the Washington Post by saying, \u201cI sold my herd of cows this summer. The herd had been in my family since 1904; I know all 45 cows by name. I couldn\u2019t find anyone who wanted to take over our farm\u2014who would? Dairy farming is little more than hard work and possible economic suicide.\u201d Goodman speaks of how he couldn\u2019t watch while his cows were loaded on the truck. So he milked them for the last time, left the barn, and let the truckers take them away. \u201cBeing able to remember them as I last saw them, in my barn, chewing their cuds and waiting for pasture, is all I have left.\u201d Goodman is clearly a capable businessman. He understands the realities of supply and demand, farming legislation, and politics. But he also understands that farmers are becoming obsolete. \u201cWhen I started farming in 1979, the milk from 45 cows could pay the bills, cover new machinery and buildings, and allow us to live a decent life and start a family.\u201d Being a good businessman, Goodman survived the 1980s\u2014a decade in which 250,000 farms in the upper Midwest went under, and more than 900 farmers committed suicide. But Goodman says the current crisis is bigger than he is. And so along with the 665 other dairy farms in Wisconsin that closed between 2017 and 2018, Goodman\u2019s farm, his home, and his family\u2019s legacy are \u201cdone.\u201d Goodman credits this ending to \u201cineffective government subsidies and insurance programs,\u201d which \u201care worthless in the face of plummeting prices and oversupply.\u2026 The despair is palpable; suicide is a fact of life.\u201d Of course, when a community of farms goes down, so do the local businesses that built their lives around those farms\u2014the caf\u00e9s, grocery stores, schools, and churches associated with the farmers and their families. Essentially, when a constellation of farmers are forced to call it quits, the infrastructure of a community collapses.<\/p>\n
With fewer farms, there are fewer foreclosures than in the 1980\u2019s. But watching your neighbor\u2019s farm and possessions being auctioned off is no more pleasant today than it was 30 years ago. Seeing a farm family look on as their life\u2019s work is sold off piece by piece; the cattle run through a corral, parading for the highest bid; tools, household goods and toys piled as \u201cboxes of junk\u201d and sold for a few dollars while the kids hide in the haymow crying\u2014auctions are still too painful for me.<\/p>\n
When I hear Jim Goodman\u2019s testimony, and so many like it, I hear the voices of the widows and the orphans of the modern era. And I wonder, who will speak up for them?
\nAccording to the US Department of Agriculture, the number of dairy farms in the United States dropped from nearly 650,000 in 1970 to 40,219 by the end of 2017. That is a staggering differential. How can we explain this? Cows are actually producing more milk, and Americans are consuming more milk than ever before. The answer is that the number of cows on American dairy farms has skyrocketed. Whereas in 1987 half of American dairy farms had eighty or fewer cows, as recently as 2012, that figure had risen to nine hundred cows. Indeed, the dairy cows of this generation are now consolidated (warehoused) on bigger, more \u201cefficient\u201d farms. But one farmer does not build a relationship with nine hundred cows\u2014a corporation does.<\/p>\n
CONCLUSIONS<\/p>\n
I began this chapter with a quotation from Myrto Theocharous, a brilliant young Old Testament scholar teaching in Athens, Greece. The quotation emerged from a plenary presentation she offered at the national gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society in the fall of 2015. Here Theocharous defined consumerism and explored how a consumer mentality intersects with a holy life. As in her published article, she states that the only true concern of a consumer mentality is getting the lowest price for the best product. This doesn\u2019t necessarily sound bad to me\u2014in fact, this is how I typically shop. It is probably how you shop too. But in the plenary gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society, when Theocharous moved the conversation regarding consumerism into her own ministry setting, the landscape for all of us in the audience changed abruptly. You see, Theocharous doesn\u2019t exactly work in retail. She works with the young women who labor in the brothels of Athens. Consider the quotation (in its larger context) again:<\/p>\n
What is dangerous about the consumer identity is that a consumer will rarely ask questions about the supply chain leading up to the transaction. His only concern is getting the most out of the lowest-priced product. In fact, the clients prefer to maintain their traditional role of the ignorant buyer; they want to be invisible, anonymous, and free of any culpability.<\/p>\n
I can testify that on that November afternoon, in the grand ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, we all got a worldview makeover. Because when we think in terms of getting the lowest price for the best product in Theocharous\u2019s context\u2014there is no question in our minds that such behavior is immoral. How can we not be concerned with how the prostitute or actress in a pornography film came to be in the industry?
\nAccording to Theocharous, assuming a \u201cconsumer\u201d identity is morally evasive because consumers do not feel responsible for the journey of the product. They do not ask, \u201cWho collected the raw materials?\u201d or \u201cWho put the pieces together?\u201d or \u201cHow was the product transported to the shop?\u201d It is the responsibility of the seller to worry about all this. In the sex industry, I doubt anyone would challenge Theocharous\u2019s thesis\u2014of course we are responsible. Our capitalist economy and consumer culture cannot absolve us of such license. So now for the hard question: How about the \u201cconsumer culture\u201d that facilitates our purchase of milk, meat, and eggs? Are we morally responsible for how these \u201cproducts\u201d come to us\u2014who and how the raw materials were collected? Do we have an obligation to the creatures who produce them? Or are we free to claim absolution as to the \u201cjourney of the product\u201d in our quest to get the best product at the lowest price? In that Kingdom Conference sermon I gave oh so many years ago at Asbury Theological Seminary, I risked the question: \u201cHave you ever considered the life of the styrofoam and cellophane packaged chicken parts you purchase at Walmart every week?\u201d Israel was constrained to do so by covenant law.
\nThe laws of the Old Testament make it clear that the people of Israel were not free to be simple \u201cconsumers\u201d of the domestic creatures entrusted to them. They were commanded to honor their God by honoring their beast\u2014a Sabbath\u2019s rest, humane treatment in its life and work, a share of the harvest, slaughter with dignity and compassion. As the people of God today, can we offer our God anything less as regards the creatures entrusted to us?<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. Why might the ancient law of Deuteronomy be so focused on animal welfare?
\n2. Why is it that we in the twenty-first century seem to show so much less interest in the welfare of our livestock?
\n3. Do you come from a farming family? Perhaps a 4-H family? How do you think farmers who have chosen to stay in the business feel about the practices described above?
\n4. Why do you think local towns embrace mass-confinement animal-husbandry companies?
\n5. Do you have any new thoughts on the \u201cconsumer mentality\u201d?
\n6. Why do you think our legislators have allowed the collapse of the family farm and all the village economies that have collapsed with it?<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
THE WILD CREATURES ENTRUSTED TO \u02be\u0100D\u0100M<\/p>\n
We in the industrialized world have allowed our appetites to outrun both our resources and our humanity.\u2026 Our sages did not condemn materialism.\u2026 But they were acutely aware, at the same time, of the need for balance, a balance we scarcely any longer recognize.<\/p>\n
DANIEL SWARTZ, \u201cJEWS, JEWISH TEXTS, AND NATURE: A BRIEF HISTORY\u201d (1994)<\/p>\n
In chapters 38 and 39 of the book that bears his name, Job, the long-suffering servant of the Most High, is hammered with a series of questions from on high. The intent of the interrogation? To remind Job that he is creature, not Creator.<\/p>\n
Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, or caused the dawn to know its place?\u2026 Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or have you walked in the recesses of the deep?\u2026 Can you stalk prey for a lioness, and satisfy the young lions\u2019 appetites as they lie in their dens or crouch in the thicket?\u2026 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Have you watched the calving of the does? Have you counted the months they carry their young? Are you aware of the time of their delivery?\u2026 Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars, stretching his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, and makes his nest on high? (Job 38:12, 16, 39\u201340; 39:1\u20132, 26\u201327)<\/p>\n
When I hear these questions voiced, I echo Job\u2019s response: surely not I. I can hardly understand these marvelous things, let alone mimic or duplicate them. Only the master of the universe can call an eagle from its perch or command the dawn to take its place. So I, like Job, respond to creation with praise for the Creator. When I stand at the ocean\u2019s edge and feel the spray of its raging force on my face, when the wind silences me, when I am privileged to hold a wild creature in my hands, my heart cries out with the psalmist, \u201cO Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!\u201d (Ps 8:9).
\nWhy is my heart moved to worship by the splendor of an eagle on the wind, the staggering realities of life in all its complex forms? Why do I sit in front of my television watching March of the Penguins with my seven-year-old and find myself in awe of a God who could instill in the heart of a penguin a level of self-sacrificial obedience that puts this believer to shame? The answer is most simply because the cosmos, in all its beauty and complexity, is a reflection of the God who made it. And I am made in the image of that same God. So the part of me that remembers Eden is stunned into silence when I step into a meadow and unexpectedly lock eyes with those of a wild creature. The part of me that can still hear the echo of the Maker\u2019s song laughs with joy when I see dozens of common dolphins race across the channel so they can \u201cbow ride\u201d off the front of my whale-watching boat\u2014diving in perfect synchronization, breathing as one, sleek and shimmering in the sun. There is no question that our God has graced this planet with creatures of such amazing beauty and skill that it nearly defies imagination. Wild and fierce and yet oh so vulnerable, these are the creatures that God has entrusted to \u02be\u0101d\u0101m.<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
So what do the Scriptures have to say regarding the wild creatures that inhabit this planet with us? The Bible makes it very clear that even in a fallen world, God rejoices in the beauty and balance of his creation. It is Yahweh who \u201csent out the wild donkey free\u201d and \u201cgave to him the wilderness for a home\u201d (Job 39:5\u20136). In the flood narrative, although God judges the world because of its corruption, he rescues animal-kind along with humankind, and his re-creational covenant is with \u201cevery living thing \u2026 the birds, the domestic animals, and every wild creature of the earth\u201d (Gen 9:10\u201311). In the elevated language of Psalm 104 we read,<\/p>\n
He is the one who sends forth the springs into the wadis;
\nbetween the mountains they flow;
\ngiving drink to each of his wild creatures. (Ps 104:10\u201311)<\/p>\n
The Scriptures teach us that Yahweh has designed our ecosystem so that his wild creatures will have the food, water, and habitat they need to survive and flourish.<\/p>\n
The trees of the LORD drink their fill\u2014
\nthe cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
\nWhere the birds make their nests,
\nand the stork builds its house in the cypresses.
\nThe high mountains are for the mountain goats;
\nthe crags are the refuge of the rock badgers. (Ps 104:16\u201318)<\/p>\n
Clearly, God has intentionally provided this vast array of creatures the habitats necessary to their survival. But as any environmentalist would tell us, the single greatest cause of the extinction of an animal species is the destruction of its habitat. And in America we are presently devouring nearly two million acres a year in the noble quest for urban sprawl. As a result we are also experiencing a species extinction rate of as much as one thousand times the historical loss ratio. It would seem that \u201cwe in the industrialized world have [indeed] allowed our appetites to outrun both our resources and our humanity\u201d and have reached a point where we need balance, \u201ca balance we scarcely any longer recognize.\u201d And the fact that the wild animals\u2019 habitat was designed and given to them by our God should inspire us to reconsider our reckless behavior.
\nThe territory we know as \u201cIsrael\u201d is in reality a very small region. But it is graced with dramatically distinctive geographic and climatic variety. Here we find both temperate and tropical zones, the Mediterranean to the west and Red Sea to the south, deserts east and south, the Central and Transjordanian mountain ranges, the Jordan Rift Valley, the Dead Sea (the lowest land elevation on earth), and the great east-west passageway known as the Jezreel Valley. This region also serves as a land bridge between two continents\u2014Africa and Asia. In other words, the \u201cPromised Land\u201d is not just a destination; it is also a very important migratory route. As a result of its diverse ecosystem and critical role in animal migration, the variety of species that have inhabited this small territory is extraordinary. The white oryx, the Syrian brown bear, the Asiatic lion and cheetah, and the Syrian wild ass were here before their habitats were destroyed. The jungle cat once occupied the now-defunct Hulah River basin. The sand cat, wild cat, caracal, and leopard were once found here as well. Aurochs, bubal hartebeest, the Nile crocodile, and the hippopotamus once inhabited the Jordan River and its densely vegetated alluvial plain. Some believe the Syrian elephant passed through this region. The acacia and dorcas gazelle, Persian fallow, roe, and red deer, the Nubian ibex, and wild boar were all food sources (see Deut 12:15, 22; 14:5; 15:22). The Arabian and north African ostrich, hoopoe bird, eagles, hawks, owls, and songbirds too numerous to name either currently inhabit this region or are known via zooarchaeology (bones retrieved from excavation). There are more snakes in the southern Levant than you want to know about. Lions, leopards, bears, jackals, foxes, and wolves have all been identified either through biblical references or excavated remains. Then there is the Eilat Coral Beach Nature Reserve just off the southern tip of Israel, filled with a staggering array of sea life. This is the sort of space that the Nature Conservancy would purchase if it could.
\nBased on the larger history of the area, we can safely assume that in the early stages of Israel\u2019s settlement and urbanization (1200\u20131000 BCE, the Iron Age I) the Israelites did not yet constitute a serious threat to this complex Levantine ecosystem. Rather, early Israel colonized the highlands in small villages of two hundred to three hundred people, organized around extended families of fifteen to twenty persons, in a closed and reciprocal economy. Each of these small villages was absorbed with the all-consuming task of survival. Dry farming of grain, grapes, and olives on terraced hillsides, complemented by ongoing mixed animal husbandry of sheep and goats, characterized this subsistence economy. These simple settlements display minimal permanent architecture. Domestic dwellings encircled the village to shield the people and their flocks from danger; storage was limited to small, lined family silos for grain and plaster-lined cisterns for water; there was no monumental architecture. This was a \u201cclosed\u201d economy that had limited contact with the outside world. Exchange was chiefly barter-based and in-kind, and metal of all sorts was scarce.
\nThus we can assume that when the societal regulations of Deuteronomy were conceived, the habitat of the wild creatures of the Promised Land was not yet under undue stress from human settlement. But Deuteronomy 22:6\u20137 offers us a very curious little law making it clear that even in this stage of human development, the preservation of the indigenous species of the region was a priority:<\/p>\n
If you happen on a bird\u2019s nest in front of you in the road, or in a tree, or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother (who is sitting) on the young. Rather, you will surely shoo the mother away, and the young you may take for yourself, in order that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.<\/p>\n
Many have identified this law as a pars pro toto: one expression of a larger principle offered as a representative of the whole. Several have also identified it as analogia: a vehicle of Wisdom literature that formulates an abstract idea by means of a practical example. And most have identified in this passage an analogy to Deuteronomy 20:19\u201320\u2014the law sparing fruit trees during siege warfare, which I\u2019ll address in the next chapter. The common idea between these texts is the preservation of the means of life. In other words, the idea of sustainability. In this law, the practice of taking both mother and offspring is censured in that such a practice will eventually lead to the extermination of a particular species in a particular place. Moreover, as famed Jewish scholar Jeffrey Tigay points out, the phrase \u201cmother with her children\u201d often appears in descriptions of warfare as a byword for wanton killing. So we see that even at the earliest stages of its urbanization, Israel is commanded to live in a sustainable fashion in its engagement with the wild creature.
\nAlso interesting to us is that the group in Israel\u2019s world best known for wanton killing was the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Neo-Assyrians were the first true world empire. Launching under the very capable leadership of Tiglath-pileser III in 745 BCE, this completely militarized state assembled the largest and best-equipped fighting force the world had ever seen. They were notorious for their brutality, economic oppression, insatiable appetite for power, and ambition to rule the known world.
\nMost nations in the path of Neo-Assyria\u2019s expansion chose to cooperate with the crown and were transformed into vassals of the empire. This meant that the local ruler retained his office and national boundaries, but was charged with an annual tribute of significant proportions that often placed the economic stability of his state in jeopardy. A vassal king was expected to open his borders to the unimpeded passage of the Neo-Assyrian army, feed and house its forces on their way, and supply conscript soldiers as well. Ultimately, all roads led to Nineveh, and all resources flowed there as well. Less cooperative local leaders were stripped of their thrones, either exiled or executed, and replaced with a man of the emperor\u2019s choosing. If rebellion continued, the local government was obliterated, an Assyrian governor appointed, and the territory absorbed into the empire as a province. This final stage often saw the exile of the indigenous populace and the gifting of the conquered territory to another people group. This strategy stripped the conquered nation of its will to rebel by relocating the bulk of its population elsewhere and repopulating the homeland with a foreign people group. In this fashion, \u201cnational identity was lost, dissident factions dissolved, and the new heterogeneous populace in both the old and new territories were left with survival as their only objective and Assyria as their only lord.\u201d
\nOne of the more undesirable qualities of the Assyrian royalty was that they traditionally advertised their \u201cright to rule\u201d via images of an array of violent acts. One of these was the kingly act of slaying a wild (Persian) lion. The \u201cpress release\u201d version of this royal accomplishment is depicted in figure 5. Here the Neo-Assyrian monarch is displayed in all his heroic splendor, killing a male lion alone and unaided. What the public didn\u2019t know is how this image came to be, and like most propaganda, there was a substantial backstory.
\nIf you were to visit Room 10a of the British Museum, you would find the backstory. An entire room filled with large stone orthostates carved with low relief images of the royal, ritual lion hunt of Ashurbanipal. These stone panels once decorated Ashurbanipal\u2019s North Palace in Nineveh. What they depict shows us that the Assyrian kings were not hunting lions in the wild but in a royal hunting park. Wild lions were trapped, held captive, and then transported in crates to the park. On hunting day, armed soldiers with shields and dogs were stationed throughout the facility to keep the lions from escaping or doing any real injury to the king. The desperate courage of the lions, and the wanton slaughter of these majestic creatures, is so graphic and so lifelike that the first time I visited the British Museum I had to leave the room\u2014and I was not the only one. In fact, more than one art historian has theorized based on the staid portrayal of the kings, and the immensely animate and detailed depiction of the lions, that the sympathies of the original artist were with the lions. Why display such graphic images of slaughter? To demonstrate to the Assyrian citizenry, in accordance with their value system, the great valor of their king, and therefore his right to rule.
\nAnd, yes, at this point, you might be thinking of another king who did indeed prove his right to rule by killing a lion, alone, with his bare hands, long before his actual coronation. But unlike the Assyrian kings, this young hero did not kill for sport. He killed because his father\u2019s flock was in danger. This heir to the throne of God\u2019s kingdom had no weapons, dogs, or armed guards, or press release for that matter. But that is another story.<\/p>\n
Figure 5. The lion hunt<\/p>\n
Returning to the Neo-Assyrians, one of the wall reliefs in the British Museum depicting the royal hunt caught my eye back in 2010 when I was working on an article for the Bulletin of Biblical Research. In this relief (see fig. 6), the Neo-Assyrian king is again returning from the hunt. His right to rule is once again being celebrated by the iconographic display of the now familiar remains of a slain male lion. But what arrested my attention is that in addition to the slain lion is the display of a mother bird with her nest still full of eggs. In other words, this relief shows that in Neo-Assyria, taking a mother bird with her eggs, a \u201cmother with her children,\u201d was worthy of display as another testimony of a sovereign\u2019s right to rule.<\/p>\n
Figure 6. Assyrian eunuchs return with the prizes of the royal hunt<\/p>\n
But in Deuteronomy Israel is commanded to be different: \u201cYou shall not take the mother [who is sitting] on the young. Rather, you will surely shoo the mother away, and the young you may take for yourself, in order that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days\u201d (Deut 22:7). In contrast to the practice of their neighbors, Israel is instructed in the wisdom of preserving the creatures with whom they shared the Promised Land. Indeed, Deuteronomy states that if Israel killed off the wild creatures without a thought as to the creatures\u2019 ability to replenish their populations, it would not \u201cbe well\u201d with Israel in the land. I believe the same would apply to us.<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
The Black Bear in the Bottomlands of Mississippi<\/p>\n
In February 2019 I was privileged to be invited to the United Methodist Clergy Leadership Conference in Brandon, Mississippi, to offer a three-day curriculum titled \u201cHoliness in a Modern World: An Inquiry into Creation Care.\u201d As I had served for four years in an inner-city seminary in Jackson, I shared strong relationships with many people in the room. But even so, I was more than a bit surprised that this was the curriculum they wanted, and more than a bit apprehensive as to what the results might be. So, knowing I was speaking to Mississippians, I did some research on endangered indigenous species. Predictably, the primary cause for the loss of native species in the great state of Mississippi was habitat loss. In this case, the clearing and draining of vast acreages of the majestic bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (known by the locals as \u201cthe Delta\u201d). By 1980, more than 80 percent of these forests were gone. Whereas this particular ecosystem had once supported an array of wildlife, the bottomland hardwood forests had been stripped to make way for agriculture\u2014first cotton, then industrial pine production. As a result, species such as the black bear\u2014an animal so prolific and emblematic to the state that President Teddy Roosevelt himself came to hunt black bear in Mississippi\u2014were decimated. As a result, the last known birth of black bear cubs in Mississippi was in 1979. Even so, it wasn\u2019t until 1984 that the black bear found its way onto the state\u2019s endangered species list.
\nHow did this happen? The first and most fundamental cause was habitat loss. But this principal issue was significantly compounded by unsustainable hunting practices. And in this case, no one sounded the alarm until it was too late. Because the means of life had not been protected (habitat), because both mother and offspring had been taken (unsustainable hunting practices), the extermination of a particular species in a particular place had resulted. On the day of my presentation, the local sportsmen and conservationist groups were celebrating the fact that two breeding females had been identified in the furthest southwestern county of the state. The reason these reports embody so much hope is that it is females who become resident in a territory, and therefore two lingering females means that there was some chance that black bears were coming home. But what a paltry representation of the thousands of black bears that had once called the Delta home. And as bears reproduce at a relatively slow rate, recovery will be equally slow and frighteningly fragile. In this equation, adult mortalities are devastating\u2014vehicle collisions, electrocutions, poaching, accidental trapping, and hunting could make recovery impossible. Most troubling here is that, as all biologists will tell us, when the top predator in any food chain is removed, the trophic cascade has devastating ramifications at every level of an ecosystem.
\nSo the United Methodist ministers of Mississippi and I grieved this emblematic loss to their homeland\u2014a loss intricately intertwined with the systemic evils of shortsighted leadership, the unjust victories of industrial agriculture, the collapse of the family farm, decimated local economies, and the marginalization of the voiceless. We were encouraged that there are currently efforts from the Wetland Reserve Easement and the Conservation Reserve Program to begin reclaiming the Delta. The hope is that some of the decimated bottomland hardwood forests will be restored, and the isolated patches of surviving habitat might be connected to provide corridors for the black bear and other species like it. But as James Allen documents, forty to fifty years after the first restoration efforts began, the reforested stands cannot compare with the diverse flora of Mississippi\u2019s past. Rather, the \u201cnear monocultures\u201d reconstructed by \u02be\u0101d\u0101m cannot compare with the magnificent design of the Creator. Centuries of neglect will take more than a few decades to repair.
\nSo we return to the biblical mandate. The wild creatures that God has placed in our care are not ours, nor are they simply disposable. These creatures and their habitat are vulnerable. And it is \u02be\u0101d\u0101m\u2019s God-ordained task to deploy our superior gifting to conserve and protect, not to exploit and abuse \u201cin order that it may be well with you [us] and that you may prolong your days\u201d (Deut 22:7).<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. Why might God be interested in preserving the wild creatures in the ancient land of Israel?
\n2. Were other nations around Israel practicing such preservation?
\n3. Do you see value in protecting the wild creatures in your own neighborhood, town, state, country?
\n4. If you do see the value of protecting the wild animal and its habitat, how might you start acting on that value in your own life?
\n5. What kind of an impact would it have in your community if your church started working for the preservation of the wild creature?<\/p>\n
5<\/p>\n
ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISM<\/p>\n
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.<\/p>\n
FARAMIR, IN J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE TWO TOWERS<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
Surely if there was ever an appropriate time to sacrifice the long-term fecundity of the land for short-term gain, it would be in the crisis of warfare. Any warzone from the days of Pharaoh Thutmose III\u2019s campaigns in Canaan, to World War I\u2019s No Man\u2019s Land, to the ongoing legacy of Vietnam\u2019s Operation Ranch Hand would testify to this broadly held belief. Yet in Deuteronomy 20:19 we find an interesting little law that seems to speak against this conventional wisdom:<\/p>\n
When you are besieging a city for many days in order to wage war against it to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them. Indeed, you may eat from them, but you shall not cut [them] down. For is the tree of the field a man that it should be besieged by you? Only a tree that you know does not produce food may you destroy and cut down, then you may build your siege works against the city with which you are at war until it falls.<\/p>\n
There is a long tradition of commentary on this verse, all of which recognizes the biblical author\u2019s effort, for whatever motivation, to reduce the collateral damage inflicted by siege warfare (cf. 2 Kings 3:19). Like Deuteronomy 22:6\u20137, many have identified this law as a pars pro toto (a part or aspect of something taken as representative of the whole) or an analogia (a vehicle of Wisdom literature that formulates a more abstract point by way of a practical example). Again, the common idea between these texts is the preservation of the means of life, in other words, sustainability.
\nThe potential damage of siege warfare in the land of Israel is illustrated by the long list of indigenous fruit-and nut-bearing trees in the region, and the significant role these trees played in the Israelite economy and diet. Oded Borowski lists the fig, olive, date, sycamore (Ficus sycamorus), apricot, carob, almond, pistachio, and walnut trees, as well as several that cannot be identified with certainty by means of their biblical appellatives. All of these trees faced similar developmental realities\u2014if maintained, they would produce for generations, but full maturity preceded production. How long did full maturity take? The all-important olive tree takes five or six years to begin to flower and as many as twenty years to reach full production. Even then, olive trees only bear fruit every other year. Famed Harvard archaeologist Lawrence Stager comments, \u201cIt is commonly said that one plants an olive yard not for one\u2019s self but for one\u2019s grandchildren.\u201d Similarly, Assyriologist Steven Cole reports that the female date palm\u2014a treasured source of preservable, calorierich fruit\u2014\u201cmay take as long as twenty years before [it] produce[s] [its] first fruit.\u201d As the great dream of every Israelite citizen was to \u201clive in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba,\u201d these timelines of maturation were significant, and the potential disruption of decades of cultivation due to warfare was terrifying (1 Kings 4:25; cf. 2 Kings 18:31).
\nIn light of the long-term value of food-bearing trees, it is no surprise that a standard aspect of Neo-Assyrian military strategy was the decimation of a besieged enemy\u2019s vineyards and orchards (see chapter four for a fuller description of the Neo-Assyrian Empire). The objective of such environmental terrorism was first to intimidate. If fear motivated a city to capitulate, the empire obtained its prize without expending the resources necessary for conquest. If intimidation did not achieve the desired results, the end goal was to cripple the city\u2019s economic stability for decades to come, regardless of whether the siege was successful. In this fashion, many potential rebels were held in check. The royal annals make it expressly clear that the Neo-Assyrians communicated this wartime strategy early and often through text and image. Hence, Sargon II boasts regarding his assault on the store city of Ursal:<\/p>\n
I entered triumphantly.\u2026 Into his pleasant gardens, the adornments of his city which were overflowing with fruit and wine \u2026 came tumbling down.\u2026 His great trees, the adornment of his palace, I cut down like millet.\u2026 The trunks of all those trees which I had cut down I gathered together, heaped them in a pile and burned them with fire.<\/p>\n
Figure 7. Sennacherib\u2019s troops cutting down date palms outside a southern Mesopotamian town<\/p>\n
Regarding his siege of the city of Suhu, Shalmaneser III declares, \u201cWe will go and attack the houses of the land of Suhu; we will seize his cities.\u2026 We will cut down their fruit trees.\u201d
\nSteven Cole offers an encyclopedic collection of these texts and images, showing that this particular military strategy was a staple of Assyrian war craft. Not new with the Assyrians, this siege tactic may be traced back into the second millennium BCE among the Babylonians, Hittites, and especially the Egyptians. King Hazael\u2019s ruination of the ancient Philistine city of Gath (Tel es-S\u00e2fi) demonstrates that this sort of environmental terrorism continued among the Aramaeans, and the archaeological remains at S\u00e2fi poignantly illustrate the magnitude of permanent environmental damage that could result from siege warfare. So we see that the systematic annihilation of orchards and olive yards in order to cripple the life-support systems of the enemy was a staple of ancient Near Eastern warfare before and during Israel\u2019s occupation of the Promised Land. Yet the book of Deuteronomy forbids it.
\nWhat might be the rationale for Deuteronomy\u2019s law? To quote Michael Hasel, Israel is forbidden from such military tactics because \u201cit would not be in Israel\u2019s interest to destroy the very resources that would later sustain them.\u201d In other words, although environmental terrorism might deliver instant results in the midst of conflict, the long-term detrimental impact on one\u2019s own or the enemy\u2019s life-support systems was ultimately self-destructive. We do not need to look far in American history to find painful testimony of the same.<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
Operation Ranch Hand<\/p>\n
Operation Ranch Hand was part of the American offensive directed against Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia during what is known in the States as the Vietnam War. Between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed 20 million gallons of chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel over one-quarter of South Vietnam and the bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia. The advertised objective was to reduce American and allied casualties by defoliating forested and rural land, depriving guerrillas of cover. What is less broadly known is that the other objective was to \u201cinduce forced draft urbanization\u201d\u2014that is, to destroy agricultural land such that rural farmers were forced to relocate into urban centers. The goal was to strip the North Vietnamese of indigenous support and food supply in the south. Estimates count the destruction of agricultural land at 25 million acres in South Vietnam alone (that is 39,000 square miles). Similar to Neo-Assyrian tactics, this land was stripped of its fertility not only in the moment of crisis but for generations to come. How? The 25 million acres sprayed by the US military were infected with levels of TCDD (Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin) one hundred times those considered safe by the US EPA. To this day, remaining \u201chotspots\u201d (such as the Danang military base where Agent Orange was stored, mixed, and loaded onto aircraft) remain at three to four hundred times what is considered safe levels. Clearly this strategy destroyed the \u201cvery resources that would later sustain\u201d the South Vietnamese.<\/p>\n
Figure 8. Map of South Vietnam showing areas sprayed with Agent Orange<\/p>\n
One of the heartbreaking results of the ongoing concentrations of these deadly chemicals is the thousands of Vietnamese children who have been born with profound birth defects and disfigurement due to prenatal exposure to the dioxins. The images from the Ho Chi Minh City\u2019s Go Vap orphanage are nearly impossible to bear. According to the Red Cross of Vietnam, 4.8 million Vietnamese people have been exposed to Agent Orange, and of these four hundred thousand have died from related causes. About one million of those exposed are currently disabled or have related health problems, including cancers, birth defects, skin disorders, autoimmune diseases, liver disorders, psychosocial effects, neurological defects, and gastrointestinal diseases. And since these chemicals are capable of actually damaging genes, it\u2019s possible that many generations will continue to suffer the resulting birth defects and deformities from exposure.
\nAnd what of the young American patriots who were responsible for dispensing these herbicides? The US Department of Veterans Affairs currently lists Parkinson\u2019s disease, heart disease, and cancers of the lung, larynx, trachea, and prostate as \u201cpresumptive\u201d diseases associated with exposure to Agent Orange. My own father, a Vietnam veteran with very limited exposure to Agent Orange, died from prostate cancer at the age of sixty-two. These ailments have crippled the lives and earning capacities of tens of thousands of US veterans. In addition to immeasurable emotional pain, the US Department of Veterans Affairs reports that there has been $2.2 billion paid out in retroactive benefits.
\nThen there are the economic effects. Not only has South Vietnam, our ally, been economically crippled by our utilization of environmental terrorism against our shared enemy, but in 1984 Monsanto and its allied chemical companies were required to pay $180 million in damages in an out-of-court settlement\u2014a settlement bitterly disputed because the compensation offered to victims was absurdly small. This settlement offers an Agent Orange widow $3,400. It offers a veteran with a proven health issue $12,000 over the course of ten years, if the veteran is willing to surrender any other state aid. And as for the ongoing hot spots in South Vietnam\u2014areas so contaminated with the residue of these lethal dioxins that they continue to create crippling health issues for the citizens of that country\u2014$43 million was committed by the US government in 2009 to begin the now forty-five-year-old cleanup. Unequivocally, Operation Ranch Hand was ultimately self-destructive for ally and enemy alike.
\nAnd so we return to the wisdom of the ancients. The abuse of the land was forbidden\u2014whether for the sake of economics or even for national defense. In Israel the human populace was commanded to set their sights on the long-term fecundity of the land. And the fact that it took a generation for an olive orchard to come to full fruition demanded deference. In God\u2019s government, human enterprise and aggression simply were not worthy excuses for wiping out the future productivity of the land, the precious ecosystems that inhabited it, or the humans whose lives relied on those systems.<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. Why might God outlaw environmental terrorism in Israel\u2019s case?
\n2. Were other nations around Israel practicing environmental terrorism?
\n3. Did the fact that Israel was forbidden to practice environmental terrorism put them at risk among their neighbors?
\n4. How could you apply this Israelite law to your life and participation in society? How might you advise those under your care?<\/p>\n
6<\/p>\n
THE WIDOW AND THE ORPHAN<\/p>\n
Learn to do good; seek justice. Reprove the ruthless; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.<\/p>\n
ISAIAH 1:17<\/p>\n
This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.<\/p>\n
JAMES 1:27<\/p>\n
There is no question that the Bible is on the side of the marginalized. As I discussed in chapter one, God\u2019s blueprint for creation was a world in which \u02be\u0101d\u0101m would succeed in directing and harnessing the amazing resources of this planet so that there would always be enough. Progress would not necessitate pollution, expansion would not require extinction, and the privilege of the strong would not demand the deprivation of the weak. Yahweh\u2019s world was a world in which there would never be hunger, homelessness, abuse, famine, genocide, or refugee camps. But as a result of the fall, all of these realities became resident on our planet. The ultimate objective of God\u2019s great plan of redemption is to fix that.
\nIf you have read or studied my Epic of Eden materials, you know that a major advance along the journey toward that final restoration is the Mosaic covenant. God\u2019s people (identified through Abraham) finally find rest in God\u2019s place (Canaan) with access to God\u2019s presence (the tabernacle). Although the formation of the nation of Israel is not the final objective of redemption (we will need the new heaven and new earth for that [Rev 21:1]), the relationship that Israel had with their land serves as a model of God\u2019s intentions for our relationship with the land. As Israel understood that their land and its produce ultimately belonged to Yahweh, one of their responsibilities as land stewards was to manage the fruit of the land such that the needs of the marginalized were met. In other words, the farmer was expected to reserve a portion of his harvest for the widow, the orphan, and the \u201cresident alien\u201d of his village.<\/p>\n
WHO WERE THE WIDOW AND THE ORPHAN?<\/p>\n
Israelite society was very different from contemporary life in the urban West. Whereas modern, urban, Western culture may be classified as \u201cbureaucratic,\u201d Israel\u2019s society was traditional, most specifically, \u201ctribal.\u201d As I have detailed in The Epic of Eden, in a tribal society the family is the axis of the community, and an individual is linked into the legal and economic structures of their society through their identity as a member of a particular family. Because Israel\u2019s was a patriarchal tribal culture, the linchpin that connected each household to the larger society was the oldest male member of the family. The patriarch was responsible for the economic well-being of his family, he enforced law, and he was responsible for his extended household members who became marginalized through poverty, death, or war. Obviously, this is very different from a bureaucratic society in which the state creates economic opportunity, enforces laws, and cares for the those in need. Ancient Israel had no social security, unemployment benefits, American Disabilities Act, TANF, Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, EITC, Supplemental Security Income, subsidized housing, or housing assistance. Nor did ancient Israel have a police force, a foster-care system, public hospitals, or orphanages. Rather, in Israel and societies like it, the family cared for individuals who found themselves on the margins. Moreover, a kinsman\u2019s responsibility to care for a relative was directly proportional to the proximity of the bloodline between the family members. In other words, the closer the relative, the higher the level of legal and economic responsibility.
\nIn Israel\u2019s particular form of patriarchal tribalism, society was formed by a \u201cprogressively inclusive series of groups\u201d emanating from the patriarch of the household. Ever broader circles radiated out from the closely knit \u201cfather\u2019s house,\u201d to the clan or \u201clineage,\u201d then to the tribe, and finally to the nation, as pictured in figure 9. Even the terminology for \u201cfamily\u201d in ancient Israel reflects the centrality of the patriarch, as the basic household unit was called the \u201cfather\u2019s house\u201d (Hebrew b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b). This household included the patriarch, his wife (or wives), his married sons with their wives, his unwed children, and his grandchildren. Current ethnographic studies indicate that the Israelite b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b could include as many as three generations, fifteen to twenty persons. When a man married, he remained in the household, but when a woman married, she joined the b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b of her new husband. As a result, both her location and her tribal affiliation shifted to that of her new family, and her children became the possession (and heirs) of her new household. This is why Rebekah leaves Paddan-aram (modern-day Syria) to join Isaac in Canaan (Gen 24), and why Rachel and Leah eventually leave Paddan-aram to follow Jacob to Canaan as well (Gen 31). This \u201cfather\u2019s house(hold)\u201d lived together in a family compound, collectively farming their inherited land (patrimony), sharing their resources and their fate. Legal decisions involving discipline were enforced through the household, and provision for those impoverished or abandoned came through it as well. Thus those who found themselves without a b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b\u2014the widow, the orphan, or the resident alien\u2014also found themselves outside the society\u2019s normal circle of provision and protection.<\/p>\n
Figure 9. Israelite tribal society<\/p>\n
Job offers us a heartfelt description of the fate of the orphan and widow:<\/p>\n
They harvest their fodder in the field,
\nand they glean the vineyard of the wicked.
\nThey spend the night naked, without clothing,
\nand have no covering against the cold.
\nThey are wet with the mountain rains;
\nthey hug the rock for want of a shelter.
\nOthers snatch the orphan from the breast, and against the poor they take a pledge.
\nThey cause [the poor] to go about naked without clothing,
\nand they take away the sheaves from the hungry. (Job 24:6\u201310)<\/p>\n
Because of her lack of an advocate, a widow could indeed have her child \u201csnatched from her breast\u201d to pay her debts. And without a household to provide for them, orphans could indeed wander about homeless, cold, and naked. Hence, in his defense against his accusers in Job 31, Job specifically reports how he has cared for the widow and the orphan as testimony to his good character.<\/p>\n
If I have kept the poor from their desire,
\nor have allowed the eyes of the widow to fail,
\nif I have eaten my morsel alone,
\nand the orphan has not shared it [then I would be guilty]!
\nBut from my youth [the orphan] grew up with me as with a father,
\nand from infancy I guided her.
\nIf I had seen anyone perishing for lack of clothing,
\nor that there was no covering for the needy,
\nif his loins have not blessed me because he has been warmed with the fleece of my sheep,
\nif I have lifted up my hand against the orphan,
\nbecause I saw I had support in the gate,
\nthen let my shoulder be dislocated,
\nand my arm be broken off at the elbow. (Job 31:16\u201322)<\/p>\n
Clearly, this wealthy householder has not only taken care of his own family members but has also shared his wealth with those less fortunate. The evidence of his integrity is his quantifiable acts of charity to those outside his household.
\nBecause Israel\u2019s tribal culture was patrilineal\u2014meaning that ancestral descent was traced through the male line\u2014a woman\u2019s identity and her link to the economic and civil structures of her community were always identified through the men in her life. She was first her father\u2019s daughter, then her husband\u2019s wife, and then her son\u2019s mother. The resources and protection of the clan came to her through the male members of her family, who were the only ones in this society who could inherit property under normal circumstances. This is why it was critical for a woman to marry and to bear children. A woman who was widowed prior to bearing a son was a woman in crisis. And a woman without father, husband, or son was destitute. An orphan\u2014that highly unfortunate child who had no remaining relatives to care for her or him\u2014was in worse straits. Because of these societal realities, there were a number of laws in Israelite society that addressed the protection of the widow and the orphan.
\nConsider, for example, the levirate law. Found in Deuteronomy 25:5\u201310, this law protected the young widow and preserved proper lines of inheritance for her deceased husband. The Latin term levir means \u201cbrother,\u201d and the law dictates the behavior of surviving brothers when a man has left a young and childless widow behind. In such instances when a b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b had more than one adult son, the premature death of a young husband required his closest remaining brother to marry his widow. The objective was to produce a male heir for the deceased and to keep the young widow within the protective walls of the father\u2019s household. Thus the first child of a levirate union was legally recognized as the deceased\u2019s heir, and any additional children belonged to the living brother. The intent of this law was both to protect the young widow from destitution and to protect her deceased husband\u2019s inheritance. As the story of Judah, Tamar, Er, Onan, and Shelah in Genesis 38 illustrates, the people of Israel considered it a very serious offense for a man to fail to fulfill this responsibility to his dead brother, and even more serious to leave a young widow destitute. As dictated in Deuteronomy, a brother who failed to care for his brother\u2019s widow would be shamed by his community.<\/p>\n
When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband\u2019s brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband\u2019s brother to her. And it shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel. But if the man does not desire to take his brother\u2019s wife, then his brother\u2019s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, \u201cMy husband\u2019s brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband\u2019s brother to me.\u201d Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, \u201cI do not desire to take her,\u201d then his brother\u2019s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall declare, \u201cThus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother\u2019s house.\u201d And in Israel his name shall be called, \u201cThe house of him whose sandal is removed.\u201d (Deut 25:5\u201310)<\/p>\n
Although this system seems very odd to most Westerners, it worked. The inheritance of the deceased brother was properly conferred on his legal offspring, and the young widow was secured within the b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b of her deceased husband. As a result, the widow\u2019s need for food and shelter was met, and her future need for a child to care for her in her old age was addressed as well.
\nThe book of Ruth offers us a beautiful memoir of what life on the margins looked like for the widow and orphan during Israel\u2019s settlement period. As the story begins, we see that Elimelech was a fairly typical \u201csmall holder\u201d farmer, \u201cbarely making it\u201d on his ancestral land in the village of Bethlehem. Based on our archaeological reconstructions of the era, Elimelech likely was practicing dry farming (rain-fed agriculture), growing grain, grapes, and olives while keeping a small family flock for meat, dairy, and textiles. Bethlehem was a small town, apparently without a defense wall, but likely safeguarded by encircled domestic dwellings such that the exterior walls of houses shielded the village from harm. But as is typical in the hill country, there was a drought. And the drought led to a famine. And Elimelech was left with no seed for his next planting and no choice but to abandon his patrimony and try to make a go of it with his wife and young sons across the river in Moab. Although Moabites were the notorious \u201cother\u201d in the Israelite experience (in other words, the people we don\u2019t like), the plan worked. The family found land, settled for ten years, and was able to earn both the confidence of the locals and the necessary means to negotiate two marriages for their sons. But before we reach Ruth 1:5 tragedy strikes\u2014Elimelech dies, and so do Naomi\u2019s two adult sons. In a patriarchal tribal culture this family has just become an unfamily. These three women are in serious trouble. There are no males left in the household to marry the young widows. Naomi is living in a foreign land far from Elimelech\u2019s patrimony and the protection of his clan. There are no legally bound relatives to whom they can turn for aid. So Naomi begs her daughters-in-law to return to their households of origin, as she has no means by which to provide for them (Ruth 1:8). And this widow-of-widows decides to leave alone for Bethlehem seeking the safety of her extended kinship circle. Naomi\u2019s hope is that the girls\u2019 mothers\u2019 affection for them will override the limited resources and legal realities of the day, and these girls will be remarried to Moabite men (Ruth 1:11\u201313). Ruth\u2019s excellence is demonstrated here in her commitment to her mother-in-law, which surpasses any legal or societal expectation. In Ruth 1:16\u201318 Ruth utilizes every possible expression of kinship alliance to announce to anyone who will listen that she is not going anywhere. Even though the linchpins of their lives are gone (their husbands and for Ruth her father-in-law), Ruth has declared Naomi her kin, with all of the responsibilities and privileges that come with that title. I can assure you that for the original Israelite audience, the drama of this story was most simply how in the world these two widows were going to find safe space.
\nThe answer to this question will come via the exceptional integrity of the other lead character, Boaz. His remarkable commitment to the widows (one of whom might also be identified as an orphan) becomes the gold standard of the biblical text. Boaz welcomes the outsider, he looks past her ethnic and socioeconomic differences, and he redeems both Ruth and Naomi even though there were other kinsmen who were closer in bloodline and should have stepped up to the plate. Boaz resolves the life-threatening realities of Ruth and Naomi\u2019s situation by buying back their land, finding a place in his household for them, fathering a child in his deceased kinsman\u2019s name, ensuring the child\u2019s inheritance, and, of course, becoming the grandfather of Jesse, the father of David\u2014the father of Jesus (Ruth 4:16\u201322; Mt 1:1). Both Ruth and Boaz demonstrate that they are people of \u1e25ayil (\u201cexcellence\u201d and \u201cstrength\u201d; Ruth 2:1; 3:11; 4:11) by their dogged commitment to the widow Naomi\u2019s well-being.
\nIn sum, anyone finding themselves outside the b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b in Israel\u2019s world was in dire circumstances. Therefore, much of Israelite law was designed to protect the b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b such that land tenure was ensured and widows and orphans were not created via the chaotic impact of premature death. The ideal was that no one would fall outside the sheltering walls of the father\u2019s household. But when the worst happened, charity was required.
\nAs we learned in chapter three (\u201cThe Domestic Creatures Entrusted to \u02be\u0100d\u0101m\u201d), throughout its national period, most of the Israelite populace lived on what Carol Meyers has dubbed \u201csmall-holder family farms.\u201d This means that the common man in Iron Age Israel, like Elimelech in the book of Ruth, lived the fragile existence of a subsistence farmer. As we have reviewed, in the central hill country the main economy was a mixture of pastoralism and intensive, permanent, diversified agriculture. Even in a good year, the typical b\u00eat \u02be\u0101b could expect a \u201chungry season\u201d of sixty days or more. We can well imagine the pressure under which the responsible patriarch lived his life\u2014fifteen to twenty people to house, feed, and clothe; the hostile conditions native to dry farming; and the constant threat of drought, disease, and war. One short harvest could place his entire family in harm\u2019s way. Yet even under these conditions, when we again turn to the constitution and bylaws of the nation (the book of Deuteronomy) we once again find a radical call to discipleship:<\/p>\n
When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, do not go back to get it; let it be for the resident alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (Deut 24:19; cf. Lev 19:9; 23:22)<\/p>\n
As we have learned, grain (wheat and barley) was the backbone of Israel\u2019s domestic food supply. This is how the Israelite farmer kept both his children and his livestock fed. It became a critical commodity in international trade as their economy advanced. Yet our subsistence farmer is being instructed to refrain from fully harvesting his most essential dietary anchor. A similar command is offered regarding his olive yard: \u201cWhen you beat your olive tree, do not go over the boughs again; let it [the unharvested portion] be for the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow\u201d (Deut 24:20; cf. Lev 23:22). Like grain, the olive was fundamental to ancient Israel\u2019s economy. Its oil was not only indispensable to domestic survival but had also long served Canaan as a significant export\u2014a \u201ccash crop\u201d of sorts (see 1 Sam 8:14; 1 Kings 5:11 NIV [1 Kings 5:25 NAB]; Hos 12:12; 1 Chron 27:28). As Lawrence Stager summarizes, \u201cThe production of olive oil was a major industry, accounting for much of the economic prosperity of the region. Surplus oil was exported to Egypt, Phoenicia, and perhaps even to Greece.\u201d
\nViticulture (the cultivation of grapes) was the third building block of the domestic and commercial venues of Israel\u2019s economy. Canaan was (and is) famous for its wine, and grape production thrived in this region as far back as the Early Bronze Age. In fact, the wine was so famous that Pharaoh Thutmose III\u2019s Karnak botanical garden depicts grapevines imported from Canaan to Egypt\u2014the Egyptians\u2019 attempt to import Canaan\u2019s expertise into their world. Yet Deuteronomy commands that the gleanings of the vineyard (Hebrew: \u02bf\u014dl\u0113l\u00f4t) be left for the poor. Leviticus further particularizes this command stating that the smaller clusters (Hebrew: pere\u1e6d) be left as well.<\/p>\n
When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean afterward; let it [the unharvested portion] be for the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. (Deut 24:21\u201322; cf. Lev 19:10; 23:22)<\/p>\n
Thus the law code of Deuteronomy lists the three crops essential to Israel\u2019s agricultural cycle (and therefore survival), and demands that the small-holder farmer not fully harvest his crops. Recognizing the subsistence struggles of the typical family farm, this is a big ask. What principle do we the modern readers find here? God\u2019s command was (and is) that the produce of the land be shared with the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien so they might have the opportunity to sustain themselves. In other words, the drive for economic security and surplus in Israel must always be tempered by God\u2019s command for charity. Not even economic viability served as an acceptable rationale for greed. In sum, the Israelite citizen was instructed that the land did not belong to him; it belonged to God. And God wanted the marginalized to have the chance to benefit from its produce too.<\/p>\n
WHAT DO WE SAY?<\/p>\n
What most of us do not realize is that environmental degradation strikes those on the margins first. It is the subsistence farmer and the poor who pay the highest price for any society\u2019s failure to utilize land in a sustainable fashion. As Norman Wirzba, research professor of theology, ecology, and rural life at Duke Divinity School, discusses at length, history is filled with examples of shortsighted agricultural practices that turned fertile fields into wasteland and desert, thereby effecting the collapse of civilization in particular regions at particular times. As discussed above, in the field of Old Testament studies, the most familiar story is that of Mesopotamia\u2019s agricultural collapse due to a failure to fallow (see the section in chapter two \u201cSustainable Agriculture: What Does the Bible Say?\u201d). Wendell Berry\u2019s classic treatment of this topic in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1977) is a more contemporary example. David Montgomery\u2019s Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization (2007) offers a pointed discussion of the same. Each of these describe the all-too-human cycle of exploitation, abandonment, and reexploitation of cultivatable soil. In our world, however, \u201cthe problem \u2026 is that we have run out of places to exploit. The frontier is closed. The question we now face is, how are we going to live sustainably \u2026 where we are? Can we grow food in ways that do not imperil the ability of future generations to feed themselves?\u201d As Oaxaca, Mexico, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, painfully illustrate, eroded and desiccated farmland equals poverty, starvation, and mass migration.
\nThe exploitation of the land, however, is not limited to agriculture. Deforestation occurs for many reasons, and people such as Scott Sabin (executive director of Plant with Purpose, an international Christian organization that empowers the marginalized impoverished by deforestation) have spent their lives attempting to make the public aware of the relationship between shortsighted environmental abuse and refugee populations. Pavan Sukhdev, author of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) report, states:<\/p>\n
Poverty and the loss of biodiversity are inextricably linked: the real beneficiaries of many of the services of ecosystems and biodiversity are predominantly the poor. The livelihoods most affected are subsistence farming, animal husbandry, fishing and informal forestry\u2014most of the world\u2019s poor are dependent on them.<\/p>\n
In this report Sukhdev argues that the \u201cecosystem services\u201d on which the poor depend are predominantly public goods. But as there is no recognizable market or pricing for these commodities, \u201cthey often are not detected by our current economic compass.\u201d Thus, when the pressures of expanding industry, population growth, changing diets, urbanization, and climate change undermine healthy, diverse ecosystems, the well-being of the poor is the first to be compromised. But because no one owns the natural systems, these losses don\u2019t show up on anyone\u2019s financial or economic spread sheet\u2014and the effects of environmental degradation on the marginalized remain invisible.
\nOne example is the republic of Haiti. Centuries of unsustainable agricultural methods and inefficient charcoal production have created a staggering level of deforestation that has been both the result and the cause of intolerable conditions for the widow and the orphan. Aerial photographs of the border between Haiti and its island companion, the Dominican Republic, show a verdant rainforest (the DR) bordered by a dirt road, beyond which is a completely denuded landscape (Haiti). With an average annual income less than $400, and a capital city (Port-au-Prince) ranked fourth out of the 230 worst cities on the planet to inhabit, the living conditions in Haiti are beyond challenging. But for the poor, they are unbearable. Matthew Ayers, president of Emmaus University just outside Cap-Haitian, has served this community for over a decade. Matt has too many stories to tell about the incredible challenges that the locals endure on a daily basis, as well as the fantastic hurdles that he and his staff have had to overcome to keep Emmaus up and running. Ayers speaks of forced urbanization due to the deforestation of the countryside, and how the resulting overflow of humanity in the cities paralyzes the little infrastructure that Haiti has. Thus the disenfranchised are driven to the least desirable areas of the city\u2014areas adjacent to the rivers and ocean. Living near the water in Haiti\u2019s overpopulated cities is particularly dangerous because deforestation \u201cmeans frequent flashfloods and landslides that are almost always fatal.\u201d Add to this the array of diseases resulting from miles of open sewage and standing water (e.g., malaria), and the relationship between environmental degradation and the plight of the widow and the orphan is brought into sharp focus. In Haiti deforestation means forced urbanization, and forced urbanization means the victimization of the poorest of the poor.
\nNeal and Danielle Carlstrom, who serve as World Venture missionaries to Madagascar, tell a similar tale about the lush forests and fertile waterways that once graced the island. Ninety percent of the flora and fauna in Madagascar is endemic\u2014truly extraordinary and unique. This island has extravagant natural resources. But predatory exploitation has left Madagascar 85 percent deforested\u2014a statistic I can hardly wrap my brain around. The result? Desiccated topsoil, massive erosion, clogged rivers, and suffocated marine life and coral reefs. The Edenic \u201cRed Island\u201d is now one of the ten poorest countries in the world, and the Malagasy are starving. Neal states that \u201cin severe poverty, you see brokenness, corruption, and evil on all levels but those who suffer the most are always the least of these: the outcasts, the disabled, the widows, the orphans, the weak, the uneducated, the indentured servants, the voiceless.\u201d So Neal spends his days teaching the least of these how to create their own microbusinesses by successfully planting and nurturing indigenous trees in their backyard gardens\u2014a beautiful and integrated enterprise that lifts the Malagasy out of unimaginable poverty while empowering them to reclaim their homeland. \u201cWhen you love, empower, and teach the poorest of the poor how to restore their land and lives, they find hope, stability and a future.\u201d Danielle is a midwife. She reports that one out of ten Malagasy women die in childbirth and that this absurdly high infant mortality rate is due mostly to malnutrition.<\/p>\n
As a result of the degradation of their land, many of the women we serve are horribly malnourished. This makes them more likely to hemorrhage after labor, makes their babies more susceptible to being born early, small and without the stores they need to thrive.\u2026 Farming families whose land no longer provides struggle to get any sort of food let alone sending their children to school. And so the cycle continues and worsens.<\/p>\n
So Danielle spends her days teaching these women how to care for themselves so that their babies might have a chance at life, while Neal teaches their menfolk how to restore their farms and waterways so that life and hope might return to a country plagued with darkness and despair.
\nIn sum, environmental degradation in Haiti and Madagascar has struck the most vulnerable the hardest. Whereas the wealthy have either profited or been protected from the islands\u2019 demise, the rural farmer, the widow, and the orphan have been crushed by it.<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY<\/p>\n
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining<\/p>\n
What of sustainable land use that benefits the widow and the orphan beyond agriculture? Let\u2019s pause to consider MTR-VF coal mining. Mountaintop removal (MTR) is a relatively new form of coal mining that requires the targeted site to be clear cut and then leveled by the use of massive amounts of explosives in order to reach the coal seams buried deep within the mountain. Valley fill (VF) emanates from the need to dump the \u201coverburden\u201d created by this method once the coal is extracted. This overburden is the remains (vegetation, topsoil, rock, etc.) of what was once a thriving mountain ecosystem dumped into an adjoining valley. As with most coal mining in our country, the regions targeted for exploitation are West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southeastern Tennessee, and parts of western Virginia. Although coal mining in the United States has a long and troubled history, MTR-VF has brought the abuse of the land, the miner, and his community to an entirely new level.<\/p>\n
Figure 10. A dragline excavator<\/p>\n
With MTR, millions of pounds of explosives are used to access what remains of America\u2019s coal seams. Demolition may extend as far as one thousand feet below the surface. After demolition, coal and debris are collected by enormous earth-moving machines known as dragline excavators\u2014among the largest machines on earth (fig. 10). The \u201cdraglines\u201d required to move the overburden stand twenty-two stories high and typically weigh 8,000 tons, and their buckets have a holding capacity equal to twenty-four compact cars. The largest ever built in the States, the \u201cBig Muskie,\u201d is memorialized at the Miners\u2019 Memorial Park in southeastern Ohio\u2014the \u201cBig Muskie\u201d weighed in at 12,000 tons and had the largest-capacity bucket ever built.
\nThe overburden excavated in order to reach coal seems is dumped in adjacent valleys. Erik Reece records 6,700 \u201cvalley fills\u201d approved in central Appalachia between 1985 and 2001, resulting in over 700 miles of healthy streams buried completely and thousands more damaged. A more recent statistic records 2,000 miles of waterway in the US either poisoned or eradicated by MTR-VF. Can this damage be repaired? A 2010 study conducted by an independent research team of university biologists and geologists states: \u201cCurrent mitigation strategies are meant to compensate for lost stream habitat and functions but do not; waterquality degradation caused by mining activities is neither prevented nor corrected during reclamation or mitigation.\u201d Between 1985 and 2015, explosives and mining equipment chewed up an additional eleven hundred square miles of the Appalachian mountains, but ironically, MTR-VF is only obtaining a third of the coal from the same quantity of stripped land area as it did three decades ago. In other words, the massively destructive methods of MTR-VF are producing diminishing returns.
\nThe demolition required for MTR leaves in its wake what many have described as a \u201clunar landscape\u201d\u2014where once verdant forests grew, now nothing grows (see fig. 11). The method causes \u201cpermanent loss of ecosystems that play critical roles in ecological processes,\u201d and the impacts on both land and waterways \u201care pervasive and irreversible.\u201d
\nThe impact on the local populations? Activist groups such as Appalachian Voices continue to labor to bring the issue into view. But because MTR-VF has targeted eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, some of the poorest communities in America, few are listening. The locals are hungry for jobs and often support the very same industry that is exploiting them. Some resist. But those who do are threatened and harassed into selling their land or live with the consequences of ongoing explosions within yards of their homes. Groundwater is poisoned, houses damaged, and lungs filled with the voluminous debris MTR-VF creates.<\/p>\n
Figure 11. Lunar landscapes<\/p>\n
One such story comes from Rawl, West Virginia. Carmelita and Ernie Brown have lived out their married lives in an attractive brick home just downstream from a mountaintop removal site operated by Massey Energy\u2014what had been the biggest coal company in the state. Ernie was a coal miner, as were his father and his grandfather before him. He and Carmelita and their larger community understood that their livelihood depended on the coal industry, and they had accepted the realities of that relationship. That was, until they started getting sick. And their neighbors started getting sick. Undiagnosable ailments, rashes, cancers, and kidney stones began occurring in people all over Rawl. And then the well water coming from Ernie and Carmelita\u2019s tap began to smell of sulfur \u2026 and turned brown. Some attempted to compensate by using bleach in their dishwater and laundry. No one realized that what was happening was the well-documented result of mountaintop removal coal mining: the water table from which the entire community drew its water had been poisoned. Arsenic, manganese, lead, barium, selenium, aluminum, and other toxins had leached into their ground water and thereby into their drinking water. The toxins in their water were traced to the mountaintop-removal operation just above the Browns\u2019 house. With the help of the media and outside organizations, Rawl shared their plight with the public. After twelve long years, they won a legal battle that resulted in a city water line that replaced the old wells. This resolved their immediate problem, but what about the groundwater? What about local streams, fish, and wildlife? What about the diseases that could not be reversed, and what about the next community poisoned by the same irresponsible mining methods?
\nOne particularly painful story regarding the impact of this industry on local residents involves a mountaintop-removal site in Appalachia, Virginia. In the wee hours of the morning on August 20, 2004, a boulder weighing half a ton was pushed off a blasting site by a bulldozer in a clandestine attempt to widen a supply road. The boulder came crashing down the mountainside, tearing through the side of a young family\u2019s home. \u201cIt hurled like a cannonball into Dennis and Cindy Davidson\u2019s house, right through the wall of the bedroom and onto the bed where 3-year-old Jeremy was sleeping.\u201d The boulder stopped just short of seven-year-old Zachary\u2019s bed. But three-year-old Jeremy was crushed to death in his sleep.
\nFlash flooding and potential coal impoundment ruptures are now a constant risk in Appalachia due to the massive changes MTR-VF has made to the local topography. When one such impoundment, again belonging to Massey Energy, failed in Martin County, Kentucky, on October 11, 2000, more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge were dumped into the Ohio River, as well as the Big Sandy River and its tributaries. The disaster\u2014nearly thirty times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill\u2014killed virtually all aquatic life for seventy miles downstream. The EPA named it the worst environmental disaster ever to occur east of the Mississippi. But until I began writing this book, I\u2019d never heard of the event. I was living in central Kentucky on October 11, 2000, and I never saw a single press release. And I\u2019ve yet to meet anyone who has. The disaster didn\u2019t find its way into my newspaper or my daily newsreel\u2014or apparently anyone else\u2019s either. Why? Probably the same reason I never heard about the children of Marsh Fork Elementary school in Sundial, West Virginia, the children who spent seven years learning to read, write, and do arithmetic four hundred yards downslope from Massey Energy\u2019s Shumate impoundment. This impoundment holds 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge. As the Martin County impoundment disaster demonstrated, these retention \u201cponds\u201d are vulnerable to failure. So the plan in case of failure was to sound a bullhorn, allowing the Marsh Fork Elementary School\u2019s 230 children five minutes to evacuate before six feet of toxic sludge engulfed their school. Seven years of protest finally resulted in action from Massey Energy\u2014the construction of a new school three miles away from the impoundment. The school was built in December 2012, and now the locals, who are struggling with limited resources in every aspect of their lives, are content. They have a new school for their children that is now located out of harm\u2019s way. But should we be content?
\nThe rationale for MTR-VF is, of course, profit. When asked why surface mining is permitted near residential neighborhoods in the wake of the Davidson case, agency spokesman Mike Abbott replied, \u201cBecause state and federal laws allow it.\u201d As more than one-third of the coal burned in the United States is mined in central Appalachia, and nearly half of the electricity used by Americans is powered by coal, this \u201ccheap\u201d energy source either makes or saves a lot of people a lot of money. But, by the laws of Deuteronomy, should \u201ccheap\u201d or \u201cconvenient\u201d be the deciding factor for the community of faith?
\nThe next question I am forced to ask is, What is the church doing about this? Allen Johnson of Christians for the Mountains\u2014a group that describes itself as \u201ca network of persons advocating that Christians and their churches recognize their God-given responsibility to live compatibly, sustainably, and gratefully joyous upon this God\u2019s earth\u201d\u2014is desperately trying to make a difference. In the fall of 2015, my coteacher at Wheaton College, Kristen Page, and I invited Allen into our classroom via Skype. The students were well-prepared and eager for the conversation\u2014wondering, as we all were, where the outrage regarding this seemingly abusive and primitive exploitation of the amazing Appalachian mountains might be found. After a very engaging conversation, one of our (wonderful, committed, and idealistic) Wheaton students asked Allen what the church in the region was doing to speak out for both the marginalized and the planet. Allen paused. He diverted. You could even say he dodged. Knowing him to be a man of great integrity, I was surprised. That is, until I received this letter from him the next day.<\/p>\n
Sandra,<\/p>\n
When reflecting upon our Skype dialogue with your class on October 12, I\u2019ve thought especially about a question that one of your students raised; a question that invariably I\u2019m asked by outside reporters and other interested people. The question generally takes a shape similar to this.
\n\u201cWhat are some things that local church congregations are doing about the problem of mountaintop removal?\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a question that makes me squirm, because the straight-forward answer is, \u201cNothing.\u201d Which is embarrassing. I usually bring up some \u201cexceptions,\u201d but these are rare cases. And then I go into a brief analysis of why congregations are uncomfortable taking on any hot-button local issue that potentially can divide a congregation, get a minister fired, result in a drop of financial contributions, create a membership exodus to other churches.\u2026
\nWhen Christians for the Mountains was forming during a weekend in May 2005, I took a group of a couple dozen Christians up to Kayford Mountain to meet Larry Gibson who would show us the surrounding mountaintop removal from his \u201cisland in the sky.\u201d We had told him our group would meet him about noon. As it turned out, we got there about 1:30 pm as our group dawdled and lingered on some sites on the way up. After we had gathered together, Gibson lashed into me, \u201cWhy are you so late??!!!\u201d I blustered an apology for our group\u2019s tardiness. \u201cNo, that\u2019s not what I mean,\u201d snorted Gibson. \u201cWhy are you church people so late to doing anything about mountaintop removal?\u201d
\nSandra, there are numerous denominational statements against mountaintop removal. The West Virginia Council of Churches has had a strong statement against mountaintop removal for many years. A number of well-known Christian leaders have come out against the practice. And a number of congregations outside our region have given solid support. My own congregation, 70 miles east of the coalfields, backs my work. But within the coalfields, congregations are typically hush on mountaintop removal.
\nI often think of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Southern states were not going to enact legislation to dismantle segregation and other disparities. African-American communities were either resigned to the situation or too fearful to step out for change. But then, a few black leaders rose up, some courageous students stood up, some congregations stirred, they suffered, but then a national movement birthed.
\nSandra, I would encourage your class to work on your student\u2019s question within a broader context. What are local issues that are taboo or otherwise risky for a congregation to take on? Why? How do jobs, economic matters, loyalties, culture, or our own privilege and comfort from those services play into the silence of a congregation? How can the prophetic word for local issues come from the pulpit, or will it have to be through individual members within a congregation or through para-church ministries? Do policymakers know that denominational statements are only worth as much as the congregations that back them?
\nThank you, again, for the privilege of interacting with your class. May God bless each and all of you.<\/p>\n
Allen<\/p>\n
When I read this letter I think about the cost of real change. I think about the price real people pay for speaking out against status quo. Having lived on this planet more years than I care to admit, I know that courage and persecution look way different up close than they do in a TED Talk or in a movie. But when I read this letter I also hear the voice of Isaiah:<\/p>\n
Learn to do good;
\nSeek justice,
\nReprove the ruthless,
\nDefend the orphan,
\nPlead for the widow. (Is 1:17 NASB)<\/p>\n
The prophets ask us again and again, \u201cWho will defend the voiceless? Who will speak for the orphan and the widow?\u201d Who will speak up for Carmelita and Ernie Brown, Jeremy Davidson, and the children of Marsh Fork? How will we answer when the Creator asks us where we were when the widow and the orphan and the resident alien were stripped of their homes, their health, and their livelihoods because we chose silence?<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. How do the biblical laws of caring for the widow and the orphan inform us of God\u2019s intentions for our relationship with the marginalized?
\n2. If you were an Israelite farmer, how would you have felt about leaving a portion of your hard-won harvest in the field for the widow, orphan, and resident alien of your community?
\n3. Who do you think the widow, orphan, or resident alien of our day might be?
\n4. What is your reaction to the impact that environmental degradation has on the marginalized?
\n5. Why do you think our churches, our country, and our government are ignoring mountaintop removal coal mining right here in our own backyard?<\/p>\n
7<\/p>\n
THE PEOPLE OF THE NEW COVENANT AND OUR LANDLORD<\/p>\n
What is left at the end of all things? Did Jesus die for plants? No. Did Jesus die for animals? No. Jesus died for people. And when it is all said and done, the only thing that will be left is the church.<\/p>\n
SERMON HEARD IN WHEATON, ILLINOIS, JULY 2016<\/p>\n
Both church history and our own believing hearts tell us that there was something amazing about the laser-like focus of the early evangelical movement. John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards were the founding fathers of the \u201ccross-pollinating revivalistic and evangelistic atmosphere of Britain and North America in the 1730s\u201d also known as Great Awakening. Thousands of churchgoers were reawakened in their faith; thousands more were converted for the first time. The Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, birthed through the preaching of the Wesleys and Francis Asbury, \u201cwent viral\u201d by the turn of the century, claiming four million adherents at its zenith. Foundational to this evangelical revival was the \u201cdifferent twist\u201d that Riley Case speaks of\u2014the belief that the primary task of the church was to preach the gospel such that humanity might be reconciled with God through the work of the Holy Spirit\u2014the conversion of souls.<\/p>\n
When Methodism jumped to America after the Revolutionary War, Wesley\u2019s admonition \u201cYou have nothing to do but save souls\u201d was understood by the first American Methodists to mean that salvation from the consequences of sin is available by faith in the blood of Jesus through the New Birth. And with the New Birth comes a changed life through the power of the Holy Spirit. This was a different twist from what anyone else in America had been preaching up to that point and it took the new nation by storm.\u2026 As for the Methodists, while only 10% of Americans claimed church membership after the Revolutionary War, by 1850 the percentage was nearly 40% and of that 40% Methodists would claim a full one-third.<\/p>\n
But as I stated in the introduction, somehow or another this wholly good and orthodox emphasis on the conversion of souls also resulted in the church\u2019s sense that converting souls is the only task of the Christian. And therefore any other task (such as environmental stewardship) is a distraction from the most essential aspect of our calling. There are many divergent trails of church history and theology that we could pursue at this point to decipher where that idea came from. Some would blame it on the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, a form of Greek dualistic thought, which supposedly infiltrated the New Testament to teach us that all matter is evil, and only the nonmaterial spirit realm is good and worthy of our investment. Some would blame it on dispensational premillennialism, which holds that the eschaton will be inaugurated by a sudden and cataclysmic event bringing about the annihilation of the created order, a \u201csharp break from conditions as we now find them.\u201d Some would blame it on the great \u201cliberal\/fundamentalist\u201d divide in the 1920s, which left social concerns to the liberals and the conversion of souls to the fundamentalists. Others, such as Lynn White (a twentieth-century American medieval historian), blame our current environmental crisis squarely on the Judeo-Christian ethic, which supposedly posits a dichotomy between people and nature in which \u201cman and nature are two things, and man is master, and therefore, whereas the exploitation of people would be ethically evil, the exploitation of creation was right and good.\u201d This alleged biblical perspective has frequently been set in contrast to the supposed more eco-friendly views of other religions, leaving Christianity a villain on the world environmental stage. The charge is that the Bible desacralized nature by eliminating polytheism and animism, subjugated the created order by giving it to humanity to rule, and degraded it by the separation of spirit and matter. According to White, the Judeo-Christian tradition in the Western world is \u201cthe most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.\u201d All of these avenues could be pursued with benefit. But as the purpose of this book is a biblical theology of humanity\u2019s responsibility toward the garden, and I believe we\u2019ve already demonstrated that the Old Testament is deeply committed to the responsible stewardship of land and creature, let\u2019s turn to the New Testament. We will start by examining the New Testament passages that seem to say that the created order will be annihilated at the second coming of Christ, passages that seem to infer that it is right and good to use natural resources as aggressively as possible to pursue the true telos (Greek: \u201cthe last part of a process\u201d) of the new covenant.<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?<\/p>\n
There are several New Testament passages that are often cited as proof that God\u2019s ultimate plan is to dispose of the current planet. The first of these is 2 Peter 3:10\u201313:<\/p>\n
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
\nSince all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. (NASB)<\/p>\n
A second passage is 1 Thessalonians 5:2\u20133:<\/p>\n
For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, \u201cPeace and safety!\u201d then destruction will come upon them suddenly like birth pangs upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. (NASB)<\/p>\n
A third passage is Revelation 6:12\u201314, 17:<\/p>\n
I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.\u2026 \u201cFor the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?\u201d (NASB)<\/p>\n
A final passage is Revelation 21:1:<\/p>\n
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. (NASB)<\/p>\n
How are we to read these passages? Are the heavens and the earth, the waters above and the waters below, the sea and the dry land with all their flora and fauna truly to be obliterated at the end of the age? Is God\u2019s ultimate plan to destroy the garden that he commanded both Adam and Israel to tend and protect? Let\u2019s first attend to a concept that lies behind all of these passages\u2014\u201cthe day of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
THE DAY OF THE LORD<\/p>\n
The day of the Lord (literally, the \u201cday of Yahweh\u201d [Hebrew: y\u00f4m YHWH]) is a concept that reaches back to the very beginning of the biblical narrative. Meredith G. Kline, the great Reformed biblical theologian, identifies the first occurrence of the day of Yahweh in Genesis 3:8, when the Creator enters the garden \u201cin the Spirit of the Day\u201d and the thunderous sound of his entry drives Adam and Eve into hiding. Although often translated similarly to the NLT, \u201cWhen the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking in the garden,\u201d this passage is more likely a reference to the first instance of divine judgment on our planet. Judgment is delivered first to the serpent for his deception, then to the woman for her foolishness, and then to the man for his treason. But as is always the case, the day of Yahweh also brings mercy and hope:<\/p>\n
And I will put enmity (hostility)
\nBetween you [the serpent] and the woman
\nAnd between your seed and her seed.
\nHe [the woman\u2019s seed] will bruise you on the head,
\nBut you shall bruise him on the heel. (Gen 3:15)<\/p>\n
There is an image that I believe perfectly illustrates the moment rehearsed above. It was drawn by Sister Grace Remington, Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, from the Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa. The image offers us Eve and Mary at the same age. One is shamed and grieving, with a serpent wrapped around her leg; the other is pregnant and hopeful, with a hand of comfort on her sister\u2019s shoulder. One holds a bitten apple. The other has her bare foot squarely placed on the head of a dying snake. Both have fixed their gaze on the child to come. I love this image. Partly because it is beautiful, but partly because in many ways it captures the nature of \u201cthe day.\u201d
\nThe y\u00f4m YHWH is indeed a day of judgment. On this day injustice, abuse, and our seemingly unending ambition to destroy ourselves will be confronted and eradicated. But it is also the day of mercy in which God\u2019s original intent for this planet as defined in that perfect first week of creation is resurrected. The day of Yahweh is the day when the Creator steps back into our dimension and says, \u201cEnough.\u201d It is the day when death dies, the prisoner is freed, the oppressed is delivered, and the oppressor gets his due. This is the telos of both the Old and New Testaments.
\nPredictably, a survey of the biblical text demonstrates that the y\u00f4m YHWH is a regular theme in Old Testament prophecy. This day of judgment and mercy is always attended by terrifying signs in the earth and sky; solar eclipses and earthquakes; sounds of thunder and rushing waters; and a huge, heavenly yet earthly army whose task is to bring judgment on all who have colluded against the rule of God. Isaiah 13:2\u201313 is a classic example:<\/p>\n
Lift up a standard on the bare hill,
\nRaise your voice to them,
\nWave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles.
\nI have commanded my holy ones,
\nI have summoned my warriors,
\naccording to my anger,
\nmy proud and majestic ones.
\nA sound of tumult on the mountains,
\nlike that of tens of thousands of people!
\nThe noise of the uproar of kingdoms!
\nOf nations gathered together!
\nYahweh of hosts is mustering a host for battle!\u2026
\nWail, for the day of Yahweh is near!
\nIt will come as destruction from the Almighty.
\nTherefore all hands will fall limp,
\nand every man\u2019s heart will melt.
\nAnd they will be terrified.\u2026
\nBehold, the day of Yahweh is coming,
\ncruel, with fury and burning anger,
\nto make the land a desolation;
\nand he will exterminate the wicked from it!
\nThe stars of heaven and their constellations
\nwill not flash their light;
\nthe sun will be dark when it rises,
\nand the moon will not shine its light.
\nThus I will punish the world for its cruelty,
\nand the evil ones for their crimes;
\nI will put an end to the arrogance of the proud,
\nand I will bring down the contempt of the ruthless.\u2026
\nTherefore I will shake the heavens,
\nand make the earth quake from its foundations!
\nAt the fury of Yahweh of hosts in the day of His burning anger!<\/p>\n
In layman\u2019s terms, God shows up. In person. To do battle with those who have defiled his inheritance and abused his people. The slaughter will be terrible. The earth and heavens will tremble. But in this great and terrible day the systemic evil that permeates our fallen planet will be purged such that those crushed under the iron fist of injustice will at last know liberation, peace, and prosperity. The Prince of Peace is coming, and his ultimate goal (Greek: telos) is the restoration of the perfect world of Genesis 1:<\/p>\n
A civilization without greed, malice, or envy; progress without pollution, expansion without extinction. Can you imagine it? A world in which Adam and Eve\u2019s ever-expanding family would be provided the guidance they needed to explore and develop their world such that the success of the strong did not involve the deprivation of the weak. Here government would be wise and just and kind, resources plentiful, war unnecessary, achievement unlimited, and beauty and balance everywhere.<\/p>\n
Thus the \u201cday of Yahweh\u201d may be found in Isaiah 13:6, 9; Jeremiah 46:10; Ezekiel 7:10; 13:5; 30:3; Daniel 2:31\u201335; Joel 1:15; 2:1, 11; 3:4, 14; Amos 5:18, 20; Obadiah 15; Zephaniah 1:7, 14; and Malachi 4:1, 5, to name but a few of the Old Testament passages.
\nBut the \u201cday of Yahweh\u201d may also be found in the New Testament. Here it is also known as the parousia (Greek: \u201carrival, advent, appearance\u201d) or in Christian circles \u201cthe second coming\u201d (e.g., Mt 21:33\u201346 [cf. Is 5]; Mt 24:35\u201344; Acts 2:20; 1 Cor 5:5; 15:23; 1 Thess 3:13; 5:2; 2 Thess 2:2; Jas 5:8; and 2 Pet 3:10). Why is the \u201cday of Yahweh\u201d in both Testaments? Because the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, and the plan that first set Eden in motion has not changed. The goal has always been God\u2019s people living in God\u2019s place with full access to his presence. And so in the New Testament we read that God the Son will return as the Captain of Yahweh\u2019s hosts and bring with him the deliverance and judgment promised on that glorious but fearful day.<\/p>\n
The sun shall be turned into darkness,
\nAnd the moon into blood,
\nbefore the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come.
\nAnd it shall be, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Acts 2:20\u201321; cf. Joel 2:30\u201332)<\/p>\n
When we understand that the day of Yahweh is the parousia of the new covenant and return to 2 Peter and 2 Thessalonians, we return with the lexicon native to the biblical authors. These New Testament writers are speaking in the same idiom as their prophetic forefathers, and they are speaking of an event that any first-century Jew would easily have recognized\u2014the day of Yahweh. Paul makes this explicit in 2 Thessalonians 2:1\u20133, 7\u20138:<\/p>\n
Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.\u2026 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming. (NASB, emphasis added)<\/p>\n
So we see that the imagery of fire and earthquake, the roar of thunder and heavenly disturbances, are common to passages involving the day of Yahweh, and this language is intended to communicate judgment, not necessarily annihilation. It is also important to understand that this imagery emerges from a genre known as apocalyptic literature\u2014a subcategory of prophetic speech meaning \u201cunveiling\u201d or \u201crevelation\u201d that depicts the end of the world and the inauguration of the kingdom of God in images that are fantastic and sometimes bizarre. This literature is known for its symbolism, mythic imagery, special use of numbers, and periodization of history. Biblical books that are apocalyptic in nature include Daniel in the Old Testament and the New Testament book of Revelation. As Douglas Moo states, \u201cthe visions we encounter in these books force us to ask if the prophet is straightforwardly describing the conditions of the new world, or is he using a series of metaphors to describe a state of affairs that have no direct analog to our experience in this world?\u201d Although the continuity between this world and the one to come is not clear to any of us, Moo and a host of New Testament scholars would side with the latter\u2014that these images and metaphors are part of a stock typology for describing the great judgment at the end of the age. In other words, this apocalyptic language does not communicate the complete annihilation of the physical world. Why? Because such a conclusion violates the great arc of redemptive history. Because the imagery is intended to be symbolic. Because the prior judgments rehearsed in the Old Testament do not communicate planetary annihilation, and there are so many other passages in the Old Testament that speak of the restoration and fructification of our fallen planet as a sign of the return of the king. Because even in the great flood of Noah, designed to cleanse the world of evil, which Matthew 24:37 utilizes as a direct analogue for the second coming of the Christ, God preserved the good planet he had made, along with its flora and fauna. And more importantly, because Paul says so.<\/p>\n
ROMANS 8:18\u201325<\/p>\n
In the midst of his famous treatment of the inheritance of the saints in Romans 8, we catch a glimpse of Paul\u2019s understanding of the fate of our planet. And rather than speaking in terms of obliteration, he speaks in terms of resurrection. Paul is probably writing his letter to the Romans from Corinth. He is about to depart for Jerusalem, but he is heavy-hearted for the converts in Rome who are struggling with their newfound faith. The questions at hand: Why did we need a new covenant? Who qualifies for membership? Why couldn\u2019t the old covenant save us? And most importantly, if the kingdom has come, why are we still poor and persecuted and suffering? And so Paul speaks:<\/p>\n
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility [i.e., frustration], not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 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. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. (Rom 8:18\u201325)<\/p>\n
This passage is a poignant presentation of the great arc of redemptive history. I use it often in my teaching to help my students see that the story of redemption doesn\u2019t start in Matthew 1:1 or even in Romans 3:23 but starts \u201cin the beginning.\u201d Here Eden\u2019s role as the blueprint of God\u2019s ideal plan, a plan that has been torn asunder by the rebellion of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m, is clear. And the fact that all of redemption\u2019s story is leading to the restoration of that perfect plan is clear as well. Throughout the book Paul reflects on the impact of sin on the individual, the community, and the race. In this passage he reflects on its impact on the cosmos. And he reminds his audience that all creation has suffered because of humanity\u2019s rebellion. As a result, all of creation is anxiously awaiting \u201cthe revealing of the sons [heirs] of God.\u201d Why does creation wait? Because creation itself has been subjected to frustration. The Greek in this passage suggests that \u201ccreation has been unable to attain the purpose for which it was created.\u201d Why? Because the \u02be\u0103d\u0101m\u00e2 (the cultivatable soil) was subjected to ineffectiveness because of the rebellion of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m. God\u2019s chosen steward failed in his appointed task, and so the creation over which he had authority was trapped within the self-defeating cycle of humanity\u2019s rebellion as well. Creation experiences the same \u201cbondage of decay\u201d as does the human race. And just like the heirs of the kingdom, creation awaits its deliverance.
\nSo how will freedom come to both the cosmos and the children of Adam? Paul abbreviates his answer here but does so with heavily loaded language. Paul elaborates in his discourse in 1 Corinthians 15:42\u201358. With the return of the last Adam, the children of the first Adam will be born again into that which is imperishable. In Romans this is \u201cthe freedom of the glory of the children of God\u201d (Rom 8:21). As Romans 8:23 states, the moment of consummation is our \u201cadoption as sons [heirs],\u201d which is the redemption of our bodies. The \u201cglory of the children of God\u201d is that moment when our commitment to Christ in this present age (what New Testament scholars call the \u201calready\u201d) is brought to its fulfillment\u2014actualized\u2014by the resurrection of our fallen and broken bodies into a quality of life that is both eternal and able to endure the same dimension as deity (the \u201cnot yet\u201d). In other words, the great moment of victory is the moment of resurrection\u2014death is defeated, the curse is repealed, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve are finally reconciled with their God and their first home. It is at this moment that the believer\u2019s \u201csalvation\u201d is complete (Rom 5:12\u201321). Now look what Paul does in Romans 8. He juxtaposes the resurrection of humanity with the resurrection of creation. \u201cThe creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God\u201d (Rom 8:21). In what many would argue is Paul\u2019s theological magnum opus, the apostle argues that the great moment of victory that the believer lives for is the same moment the creation anxiously awaits. When death is defeated and the curse eradicated, the cosmos will also be born again, liberated and healed, freed at last from the chaos of humanity\u2019s rebellion.
\nWhen we read this passage in class, it is often the first time my students realize that the end goal of the gospel is not simply personal \u201cfire insurance.\u201d They are usually a bit stunned (and always totally jazzed) to find out that their personal story of salvation is actually only one small part of a panoramic master plan to restore all of creation through the work of the Christ. In the words of Douglas Moo,<\/p>\n
If creation has suffered the consequences of human sin, it will also enjoy the fruits of human deliverance. When believers are glorified, creation\u2019s \u201cbondage to decay\u201d will be ended, and it will participate in the \u201cfreedom that belongs to the glory\u201d for which Christians are destined. Nature, Paul affirms, has a future within the plan of God. It is destined not simply for destruction but for transformation.<\/p>\n
REVELATION 21:1 AND REVELATION 22:1\u20132<\/p>\n
The book of Revelation offers an additional glimpse of the master plan. Here what Christians name \u201cheaven\u201d is identified as \u201ca new heaven and a new earth,\u201d a \u201cnew Jerusalem\u201d coming down out of heaven from God, \u201cmade ready as a bride adorned for her husband\u201d (Rev 21:1\u20132 NASB). John describes heaven with all of the past beauties of Jerusalem, purified and amplified until we are gazing at a city that sparkles like jasper \u201cas clear as crystal\u201d (Rev 21:11), with gates made of pearls, guarded by angels, perfectly square, as was the holy of holies, and made of pure gold (Rev 21:18). The gates never close, because there is no danger there (Rev 21:25). There is no need of sun or moon or lamps, because \u201cthe glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light\u201d (Rev 21:23). In this place, the cosmic river of Eden is free to flow from the throne of the rightful king (Rev 22:1; cf. Ezek 47:1\u201312), and Eden\u2019s tree of life has multiplied such that it lines the central street of the city (Rev 22:1\u20132).<\/p>\n
There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev 22:3\u20135 NASB)<\/p>\n
As I discuss at length in The Epic of Eden, the iconography John deploys makes it clear that unlike the disembodied existence most Christians envision \u201cheaven\u201d to be (an existence in which we are destined to float around the heavenlies for all eternity playing harps among the clouds), \u201cheaven\u201d is in reality Eden restored. By describing heaven with Eden\u2019s sacred river and tree of life, the New Testament writers are intentionally forging connections for their readers. They are leaving us \u201ctheological breadcrumbs\u201d to lead our minds back to Eden. The books of Romans and Revelation are telling us that just as our bodies will be raised as living flesh and blood, our heaven will need to accommodate such a corporeal identity. Thus, although missed by too many readers, the New Testament is teaching us that \u201cheaven\u201d is this very earth resurrected, healed of its scars, and washed clean of its diseases. As Gregory Beale states, it is \u201can identifiable counterpart to the old cosmos and a renewal of it, just as the body will be raised without losing its former identity.\u201d And although it is true that the continuity between this world and the next is difficult to define, the fact that Paul dares to associate the final destiny of this planet with the ultimate expression of a believer\u2019s identity as the redeemed heir of God (i.e., the resurrection of the body) speaks volumes regarding the intrinsic value that God places on this planet.
\nAll said, although it is true that the audience of the New Testament is more urban than that of the Old Testament, and as a result we hear far less about agriculture and pastoralism than we do in the Old. And although the theocracy of the nation of Israel is no longer functioning in first-century, Roman-occupied Judea, and therefore federal law is no longer God\u2019s law. And although the corpus of the New Testament has a nearly singular focus to make plain the character of the new \u02be\u0101d\u0101m, and therefore offers us less in the way of land tenure and creature care, this inquiry makes it clear that the New Testament continues to embrace and reiterate the message of the Old: \u201cFor by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities\u2014all things have been created by Him and for Him\u201d (Col 1:16). In other words, in the New Testament the garden (and the widow and the orphan and the creature) still belong to God. God still intends that the resources of this planet be utilized for his purposes. And according to the apostle Paul and John the Revelator, God\u2019s most central purpose for his garden is to redeem it.<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
\n1. Would you concur that the church\u2019s only mission is the conversion of souls?
\n2. Do you believe the church is also responsible for charity and service toward the widow and the orphan (even the unsaved widow and orphan)?
\n3. Do you think the New Testament would agree with the Old Testament as regards sustainable use of the land and humane treatment of livestock?
\n4. Where do you think the assumption that it is ethically appropriate to use the earth\u2019s resources as aggressively as possible to accomplish what \u201creally matters\u201d (the conversion of souls) has come from?
\n5. Having read this chapter, would you identify environmental stewardship as peripheral or alien to the theological concerns of the Bible?<\/p>\n
CONCLUSION<\/p>\n
HOW Should We Then Live?<\/p>\n
I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don\u2019t know how to do that.<\/p>\n
Gus SPETH, CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY UNDER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER<\/p>\n
In this brief study, I have attempted a biblical theology of environmental stewardship. My method has been consistent with the task of biblical theology throughout the ages, to submit the topic to a survey of the biblical text. I have asked the questions: Do I see this particular precept systematically represented in the text as an aspect of the character of God? Or is this value limited to a marginal representation in the text via the particularities of situational ethics? We have seen that Scripture speaks to this topic repeatedly and systematically, and contrary to what we may have thought when we first opened this little book, the stewardship of this planet is not alien or peripheral to the message of the gospel. Rather, our rule of faith and praxis has a great deal to say about the subject. We have learned that God owns this planet and that both the garden and Israel were \u201cland grants\u201d offered to humanity for their responsible stewardship. We have seen that the themes of sustainable land use, humane treatment of livestock, care for the wild creature, respect for the flora and fauna of our leased land, and care for the widow and orphan are reiterated from Eden to the new Jerusalem. So from the perspective of Scripture\u2014yes! the Bible does speak to these concerns.
\nSo now for the most challenging question: Where should we as Christians position ourselves with regard to these truths? As discussed in the introduction, the message of environmental concern is politically charged for many. But when we put aside national politics and focus in on kingdom politics, a new picture emerges. Stewardship of this planet is not a Republican versus Democrat conversation. This is not the NRA versus Planned Parenthood or \u201cliberal\u201d versus \u201cconservative.\u201d Rather, what we are discussing here is the call to be a Christ-follower in a fallen world. Of all the voices and all the \u201cfacts\u201d that are calling for our allegiance in the many arenas of environmental thought, for the citizen of the kingdom of God, the voice of Scripture must surpass them all.
\nMy study of the nation of Israel made it clear that the first kingdom of God required its citizens to serve and protect the garden. In Israel neither economic expansion, national security, nor even personal economic viability, were legitimate justification for the abuse of the land, the poor, or the domestic or wild creature. Rather, all of Israel\u2019s laws of land, tree, and creature communicate the same premise as that in Eden: Israel was a tenant on God\u2019s good land, a steward. The land, its produce, and its inhabitants belonged to God, not humanity. And each member of Israel\u2019s society stood responsible before God for their care of his resources. We saw that the broader testimony of the Old Testament reinforces this same message. God takes pleasure in his creation. He has designed it, provided for it, and his expectation is that his people will respect and protect it. If I were to summarize the message of the Old Testament regarding creation care into a single proverb it would be this:<\/p>\n
The earth is the Lord\u2019s and all it contains;
\nyou may make use of it in your need,
\nbut you shall not abuse it in your greed.<\/p>\n
We also found that Israel\u2019s attitude toward the enduring fertility of their land, its wild residents, and the well-being of their livestock stood in significant contrast to the practices of other societies of their time. Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aramaeans were well known for their environmental terrorism in warfare. Assyrian iconography celebrated the wanton slaughter of the wild creature, and it is broadly believed that a contributing factor to the collapse of the Mesopotamian civilization was agricultural sterility resulting from the failure to fallow. According to my training as an academic, I should be looking for an explanation of Israel\u2019s distinctive mindset in the sociological realties of the evolution of its culture. Perhaps Deuteronomy\u2019s concern for the long-term environmental impact of their civilization on the land is the result of their uniquely challenging geographical setting, the psychological impact of their dependence on dry farming as opposed to irrigation-based agriculture as in Egypt and Mesopotamia? Perhaps Israel\u2019s unique perspective grew out of their egalitarian societal structure, unlike the empires surrounding them? Or perhaps Israel\u2019s law is a standard ethnocentric reaction against the practices of \u201cthe other\u201d? My study of this topic has convinced me that the answer to this question is not to be found in Israel\u2019s social formation or egalitarian politics. Rather, it seems to me that Israel\u2019s distinctive perspective is instead a reflection of the character of their God. A reflection that critiqued and censured their culture and their economy just as much as it does ours. Living sustainable lives that embrace restraint and charity and the rhythm of Sabbath, lives that honor the long-term fertility of the land and well-being of both the domestic and the wild creature, was no easier for Israel than it is for us. Just like us, Israel struggled with the competing demands of a diverse society, insufficient yields, property loss, land tenure, poverty, and taxes. But underlying their response to these issues was one central tenet: this land, these creatures, are not ours. They are on loan to us. We must manage them well so that each is preserved. And we must take God at his word that in response to our obedience, he himself will bring about the increase (Deut 30:9). Short-term, desperation management that exhausts current resources in answer to the cry of the urgent was not acceptable in Israel, and it cannot be acceptable to us either.
\nThus, of all the messages regarding creation care that might be attributed to Scripture, one seems incontrovertible to me: the garden and its creatures are not ours, they are his. Our God-ordained task, before the fall, was to care for his garden, to serve it (l\u0115\u02bfobd\u0101h) and to guard it (l\u0115\u0161omr\u0101h; Gen 2:15). Our fallen race has instead chosen to use its superior gifts to exploit and abuse. In our greed we have taken what we wanted with no concern (often no thought) as to what the consequences of our behavior might be. At this point, the statistics quantifying those consequences are truly staggering: countless waterways poisoned, tens of thousands of species lost, millions of acres decimated, unfathomable quantities of trash. Humanity was created and commanded to serve and to protect, yet humanity has instead ravaged the garden. And like the results of \u02be\u0101d\u0101m\u2019s choice in the arena of human relationships, in the arena of our relationship with creation, the results are all around us.
\nBut God\u2019s people are called to be different. We live for the day when the creation itself will be set free from \u201cits slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God\u201d (Rom 8:21 NASB). Our God-given calling is to serve as witnesses to the fact that \u201call things have been created by Him and for Him\u201d (Col 1:16). Thus, in this fallen world, the role of the redeemed community is to live our lives as an expression of another kingdom, to reorient our values to those of our heavenly Father, to live our lives as Adam and Eve should have, as Jesus Christ has. Our calling is to demonstrate with our lives \u201cwhat the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect\u201d (Rom 12:2 NASB). How can we avoid this message, then, that it is our responsibility as redeemed humanity to live in such a way that the intentional stewardship of God\u2019s creation is evident in our lives?
\nAnd so I return to my proverb:<\/p>\n
The earth is the Lord\u2019s and all it contains;
\nyou may make use of it in your need,
\nbut you shall not abuse it in your greed.<\/p>\n
I firmly believe that our current environmental crisis is not the result of need; it is the result of greed. Returning to Gus Speth\u2019s quotation that opened this chapter, I want us to pay attention to the fact that this longtime veteran of environmental activism, cofounder of the National Resource Defense Council, founder of the World Resources Institute, CEO of the UN Development Programme, and President Carter\u2019s chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, has come to the same conclusion. I cannot imagine a person who has a better \u201cinside scoop\u201d on environmental politics and policy than Speth. But after thirty-five years of working in the highest echelons of environmental activism and national policy, Speth is convinced that the real issue behind environmental degradation is not science or politics\u2014it is morality. A morality that allows government to promote \u201cmoney power over people power.\u201d A morality that allows unrestrained profit to prevail over all other societal goods. A morality that allows the inherent balance of a democratic system to be held hostage by \u201cbig money.\u201d Speth\u2019s critique of government might not surprise you. But what should surprise you is that this man, who has attained more influence in his career than most of us could ever dream of, is asking for help. Why? Because he has realized that scientists and activists cannot change the morality of a nation. That is where we come in. Because the community of the redeemed can.
\nAt its very best, the church has led the way on abolition, temperance, homelessness, orphan and foster care, medical services for the least of these, and civil rights. At our best we have built more orphanages and hospitals than any other single organization on this planet. At our best we have taken our God-ordained self-sacrificial posture to places such as Madagascar and Haiti and served as educators, botanists, and midwives. We have embraced our role as the moral compass of society, confronted corruption, and defended the voiceless. Can we do it again? Can we step up and lead on the topic of environmental stewardship? Douglas Moo says it this way: \u201cThe \u2018not yet\u2019 of a restored creation demands an \u2018already\u2019 ethical commitment to that creation now among God\u2019s people.\u201d What he means is that our identity as a witness to God\u2019s character in this fallen world demands that we live our lives as animated representations of what God\u2019s kingdom will be. As I told a sobered and impassioned gathering of young PhDs at the Evangelical Theological Society in 2012, I do not anticipate that the church will be able to fix all (or even most) of the environmental woes of our planet any more than we will be able to end every war, adopt every orphan, or free every young woman trapped in the sex trade. But I do believe that we can stand boldly with the opposition. Yes, when we speak of living lives of restraint and stewardship we are articulating a value system that is foreign to our fallen world\u2014as is expressly obvious by the relational and environmental mess that surrounds us. But the fact that our message is countercultural in no way releases us from the prophetic task at hand. A light in the darkness, leaven in the lump: that is who we are. An audacious (but prophetic) Margaret Mead is often credited with this quotation: \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it\u2019s the only thing that ever has.\u201d
\nIn sum, I am completely convinced that the redemption of all creation is the gospel. Therefore, creation care is not merely a message of social justice, a wise approach to life on this planet, or a political action item. It is instead a life posture that reflects the character of God and embodies the telos of his plan. Like all of the fallout of Eden, the only true solution to our dilemma is the gospel\u2014the message of transformed lives, living in alliance with God\u2019s strategic plan. The apostle Paul says it this way, that our calling is to demonstrate with our lives \u201cwhat the will of God is\u201d (Rom 12:2). What is the will of God regarding creation? \u201cThen Yahweh Elohim took the human and put him into the garden of Eden to tend it [l\u0115\u02bfobd\u0101h] and protect it [l\u0115\u0161omr\u0101h]\u201d (Gen 2:15).
\nThe introduction of this book asked the question: Can a Christian be an environmentalist? My answer is, how could a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve, redeemed and transformed by the second Adam to live eternally in the resurrected Eden, be anything else?<\/p>\n
APPENDIX<\/p>\n
RESOURCES FOR THE RESPONSIVE CHRISTIAN<\/p>\n
In an article published in Sierra in April 2018, climate-science communicator Eric Holthaus confessed that his research into climate change had landed him in a therapist\u2019s chair in need of help with unmanageable anxiety. \u201cLike many people who care about the fate of the planet, I\u2019ve spent most of the past year alternating between soul-crushing despair and headstrong hope.\u201d According to Holthaus, the therapist was a bit taken aback by the intensity of this scientist\u2019s emotional dread. His advice? \u201cDo what you can.\u201d Holthaus reports that this very simple advice really helped him \u201cto realize something important: We are all in this together.\u201d
\nAt a Seminary Stewardship Alliance meeting in 2014, I was asked to offer a devotional on Romans 8. Standing in front of a deeply committed community of professors, activists, and lay leaders, like Hothaus I was struck by how deeply discouraging the battle can be. Whole species are slipping through our hands as I write, mountains are being blown into oblivion as you read these words, irreplaceable wilderness is groaning under the machinery of shortsighted industrial development. Thus, as I concluded my devotional on Paul\u2019s powerful words about the resurrection of this planet, I told my audience what I am telling you. If Paul were among us now, I think he would remind us that we must be encouraged. Even though our efforts, like the cosmos, seem to be subjected to frustration, know that they have been subjected in hope. The hope of a plan that cannot fail. The hope of a God who stands behind and before his people. A God who stands as our advocate, advancing and empowering our efforts on his behalf. So as you take up this task, know that as with everything else in the Christian life, we hope for what we cannot see, and with perseverance we eagerly wait (and work!) for it. As my friend and past colleague ethicist Christine Pohl was often heard to say: \u201cSmall moves against the darkness.\u201d That is your task. And every small move \u2026 matters.<\/p>\n
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP: HOW TO TAKE ACTION<\/p>\n
As you look through this list, choose one thing you can do this week and start. Consider adding a second next month, and maybe another three months from now. Choose the easy things first, and get rolling!<\/p>\n
1. Get informed! Join a responsible environmental organization. This way you commit some portion of your resources to the cause and they keep you informed. Among my favorites are the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy. The Humane Society and the Defenders of Wildlife are organizations that specialize in creature care. Make sure you check out the local chapter in your town as well.<\/p>\n
2. Vote your informed conscience! A nice feature of the Sierra Club magazine is that it always has a section on local government representatives come voting season. I of course never agree with all of their recommendations, but this resource helps me identify which of my representatives have been voting for what. It also helps me contact them and speak up.<\/p>\n
3. Begin to vote with your finances! What you choose to buy does more to change the face of industry than any other single action. This includes what wood your new dining room table is made of, where your meat came from, and your investment portfolio.<\/p>\n
a. Buy organic and recycled as often as you can. By this you communicate to the agricultural industry that you as a consumer want responsibly grown food products. Look for \u201cfree range,\u201d \u201cgrass fed,\u201d and \u201chumanely raised\u201d labels on your meat products.<\/p>\n
b. Buy \u201cfree range\u201d (not just \u201ccage free\u201d) eggs. By this you communicate that you care how the hens that produce our eggs live out their lives. See the Humane Society\u2019s website to get more information: humanesociety.org\/issues\/confinement_farm\/facts\/battery_cages.html.<\/p>\n
c. Buy \u201creduced packaging.\u201d Less packaging means less processing, less waste, less trash, less land and resources committed to processing trash.<\/p>\n
4. Live with restraint. Every time you buy a smaller house, a smaller car, less recreational equipment, and less junk you preserve resources (not the least being your credit rating!).<\/p>\n
5. Learn how and where to recycle responsibly. The information is easily available online. In 2013, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash and recycled and composted about 87 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.3 percent recycling rate (municipal solid waste, US EPA archives).<\/p>\n
6. As approximately 18 percent of the trash your household produces is compost, think seriously about designating some portion of your yard for yard clippings and fruit and vegetable waste. Our family composts everything but meat.<\/p>\n
7. Make sure your school, church, and office are recycling\u2014if they aren\u2019t, help them. Shred-it remains a leading document-shredding and paper-recycling company that is worth a look (see shredit.com).<\/p>\n
8. Look online to see whether you have a local wildlife rehabilitator. Get their number in your phone. Maybe make a donation. I just carried an oil-soaked loon home from a morning walk, and because of our local wildlife group, he\u2019s doing just fine.<\/p>\n
9. Address your own consumption of energy in your room, your home, your office. Little changes make a big difference. You might even schedule an energy audit with your local utility. Simple fixes such as closing curtains in summer, caulking around windows and doors, and switching to LED light bulbs save a lot of energy. A three-degree adjustment to your thermostat reduces heating and cooling consumption (and bills!) by 10 percent.<\/p>\n
a. Did you know you can rent solar panels?<\/p>\n
b. Do you remember how nice a clothesline can be?<\/p>\n
10. Attend to your automobile! In your family\u2019s life, more than likely your biggest use of fossil fuel is your car. The size of your vehicle, the number of vehicles, the number of miles you drive, updated maintenance on those vehicles, are all enormously significant. Buy smaller, fewer, and with better gas mileage. Your grandchildren and your savings account will thank you.<\/p>\n
11. Join a community supported agriculture group (CSA). By buying your produce (and meat) from a CSA, you offer the family farm a niche in our economy, support environmentally responsible agriculture, and boost your family\u2019s health. Just punch \u201cCSA\u201d or \u201cCommunity Supported Agriculture Group\u201d into Google to find a CSA in your area to order fresh, local produce online.<\/p>\n
12. Give up your chemical lawn service and be very restrained in the use of pesticides. The link between these chemicals in our food chain and human cancer is clear. Consider an outfit such as Gardens Alive (gardensalive.com) for making your lawn beautiful and keeping ants out of your sugar canister.<\/p>\n
13. Plant native trees and plants in your yard. Indigenous plant species grow better and faster, need less water, are resistant to local pests and diseases, and attract wildlife.<\/p>\n
14. Think about water consumption in your landscape.<\/p>\n
a. Soaker hoses on a timer used at night are the best way to water everything.<\/p>\n
b. Sprinklers during daylight hours are an invitation to evaporation and are not good for your checkbook or your plants.<\/p>\n
c. Think about rain barrels at the base of your drain spouts.<\/p>\n
15. Read Nancy Sleeth\u2019s very user-friendly Go Green, Save Green: A Simple Guide to Saving Time, Money, and God\u2019s Green Earth. It is available as an ebook on Amazon. The first two chapters and the \u201cChurch\u201d chapter are available under \u201cchurch resources\u201d on the Blessed Earth website, blessedearth.org.<\/p>\n
16. Support environmental missionary efforts that seek to give witness to Christ while restoring indigenous habitat. Groups such as Plant with Purpose (plantwithpurpose.org) and Red Island Restoration (redislandrestoration.com) are worthy of your attention.<\/p>\n
17. Are you a pastor or do you want to start a \u201cgreen team\u201d at your church?<\/p>\n
a. Keep in mind that a church is an enormous public facility that uses all sorts of resources. But rarely does a building committee or pastor have training in sustainable-energy use, native planting, water conservation, recycling, and so on. These questions need to be addressed as a community of faith builds its worship center. Be the person who offers to help.<\/p>\n
b. Blessed Earth offers a twelve-part DVD Bible study, Serving God, Saving the Planet. Matthew and Nancy Sleeth report that after a dozen years in the fight, it\u2019s the most successful way they\u2019ve seen to start and maintain a church group committed to making practical changes at the personal, church, and community levels (blessedearth.org).<\/p>\n
title Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says about the Environment and Why It Matters
\nauthor Richter, Sandra L.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This little book has been a long time in the birthing. My passion for God\u2019s good creation and for good theology in addressing the stewardship of this good creation has accompanied me throughout my career. As a result I have spoken, taught, and written on this topic in more venues than I can recall … <\/p>\n