Blog

By Benjamin Holdsworth

To address this question, it is important to establish some context—an understanding of the interrelationship between climate change, environmental extremes, and their effects on global conflict and insecurity. Let’s examine some realities based on recent research.

In regard to climate and environmental extremes, Munich Re, a reinsurance company, has documented over a 300% increase in global meteorological, hydrological or climatological events between 1980 and 2019.1 The association of climate change, extreme events and conflict is also well established.2 ACLED, an organization which tracks global conflict, reported that 2019 had more protests, riots, battles and strategic developments than any year in its database.3

Many of these conflict events have taken, and continue to take place in regions impacted by climate change.

In relation to insecurity and declining human wellbeing, ACAPS, a global crisis severity tracking organization, documented 127 major international humanitarian emergencies in 69 countries at the end of 2019.4 OCHA, a UN humanitarian organization, foresees 167 million people needing humanitarian aid in 2020, and an estimated 200 million by 2022.5 Additionally, the Food and Agricultural Organization reports that 704 million people suffered

severe food insecurity in 2018, and OCHA reported 821 mil- lion food insecure in 2019. Both predict the food insecure population to rise in 2020, given the impacts of climate, conflict and ineffective government intervention.6 The increase in global environmental extremes are expected to result in mounting rising damage costs, systemic financial risk and social destabilization.7

This evidence has led the US intelligence community to conclude that environmental and climate change impacts are increasing in frequency and severity as more extreme temperatures, excessive precipitation, droughts, storms, floods, heatwaves, fires and disruptive ecosystem impacts result in increasing food and water insecurity, social stress and destabilization, migration and conflict on a global scale. As Peter Kiemel, Counselor to the National Intelligence Council summarized, “We assess that such impacts from climate change almost certainly will have an increasingly significant direct and indirect effect on the social, political, economic, and security challenges faced by the United States and other countries during the next few decades.”8

The United States is not immune to environmental extremes and climate change that create detrimental social impact. In January 2020, all but three states (Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada) had an active FEMA Disaster Declaration.9 Crop losses, often due to extreme weather, caused the United States Department of Agriculture to declare Presidential and Secretarial Disasters in 46 of 50 states in 2019.10 Over the last decade, especially the last three years, NOAA data shows that the US experienced more “billion-dollar” natural disasters than in any earlier period.11

Environmental extremes related to climate change directly impact Seventh-day Adventist Church institutions, members and their communities. Images of the smoldering remains of Paradise, California, its Seventh-day Adventist Church and the disrupted lives of 1,300 Adventists directly impacted by that fire are reminders of environmental and climate related effects on members.12 More recently, Hurricane Dorian devastated the Adventist churches and members in the northern Bahamas.13

With this context let us consider our question: Why should Adventists care about the environment?

Because God loves us and His world. Christ told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”14 Paul reinforces this by pro- claiming, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”15

Yet it is not only humanity that God loves, but His entire creation. The psalmist reminds us, it was by the word of the Lord that heavens, earth and seas were made, and “He is King of all the earth.”16 Father, Son and Holy Spirit engaged in God’s “good” creation.17 God loves all humanity and the environment He gave us in which we live. Not caring for the environment results in neglect of God’s kingdom and creation.

Because we love God. In Mark 12:29-30, Jesus cites Deuteronomy 6:5: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”18 We are called by Christ to bring our whole being into a love relationship with the Father, which Paul asserts is “our spiritual service of worship.”19 The Psalmist calls us to worship, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!”20

Praise and worship include caring for God’s world, as our Father, Creator and Redeemer cares for it. Revelation 14:7 summarizes this beautifully, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of his judgment has arrived, and worship the one who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water!”21

Because He called us to “love your neighbor as yourself.”22 Loving our neighbor—all humanity—is directly interrelated with caring for the environment. In Matthew 25, Christ’s judgment of His followers is portrayed in terms of feeding the hungry, providing drink and clothing, caring for strangers and for the sick.23 To engage in these activities we must first care for our environment. To provide food requires crop production; to offer water requires a reliable supply; to give shelter to strangers, migrants, refugees, requires the ability to provide safe housing.

The apostle John reinforces our caring for others as evidence of our love toward God. “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?”24 Environmental factors that impact global health and wellbeing add urgency to Adventist involvement in ministries of healing of humanity and nature—caring for others in need and our earth as the Father and His Son also care for them.

Because caring for the environment as God’s creation is intertwined with God’s love for humanity and the world, and our love toward God and our neighbor. This is aptly illustrated in God’s command to Israel to allow a “sabbath” for their land every seven years.25 Neglect of this environ- mental practice broke the covenant relationship with God, and Israel’s resulting captivity forced a sabbath rest on the land when humanity refused to care for it.26

Jesus called for preaching or living the gospel to all creation—not just humanity.27 In Romans 8:19-23, Paul portrays creation and humanity groaning together in anticipation of Christ’s return; as nature awaits freedom from deterioration while humanity anticipates its final redemption as God’s children.

Psalm 146 offers an excellent summary. First, humanity is called to praise God—as creator of heaven, earth and sea.28 Then God is remembered for caring for the oppressed, the hungry, the imprisoned, the stranger, orphaned and widowed.29 Then, God is praised because He blesses those “whose hope is in the Lord his God.”30

Adventists should care about the environment, because our hope is in the Lord. We have the hope of salvation and the hopeful anticipation of the return of Jesus that will end the anguish of our broken world. We will experience hope fulfilled, God’s restoration of His creation, a renewed heaven and earth in which we dwell with Him.31

Caring for our environment and the humanity who live in it is not only an urgent priority, but an act of obedience to the God who created all things.

–Benjamin Holdsworth, MBA, PhD, is professor of religion at Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska. Email him at: [email protected]

References

1-Munich Re, NatCatService, Number of relevant weather-related loss events worldwide 1980–2018.
2-Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia, eds, Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene, (The Center for Climate and Security, June 2017); also, Jürgen Scheffran, et. al. eds, Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict (New York: Springer, 2012); also, Solomon M. Hsiang, Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel, “Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict.” Science (2013).
3-Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), (January 2020).
4-ACAPS, Global Crisis Severity Index, (ACAPS, December 20, 2019).
5-OCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview 2020, (Geneva: OCHA, December 2019), 4;
6-FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (Rome: FAO, 2019), 20, Fig. 11; 22, Fig. 13; OCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview 2020, (Geneva: OCHA, December 2019), 12; Also Issa Sikiti da Silva, “Climate change and conflict could fuel hunger in 2020,” Climate Diplomacy (January 16, 2020).
7-See J. Woetzel, et. al., Climate Risk and Response: Physical Hazards and Socioeconomic Impacts, (McKinsey Global Institute, January, 2020); also, World Economic Forum, Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy, (World Economic Forum, January, 2020), also, Patrick Bolton, et. al., The Green Swan: Central Banking and Financial Stability in the Age of Climate Change, (BIS, Banque de France, January 2020).
8-Daniel Coats, World Wide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (January 29, 2019), 23. Also, Peter Kiemel, Counselor, National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Statement for the Record, For a Hearing on “The National Security Implications of Climate Change,” (HPSCI, June 5, 2019), 2.
9-Federal Emergency Management Agency, Disaster Declarations Page, (FEMA, January 13, 2020); On the Map For Emergency Management, (January 2020).
10-United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Disaster Declarations Crop Year 2019, (USDA FSA, October 23, 2019).
11-A-dam B. Smith, “2010-2019: A landmark decade of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” Climate.gov (January 8, 2020).
12-Kimberly Luste Maran, “Community pulls together after deadliest fire in California’s history burns through towns,” Adventist News Network, (November 20, 2018).
13-Libna Stevens, “In the Bahamas, Adventist Church accounting for members after Hurricane Dorian,” Adventist News Network, (September 5, 2019).
14-New American Standard Bible (NASB): 1995 Update. (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), John 3:16.
15-Romans 5:8 NASB.
16-Psalms 33:6-9; 47:2, 7 NASB.
17-Colossians 1:16-17, Genesis 1-2 NASB.
18-Biblical Studies Press. The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005), Mark 12:29-30.
19-“Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Romans 12:1 NASB.
20-Psalms 150:6 NASB.
21-Revelation 14:7 NET.
22-Mark 12:31; Leviticus 19:18 NASB.
23-Mathew 25:31-46 NASB.
24-1 John 3:17 NASB.
25-Leviticus 25:1-7 NASB.
26-Leviticus 26:34-34, 40-45 NASB.
27-“And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Mark 16:15 NASB.
28-Psalm 146:6 NASB.
29-Psalm 146:6-9 NASB.
30-Psalm 146:5 NASB.
31-Revelation 21-22.

By Reinder Bruinsma

The Miriam Webster Dictionary defines stewardship as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.” Traditionally, Seventh-day Adventist Christians link the concept of stewardship mostly to our talents, our material possessions, our physical health and our use of time. It is grounded in the conviction that God, as our Creator, is the Owner of everything we have.1

What we have is lend to us to use it responsibly—to God’s honor. More recently Adventist Christians have increasingly become aware that we are also stewards of the earth and of our environment. But we hear very little, if anything, about stewardship of space. Admittedly, there are no biblical statements that address this specific issue directly, but the principles of stewardship that we find in the Word of God certainly also point to our responsibility to be stewards of space.2

A spacious topic

Where does one begin an article about man’s steward- ship of space? It certainly is a very “spacious” topic. Space includes what is above the surface of our planet—airspace, the atmosphere, but also outer space, i.e. the realm further away, between celestial bodies. And space refers to what is between the things that surround us on earth, to the areas where we live, and to interpersonal space.

With outer space on one end of the specter and intimate space, such as exists between lovers or between a mother and her newly born child, on the other end, we can in this short article only touch the surface of this very spacious subject. However, one thing must be clear: We are called to be stewards of space in the broadest sense of the word.

Our modern technology has enabled mankind in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century to explore space. We cannot only send satellites into the earth’s orbit, but we also made—in the words of Neil Armstrong—a “giant leap for mankind,” when human beings first walked on the surface of the moon. Missiles have carried powerful telescopes into space, allowing us to get a glimpse into the vast recesses of the universe. Many manmade objects have been launched into space. Some have actually landed on planets or other celestial bodies or are in an orbit around such bodies. Unfortunately, not all space exploration has peaceful purposes. We are presently seeing an increasing militarization of space, and “space wars” no longer are just harmless fiction, but have become a “real and present danger” for mankind.

The pollution of space has also become an ugly reality. The US Space Surveillance Network reported that presently almost 20.000 artificial objects, including over 2,200 operational satellites, are now in an orbit around the earth.3 Regrettably, these space activities have produced a lot of space junk. Tens of thousands of discarded objects float in space. Scientists and parties with commercial interests, but also politicians and generals, must become more aware of man’s obligation to be stewards of all that is within his reach, including outer space. Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Vatican to the United Nations, last October rightly stated to a special committee of the UN General Assembly that “outer space is fully a part of our comprehensive environment, and thus it de- serves as much care as our environment here below.”4

If the last decade has made anything clear, it is that proper stewardship of the atmosphere is more urgent than ever. The vast majority of scientists agree that the heating up of the earth’s atmosphere is to a major degree responsible for dramatic climate change and that the emission of nitrous oxide (N2O) is one of the main culprits. There is also considerable consensus among these scholars that we can, and must, take measures—difficult and costly though they might be—to ensure that this heating up of the atmosphere remains below two degrees Centigrade. We should call upon our politicians to take the necessary measures and our personal stewardship responsibility includes electing the kind of leaders that are ready to take the necessary actions.

The space around us

The literature about the topic of space usually describes four different zones of space: public space, social space, personal space and intimate space. A great deal of the world around us is public space, that is in principle accessible to us all. Public space must be cared for, maintained and often protected against influences that pollute it or make it less useful and less enjoyable. This requires stewardship, first of all from authorities at all levels, but also from individual citizens. Christians will regard this not only as a sensible civic duty, but also as a God-given charge to “keep” the earth.5 Examples of such public spaces are the world’s oceans, the beaches, the forests, the parks, the motorways and the high street in our cities, towns and villages.

The country we live in is, in an important sense, also a public space. It is important that it becomes, and remains, a space that can be enjoyed by all citizens. Unfortunately, many people feel that those coming from the outside (immi- grants and asylum-seekers) invade our national, ethnic and cultural space, and are a threat to the enduring wellbeing of our national public space. Christians will agree that rules and regulations are necessary to deal with the problems connected with mass migration, but they should also re- member another key Christian principle: Welcoming the “stranger” in our midst.6 Stewardship of space implies not only protecting our public space, but also sharing it with others in a loving and responsible way.

Much could be said about the stewardship of our social and personal space. The discussion mostly focuses on the physical distance that feels comfortable between us and other persons. We do not like people to come too close to us as we talk with them. If we travel by bus and the bus has plenty of empty seats, we do not choose a seat next to another occupied seat. How much social and personal space we want depends not only on the circumstances, but also on aspects of culture. In general, women want a bit more personal space from strangers than men. And it seems that older people on the average tend to want more personal distance than younger people and that people in colder climates also keep a greater distance to others than people in warmer regions of the world.

The aspect of personal space also plays a role in how we worship. In western countries we do not like our churches to be too crowded and do not like to squeeze into a pew and sit in close physical contact with others, while in African churches this is no problem. Research has shown that a church should begin to think about plans for enlarging its worship area if more than 65 percent of the seating is regularly occupied!

Space for others

Our stewardship of space has another important dimension. We object to people invading our physical and psycho- logical personal space. That even applies to our partner and children, other loved ones and close friends (and church members). We need others around us to enjoy a healthy social life, but we also need privacy and personal space. There may be times when people who are in a relationship ask for emotional and physical space, to take stock of their feelings and make decisions. In such situations Christians do well to seek counsel from others whom they trust and to seek special direction in prayer.

Children and teenagers need parental guidance and protection, but they also need space, even if this brings the very real risk that they will make mistakes. Without a responsible granting of space, young people do not develop the independence they will need as they enter adolescence and adult life.

Stewardship of our social and personal space includes welcoming others, at appropriate times and in appropriate ways, into our space. We must guard the privacy of our home and carefully nurture our circle of friends, but Christians will also share their space with others. A country that claims to be founded on Judeo-Christian norms must be a country that welcomes strangers. A Christian home is by definition a welcoming home. A Christian church must offer the kind of space where all people who decide to enter, regardless of culture, color or sexual orientation, are welcome. And individual Christians are ready to enlarge their circle of friends when they meet people who long for love and friendship.

Space to grow at our own speed

There is yet another dimension to stewardship of space. This is space in the spiritual realm. As members of a church we are united in our thinking about essential tenets of our faith and we agree on a number of lifestyle principles. How- ever, we all have our own background. We are different in temperament and in life experience. We do not all think alike and are not at the same point in our spiritual experience.

We must all have the space to be who we are. We must allow others to ask their own questions, to agree with us or to disagree with us. That is not always easy. We may tend to think that people have wrong ideas, that they are in danger of compromising ‘the truth’ and that we need to warn them, criticize them or even discipline them. At times that may be the only right option. But in a real community, where “members of the body of Christ” support each other and complement each other, we must give our “brothers and sisters” the space to think for themselves and to develop at their own speed.

The other side of the coin is that we also have the right to ask for the space we need to be who we are and to grow in our spiritual life in ways that are different from those of others.

A few years ago, I came across the term generous spacious- ness in a book written by Canadian author. She admitted that she had borrowed the term from some other writer. I have come to like that term. It encapsulated what I think our Christian stewardship of space is all about. Let’s try to practice “generous spaciousness” as we relate to the multiple spheres of space, but, in particular, as we learn to give others the space they need and in welcoming others in our space.

Reinder Bruinsma has served the Seventh-day Adventist Church in publishing, education, and church administration on three continents. He writes from the Netherlands where he lives with his wife Aafie. Among his latest books is a daily devotional “Face-to-Face with 365 People from Bible Times” and “I Have a Future: Christ’s Resurrection and Mine.” Email him at: [email protected]

References

1-Psalm 24:1
2-Psalm 19:1
3-https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/reference/space-junk/
4-https://zenit.org/articles/archbishop-auza-outer-space-a-common-heritage/
5-Genesis 1:26-30; 2:15
6-Psalm 46:9; Matthew 25:31-40

By Barry Casey

“Our relationship to nature is not merely one of benevolent boss, it is one of love, because we are one body with nature.”1

I live near a pond that is noisily inhabited by a large flock of Canada geese. These are no seasonal visitors: they came, they liked it, and they stayed. Why fly all the way back to Canada when you can stay in Maryland all year round? And there’s no one to tell you your visa has expired, and you’re not welcome here anymore.

So, every morning I hear them and then see them flying overhead in a straggly V shape, honking croakingly to each other on their way to breakfast at a soccer field near our townhome. Their throaty calls make me smile, and when I walk around their pond (our homeowner’s association loftily refers to it as a “lake”) they grudgingly step aside as I pass through the crowd.

When I was growing up in Northern California, I had the run of the woods and an abandoned vineyard just up the road from our house. My friends and I would hop our way down the massive volcanic boulders lining Linda Falls Creek almost every Saturday and camp out in the forests around Howell Mountain or hike along the old stagecoach roads that ringed Mt. St. Helena. Every month or so, we’d head out to one of our favorite Northern California beaches near Jenner-by-the-Sea, and now and then make the trek down to Yosemite. I realize now how privileged and fortunate we were to grow up in such a bountiful region in the hills above the Napa Valley.

I joined Pathfinders in spite of my gut-level dislike of uniforms, drills, and close-formation marching, just so I could go on the campouts. In those forests and glades, building forts and climbing trees, my friends and I experienced an immersion in the natural world that breathed of the mysterious and the spiritual. And by that same token, depredations to our environment felt like blows to the soul, so close was our affinity to the land.

“Within these plantations of God,” mused Emerson,“a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thou- sand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith.”2

Emerson was never one to shortcut his access to transcendence, but he did seem vibrantly aware of the blessings of nature any time of day or night, sunshine or darkening sky. “Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts an occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.”3

That exultation, bordering on fear, signals the presence of the sublime. More a state of mind than a presence to the eye, this awareness is what Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, and it was for him the doorway to the holy. C. S. Lewis drew on this in creating the geography and the mindscape of Narnia. There is a frisson of fear, a sense of what is awesome, as we feel our own smallness in a majestic landscape.

Emerson takes us to task: “To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most people do not see the sun. . . The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child . . . In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”4 We adults look to our weather apps to gauge how we must dress and what we can accomplish that day, in spite of the weather. For Emerson, taking after the innocence of children, the sun, all light and warmth, was to be first enjoyed for itself and not simply for its utter necessity.

But way back in the 60s, Harvey Cox, in his bestseller, The Secular City, showed us that it was the ancient Hebrews who first drove a wedge between humans and the natural world. All around them were cultures that venerated spirits of mountains, trees, lakes, the sky, and the sea. Humans, in that spiritual landscape, were at the mercy of the elemental powers of nature and could only hope to placate these violent forces. If they wanted to “live long upon the land,” they needed the blessing of gods and goddesses of fertility. Every blight, every scirocco wind, every drought, exposed their dependence on these greater forces.

Under these circumstances, the familiar verse, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” could be a nod to Baal, the god of precious rain sweeping down from the mountains. But punctuated differently, it renders a starkly divergent view: “I will look unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help comes from the Lord.”5 Baal loses, Yahweh wins.

Cox called this deliberate distancing from the gods the desacralization of nature. It stripped nature of its sacred power, placed humans in the middle strata of a hierarchy between the creator God and the earth, and forced distance between humans and creation. This objectified the world, broke the dependence humans once had on the gods, and opened the way for the development of cities and, in time, the rise of science. Loyalty to Yahweh had the unintended consequence of exploiting the earth. When the nature spirits no longer had to be placated, fear turned to indifference at best and arrogance at worst—the abundant resources of nature were there not only to be used, but to be exploited.

And now we are living in a world that is suffering from climate change at a faster rate than we have seen in a century. The Industrial Revolution sped up the innovations of technology and provided comforts that many had not enjoyed before. But the use of technology is not neutral: for all the good it has done us, there are consequences for these bene- fits. Our stewardship of this world, entrusted by God, has been one of domination rather than care. The gifts of nature have not been received with graciousness but taken with force and ruthlessness. Instead of seeing ourselves as one with our environment, we set ourselves apart, imagining that our skill and power to dominate give us the right to rend and tear—and to take without giving. We are living under an administration that is relentless in its goal to strip away protections for land, water, air, and creatures, in order to maximize profit and claim the right to dispose of our resources without thought for those downstream, both literally and metaphorically.

Our ecology is the study of our home, this earth, our oikos, (Greek for “home”). Do we want this home to endure, to renew itself, to flourish? Some scientists now say we are in the sixth extinction of this earth. We might be tempted to believe that since we came back from the previous five, why worry about this one? Since we won’t be around to witness the final moments of this extinction, why should we concern ourselves? And then there is the shrug of many Christians, that soon Christ will come and wipe away the mess we have made, giving us a fresh, clean, and sparkling Earth in place of this sad, worn-out, rubbish heap we are building.

***
Here’s a thought-experiment: imagine that Adam and Eve have come to stay with us for a week, to see what we have made of the earth in their absence. They sit at our tables, watch the news with us, ride in our cars and airplanes, listen as the decibel level rises in our cities, and watch as pollutants foam the creeks and fires char the wilderness. They look in bewilderment as oil spills foul the oceans, and they shudder as the tundra turns to a bog and rivers pour off the ice fields of Greenland. They do not speak; they watch in silent disbelief. What could we say to them?

***
What I am trying to express is the idea that Christians, of all people, should regard this earth—land, seas, sky, plants, and the creatures in it—as family. Aldo Leopold, writer and conservationist, put it well: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”6

Seventh-day Adventists already have a template for this in the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a glade within time and space in which we relish the created world. The Sabbath lodges us in this world, our ancestral home, with responsibilities to care for it and the invitation to love it. It is one way to say, “Blessed be the earth and all that is in it.”

Barry Casey taught religion, philosophy, and communication for 37 years in Maryland and Washington, D.C. He is now retired and writing in Burtonsville, Maryland. More of the author’s writing can be found on his blog, “Dante’s Woods.” His first collection of essays, “Wandering, Not Lost,” was recently published by Wipf and Stock. Email him at: [email protected]

References

1 – Roughgarden, Joan. Evolution and Christian Faith. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006, p. 23;

2 – Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays. New York: Penguin Books, 1982, pp. 38-39;

3-Emerson, 38;

4-Emerson, 38;

5-Ps. 121:1,2, NRSV;

6-Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine Books, 1949, p. 262.

By Zdravko Plantak

In the last several years, and even more intensely in the very last few months, the earth has experienced deeply disturbing climate turmoil with some of the highest temperatures across the globe,1 the fires in California, then across the Amazon region, and then, more recently, across the entire continent of Australia; the earthquakes in various parts of the world around similar time-frames.

These events have created a significant moral reflection among many young people of the world regarding their future and the future of the planet on which we share existence. As one of the powerful voices reverberating around the globe talked about “our house being literally on fire,”2

I reflected on what may be our Christian responsibility and our moral response to such sentiments. Is our response to the urgent message of our earthly home being on fire that we play a lyre as emperor Nero did in ancient times while Rome was burning, or do we deny the facts of science that have clearly reached a consensus, or do we just hide behind the misunderstanding that since the Second Coming is drawing nearer, we have no need to be involved?

With such background fresh before our concerned eyes and reflective, faith-encompassing hearts, I remembered the powerful and disturbing text in Romans 8 that “consider[s] that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed.” And such exhortation brought me to a deeper reflection of that passage of lament and hope, the passage that reflects on the pain and suffering that nature experiences in the moments of climate distress in the world of ecological disaster when, in the Australian bush fires from September to December 2019, over 500 million animals have died (the estimates actually go from the very conservative 480 million to just under one billion animals).3

As I watched the animals suffer the fate of being burned alive, and read about the accounts of such horrific suffering in nature, I could not but hear the groaning of creation as described in Romans 8. Verse 22 describes the cacophony of voices crying out aloud, “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

The harshness and discord of that noise of nature sounded terribly painful and frankly disturbing. And Paul meant it to be so. He compared it to the pain and suffering and the loud cry of a woman in a difficult childbirth. The figure of the non-human creation is arresting because labor pain is excruciating as Isaiah 13:7-8 describes it: “all limbs will be limp, every man’s heart will melt, and they will be afraid. Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them; they will be in pain as a woman in childbirth; they will be amazed at one another; their faces will be like flame.”

The auditory image of Roman 8 is overwhelming, the high decibel noise, the polyphony of voices. Firstly, in verse 15, there is the loud cry of the believers; then the groans of the whole creation in verse 22, and then in verse 23 back to those believers who have the first fruits of the Spirit and who groan as much as they cry out (8:15), and finally the Spirit of God joins the two groups with ‘groans which cannot be uttered’ (8:26). As Sigve Tonstad comments: “The Spirit is decisively on the side of the groaners with a voice that does nothing to hush the intensity because the Spirit joins in with “inexpressible groans” (8:26). . . . non-human reality (8:22), human reality (8:23), and divine reality (8:26), all three on the same page and all expressing themselves in the verbal currency of groaning.”4

A noise analysis of groaning as the deepest language of suffering and most profound language of anguish as well as longing is the language of pain, which at the same time, is the language pointing towards hope. The plight of nature is complemented by the desire of the redeemed humans to be joined with the divine voice in the eschatological tenor in this language of groaning. I particularly appreciated Tonstad’s translation of this text: “we know that the entire non- human creation groans together and suffers agony together (in labor pains) until now.”5 He goes on to further comment: While “the entire non-human creation” depicts a single entity by means of a noun in the singular, the term is inclusive and all-encompassing. Many voices are coming to expression; indeed, every single voice in the non-human realm groans. The verbs have prefix sys- that conveys co- ordinated voices crying out in unison. Braaten points out that the verb “to groan” (stenazo) and its cognates often occur in mourning context in the Old Testament. He highlights two specific aspects of mourning in the Old Testament that add depth and perspective to the text in Romans. First, the mourning is intensified and made worse if “no one joins in mourning, or worse yet, if others ridicule the mourner’s plight.”

For the mourner, then, the mourning gets worse if no one cares. Conversely, communal participation lightens the grief, making it more bearable. In Romans, there is threefold “communal participation” in the sense that (1) “all non-human creation groans together,” (2) humans who have the Spirit groan, too, (3) and the Spirit joins in with “inexpressible groans” (8:22,23,26). The unison character of the groan- ing that takes place in non-human creation, together with the human groaning and the groaning of the Spirit, serve to amplify the voice but also to diffuse the pain.6

The Spirit-led believers recognize the pain and suffering of the earth and its non-human inhabitants and they grieve and groan with them because of the terrible abuse that has cost the lives of animals and eco-systems and that awaits future solution in the redemption that will be mutually received.

In view of all this pain and suffering we see around us, how should our ecological conscience prompt us to respond? Do we groan with animate and inanimate creation? Do we sympathize with our fellow beings in their cries and sighs? Is there anything more we could consciously do to alleviate that suffering and to help the voice of creation be more celebratory of their creator as expressed in the Psalms. How could we become agents of change and be more aspirational to what Hans Küng called “a world order which is friendly to nature.”

“We know” of Romans 8:22, (“we know that the whole creation has been groaning”), assumes the shared attunements to the plight of the world around us. But do we know? Are we a part of that redeemed group of the firstfruits of the Spirit who actually know and understand the excruciating suffering of ecological pangs happening all around us and join in that groaning as well as become involved with the eco-pains of our time? And even if “we know,” do we indeed join with the Divine Voice who intercedes “with sighs too deep for words”?

Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, in their most recent book, Romans Disarmed, talk about the very essential need to not jump to immediate practicalities of what to do or how to get engaged with the groaning creation. They talk about the importance of lament and the fact that unless we enter into the lament of creation in the first place, it may be hard, if not impossible, to genuinely repent.

One of the reasons Paul calls us to lament, to grieve, to enter into the groaning of creation, is that genuine grief and lament is a sign of repentance. Grief is the doorway to repentance. Without grief we will not come anywhere near comprehending the depth of the problem nor will we have a profound enough grasp of our need to repent. Unless we enter into that place of grief, it is too easy just to jump into solutions without having realized the depth of our sin. . . . Lament and repentance go together and form a circle of shared relationship, a dance of lament between God’s people, and the groaning earth, one sharing the pain of the other, both knowing the sinfulness that has led to this deep pain.7

The lament of groaning is, therefore, the first step in our solidarity with the suffering of creation. Truly, any serious engagement with a world of ecological wounds must begin in lament. In such a way, like any lament ideally anticipates, we are crying out for things to be different. In other words, groaning in Romans is surely an act of hope, an act of passionate expectations for things to change. Lament envisions a hopeful move forward, as in the way that we wait for adoption and redemption of our bodies, the creation is not only hopefully in birth pains to the outcome of hope that a child- birth inevitably brings and is waiting for such childbirth with eager longing. “[L]ament is always asking “How long?” be- cause lament is voiced in defiant hope of a restored world.”8

And therefore, the believers do not need to feel as if we are “stuck in a moment that we can’t get out of,” as Bono of U2 expressed it, paralyzed as if nothing can be done in some of our most liminal moments. What we need is a creative and transformed imagination that comes out of our co-groaning with the divine and non-human creation which is based in the firm promise that restoration is on its way and that hope moves us forward to become a community that joins the Lament Choir loudly groaning with the Spirit and the Creation and walking alongside the most vulnerable of non-human creation and those that are affected the hardest due to the suffering as a result of the earth’s worst ecological disasters.9

Zdravko (Zack) Plantak, PhD, is professor of religion and ethics at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University. Email him at: [email protected]

References

1 See, for example, a report of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, “2018 was 4th hottest year on record for the globe: The U.S. experienced 14 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters”, https://www.noaa.gov/news/2018-was-4th-hottest-year-on- record-for-globe, (February 6, 2019); Patrick Galey, “2019 second hottest year on record”, https://phys.org/news/2020-01-hottest-year-eu.html, (January 8, 2020); “June 2019 was hottest on record for the globe: Antarctic sea ice coverage shrank to new record low”, https://www.noaa.gov/news/june-2019-was- hottest-on-record-for-globe, July 18, 2019); Jason Samenow, “Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week”, The Washington Post, (July 5, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/07/03/hot-planet-all-time-heat-records-have-been- set-all-over-the-world-in-last-week/. 1 Greta Thunberg expressed it in her second speech at Davos Forum in January 2020 like this: “Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.”, Alexandra Kelley, “’Our House is Still on Fire:’ Thunberg demands stop on emissions ahead of Davos Forum”, The Hill, (January 21, 2020). The full speech of Greta Thunberg is available: ““Our House Is Still on Fire” at Democracy Now, (January 21, 2020), https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/21/our_house_is_still_on_fire as well as “Greta Thunberg’s Remarks at the Davos Economic Forum”, New York Times, (January 21, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/climate/greta-thunberg-davos-transcript.html. 1 Sigal Samuel, “A staggering 1 billion animals are now estimated dead in Australia’s fires”, (January 7, 2020), https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/1/6/21051897/australia-fires-billion-animals-dead-estimate. 1 Sigve Tonstad, Letter to the Romans: Paul Among the Ecologists, (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016), p. 239. 1 Ibid., p. 253. 1 Ibid., p. 254. 1 Sylvia C. Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, Romans Disarmed: Resist- ing Empire / Demanding Justice, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2019), pp. 176-177. 1 Ibid., 190. 1 See, for example, Stephen Gardiner, “The Ethical Dimen- sion of Tackling Climate Change”, Yale Environment 360, (October 20, 2011) “We in the current generation — and especially the more affluent — are in a position to continue taking modest benefits for ourselves, while passing nasty costs onto the poor, future generations, and nature. However, pointing this out is morally uncomfortable. Better, then, to cover it up with clever but shallow arguments that distort public discussion, and solutions that do little to get at the core problems. After all, most of the victims are poorly placed to hold us to account — being very poor, not yet born, or nonhuman.”