Environmental problems are not only caused by direct selfishness, ignorance and the greed of humans but also that the world, the nature itself, is cursed against us. This is explained in the poetic Genesis 3 account of the sinfulness of humans in the garden. Here the perfect relationship between nature, God and humans is destroyed by disobedience to a simple rule from God. The result is God curses the ground (literally the dirt).
We all know this in our experience, nature doesn’t always work with us, it jars with us, even when we try hard to work with it. Sometimes it is beautiful, glorious (spring warmth in the coastal Australian bush, insects dance though the olive green, the salt spray in the air, the sand between bare toes and the expanse of blue above). But often it seems harsh, untrustworthy, monotonous, cruel and indifferent to our suffering (If you have been a lost bushwalker, you will know this feeling acutely). If can be a friend that turns easily.
Humans use differing ways to deal with this duality. Living in a city is one of the most obvious ways. In a city structure humans collectively deal with nature’s dyamics by creating space separated, or compartmentalised, from it. A few select individuals deal with one element of nature on a big scale (like harvesting water for all or building a seawall to prevent the incoming tide) but living together in a city no one has to deal with all of it at once and a lot of us don’t have to deal with much of it at all (we buy food without killing anything, light our rooms without the sun, and travel without physical exercise).
But I wanted to argue that it was good for humans to be connected to nature. That it was helpful (and possibly godly) not to lose grasp of the natural world. That we should attempt (even in the cities) to keep connected with it.
I still don’t think I have a complete knockdown proof answer but I have started putting the threads together. The latest is from sermons I have been listening by Kirk Patson on Eccesiasties.
If I understand it right, Kirk’s take on the verses (Ecclesiastes 1:4-7) that talk about the water cycle and the wind are not meant to show us that life is meaningless but rather that it is temporal (misty). The cycles are not described to say “see it’s all a waste of time” but rather “the natural cycles are amazing beautiful gifts, they don’t gain anything but they are so important and they teach us about God”.
Kirk’s big point is that you can view the world in gain or gifts (apparently he uses this lens a fair bit in his OT work) and the cycles are a great way to keep in touch with, and an example of how we are to relate to, God. That is, in thankfulness that he has given us so much beauty that doesn’t need to have a profit or loss at the end. That life doesn’t have to have an economically positive result. So in his thinking you can’t waste time, or be inefficient or spend too little time on something. You just can receive what God has given you, good or bad.
So one more thread for me. It is important to be connected to God’s natural world (fallen as it is) as it is full of gifts we should receive with thanks. It teaches us of God’s wisdom, focusing our minds from the economic rationalism/gain mentality of human wisdom to something much more satifsying, something worth being thankful for.
