What Jesus Didn’t Say

            My friend Mary is active in her church, and has been a Christian all her life. She’s also environmentally aware, recycles, and considers matters of ecology when she votes. But Mary doesn’t see that her faith and her eco-consciousness are related. Composting her kitchen waste is no more a part of her faith than, let’s say, paying for her daughter’s dance lessons.

            That’s pretty typical. People tend to think that because Jesus didn’t talk about environmental issues, those issues aren’t a Christian concern. What an odd disconnect, since we’ve brought so many unrelated topics and arguments under the Christian tent. Same-sex marriage, alcoholic beverages, public display of the Ten Commandments, abortion, acceptance of other religions, whether women can be ordained, and whether we should have musical instruments in church, are among the multitude of causes that have been adopted, pro and con, by our churches. As far as we know, Jesus didn’t talk about any of them. And it’s not a matter of what the rest of the Bible says. Offhand, I can’t think of any mention of abortion in the Bible. But I can offer dozens of scriptures about creation care, beginning with, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything therein.”  

            So isn’t it odd that some folks are so vocal, and even physically violent, over some of those issues, all in the name of Christianity, but don’t see a role for Jesus in our current environmental crisis. Jesus, who was there at the creation, and taught us to love our fellow beings. Meanwhile, virtually all our environmental problems are related to social injustice, human suffering, and disease. The poor, uneducated, and unemployed live near our land fills and polluting factories. The indigenous people of South America suffer terribly when they move away from their family farms to city slums as rain forests are wiped out. And all of us suffer from land, air, and water pollution caused by the oil-based economy that fuels our whole world.

            You see, it’s not a matter of what Jesus didn’t say.

            Of course Jesus didn’t talk about recycling. That was a given. For people of his time, living in the desert, lumber was at a premium. So when a building was torn down or a cart broken, of course the wood was reused for something else. Their empty wine skins were refilled. Their houses were made of mud. And when he fed the five thousand, he told the disciples to collect the leftovers so nothing was wasted.

            And of course Jesus didn’t warn us not to destroy life on earth. People would have laughed at the very idea that they could have that kind of power. There was hardly any mining, any synthetic chemicals, or any air pollution. Human activity rarely destroyed wetlands or built anything big enough to disrupt the animals’ migratory pathways. There weren’t enough people to over fish the oceans, and there were no chainsaws and bulldozers with which to wipe out the rain forests.

            In fact, only in the last forty years or so did we begin to see that we have the power in our humble human hands to wipe out life as we know it.

            So the question is not whether Jesus talked about it. He didn’t tell us to live simply, because in his time everybody lived simply. He didn’t tell us to conserve water because everybody in his time conserved water. He didn’t talk about street drugs like crack, and yet we can probably all agree that he’d think crack is a problem. He didn’t talk specifically about video games, real estate deals, mountain top removal, hormones in the drinking water, or the dams that have dried up the mighty Colorado River. We could fill books with the things Jesus didn’t talk about.

So the real question is whether Jesus talked about caring for life. And of course, life is central to Jesus, everything he talked about, and everything he stood for. He didn’t separate earthly life and heavenly life. In his way, we care for either by caring for both. To Jesus, it was all one eternal life. “God is spirit, and those who worship him can only worship in spirit and in reality.” (John 4: 24)

            In the twenty-first century, even more than in previous centuries, we have to interpret and extrapolate what Jesus would say about our world. It seems so complex, and yet it’s so simple. “It is the Spirit that gives life.” (John 6:63)

Who are we to take that away?

Free For Life

            Colette came to speak to our prayer group, and it wasn’t pleasant. Her topic, and her passion, is human trafficking, the selling of people.

            It sounds so barbaric, our initial reaction is that it must be archaic. Or at worst a problem limited to certain dark corners of the world. And an occasional blip on the screen of human activity. But the truth is far from that. People are selling people in most of the countries on earth. Lots of the traffickers are former drug dealers who’ve found that there’s more money in human products, and yes, this is their day in and day out job.

            According to Colette and her charity, Free For Life Ministries, there are millions of  people in slavery right now, and the number is growing. Just imagine what it would do to a young girl’s mind and spirit, to be sold, maybe even by her own parents. Then resold again and again. Each time she’s sold, the conditions change, and she has no control over anything. And her owners sell bits of her for work, or more likely she’s sold for sex. She would simply be left with no sense of self-worth.

            At last she grows older and is released, or perhaps along the way she becomes pregnant, and has a baby. Surely she would have no idea of how to care for herself or to raise her child, except with the same worthless feelings, no hope, no purpose.

            As you might imagine, policing this industry is nearly impossible. And there’s so much money at stake, the officials in many parts of the world can be bribed not to interfere. Like many of the problems facing our world, it seems so huge that there’s no way to fix it, and it appears that there’s little that one individual person could do to help. But Free For Life has raised a lot of money and used it to actually buy people out of slavery, move them to safe houses, and teach them how to live independently, free for life.

            Because I think most of our modern problems have an ecology angle to them, as I listened to Colette I kept thinking that there has to be a link to environmental issues. It seemed like a stretch, and yet, as I pondered the matter deeper, it became so clear. Colette’s business is focused on this one issue, and her organization has been able to save lives. Thank God for her and her work.

            It’s a lot like Defenders of Wildlife. And church missionaries. And the American Cancer Society. And countless other charities. When we look at each of them, and follow it down and down toward its source, we find that they’re branches of the same sick tree. And like a tree, every dying limb is an open doorway to bugs, diseases, and decay.

            You see, we’re separated from God. So of course we’re separated from our mother, the earth. So of course we’re separated from other people. So of course we’re separated from other species. Through the course of human history, value has shifted from life to money. Rather than cooperating in the survival for this generation and creating a thread of history to the future, it’s every person for themselves, right now. The focus of our marketing, media, technology, careers, families, and sometimes even our religion, is on me, me, me, right now.

            If I don’t value one human life, how can I value another? How can I care about the quality of our water, religious persecution, or corruption in government? If I’m focused on making more money to buy a more lavish lifestyle, even my peripheral vision won’t detect a malnourished hand reaching out for help.

            And so yes, it matters a great deal that Colette concentrates on human trafficking. And thank God there are other charities, organizations, and government offices that work on other specific problems, those in nature, and those in human society. Every single one of us much contribute in the way that touches us. We need each other.

Every such effort is a step toward community and away from isolation. It’s a helping hand where there was none before. It’s one less branch on the sick tree, and one more living vine.

THANK GOD FOR EVOLUTION

One Sunday morning our preacher said, “God created me, he didn’t evolve me.” Well, actually God did both.

Oddly, some Christians think their faith isn’t consistent with the theory of evolution. But to think that evolution is somehow anti-God, or that God couldn’t create through evolution, is to sell God short. The universe, including our earth, is constantly changing, which means creation is still going on. So of course evolution is real, and is part of the mysterious and beautiful way God works.

Most of us know the basic idea of evolution. Life began in the water, because that’s where the nutrients were. Various creatures became more complex, spent more time on land, and so forth. Plants evolved in a similar way. But did you know that whales evolved backwards? There’s a clear trail of fossils showing that whales were once lumbering land animals that spent more and more time feeding in the water. Over many generations they used their legs less and less, so the legs finally became fins, as whales evolved into the sleek and graceful giants that live in our seas today.

And just look at the microscopic world. Diseases mutate on a daily basis. Bacteria quickly adapt to defeat our best antibiotics. Avian flu only infects birds, but it’s working hard to make the jump to people.

And what about people? Our brains are bigger than our early ancestors. Our great grandparents were about an inch shorter than we are. People’s jaws have gotten smaller in the last hundred years, but our teeth have stayed about the same size, and that’s why all our kids need braces.

Among the thousands of islands in the Pacific, the Komodo dragon is native to only Komodo Island. There are thousands of such animals and plants on remote islands that exist nowhere else, because they uniquely evolved to fit those places. That’s what started this whole line of thinking. Darwin noticed that neighboring islands had similar but different species of the “same” animal. But like any good science, the study of evolution has advanced far beyond Darwin. Most of us are familiar with the idea that the strongest survive, but evolution is really far more complex than that. Sometimes it’s the smallest, fattest, meanest, smartest, or sneakiest that survives.

Now back to Christian confusion about evolution. Some misguided folks are pushing an idea inappropriately called Intelligent Design. They say it’s an alternative to the theory of evolution. Yes, evolution is a theory. And in science, a theory is a pretty specific statement that’s subject to testing and refining. So the reason evolution persists and grows in support among scientists is that it has been tested and refined repeatedly. It’s about as close to a scientific fact as a theory can get.

Intelligent Design (ID), on the other hand, has no supporting scientific evidence. It doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory, because it can’t be tested. We can test whether whales still have leg bones. We can’t test whether God designed whales that way. We can believe that on faith. But we can’t test it.

            It’s true that anthropologists can’t produce a steady stream of fossils that show every little stage of human evolution, proving that we descended from lemurs. They’re pretty sure something like that happened, but there are gaps in the fossil record of human evolution. Proponents of ID say that’s because we didn’t descend from lemurs or anything else. They say the very first people were made to look just like you and me. Fossils and skeletons of other humanoids, like Homo erectus and Neanderthal Man, are other races that God created and destroyed.

            In fact, the basic idea of ID is that God created everything just the way it is now. The earth is not billions of years old, but only a few million. Some ID supporters say it’s only ten thousand years old. Of course for that to be true, we have to disbelieve the process of carbon dating. That’s the way scientists estimate the age of archeological specimens, and virtually all credible scientists from various fields like archeology, chemistry, geology, and biology have put their trust in it.

So to say we don’t believe carbon dating is accurate, we need an alternative that disproves it. Simply saying, “The earth isn’t billions of years old,” doesn’t disprove the endless volumes of work that prove the earth is billions of years old.

Scientifically speaking, Intelligent Design is baloney. These people use the word “intelligent” to mean intelligence like ours. They’re saying God thought things out like we would. Boy, talk about selling God short. The Bible clearly says that God doesn’t think like we do. In fact, if God’s intelligence were like ours, he would clearly have designed a world without cancer. He’d have given us another eye in the back so we can see enemies sneaking up behind us, and gills along with our lungs, so we can swim as much as we want. And he surely would have come up with a better design than these silly ears that hang on the sides of our heads and grow bigger throughout our lives.

We can make a long list of good ideas in nature and wonder why they weren’t designed into everything. An earth worm can get torn in half, and both pieces will make a perfectly good new worm. So intelligence would suggest that if a soldier has a leg amputated, he should be able to grow a new one. Fur keeps bears warm in winter, so why don’t people have fur? It would be cheaper than electric heat. Opposable thumbs make it possible for us to pick up food, so why don’t all mammals have thumbs like ours?

We can also make quite a list of unintelligent designs in nature. Why do deer have antlers? What a ridiculous piece of gear for an animal that runs through the woods. And the ostrich. What’s that about? The clam doesn’t have any feet or fins. Dolphins live in the water, but have lungs. Salmon struggle to travel thousands of miles to mate in the place where they were born, then die. Mayflies only live for a day. Lots of micro-organisms have parts of eyes, but no eyes.

All those facts of nature that look silly to us have a beautiful, God-given place in the circle of life on our planet. We see clearly how some fit in, and some remain a mystery. To design the earth with any measure of human intelligence would mean doing it far differently.

            OK, so here’s the thing. Intelligent Design is so silly that respected scientists have come to ignore it. It’s not even worth discussing. In military terms, scientists have abandoned the field to the enemy. And there are plenty of people who are making money by pushing their books, lectures, clubs, newsletters, and churches that preach ID. They’re gaining ground at a remarkable rate. They’re getting rich and investing in law suits to require school systems to teach ID in science class. That’s like teaching how to overeat in gym class.

            So could Christians agree that our intelligent God created everything on the earth? Sure, and evolution is part of the way God creates. We need to teach that and celebrate it together. The more we all know about the natural world, the more we’ll appreciate the hand of God in ongoing creation. The more we’ll see how God uses evolution to help all things in creation adapt, heal, and sustain themselves. Evolution is a beautiful - and intelligent - part of creation.

Cry wolf

            If you do a web search for hunting wolves by airplane, you can see some sickening videos. People use airplanes and helicopters to frighten wolves into running until they drop from exhaustion. Then they land the plane, step out, and shoot the helpless wolf dead. Oh yes, then they get their picture taken with it as if they accomplished something wonderful. What a weak, cruel, and cowardly use of technology.

Hunting is terrific. It feeds families. It’s the way of the world.

            But there’s hunting, and then there’s hunting.

            There are only two reasons to hunt: to get food, and to protect our homes and families. Killing for the sake of killing is insane.

            Amazingly, our federal government has in effect recently sanctioned killing for the sake of killing one of the earth’s treasured and threatened animals, wolves. You see, wolves have been under federal protection for a long time because they were near extinction. During that time, they’ve come back, increasing their numbers. In effect, we moved into their habitat about a century ago, and gradually took away their places to live, hunt, roam, and breed, which almost wiped them out. Then we gave them a chance to adapt, and they did.

            Keep in mind that people aren’t wolf food. In recorded history, there are only a handful of wolf attacks on humans. Neither are wolves particularly interested in our livestock. They’d prefer to pull down elk, moose, or buffalo. But when we move more and more into wolf territory, shrinking their hunting grounds, cutting up the land with fences, highways, town, and pipelines, they can’t find enough natural prey. Sure, they’re going to find food wherever they can find it, and that will include livestock.

            So we might say, “That’s just the way of things. People need the land, so wolves are just going to have to give it up. They’ll just have to survive in smaller numbers in more remote areas, if they survive at all. We’re the dominant species.”   

            But there are several problems with that. You see, along with being the dominant species, we’re also the caretaker species. When we don’t take care, our dominance can wipe out entire species, including our own. That’s why every Christian has a Biblical responsibility to care for the earth. Even people who don’t ascribe to Christian teachings has a similar ethical responsibility.

And we all have a scientific responsibility. Lofty notions of ethics and sacred commandments are grounded in solid science of survival. We don’t survive by wiping out other animals. We survive by living with other animals. We all need each other to sustain abundant earthly life. The wolves are part of a grand and complex food chain that’s understood only partly by people, but completely by God. Wolves generally eat old, sick, and baby animals, including elk, buffalo, and moose. They also eat smaller game and scavenge on carcasses. Without the wolves, there’s no other predator to do what they do. There’s nobody to fill their place in the scheme of things. Just to give one example of what happens, without wolves, the moose population grows. They need more food, so they move into town. That means more dangerous encounters between moose and people, including horrific car wrecks. As the earth warms, and moose wander farther to find food, they encounter more ticks. Enough ticks to kill a moose. Of course that means the tick population grows and spreads, and ticks carry disease.

There are plenty of ways for ranchers to protect their livestock from wolves. They can use wolf-proof fences. They can use noisemakers and lights, both run on solar power. Even dogs and donkeys discourage wolves from coming around.

When the federal protections were relaxed, Alaska’s governor jumped at the chance to legalize shooting wolves from airplanes in that state, even proposing a bounty on them. So yes there are individuals like her who would rob all of us of the wonders of nature. And clearly, federal protection is needed, just as it has been to encourage the resurgence of eagles and many other species.

Can you help? Absolutely. All of us have to speak up. To cry wolf! Join Defenders of Wildlife. Donate to World Wildlife Fund. Write, call, and email your lawmakers. Today.

Please help make sure our children’s children can marvel at the beauty of wolves. Please help maintain human dignity. Please help make sure some people don’t destroy our collective sensitivity in the name of sport killing. Please don’t let cruel people run one more wolf to its death.

MORNING AT THE CABIN

            In the morning I’ll boil water on the propane stove, pour it through the cone, and have some of the best coffee on the planet. There was a time around 1970 when drip coffee was real popular. Until then, everybody used a percolator, which boils the coffee, often far beyond its peak of flavor. But pouring boiled water through the grounds made the coffee just as strong, and better-tasting. That was drip coffee, and that was before Mr. Coffee machines automated the whole process.  Now, at the cabin, I think the old drip cone is the best way to make it. At home I’m happy to flip a switch and watch the coffee make itself. But out here, it’s a little slower, and I have to be present for every step. The anticipation builds, as I see the grounds drink in the boiling water, then release it again, teasing me because I can’t see the inky liquid filling up the carafe below.

            The morning will be crisp. Not cold, but just cool and damp enough for sleeves. Just right for breathing the steam coming off my cup. In fact, I may even have to reach for a blanket tonight. Maybe not. But I’m glad I have it nearby. Isn’t that amazing, here in the middle of summer, with the daytime temperatures hitting the mid-nineties? But out here in the woods it’s about ten degrees cooler, and at night, that means the lower sixties. Great sleeping weather.

            And you know what I’ll have for breakfast? I’ll stroll fifty paces in any direction and pick fresh blackberries. I can eat as much as I want, just fill myself up. Some will be tart. The bigger ones will be sweeter. But they’ll all be wholesome and delicious, and just like God put them here for us to enjoy and share. Yes, the birds will get plenty too. There’s enough to go around.

            How primal. How sensual. How authentic. Scrounging in the dew-sparkled brush for a meal. No silverware. No table or place setting. Only the embrace of the forest. It’ll be as if everything in the woods is as happy to feed me as I am to be fed.

            Tonight the tree frogs are singing. I sometimes get focused on my writing and don’t notice them, even though they’re quite loud. Then they’ll catch my attention again, and I’m astounded, as if I’m hearing them for the first time. They’ll sound quite random, a fugue of a million independent songs, and then in a few seconds they get closer and closer until they’re all singing together in perfect rhythm. How do they do that?

            The tree frogs and crickets are so loud I can’t hear the horses, but I know they’re there. I saw the neighbor turn the mare and foal out into the pen so they can graze all night. They spend the steaming hot days in the barn, so they’re grateful for a chance to stretch their legs and enjoy the hearty grass of that pen tonight. Sometime near morning I’ll awake, the frogs and crickets will be still, and I’ll detect a faint hoof step, followed by the foal’s nicker, and her mother’s answer. I’ll sleep better knowing they’re not too far away, just down the road, eating and dozing the night away.

            They’ll still be there when I have my coffee. There’s such power and energy, such zeal for life in a foal, especially at dawn. This baby is a light sorrel, and when the sun hits him it’s as if he glows around the edges.

            Good morning. What a surprise. It got so cold last night I had to grab for the blanket, and by morning I had covered by head. Good thing I brought some jeans to the cabin, in addition to shorts. I brought them for briars, but turned out needing them for the cold.

            It was a great way to settle into the lawn chair, wrapped in a blanket, and say morning prayers.

            And you know what crossed my mind as I sat there watching the pink sun lighting each little space between the oak leaves along the eastern hill? We don’t have to be at a cabin in the woods to feel the way I felt. I could be at an apartment in the middle of the city, and feel the same things. In those concrete places I can feel God’s presence. I can know the extent of love. The power of the gift of life. The preciousness of work and play. Respect for all things, for all things are from God.

            It’s good to understand community. The family of birds. The family of all animals. The plants. The water. The rocks. And people. It’s all one community of communities.

            Oh, it’s good to get back to the woods, to smell fresh breeze, feel the grass under our feet, and touch our mother earth, from which God gives us nourishment, life, food, drink, and protection. It’s good to be reminded and refreshed. And it’s good to hold those things in our hearts everywhere we go.

National Insecurity

            In early March 2008 there was a startling news item that barely registered in the national media. President Bush was working on a deal to beef up the Polish military, in exchange for them allowing us to put missile bases in their country. Does anything strike you as odd about this? It should.

            First of all, we have missiles right here on US soil that can reach any place on the globe. Why do we need to put them in more countries? So they can arrive at their targets a nanosecond earlier? Don’t forget, we’ve also got missiles, fighters, bombers, and drones all around the earth on land and sea. Plus, we’re the only nation with a ready nuclear arsenal, and it’s sufficient to wipe out life on earth many times over.

            Now let’s see why Poland’s military is our concern. Most folks would probably agree that stability in Europe is a good thing. But of all Poland’s needs, it doesn’t seem that military readiness would be at the top of the list. Who’s going to invade Poland, Germany? Hardly. And besides, if the US needs to go save a friendly nation from invaders, we can do that. We’ve proven that with Kuwait and others.

            On the other hand, let’s look at how far we’ve stretched our military muscles. We’ve got two wars going in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve been at it for years, at a cost of 5,000 American lives. Most of that time most our combat troops have been sent into harm’s way with inadequate armor on their vehicles. They’re fighting a guerilla war against an enemy that doesn’t play by the same rules we do. Walking the streets among suicide bombers subjects our troops to extreme levels of psychological trauma. And our regular service members have been deployed far beyond what’s healthy and reasonable, including long tours in combat, resulting in record levels of suicide and other domestic problems for them and their families. We’ve sent National Guard members into combat and extended their commitments far beyond anything they expected. Meanwhile, our troops continue to provide aid around the world, including pitching in for natural disasters here at home. We’re stretched mighty thin.

            So it’s hard to imagine exactly what’s behind Bush’s Polish missile plan, but it’s clearly not a concern for life on the planet. It might be power, or control of natural resources, or manipulation of world markets, a desire to maintain a high state of military paranoia, or the motive might even be to keep those lucrative military contracts percolating. But it’s not concern for life on the planet.

            You see, Bush just doled out $90 million for AIDS relief in Africa. That’s a joke, considering that he’s spending more than twice that amount every day on the war.

            Actually, AIDS is at crisis levels in Africa partly because that part of the world is desperately hungry. Water is so scarce that people have to catch rainwater and store it between rains. So education levels are low, sanitation is poor, families are fragmented, traditional cultures wrecked, civil wars are raging, and in that scenario, AIDS continues to flourish. Improvement in any or all of those factors will help in the battle against AIDS.

            We can assume that our president really wants to relieve some of the suffering from AIDS. But the real reason Bush is making friends there is that Africa is home to one of the earth’s few remaining underdeveloped sources of oil. And gold. And coal. And other natural resources. It comes down to money, not people. That’s why civil wars terrorize the people of Africa; those wars are really just power struggles over who gets to broker deals with the US and other nations for the natural resources.

            So our national leadership, yes Bush, the lawmakers, all of them, continue to make oil the centerpiece of the world’s table. We fight wars over oil, we make deals over oil, and we help the oil companies make obscene profits of millions of dollars a day. And we do pretty much the same with coal. And it’s all to support our insane American lifestyle, a way of living that destroys more life every day.

            So of course there are people all around the world who hate the US. Some of them are misguided and even insane. But the fact is that we give them reason to hate us when we try to make the whole world our chess board. People are starving. Some of them do desperate things because they’re simply desperate to survive. It’s possible to feed the people of the world, but we can’t do it by waging war over natural resources.

What if our troops just walked away from Iraq? If they didn’t patrol those streets every day, there wouldn’t be any reason for terrorists to plant bombs there. But let’s face it, without that Middle Eastern oil, America will screech to a halt.

That’s our national insecurity. Our dependence on oil, which has to be imported from around the world.

            What could we do better? We can make alternate sources of energy the number one national priority. The government must legislate that process with funding, and with tightening vehicle emissions laws, which have been relaxed under Bush. We have to demand that our government turn its face in a new, sustainable direction.

            But each of us also has to simplify our lives. We’ve got to stop our current levels of consumption, which make us all desperate to make more money, have more, hoard, and spend ourselves to exhaustion. We have to eat local foods. Use less electricity. Keep our possessions longer. It’s the old advice of reduce, reuse, recycle.

            Imagine that we don’t need oil. We don’t need coal. We don’t need to import our beef or export our timber. Imagine that we just come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. See what a different picture that is? See how that changes all our relationships around the world? See how little reason there is to hate the US? See how little we need manipulate the world’s power struggles? See how it frees our resources, including $200 million a day, for more positive things?

            It may not stop someone from flying an airplane into our skyscrapers. But truly, nothing can stop that completely. What we can do is make friends around the world, instead of enemies. Make life more peaceful around the world, instead of more desperate. Once the US changes, the world will change. That’s the only way to reduce the threat to our national insecurity.