Science and Ethics

I grew up with the deep conviction that science and theology belong together. Nurtured in the Reformed tradition, I had learned that science and religious faith are compatible ways of looking at the world. It was a tradition that esteemed science—as well as the arts, politics, trades, and good housekeeping. It also esteemed the Bible, our rule of faith and practice, and the theological research and scholarship that enriches our understanding of Scripture. I grew up knowing that both creation and the Word came from the same Author—the Author of the universe, who is thoroughly and perpetually consistent.

I also learned that there is great concordance between the natural world and the Bible—the two great books enjoyed by my culture. Scientific study of how the natural world works is in accord with theological study of the purpose and meaning of life illuminated by the Bible. And so, for these students I wrote “science” at one corner of my triangle and “ethics” at another. Under “science” I added the explanatory question “How does the world work?" and under “ethics,” “What is right?”

My early childhood interest in reptiles had continued on through my teens, through college, and into graduate studies. In graduate school at the University of Michigan, I picked up on my love for the painted turtle, the first species that occupied my backyard zoo, and set about researching how it might control its body temperature. But working with creatures that move between land and water was complicated—especially when I tried to quantify evaporation from the turtles’ shell following their climbing onto a basking spot, and when I tried to record their body temperature underwater with thermocouples whose wires got tangled as my turtles moved through a variety of aquatic vegetation. That prompted me to me to shift my subject to a reptile that lived in a nearly water-less and nearly plant-less environment—a desert lizard.

My shift of subject from a reptile I had studied in a pond in my backyard zoo to one that lived in the desert of southern California led to many wonderful discoveries. It helped my research, but it did much more: it would also produce the third label I would add to the triangle I drew for those students.

In search of my new subject, the desert iguana, I traveled to the desert with Ruth, my wife and field assistant. I learned that its genus (Dipsosaurus dorsalis) comes from the Latin words for “thirsty” (dipso) and “lizard” (saurus). I learned about the marvelous ways this creature survives and flourishes in the desert with almost no water in extremely high temperatures. Eventually I reported my findings in my dissertation and in various scientific papers. But it was there in the desert that I also learned something unexpected about another species—our own Homo sapiens. I learned that we humans have immense capacity for taking action in areas about which we know next to nothing! Uninformed by science and ethics, we can and do act in ways that have great negative consequences on the world. And often we do so intentionally, eschewing scientific and ethical knowledge in cultured ignorance.

The site I selected for study of the environmental physiology and physiological ecology of desert iguanas was on the alluvial fan at the mouth of Deep Canyon—a dry river delta—several miles to the east of Palm Springs in what would later become the city of Palm Desert, California. About once in a century, this canyon would discharge floodwaters from torrential rains in the San Jacinto Mountains above on to this delta that fanned the waters out to the desert below. For a century or so, this alluvial fan had been as we observed it: a quiet, dry, gently sloping plain that provided a grand view of the desert below. The area’s infrequent deluges were mutely proclaimed by an Indian village whose remains rested high off to one edge, out of most floods’ reach—a revelation of the knowledge and wisdom of an earlier people. The absence of water did not diminish the ominous reality displayed in this sloping plain. Had a torrential rain dumped onto the mountains above, we could have been swept off our study site by its floodwaters.

One day, toward the conclusion of my field research, as Ruth and I studied how the Desert Iguana survived on this hot dry delta, we were startled by the arrival of jobbers who parked their tank truck near us and sprinkled water on the desert for a few days. Soon after, they poured a concrete slab for a house on the wet soil. It was one of hundreds—and later even thousands—of buildings that would be placed on this usually dry river delta. House would be added to house, and lot to lot, until the city of Palm Desert covered most of the sloping triangular plain. At some point during the next few decades, my study site would become the approach lane to a drive-in bank, and the once-abundant population of desert iguanas would be reduced to a specimen or two in the local zoo. The annual rainfall in this new city? Less than 3 inches.

A second surprise happened to the west of my study site, toward Palm Springs. First men with machines arrived and leveled some shifting sand dunes. Next they sprinkled the areas they had flattened from water trucks, and this was followed by a similar sequence of slab-laying and house-building. Earlier, developers had subdivided the flattened dunes by lines scribed on a plat map; these lines were then transcribed to the landscape as a housing “development” acclaimed and commended by Life magazine.

And now, while driving my car through drifting sand on paved streets, I came upon a brand new ranch-style house—cracked in the middle, with one end hanging several feet down into a deep wind-scoured hole. A nearby neighbor complained to me that Riverside County did not send plow trucks frequently enough to keep the streets clear of continually drifting sand. People settling in houses newly placed in desert sand seemed to know nothing about the place they had chosen to live. Their subdivision stood in the blowing winds and the shifting dunes of the open desert. In air-conditioned oblivion—in cars and houses that protected them from the desert’s searing heat—they did not know their place.

It was a startling illustration of how human knowledge about how the world works (science) and about what ought to be (ethics) had had little effect on the decision of the people who settled in these desert dunes (praxis). The dune levelers had transformed dirt-cheap land into high-priced lots. Presumably the human settlers to whom the developers sold knew nothing of shifting dunes or alluvial fans; neither did anyone tell them of their precarious situation. The “developed” landscape, as I beheld it, was a silent testimony to the cultured ignorance of these well-intentioned home buyers and to the arrogance and greed of those who enticed them to buy. Living there, they knew next to nothing of the “there” where they lived, the desert and dunes. Their praxis was divorced from desert knowledge (science) and desert wisdom (ethics).

For the students in New Hampshire I added “praxis” to the third corner of the triad, along with the question, “What then must we do?” The corners of the completed triangle provided the framework for me to address their question.

Part 2 describes the science-ethics-praxis triad that Dewitt drew for his students.

A careful study of this chapter is important because it gives us a beautiful picture of the proper relationships we should have with God, the natural world, and each other. Numerous posts could be written on each of these relationships, but in this post I’d like to focus on how Genesis 2 describes our relationship to the rest of creation. These relationships are given deeper significance when we recognize that the garden is being described as a temple-like “sacred space,” not just an ordinary garden. There are numerous clues in the passage that this is the case. John Walton writes that the Garden/temple parallels “are givens that are simply assumed by the author and audience” ¹ of Genesis, but we completely miss them if we take fail to read the text the way the ancient author and audience would have.

Temples and Gardens

In the Ancient Near East (ANE), all sacred space was conceived of as something like a temple; it was a place where humans would serve God and experience their closest access to Him. Thus in ANE cultures, a temple complex was seen as being the apex and a microcosm of creation and the earthly abode of the god(s). Descriptions of temples often pictured a river flowing from under the temple and flowing out through an adjacent garden, symbolizing the fertile extravagance of the divine provision. A temple garden would be no mere backyard vegetable patch, but rather an elaborate, beautifully landscaped botanical park.

The same temple/river picture can be seen in the description of the eschatological temple in Ezekiel (ch. 47) and Revelation (chs. 21-22, where the final temple is God Himself). Sound familiar? In Genesis 2 we also have a river flowing “from Eden [‘Abundance’] to water the garden” (v. 10).² Not only is the Garden filled with “every beautiful tree with edible fruit” (v. 9), but the area itself is rich with gold, resins, and gemstones (sometimes translated “bdellium and onyx”), the same materials later used to decorate Israel’s tabernacle, temple, and priestly garments. Furthermore, many scholars are convinced that the design of temple’s Menorah (candlestick) deliberately echoes the Garden’s Tree of Life, and some also think that the Ark of the Covenant in the temple parallels the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.³

Made for Sacred Service

As inhabitants of this temple-garden, it comes as no surprise that Adam and Eve enjoyed a special closeness to God’s presence (Gen. 3:8 pictures God taking an evening walk through the Garden). But as inhabitants of the Garden, they had special responsibilities as well; they were told “to farm it and take care of it” (v. 15). The two Hebrew words used here have a broader range of meaning than their English translations suggest. As John Walton writes, the broader meaning of the word here translated “to farm” (particularly when used in a sacred context) “is often connected to religious service deemed as worship (e.g., Ex. 3:12) or of priestly functionaries serving in the temple precinct (e.g., Num. 3:7-10).” ⁴

The usage in Genesis 2 seems to have two layers of meaning: “farm/cultivate the Garden” (since it is an agricultural space) and “serve/worship God” (since the Garden is also a sacred space). The dual meanings are as intertwined in Hebrew grammar as they are intended to be in practice. The second Hebrew word (translated “take care of”) has a deeper religious meaning as well. The word can refer to protecting farmland from external threats, but in a danger-free sacred space like the Garden, the word more generally refers to “performing duties on the [temple] grounds,” that is, to “sacred service.”⁵

Walton therefore translates these two Hebrew words as “serve and preserve.” These same words appear again together several times in Numbers to describe the priest’s duties in the temple. Because of all this, Gordon Wenham describes Adam as “perhaps…an archetypal Levite” with a “quasi-priestly” role in the garden.⁸ Eve was created as Adam’s companion and “helper” in his work, a word which nowhere in the OT refers to a subordinate assistant, but rather to one who is at least equal to the one being helped.⁹

Genesis 2 should banish from our minds any idea that creation care is somehow “secular” work for a Christian, or that it is not even our responsibility. This was the first task given to humanity, to serve and worship God by cultivating and protecting the natural world. The centrality of our responsibility in this regard is even clearer when we back up to the beginning of the chapter. We know there was a river “flow[ing] from Eden to water the garden” (v. 10), symbolizing that “all fertility emanates from the presence of God.” ¹⁰ Nonetheless there could be no cultivated plants in the garden because “there was still no human being to farm the fertile land” (v. 5). With no gardener and no rain, the ground was watered indiscriminately; a human was needed to irrigate the waters and support a garden.¹¹ Therefore, God “formed the human from the topsoil” (Hebrew wordplay equivalent to “human from the humus”) before planting the garden. God certainly could have watered it another way without needing us, but He chose not to, and the resulting collaborative picture here is a beautiful one. All provision flows from God, but He has chosen to give us an essential part in further channeling his provisions in the natural world. Far from countering God’s creative work by destroying nature, we are intended to work with Him to preserve and further it.

Of course, though created primarily to glorify God, the world was also made to provide us abundantly with the food and resources that we need to live (Gen. 2:16). Yet we don’t need to look far to see that we have often failed in our responsibility to properly care for creation. We live in a fallen world, and sin has fractured the intended harmony of our relationships with God, creation, and each other (as described in Genesis 3:14-24).

I recently heard a striking crystallization of this fallen perspective in Spencer Tracy’s narration in the opening scene of the sprawling 1962 western film “How the West Was Won.” As the camera flies over majestic Western fields and mountains, the narrator tells us that “This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But the names and the maps all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.” This is the fallen perspective – advancing our human purpose on earth is done through defeating nature and other people (derogatively labeled “primitive,” as well) apart from God. This perspective perfectly illustrates the conflict-based relationships that sin brings about, already described for us back in the first chapters of the Bible.

Are we doomed, then, to live helplessly in this way? If this is just the way the world is and the way we are, shouldn’t we just accept that? Apart from Christ the answer would be “yes,” but the New Testament makes it clear that though we are still fallen, the saving work of Christ has brought about a profound change in us. As N.T. Wright makes clear in his book Surprised by Hope, Jesus taught (and the Resurrection vindicated) that the Kingdom of God “was and is breaking in to the present world, to earth.” ¹² Christ’s Resurrection was the first act of the future new creation. If we are truly “born again” into this new reality, this new way of living, we must strive (in the Spirit’s power) to live lives of wholeness and right relationships, putting our sinful nature to death (Colossians 3). In doing so, we would be wise to include Genesis 2 as we seek to follow God’s will and God’s Kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

In part 2 of this series, David describes how Genesis 1, Genesis 2, and modern scientific accounts offer complementary and mutually enriching perspectives in our understanding of God's creation.

Notes

1. John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 125.
2. Biblical quotations are from the Common English Bible unless otherwise noted.
3. Both symbolized divine wisdom that humans had to receive from God obediently, with the proper “fear of God” that the Old Testament wisdom literature stresses as a prerequisite. Disobediently eating the Tree’s fruit would lead to death and disobeying God would lead to expulsion from the Garden. Similarly, disobediently touching the Ark brought death (Num. 4:15, 2 Sam. 6:1-7) and disobeying God’s instruction led to Israel’s exile from their Eden, the land of Canaan.
4. John H. Walton, Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 172.
5. Ibid., 173.
6. Ibid., 192.
7. See Numbers 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6.
8. Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11, ed. Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 401.
9. Walton, Genesis, 176.
10. Ibid., 170.
11. This follows Walton’s illuminating exegesis of this passage in Genesis, 164-65.
12. N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 201.

The first video, “10 Questions with Katherine Hayhoe”, introduces the scientist in a brief and lighthearted interview. Hayhoe is presented with 10 questions concerning her personal life and beliefs. When asked, she explains that one thing people should know about Christianity is that having a relationship with the God of the universe is one of the most incredible experiences that a person can have. As the video unfolds, the viewer quickly begins to realize that, despite her unique profession of two seemingly incompatible beliefs, Hayhoe is a remarkably sane and “normal” individual. Her role model, she explains, is her father-- the person who first introduced her to science and showed her that it could be “really cool”. On a more serious note, the scientist admits that being both a scientist and a Christian can be difficult. The most frustrating thing about her position, she says, is the amount of disinformation which is targeted at her very own Christian community.

In the second video, “Climate Change Evangelist”, Katharine Hayhoe delves into deeper discussion of the perceived conflict between climate change and Christian faith. She explains that admitting her identity as a Christian scientist can be uncomfortable. Since evangelicals are the targets of much disinformation concerning science in general -- and specifically the science surrounding climate change -- many people in the church have a misguided view of the subject and do not look kindly at her career choice. One woman encountered by Hayhoe at a church in Texas, for example, believed that global warming was a lie taught in schools to mislead her children. In an effort to realign misguided views like these, Katharine Hayhoe and her husband wrote a book addressing the deep-rooted emotions often associated with climate change. People fear that addressing the climate issue will bring forth changes in the economy and uproot their way of life. However, Hayhoe encourages her viewers to act out of love, as the Bible calls us to do, rather than out of fear. Acting out of love inspires us to consider the poor and disadvantaged people around the globe when we respond to the reality of a changing climate.

In the final segment of this three part video montage, Hayhoe addresses the question of what climate change means. Specifically, she is concerned about how global warming affects people on a personal level. While global warming generally brings to mind melting ice caps and polar bears, its implications are far more widespread, affecting the lives of everyone around the world- from cotton farmers in Texas to public health workers in Chicago. If nothing is done to change current emission levels, the number of days per year which exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, will begin to increase dramatically, and if emissions are increased, many areas will even develop extreme conditions like those seen currently in Death Valley. Hayhoe’s goal is to demonstrate clearly that the only way to preserve the world for future generations is to significantly reduce dependence on inefficient means of getting energy and instead transition to cleaner renewable energy sources.

Editor's Note: These videos first appeared on the Nova program "The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers".

Along the side of our patio in front of our family garden, I grow grapes. I was inspired to grow them from the tradition of my mother's homeland in Cyprus, where grapes, olives, figs and lemons adorn the patios of each house. I was challenged to grow them well by the words of Jesus in John 15: "I am the vine, you are the branches, I will prune you to produce much fruit." Pruning is the secret to successful grapes, but that's another story.

The point is that in tending that grape arbor and our family garden, and exploring the beautiful landscapes we are blessed with in Virginia, my wife Elizabeth and I, along with our three daughters, are in communion with the Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth. That may sound like a lofty statement, but for me, nature, His created order, is where I find Him most personally. I have known and recognized this since I was a boy.

Though born in Richmond, I was raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, where my father and I would fish along the Elizabeth River and the Chesapeake Bay. With my friends, I hunted in the Great Dismal Swamp. My father grew up on my Grandpa's farm in Tennessee near Bristol and he took our family back there often. My grandfather was one of those vanishing breeds of men who had fidelity and love for the land. He was dependent on the land for his food and a few cash crops for income. He was intimately tied to the rhythms of the seasons and his work in the fields.

My grandfather and my aunts and uncles looked at this work as a partnership with the Lord. They taught me how to care for the land, as well as the names of plants that grew in the forests and along the streams that surrounded their farms. They also taught me skills that made me appreciate their way of life. Through these early experiences, I became fascinated with an essential question: What makes nature tick? I also developed an interest in the spiritual relationship between God and His creation. And so the journey began.

I took up the study of biology at Virginia Tech focusing on stream ecology, and then worked as a field biologist surveying rivers throughout the Southeast. Eventually, I returned to graduate school to study forest ecology in the Shenandoah National Park. My faith in the biblical account of creation was challenged by professors who taught evolution as the mode of creation of living things.

This challenge I brushed aside until I began teaching biology at a community college in Clifton Forge. The words in the textbooks and the words of Genesis took on new meaning. Did they contradict each other? Could all forms of life really evolve by chance? Weren't we created in His image? My students questioned me about this conflict and I started a search for the answers.

For several years I wrestled with these questions as an intellectual exercise. I began to make progress only when I started answering with my heart along with my head, aided by that other gift received from my parents, trust in the power of prayer. Looking back, this doubt and questioning, this need to have all the answers, made my faith real exactly as it taught me that I don't need to have all the answers: that is where faith comes in.

I do know with certainty that God created the heavens and the earth, and manages and sustains His creation even today. I cannot know with certainty how He did it with such precision and beauty. How God created is still a mystery that science, by its methods, tries to discover and cannot fully explain, and one that the Bible is mostly silent on.

To me, there should be no contradiction between science and the Bible. In the beginning, God was there and science cannot speak to that. It is by faith that I know that God created the world not by chance, but for his purposes and glory. The precision of natural order and its beauty have always focused me on the Creator, just as Paul states in Romans that all creation bears witness to God. The more I study nature and natural sciences, the more it drives me back to God who made all things.

In time, I was hired by The Nature Conservancy in Richmond as the ecologist and director of a new biological inventory for Virginia. Then another faith question came. Why did the Church not speak to the Christian practice of stewardship as it relates to creation? Why did many in my profession worship the creation and not the Creator?

I stumbled upon the work of Wendell Berry, who has since become one of my favorite authors. In a short essay he wrote in 1988 entitled God and Country, he said we must deal with the true meaning of Genesis 1:28 where God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." He was right. Berry noted that many people use the words "dominion" and "subdue" as "unconditional permission to use the world as they please." I came to realize, like many, that such an interpretation is contradicted by the rest of the Bible.

The ecological teaching of the Bible is clear. God made the world and it pleased Him. It is His and He loves it. He has never given up title to it. He wants us to take excellent care of it. In Genesis we see it in His instructions to Adam and Eve in the Garden; in Leviticus 20, we see it in the Sabbath year and the Jubilee—laws governing land use, land rest and God's ownership of the land; in Psalm 24 David affirms "the earth is the Lord's and everything in it"; Jesus, in Matthew 6, tells us not to worry, for if God cares for the birds and plants, he'll also care for you; and in Romans 8:19, Paul says the creation eagerly awaits freedom when right relationships will be restored.

Biblical ecology is really a moral understanding of what God expects of us in relation to the natural world, but also in relation to the other people with whom we share it. This kind of stewardship has only been recently talked about in the Church. It means careful management, not destruction and abuse. It is infinitely practical because a healthy planet is in our best interest (we depend on its fruitfulness, after all), but biblical stewardship is also an act of loving our neighbors as ourselves, of loving even our children and grandchildren, by leaving them a decent place to live.

Psalm 8 lays out a mystery that, with the rest of Scripture in mind, invites a response in action as well as praise: "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him?" After more than 20 years with The Nature Conservancy in Richmond, Elizabeth and I have made a home for our family and have a church home, as well—all places in which we can respond to that mystery by bearing fruit. And though my answering the call to use my talents and time in each of those realms branches in many directions, it is always rooted in my awe of God, who created and sustains the universe and seeks a relationship with us. It is a call I live out in my vocation of protecting and restoring the lands and waters in Virginia, and a call our family lives out in our garden, in our frequent excursions in the outdoors, our worship of the Lord in church and at home, and, yes, even in growing grapes.

It didn’t seem right to deposit such a gift unreflectively into our bank account, allowing it to be swallowed up anonymously into our daily expense fund. My wife Sarah and I talked about a symbolic way we might use the money to honor John’s mark of grace on both of our lives. We very quickly settled on our decision: an SLR camera with a fine telephoto lens.

Many people remember John Stott for his books and preaching, but fewer remember him for his love of creation, his ornithological passion, and his knack for bird photography. On the very first day of my job working as his study assistant, I found on my desk a brand new set of binoculars and a copy of “Birds of Europe,” by Lars Johnson (the definitive guide). No study assistant was to work for John unless we shared in his love for birds, or at least could ably feign it. I soon discovered how seriously he took this avocation. In London he would stop whatever meeting we might be rushing off to in order to catch a look at a passing Kestrel. At his writing cottage in Southwest Wales we would begin every Sunday morning at Pickleridge Pools to see the Loons and Cormorants. Wherever we traveled, whether Uganda, India or Hungary, we would always schedule an extra few days to visit the local bird life with the accompaniment of a local expert.

But I also discovered that his love for birds was an extension of his love for creation and for its Creator. Uncle John took seriously the Psalmist’s words, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps 111:2). Taking “the works of the Lord” to include both God’s work of creation and redemption, he would often say that nature study and Bible study must go hand in hand. He was ahead of his time in calling Christians to have a more robust doctrine of and appreciation for Creation, and he viewed having at least one pursuit in the realm of natural history as an outflow of Christian discipleship. Indeed, it is striking that in his very last book, The Radical Disciple, in which he reflects on “some neglected aspects of our calling,” he includes “Creation Care” among Christian responsibilities like Christlikeness and Dependence.¹ And as remarkable as his accomplishments were in authoring such influential books as Basic Christianity and The Cross of Christ, it was his much less well known book The Birds Our Teachers,² which includes over 150 of his own photographs, that he would most often pull out to show visiting guests.

Some criticized John for his theistic evolutionary position and even his appreciation for Darwin, who John viewed as a man genuinely conflicted with how his discoveries could be integrated with his personal Christian faith. But Stott saw no contradiction between his own commitment to the authority of Scripture and his openness to God’s use of evolution in His creative process. He was of course unequivocal in his assertion that “One cannot be a Christian and not believe in creation.”³ Yet believing that Genesis 1 speaks more to the “why” rather than the “how” of creation, John also affirmed, “Those Christians who believe in evolution…mean that the huge variety of animal and vegetable forms can best be accounted for not by the independent creation of each, but by a gradual process of ‘descent with modification’, whether or not Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ is the best explanation of its mechanisms.”⁴ If anything, for John the possibility of God’s implementation of the evolutionary process was a striking example of the way God does not simply create but is also actively involved in sustaining and ordering His world.

So on the date of John’s birthday, April 27, we used his gift and bought our new camera. Laying it out on the table, I realized I needed a spacious and protective carrying case to hold the various lenses and equipment. I climbed up into the attic and retrieved John’s old camera bag, which he passed on to me after he had his second embolism and could no longer see well enough to take photographs. As I opened it up and examined the various lenses and mounts inside, now too old to adapt to any of the modern equipment, I realized I was holding in my hands the tools of one man’s passion and an expression of his love for his triune creator God. Deeply moved, I picked up my own camera, a new tool for my own stewardship of created life, and headed outside.

Notes

1. John Stott, The Radical Disciple (IVP, 2010).
2. John Stott, The Birds Our Teachers: Biblical Lessons from a lifelong bird-watcher (Angus Hudson, 1999).
3. Ibid.
4. John Stott, People Our Teachers (Angus Hudson, 2002), 110.

Jennifer Wiseman’s 2009 white-paper explained how a renewed engagement with science can enrich the church’s life of worship. Part 1 of our series taken from that paper discussed stumbling blocks to such a renewal. Part 2 began to describe how the Creation itself reflects the nature of God by displaying his power, creativity, beauty, patience, and faithfulness, all tied up in his character of love. This series concludes by connecting the knowledge of the world we get through scientific investigation with humanity’s Biblical mandate to exercise stewardship of God’s Creation.

Science can inform us of what we need to do, as stewards of God’s Creation.

Humanity faces tremendous moral dilemmas today, and science has relevance to most of them. As followers of Christ, we understand that our lives are entrusted to us for a short time, and that we will give an account for the things we do. So as stewards of our lives, and as disciples entrusted to build God’s Kingdom on Earth, it is essential to have knowledge and wisdom to shape the impact of our lives. Are we polluting the environment by our lifestyles? Clear studies of the relationship of how we live and the environmental impact on others are vital for God’s people. What about service? A well-intended project to provide irrigation or livestock for one needy people group may well end up polluting and destroying an ecosystem downstream.

Scientific understanding can foster wisdom for the best choices of lifestyles and service. And informed Christians can lead the pack in helping “science to inform science” when it comes to difficult ethical dilemmas. For example, farming systems that intensively confine animals may offer a promise from agricultural science of more food production to feed more people. But informed Christians can rightly cry foul, because the sciences of animal behavior and medicine clearly show that such confinement is inhumane and thwarts even minimal natural social and physical needs of animals, and environmental science shows that pollutants from such “factory farms” are devastating. The Biblical mandate for compassion for both people and animals is violated. Thus by combining compassion and prayer with broad scientific understanding, wisdom and clearer discernment will equip the Church for effective discipleship and social leadership.

There may be strong differences of opinion, between equally committed believers, as to the right use of science and technology. Should we genetically modify plants and animals, to provide a more abundant food supply? Should we design sophisticated weapons that can unintentionally destroy innocent lives? Should we use medical technology to prolong life at all costs? Such challenging issues can be an exercise in teaching God’s people how to be informed, how to articulate a viewpoint, and how to weigh respectfully the opinions and concerns of others, without necessarily condemning alternative points of view. In this way the Church can also set an example to the nation and the world of how healthy, respectful dialogue can foster productive progress in addressing difficult public issues. But how important are these issues, if the return of Christ is eminent? This is a realm of theological understanding that can affect whether some churches consider stewardship of technology and environmental protection as an important mandate of God, or even relevant to the future, if in fact there may be no long-term future of the present Earth. This requires careful teaching on the balance between embracing Godly stewardship principles with the intent to bless the world now and for many, many generations to come, while at the same time becoming spiritually ready to join the Lord however soon that may take place.

There is yet another realm of Christian discipleship in science, and that is simply the joy of exploration for its own sake, or rather, as a means of discovering and sharing what God has done. Sharing the wonders of Creation, as scientific discovery reveals them, is a great service to others.

(Earthrise: our beautiful, fragile planet, as seen from lunar orbit. Credit: NASA/Johnson Space Center)

Since I am an astronomer studying distant star-forming regions, and I work for our nation’s space exploration agency, I am sometimes asked by citizens of the public why we should spend any time or money on studies of outer space while there is so much human suffering on Earth: shouldn’t we solve the world’s problems first, before we spend money and effort exploring the oceans or the forests or distant galaxies? I have seen good people get very angry over what can appear to be completely unethical priorities; for instance should we send a probe to study Saturn when we could instead feed hungry children here on Earth? These dilemmas will always be present, and they are not simple. But I believe that God has called us to do BOTH: that is, to serve the poor and the suffering, AND to explore and study his Cosmos. In fact, it is those moments of great discovery and exploration, such as the first moon landing, or the Voyager images of Jupiter’s moons, or the historic first images from the Arctic explorers, that lift the human spirit and give us pause to contemplate the larger context and meaning of our lives. I have found kindred spirits, excited to learn about space, in both the western academic world and amongst the youngsters in impoverished, developing nations. Curiosity and wonder bring us together. We get a Biblical glimpse of this in Genesis, when God asks Adam to name all the animals. The text gives the sense of God’s pleasure as Adam sees the wondrous variety of creatures, and descriptively names each one.

And how should Christians view science and scientists? Since science is a systematic search for truth, and Christians believe that all truth is God’s truth, then there should be true appreciation for these “messengers” who devote their lives to understanding the details of God’s creation and who share their discoveries of scientific truth. Of course as human beings, scientists are sinful and fallible like everyone else. But the portrayal of science and scientists in the church should be a positive one. In fact, historically a great many leading scientists have done their work as explicit service to God (e.g., Blaise Pascal and Johannes Kepler). It should be no different today. Our congregations should encourage young people to go into science, and to see this (and all noble careers) as service to God. Imagine the difference it could make to the whole world if Christians would lead the use of science in a path compelled by love, compassion, and service!

Vox Balaenae, or “Voice of the Whale,” was composed by American composer George Crumb (b. 1929) and was first performed by the New York Camerata in 1971. It was only four years before that, in 1967, that biologists Roger Payne and Scott McVay discovered that humpback whales “sing” and published recordings of the whales’ complex vocalizations, after which “whale song” quickly entered the popular consciousness and helped propel the “save the whales” environmental movement forward. (In 1970, Folk singer Judy Collins even put out a version of the traditional melody "Farewell To Tarwathie" over a background of recorded humpback whale songs.) For many, the fact that the massive creatures might share the human capacity and desire to engage in music as a social activity only made their wholesale destruction at our hands more egregious.

Though he was himself inspired by hearing those early whale song recordings, Crumb’s work does not utilize tapes of real whales or attempt merely to reproduce the effect in the context of an ordinary musical form. Instead, he asks three chamber musicians with modified and electrically amplified instruments (piano, flute and cello) to create sounds that evoke the entire natural history of the sea. The piano is played and strummed from inside the case and with a glass rod or plate on the strings, the cello part emphasizes a string’s abilities to produce high harmonic tones, and the flautist sings into her instrument as she plays. Many of these effects are intended to suggest natural sounds—as in the cello’s "seagull effect" (audible at 5:59 in the video linked blow), and the whale-like beginning cadenza by the flute—but not always in a direct way. In addition, all three players perform wearing half-masks, which, according to Crumb help “effac[e] the sense of human projection,” especially when they play under blue stage lighting as he envisioned. (Most of these features can be seen and heard in this April 2011 performance in Montreal by Philippe Prud'homme, piano; Stephane Tetreault, cello

; and Camille Lambert-Chan, flute, though it omits the blue stage lighting.)

In this multi-sensory impressionistic scene, the whales become representatives of a natural world that predates humanity, yet whose fate is inextricably bound up with the will of mankind. Indeed, the tension between the measured vastness of geologic time and the “Age of Man” is written into the score, as an opening prologue is followed by variations on the initial “Sea Theme” (beginning at 4:20), each named after geologic epochs: Archeozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and finally, the Cenozoic. It is in this last age—when mankind arrives on the scene—that the sometimes atonal and harsh combinations of sound reach a dissonant climax that the score indicates should be played as “dramatic, with a feeling of imminent destiny” (beginning at 11:26). Finally, the piece moves towards its conclusion with a haunting restatement and renewal of the Sea Theme (at just after 13:00), with the musicians gradually playing more and more quietly until ending with a pantomime, as if creating sounds beyond the limits of human hearing. Again, the sense of resolution in the music is named by Crumb in the score’s instructions to the players: “serene, pure, transfigured.”

So what do we make of this musical narrative and what Crumb seems to be saying about both whales (standing—or swimming—for the natural world) and humankind? Is it truly an anti-human statement, a “whales vs. people” image in response to environmental damage we were only really beginning to understand (via science) at the time the piece was written? There is certainly a skepticism here about human hubris, made explicit at the end of the prologue section by a “parody” of the opening phrase of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra (at 2:40). Contemporary listeners then and now will likely recognize that borrowed theme as the music from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but before that it was a musical homage to Nietzsche’s view of ascendant Man. In this ironic re-use of Strauss’ work, Crumb seems to say that against the span of geologic time and a vast (musical) world previously unknown to human ears, our claims of knowledge and technological mastery seem laughable.

Yet there are several clues that that sort of reading misses the mark, or that it is, at best, incomplete—beginning with the experience of playing and hearing it in person. I first heard Vox Balaenae in about 2002 with my then 6-year-old son. It was played in a small hall (under blue lights) at our local art museum by the Quadrivium Players, a group that included my friend Mary Boodell on the flute. While the masks were surprising at first, they did, indeed, de-emphasize the personality of the players as individuals, while emphasizing the atmospheric, world-creating power of art-forms, especially music.

Rather than a symbolic effacement of the human presence in the world (in keeping with the anti-Nietzschian not above), the effect was to move away from the ritualized performative aspect of modern chamber music and bridge the divide between players and observers, creating a more participatory community. Because of the piece’s distinctive, impressionistic kind of narrativity, one isn’t so much as “carried away by” the music as submerged and suspended in the world created by it, and Boodell describes the effect (especially at the end of the piece) of feeling like the audience is holding it’s breath to hear the silences Crumb has written into the score.

But Boodell also recounts the story of being drawn into the conceptual frame of the piece in a very physical, way when she found herself alone in a swimming pool in the weeks leading up to a performance. Though hesitantly at first, she couldn’t help but wonder how the sounds she made in Vox Balaenae would sound underwater, and so went under in the pool to find out. While the image makes one smile and probably reminds most of us of similar, less technically-proficient underwater experiments of our own, it also suggests how the piece helps hearers make a connection in addition to that between player and listener—that between humanity and the rest of the natural world. If the unexpected flow and soundscape created by Crumb helps audience and players achieve the kind of connection music scholar Jeff Warren has elsewhere on this site discussed as “entrainment,” it is also an invitation to a similarly compassionate state with the rest of creation, based on the new-found knowledge that other creatures have complex, even musical relationships with each other, and that we are privileged to discover and begin to understand them.

Clearly, then, Crumb’s Vox Balaenae touches on scientific knowledge of the world both in its genesis in recordings of whale songs and its structure keyed to geologic, evolutionary ages. But does it have more to say to us here than that we should avoid killing whales because they sing? While we can recognize that the biblical call to have dominion over the earth guides us towards cultivation and care for its creatures and remember that Jesus exemplified such a shepherding role, we should also remember his priestly one, and ours. For just as he remains the High Priest of heaven, holding our prayers in the presence of the Father, we have similar joy in being between heaven and earth, “a little lower than the angels.” Thus we can hold up the great whales (and their songs) as monuments to the depth of God’s creative activity in and through nature—and even revel in our musical, creaturely fellowship with them—without denying the special place of humanity. On the contrary, we affirm that special place when we humble ourselves to listen, seek to understand the native tongues of creation, and then, through Christ, present its songs before the throne of the Almighty Creator and King.

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon, which we highly recommend can be purchased from Redeemer’s sermon store. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

Genesis 2:2-17 places an interesting emphasis on work—not only does God work to bring about all creation, but also, man is called to the task of caring for God’s world. Dr. Keller believes this passage provides an important assumption, a purposeful direction, a resulting burden, and a necessary provision concerning the work.

First, because God is described as working, one can conclude that work reflects a significant aspect of God’s character. Therefore, when humans perform various tasks, they are reflecting the image of God. If working does indeed reflect his image, Dr. Keller states, then there is an intrinsic dignity to manual labor no matter what the occupation. This concept reveals the goodness of ordinary life. Whether simply gardening to produce food or cleaning a space to produce order, people are meant to rejoice in the responsibilities that daily life brings.

Then, Dr. Keller explains that the duty of humankind to care for God’s garden reveals the aim of all work. In order to garden properly, one must meddle with the natural state of things to bring about fruitfulness and prosperity. This may include clearing the ground to expose it to sunlight or trimming back plants to stimulate growth. The gardener cannot simply standby like a “park ranger” and let things freely develop—he or she must creatively order the garden in such a way that all plants thrive. In the same way, all work involves, as Dr. Keller puts it, “rearranging the raw material of a particular domain [in order] to draw out its potential for the flourishing of everyone.” He strengthens his point by applying this definition to the work of writing music. Music, he says, is created when the raw material of sound is structured in such a way that it brings meaning to human life. Overall, God has given all people the ability to express creative energy in the service of others, and that is the intended goal of work.

Next, the Genesis text reveals the burden of work. When the curse of the Fall came upon Adam and Eve, death entered the world. According to Dr. Keller, this is more than just a physical death that came to humanity. He compares the human condition to the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the universe is becoming more disordered) in order to demonstrate that people are falling apart physically, culturally, spiritually, vocationally, etc. People are constantly caught in the tension between their efforts to accomplish tasks and the unstoppable force of death that causes all things to degrade. Furthermore, he says that one can neither have a cynical view nor a romantic view of work. A person must recognize the goodness of work, yet keep in mind that it is still difficult and laborious. Although each person has a specific vocation through which to serve the world, he or she cannot always fulfill this calling because he or she must work to survive as well. This is the very heart of the frustration and burden of humanity’s calling to work in this fallen world.

Finally, in the midst of this struggle and tension, God has given humans this provision: rest. Genesis 2:3(NASB) puts forth the statement that, “…God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” The Bible shows that this rest has been given as a free gift to all people, and it is not a provision that needs to be earned. According to Dr. Keller, this gift is the rest of peace and the rest of hope. It is the rest of peace because Christ has offered his love that assures believers in their significance. People no longer have to bear the burden that somehow their performance in their job or career determines their value as a human being. Likewise, it is the rest of hope because believers will one day have the ability to realize their dreams—an invention, a painting, a novel—when God makes the new heavens and the new earth. Therefore, a Christian need not be dismayed by the broken dreams in their heart during this lifetime, for one day, those things too will be accomplished. Now, through Jesus Christ, all can enter into the deep peace that their soul so desires and find true rest in work.

ADDENDUM: Please note, although we do invite your comments as we explore the theological richness of God's word in the sermon series, the comments will be restricted to Christians who are genuinely seeking to enter into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God. Those who are not Christians but are seriously seeking to explore the Christian faith as a possibility for their own lives are also very welcome to raise questions and make comments. However, this will not be a place to belittle Christianity. We ask that our atheist friends respect our purpose here. We realize that you think Christianity is irrational and we are willing to engage the profound rationality of our faith, but this is not the place to discuss that with you.

A week ago, two of my sons and I got to spend several hours as part of a group looking for red cockaded woodpeckers at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Virginia’s Piney Grove Preserve near Wakefield, Virginia. Invited by State Director Michael Lipford and introduced to the bird and its habitat by TNC biologists and land stewards Brian van Eerd and Bobby Clontz, we were hoping to see the endangered birds at the northernmost limit of their present range, and to help count and identify individuals as they returned to their roosting trees for the night. But while we came on account of the woodpeckers—and protecting and encouraging their local population was the initial aim of assembling the contiguous tracts of pine forest that make up Piney Grove Preserve—it quickly became clear to us that the ongoing project of restoration was not about a single species, but an interconnected system.

As I wrote in a previous post, one assumption shared within the BioLogos community is that the natural world as revealed through scientific investigation provides signposts that point us to the Creator. Sometimes this means attending to the symbolism of specific creatures like the coelacanth or the red cockaded woodpecker (or RCW, as it’s sometimes called) in terms of qualities of God or the individual believer, but in other cases it means looking carefully not just at individual kinds but at the synergy between plants, animals and the land itself—looking at an ecology, in other words. Such a view can also heighten our appreciation of the ideal the Scriptures set forth for the whole human community, modeled first and foremost by the Church. Thus, while the red cockaded woodpecker is the “marquis species” in the restored pine savanna, understanding how the bird is integrated with many other kinds of living things (and even forces of nature) is suggestive of the interrelation between God’s providence and grace, and our own call to cultivate His world.

With that in mind, let me briefly suggest three of the elements in the pine savanna ecology that Christians may take as prompts for meditation on life in Christ: first, the pine trees in which the woodpeckers nest; second, the birds’ cooperative social structure; and third, the fire that enables both to thrive.

Alone of North American woodpeckers, the RCW carves out its home in the hearts of mature, living pine trees, generally at least eighty years old. It is on account of this habitat requirement that they became endangered by human appetite for pulpwood in the twentieth century, as a shift in logging practices to meet a changed demand meant that few mature trees were left standing. It was easier and more profitable to clear-cut swaths of young trees for paper than to grow old trees for timber. As our Conservancy guides and other sources attest, it is not just the size and age of the trees (making soft heartwood more likely) that is of benefit to the birds, but the fact that they are still living and producing sap.

Black rat snakes are a principal predator of creatures nesting in tree cavities, as the snakes are adept at climbing even the fairly limb-free lower reaches of pines. Red cockaded woodpeckers not only carve their brooding and roosting cavities into the trees, but in response to this danger also peck into the sapwood above and around their nests, causing a flow of the sticky pinesap to coat the area around the holes. These sap-flows form a physical and chemical barrier to the snakes, and give trees in which the woodpeckers nest a distinctively pale, candle-like look from the ground. Peering at a tree “grayed” by the birds that live within it, I could not help but consider that the tree offered sanctuary to the very creatures that wounded it, and granted them a sacrificial shelter exactly by spilling its life-blood.

The red cockaded woodpecker’s cooperative social structure is the second aspect of its life in the pines that offers an image worth consideration by Christians. These are not solitary birds, but ones that build their homes in clusters with several roosting trees for the non-breeding members of the group arrayed around a central tree that serves as home for the breeding pair and the chicks. The birds in the cluster are typically related, but there is considerable diversity in how the relationships between the birds plays out over time in terms of which birds become part of the breeding pair each year, how long the helper birds remain in that role and how they move off to form new clusters of their own. But all the birds in a given cluster contribute to cavity excavation and help provide food for the growing chicks.

While we can certainly take a more or less direct lesson in sociability and community interdependence from the woodpeckers, what is perhaps more instructive about this arrangement in terms of the science/faith dialogue is not its novelty, but that, any more, it is an example of what contemporary evolutionary biologists expect to find. As biologists gain increasing knowledge of the way the natural world operates as much by cooperation and interdependence as by a vulgar “survival of the fittest” model, evolution can be recognized as a tool by which some of the human values God has ordained for His people (including self-sacrifice, as above) are written into the rest of creation, as well.

Finally, a few words about fire. One of the principle duties of the Nature Conservancy’s Bobby Clontz at Piney Grove is to burn the woods, for the ecosystem that he and others in pine savanna settings across the Southeast are trying to restore depends on fire to maintain its distinctive park-like appearance and its specific diversity of species, both in the canopy and on the forest floor. While restoration of the original and especially fire-friendly longleaf pine is a slow process, even the now-dominant loblolly pine is safe from the smaller fires that result from regular burning of the under-story and, when mature, provide the same sort of safe haven for woodpeckers and all manner of other creatures.

Similarly, many of the native grasses that carpeted Southern forests two centuries ago also depend on fire not only to set seed and reproduce, but to keep down the bushy, mid-story plants that compete for sun and space and provide abundant fuel for larger, more destructive fires that reach into the crowns of the trees. Without fire there is no hope of recovery for the red cockaded woodpecker, because without fire the complex community of the forest cannot be restored, much less maintained. In this ecology, then, fire is not principally a force of destruction, but rather an indispensable source of renewal.

If the task here is to take note of signposts to the Lord that He has provided in the natural world, it is especially appropriate that we end by speaking of fire, as this is the Sunday on which the Church celebrates Pentecost, when the Spirit was bestowed upon Jesus’ disciples in the outward form of tongues of flame. Certainly that particular fire is no less critical to the health and life of the church than regular “controlled burns” are within the forest, but it may also be worth pointing out that in both the forest and the church, fire has often been pointed to principally as something to be feared—a harbinger and means of “the end”— rather than as a constant source of refinement and new beginnings.

As we consider the complex web of interrelations in the pine savanna, and how careful stewardship is bringing restoration not just to the red cockaded woodpecker but to the whole living community of which it is only the best known example, may God grant by the fire of his Spirit a similar revival within the church, for the blessing and renewal of the whole human community.

Like many of my college-aged contemporaries, I have in recent years become rather selective in the movies and media I choose to absorb. When one’s daily planner is soaked through with ink and coated in illegible reminders of exams, research papers, club meetings, social obligations, work hours and volunteer commitments, it becomes necessary to filter out a great deal of unnecessary movie-watching time. Some videos, however, are well worth the effort spent to rearrange one’s daily to-do list and sit down for an hour or two. Lately, I was given the opportunity to expand my knowledge of how religion and science can work together through the documentary RENEWAL (read a post from one of the film's creators here). Another ink-scribble was added to my planner, and I carved out time to absorb the content of this inspiring documentary work. They were 90 minutes well spent.

RENEWAL presents a dynamic snapshot of how religion and care for the environment (“creation care” if you will) have become deeply intertwined in American society. Eight stories are told in which communities from different religious backgrounds take up arms in defense of the earth around them. Each of these stories is unique; each tells of a different community from a different faith background engaged in caring for a certain part of creation. The themes threaded through each, however, are constant. Throughout the documentary flow the underlying ideas that humankind and creation are deeply interconnected; that we as humans are responsible to take care of the earth; and that, through renewing the environment, we worship God and grow closer to him.

The fourth episode of RENEWAL, cleverly dubbed “Ancient Roots”, tells the story of the Tevah Learning Center- a Jewish environmental learning center where groups of children are invited to come, grow in their faith, and learn about the value of creation. While the Tevah center is an inspiring idea in itself, what I found to be most captivating about the story was how deeply these individuals felt connected to creation. The environmental movement, to these people, is not a modern phenomenon drawn out of a pagan worship of the Earth; rather, it is an idea born out of the ancient texts of Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Ecclesiastes. In fact, as the Tevah founders explain, the connection between humanity and earth is as ingrained in Hebrew religion as the language itself. The word for human, Adam, is derived from Adammah, the Hebrew word for earth. People are a part of the earth; we are bound up with the entirety of creation as one. Teaching children to care for the environment is an expression of faith, a means of worshipping God and growing closer to him.

An understanding of humankind’s connection with the earth, however, is not limited to Jewish students at Tevah. Another segment in RENEWAL, for example, tells the story of Interfaith Power and Light (IPL), a religious group formed to combat global warming. The founder of IPL, an Episcopalian minister, is motivated by the understanding that God left Adam to take care of the earth and we, as the “seeds of Adam”, are left with that responsibility; God created us to be one with the earth, to love it, and take care of it. In the case of IPL, this religious conviction motivates people from the Episcopalian church, in addition to those of other religions, to campaign for tighter restrictions on carbon emissions. Their efforts arise from passionate moral convictions and a desire to serve God.

One especially potent episode takes place in the mountaintops of Eastern Kentucky, where mining companies engage in the destructive practice of “mountaintop removal” so they can easily access the coal stored beneath them. This means of harvesting coal destroys the aesthetic beauty of the Appalachian Mountains while also causing erosion, flooding, and contamination of water sources, jeopardizing the lives of those who live in the valleys. To local evangelical Christian communities, however, the implications of mountaintop removal are deeper still. As believers in a Creator, they understand their role as members of creation and caretakers of the earth. The act of destroying mountains is not just damaging to nearby human communities; it is also a crime against all creation, a sin against He who created. Their response to these convictions is visceral and powerful: they form a mountaintop tour which allows people to witness firsthand the damage being done to the earth by mountaintop removal and hopefully spurs them to take a stand against the destructive practice.

As the stories in RENEWAL unfold, it is clear that each community is characterized by deep feelings of unity with God’s creation. These sensations of awe for creation compel people of faith to take up arms in defense of that creation. Personally, I was moved by the sincerity of feeling and the depth of dedication demonstrated in these stories. The people in the film are clearly not just joining the “green movement” to be trendy; nor are they simply engaging in empty banter about what people “should” do. Rather, as Proverbs 31:8 urges, they are “speak(ing) up for those who cannot speak for themselves” and taking action in response to their faith. Their care for the environment is not a religion unto itself, but an extension of their own love for God and their desire to be stewards of his creation.

The religious-environmental movement is powerful exactly for these reasons. When people are motivated by a deep-rooted desire to worship God, they are willing to invest time, energy and emotion to what they believe is the right thing to do. Throughout history, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in his famous work Mere Christianity, “those who did most for this world are those who thought most of the next”. In the case of creation care, this statement certainly seems to ring true. For the people in these stories, hectic schedules are not an excuse to ignore our calling to care for and protect creation. Rather, caring for creation is an expression of faith and a way of worshipping and thanking God for the gift he has given us.

The men, women and children we met were using teachings of faith as directives to care for the environment, and they were courageously confronting the central questions of what it means to be human in the midst of a culture of profligacy and consumption: What is our relationship and responsibility to all life on this planet, and to our Creator? How can we become better stewards of the environment and build a sustainable future?

RENEWAL presents eight grassroots stories about people who have been spiritually called to environmental action. Each story is set in a different faith tradition, addressing a different environmental concern. The film includes several Christian stories with one focusing on Evangelicals bearing witness to the sin of mountaintop removal coal mining that is decimating Appalachia and has been denounced in formal resolutions by the Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. While the entire film runs 90-minutes, each story on the RENEWAL DVD is easily accessible as a short stand-alone film.

The emerging religious-environmental movement has been thrilling to document for its potential to bring about deep and lasting changes that can impact the earth. Addressing issues of consumption, pollution and stewardship, the religious movement promises to make a difference and motivate action in ways that the secular environmental movement has not yet been able to do.

One of RENEWAL’s stories, about the Reformed Church of Highland Park, NJ, portrays church members motivated by their faith to make changes at every level, to reduce their waste and become more low-impact stewards of the earth. This is typical of what is happening now in many houses of worship across America as people are becoming part of the religious-environmental movement.

It makes an enormous difference once you look at environmental protection in more than political, economic or scientific terms – once you understand it’s essentially a personal moral, ethical and spiritual issue. Today many people are discovering that caring for the environment is not only about endangered fish or imperiled birds or wilderness areas that most of us will never see. It’s about our deepest connection with the entire web of life, and with our Creator. And it’s about the choices that each of us makes, day to day.

In our early days of filming, the most striking thing we discovered was the lack of communication among groups who profoundly understood the deep bond between human beings and the earth – and who were already doing faith-inspired work to protect the environment. Most people assumed they were alone in taking action and that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish much – but they were acting anyway, out of a sense of spiritual calling to create a more mutually enhancing way of living with the planet. When we told them about others like them whom we'd met, they were usually surprised and delighted; the news provided a sense of strength and solidarity. We hoped the film would do that on a larger scale: offering a mirror to others whose faith inspired them to creation care across the country, showing them an image of their own good work and assuring them that they were not alone.

It’s been gratifying to watch the growth of this movement and to see the expanding role that Evangelicals are now playing in it. More and more are stepping forward to say that their faith in God has compelled them to find new ways of living with the planet, God’s gift to us. They’re doing it at home, in their churches and in the arena of public policy. Motivated by faith and by Scripture, Evangelicals are taking an active stand to strive for environmental awareness and build a more sustainable future.

Today, the religious-environmental movement – known as creation care to some – is emerging on the map of American consciousness, thanks in part to the continuing growth of Evangelical organizations and individuals who have discovered a calling in their biblical faith tradition to be stewards of the earth.

These include Allen Johnson and Christians for the Mountains (working to save Appalachia from the devastation of mountaintop removal coal mining); Peter Illyn and Restoring Eden (helping Christians, especially youth, rediscover the biblical call to environmental stewardship); the Evangelical Environmental Network (offering biblically inspired education and advocacy that relates to the moral aspects of public policies on energy and the environment); the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies (integrating environmental studies with biblical principles to bring the Christian community and the general public a better understanding of the stewardship of God’s creation); Matthew Sleeth, MD (author of Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, a personal account of how Christian faith inspired significant changes in the way he and his family were living); Susan Emmerich, environmental activist / filmmaker (When Heaven Meets Earth, telling the story about the positive work-practices impact her faith-based stewardship approach has had in several Christian communities) and many others.

These exemplary Christian individuals and organizations have turned their faith into action, heeding the words that The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it (Ps. 24:1), that we have a responsibility to Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves (Prov. 31:8) and that the sanctity of nature comes from God, for There is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (I Cor. 8:6b)

Today, as our nation faces the most daunting ecological challenges of human history, it is increasingly evident that religious communities have a critical leadership role to play by raising their voices to speak out for peace and better stewardship of the earth. Christians have a brilliant opportunity to lead the way at the personal, community and political level.

As filmmakers, we’re proud that RENEWAL has become a positive and powerful influence in the growth of creation care throughout the nation. As a recent article explained, RENEWAL aims to help people “recognize they’re part of a moral and spiritual movement to save the earth and discover a new relationship with the planet.”

The inspiring stories in RENEWAL (which you can learn more about here) are typical of many stories that are now multiplying in religious communities across the nation. These are not only stories about renewal of the earth; they are stories about renewal of the soul and the experience of reinforced faith for those who become engaged in this great work of our time.

Perhaps, then, it is fitting that Earth Day, a day celebrating environmental renewal, falls so close to Easter, the season of spiritual renewal, this year. It is a perfect time to spread the word and celebrate that creation care, the religious-environmental movement, is truly here!

Last month, in a hectic season, my wife Arlyne and I stole away to celebrate an anniversary, our twenty-fifth. There wasn’t time for a Mediterranean cruise, so we settled for one night in Concord and a walk around Walden Pond.

Henry David Thoreau, always a prankster with words, once described Walden as “mediterranean”—literally, “in the middle of the land.” As our evening waned, the winds stilled, and the unbroken surface of the pond absorbed the surrounding terrain, the hardwood reds and yellows vibrant enough to survive the dusk. A few egrets surveyed the silent water, now gray and melded with the granite stones along the shore.

As we walked, we carried our own stones to toss on the cairn that marks the site of Thoreau’s cabin. Not long after Thoreau died in 1862, visitors began bringing hometown stones to throw on the pile. Walt Whitman carted one from New York. John Muir left a scrap of the Sierras.

A contemplative stroll at Walden gave us a chance to reflect on the rapid pace of our last quarter century and to survey the mists before us. Most of all, it gave us another moment together, simple and sufficient in itself. “I am grateful for what I am & have,” Thoreau wrote to his friend H.G.O. Blake. “I live in perpetual thanksgiving.”

Provosts, I must admit, are not prepped for gratitude. More often, we feel pressures for continuous improvement; we sweat over what needs to be fixed, discarded or built. Show us marshlands and we see weeds. I live in perpetual reassessment.

So, returning from Concord, I decided on a new prompt for giving thanks this season—a regular walk around our own pond behind Gordon College. And Coy (Pond) is a reason for gratitude. As much as I love the fertilized soccer green at the foot of the library, I can’t imagine Gordon without the woods and wetlands. They are our best classrooms.

Especially if Dorothy Boorse, one of our resident biologists, comes along as your guide. She found wintergreen leaves for us to chew, traced lightning burns on trees, and scooped up duckweeds from a small bog. We found a coiled garter snake and felt the sphagnum moss. We paused at the native species—hemlocks, red maples, soft-purple asters, pepperbush, cattails and water lilies.

Along the way, Dorothy explained how all the water saved the land. It forced Gordon to cluster buildings, the wisest practice for sustainability. She also warned of excessive pruning. Dead trees may trouble the patrician eye, but when you cut them down you will chase away birds and deplete nitrogen. Dredge the lily pads and get ready for an invasion—most likely from a pernicious species, such as curly-leaf pondweed, which will fill the low waters and erode the habitat for wildlife.

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness,” Thoreau wrote just before his death. “I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of walking . . . who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.” And sauntering, in Thoreau’s quirky lexicon, was a journey toward “la Sainte Terre,” or holy ground.

I have always cherished that Gordon’s grounds include both a quad and the woods to wander in. As a faith-based institution, we do need a clear, clustered center, with some well-lined boundaries, like the best-kept soccer pitch. At times we may need to issue cautions, even red cards.

But native to this place is also a sense of joy in our uncultivated fringes—the chance to explore trails and tangents that may lead to a richer understanding of what is holy and good.

I am thankful—continually so—for the colleagues here who pause before slashing away at what others might consider untidy. Marvelous things can grow out of our own dead ends, like the beautiful white fungus that Dorothy discovered on a dry trunk. Christian colleges all too often succumb to fear. Policies and creeds, like commercial brands, become overly manicured. Websites are full of Stepford students.

But, at our best, we have trusted that one another’s journeys—sometimes born of wonder, sometimes born of sorrow and consternation—can enrich our own love for God and the world He has made. It’s a fragile ethos, this balance of freedom and faith, and certainly not perpetual, much like the ecosystems so easily overcome by bank loans and bulldozers. Preserving it requires care. But that care begins best by rejoicing that we can saunter together as God’s children.

Thanksgiving, as Arlyne knows, is my favorite holiday. But it should be a better habit. Two millennia ago the Apostle Paul—in a Mediterranean prison at that— extolled the young believers at Philippi to “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.” I don’t know about you, but I am often grateful for that second reminder.

Interestingly, I find this sort of cynicism about climate change especially prevalent among Christians. Why is this? I am reminded of what N.T. Wright spoke about here of a common tendency to group controversial issues under a guiding political umbrella. I definitely see this among many of my Christian friends on highly politicized topics, and climate change is no exception.

Some History

There is strong evidence that we have seriously changed the composition of a few chemical species in our planet’s atmosphere. The formation of the ‘hole’ in the ozone layer over Antarctica from the use of CFC refrigerants is one dramatic illustration.

As evident as this human impact on the atmosphere is, it is encouraging that – as a result of the 1989 Montreal protocol that enacted the phasing out of CFCs – there have been definite slowdowns both in the growth of the ozone hole and in global ozone depletion. This has given hope for recovery in the next 30 years as the depleting chemicals are cycled out of the atmosphere.

Warming and Cooling

Now fast-forward some twenty years. Just as there is evidence that we have affected the global distribution of ozone through injecting CFCs, there is equally convincing evidence that we are putting an ever-increasing amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. There is no doubt that we have fossil-fuel hungry, CO2-emitting lifestyles. The now-famous ‘Keeling curve’ illustrates the dramatic rise in atmospheric CO2 that is directly attributable to our burning of coal and fossil fuels in the past 250 years. From studies of past climates, there is no doubt that we are living in a period where atmospheric CO2 concentrations are as high as they have ever been. There is also no doubt that CO2 absorbs and re-emits back to the Earth a fraction of the infrared radiation that the Earth continually emits to ‘cool’ itself, the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’.

There are opposing factors that can mask this warming, such as sulfates in the stratosphere that produce an opposite, ‘cooling’ effect in the wake of strong volcanoes such as El Chichon (1983) and Mount Pinatubo (1991). In these two cases, the particles injected into the atmosphere by these eruptions were largely cycled out of the atmosphere a decade after eruption. The baseline story remains unchanged, that increased atmospheric CO2 means increased warming.

So what’s the issue? Why isn’t it clear that this is a problem and that we need to do something about it?

Murky Waters

Part of what muddies the waters is the simple fact that earth’s climate is a complex system, to put it mildly. Without being able to run experiments on another planet, we rely on computer models. The massive atmosphere-ocean global climate models (GCMs) that are used to predict future climate can accurately capture long-term, global-scale phenomena such as El Nino reasonably well. The largest source of uncertainty in these models is the presence of many feedback cycles within the climate system. These intrinsic, unforced variabilities are seen in several elements of the climate system. To name a few, there are feedbacks in the light-absorbing characteristics of clouds and water vapor in the atmosphere, in the reflection of sunlight by ice cover, and from changes in land-surface sunlight reflectivity from changes in the land usage (i.e. forest becoming cropland).

Consider ice cover as an example. The area over the North Pole is covered by ocean, with a fraction of that area covered by ice. Ice reflects the majority of incident sunlight back to space, whereas water reflects back a much smaller fraction. Much of the remaining energy goes into warming up the water. Consider what happens when the amount of ice covering the northern seas slowly melts (as it is doing) from warmer air and/or ocean temperatures. Less ice to reflect sunlight back to space means more light strikes water, so the water slightly warms, so more ice melts, so there’s less ice to reflect sunlight back to space, … and so on. This is positive feedback: a change in the system leads to furthering that change.

Negative feedbacks also occur, where an affected component of the system will act to counteract the cause: negative feedbacks are a self-stabilizing process. My work focuses on studying high-altitude ice clouds. In the study of these clouds and their effects on climate, there are numerous interacting feedbacks, where even the nature (positive or negative) of the feedback itself is not clearly known. These are matters of intense current debate – the question of whether certain aspects of climate will stabilize or destabilize.

The highly political nature of the subject equally muddies the waters of climate change science. The complexity of the topic can rarely be sufficiently dealt with on a pedestrian level without great simplification. When it has become so politicized in the public mind, the facts are especially difficult to find – assuming that the facts are indeed sought. Neutrality is elusive. Our vested interests in this matter, in my mind, form a continuum. For most readers of these words, top-down implementation of mitigation strategies mean sacrifices and changes to our lifestyles. For those whose resources and dwellings could be threatened by a warming world, it’s not so much inconvenience as survival. It’s practically impossible not to have a vested interest. As one species – though not with equal contributions – we are having an unmistakable impact on factors that, to the best of our knowledge, regulate our planet’s climate. When will we know the full impact? Only time – twenty or fifty years’ worth – will tell.

Responding

What’s an appropriate response? Undoubtedly, top-down mitigation strategies are necessary, but are they enough? I believe that my daily choices and actions can have a definite effect on the world around me, and as a Christian, I believe that I will be held responsible. It’s clear to me that part of having been made in God’s image means that we act as responsible stewards of creation. What does that translate to in this context? One aspect is that we each live in the most responsible way with the available resources to ensure that others can also live to have the same opportunities. We are each responsible for the knowledge that we have. I believe there is a light we can show here as Christians. We have a call to simplicity of life that – though it is not the gospel – does resonate deeply with the words of Jesus, and that dovetails into these questions. How can we do a small part within our own sphere? By standing apart from the materialistic culture that convinces us that purchasing is the solution to every problem – from personal to mechanical to ecological.

I am the first to admit my need to re-organize my daily activities to minimize my ‘footprint’. As a typical North American, I use vastly more resources than the vast majority of people on earth. If everyone on earth lived the way I do, we would need 5-10 Earths to provide the necessary resources.

It seems that in any matter as complex as this, one’s clarity seems to be inversely related to the distance from it. But assuming that earth will take care of itself seems somewhat analogous to merging into traffic with eyes closed, believing that others will surely make way for me.

I’m not sure it’s possible to be unaware of environmental issues in 2010. After all, a Nobel Peace Prize helped bring attention to the issues of human impact on climate; recycling efforts are now ubiquitous in many areas of the country; and large corporations have invested billions in “greening” their products and production.

Why, then, do the roles of government and individuals in our stewardship of the earth seem so contentious? Sure, it’s tough to weigh uncertain scientific projections with economic impacts, tougher still to create precautionary environmental standards, particularly in a global economic crisis. And the widely publicized errors in the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change don’t help; neither does the news of e-mail exchanges between top scientists working on climate research. Each has added fresh energy to debates about the environment from the halls of Congress to Facebook posts.

But this April as we mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we’d do well to remember it as a day that, since its inception, was successful because of its remarkable grassroots response. Ever since, we’ve all become aware of the daily choices we encounter where there really should be no debate, situations where we could all do our part.

My young sons, for instance, have incredible enthusiasm for recycling, probably because they imagine the recycling truck magically rejuvenating their exhausted juice can for them. When I realized they didn’t quite understand the process, my initial leaning was to correct it; but then I wondered what might happen if we all adopted a similar zeal.

Perhaps their understanding is closer to the big picture on which we need to focus. How can we tackle the major issues facing our world if we do not enthusiastically surmount the ordinary?

Aluminum, for instance, is the most abundant metal on earth. Its abundance, though, was not always recognized, hence the crowning point of the Washington Monument being made of such a “rare and precious metal.” But it’s not a pure element in nature; it’s combined with others such as oxygen. Removing these other elements to produce pure aluminum is one of the most energetically costly processes taking place daily on our planet. So recycling aluminum not only prevents unnecessary volume in landfills but provides an estimated 95 percent energy savings over new production.

And although water covers the majority of our planet, only about three percent of the world’s water is fresh with only a third of that in liquid form. Yet we can’t live without it. Some estimate that within the next 15 years, 1.8 billion people will live in regions where water is scarce.

As New Englanders pump the spring rains from our basements, it may be hard to appreciate the value of this resource. Nevertheless, perhaps the best explanation for relatively limited media focus on global water issues is that there simply is no viable alternative. We cannot substitute another chemical for H2O.

So although heavy rains or shortages create challenges, maintaining water purity is crucial. Many pollutants are dangerous even in minute quantities – parts-per-million and lower levels. The destructive environmental and human health impact of water pollution from such sources as improper recycling of electronics in developing nations requires our attention and action. We can’t afford to under-appreciate this vital resource.

Which might be why the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, held its conference last month with the theme “Chemistry for a Sustainable World.” Thankfully, the focus was due to strong interest in the scientific community and particularly in the younger generation of scientists. Along with colleagues and students, I attended the ACS meeting to participate in presentations, collaborate with other scientists, and help with green chemistry workshops. And I was encouraged by what I saw. Each interaction reinforced what we’ve already been teaching and observing: that the next generation of scientists and stewards—today’s students—are quick to embrace a ‘green’ vision.

That’s good news for the Earth, and of course, for those who see caring for it as an extension of their faith. Though some might want to separate the spiritual from the material, the mandate from our Creator is clear: he saw what he’d made and it was very good.

So apart from all the debates, one thing we can all agree on, especially as we enjoy the beauty of nature’s rebirth with spring’s arrival, is that the resources of our world matter. And this Earth Day can only be happy if we continue to value and invest in that which we’ve been given.