In our
passages this morning we read about humanity's relationship to the
rest of God's creation. I want to draw our attention to, and spend
our time this morning, on what, at first glance, may appear to be a
contradiction. In the first passage humanity is described as the
master of creation. We are to dominate it, fill it and rule over it
as God's viceroy. It would be hard to argue against the assertion,
it is just what humanity has done. There is hardly a corner of
creation that is habitable that we have not inhabited. With over 6
billion human beings and more being added every day, one could be
forgiven if they thought that the earth had been filled. If it is
possible to add more human beings to the world community, we might
ask if we should, given the stresses on our ecosystem wrought by
humanity's drive for resources and space. More than filling the
earth, we are able to alter it according to our own needs and
desires. We can drain wetlands or clear jungles. We can take the
tops off of mountains or strip away the earth for the tar sand
beneath. We can, at least for a time, change the course of rivers
and drain the reservoirs of lakes and alter the biology of seas.
But
Genesis reveals another side of our relationship to creation.
Humanity is called the caretaker of that which God has created. A
more literal translation would be to say that humanity is the servant
of the garden. To say that we tend the garden is to use the same
Hebrew language as would be used to describe how a servant cares for,
or tends to the needs of, his master. The relationship as described
in Genesis chapter 2 appears, at first, to be in opposition to the
reading in chapter one. But there is no contradiction between the
two statements. This dual identity of dominator and servant is very
much describes the world in which we live.
While
it was hailed as a great achievement when it was built the Aswan High
Dam that filled Lake Nasser and made possible the electrification of
Egyptian villages and the industrialization of cotton agriculture in
Egypt is proving itself that we cannot escape our servitude to the
process that govern the earth. In the absence of the annual flooding
of the Nile basin greater fertilization has been necessary. Due to
the irrigation of the fields, salt that normally would have been
washed out to the Mediterranean, is now accumulating in the soil,
reducing yields. This is not a lone example. Shrinking inland seas,
decreasing soil fertility, water tables that go lower every year,
they all speak to the abiding nature of limits regardless of how much
power we come to wield or how invincible we think our ingenuity to
be..
We
have it in our power to do great and powerful things, both as nations
and in this age of the internal combustion engine, as private land
owners. Yet we cannot escape the fact that we are prisoners to the
natural world and to the natural processes by which it operates. We
have great power but it is a power to change the shape and influence
the plants and animals that fill the earth, we remain servants to the
God created processes at work throughout creation. We attempt to
transgress the limitations that they enforce at our own peril.
A
wonderful example of this is related by the author Wendell Berry in
his essay titled, simply, “Damage.”
I
I have a steep wooded hillside that I wanted to be able to pasture
occasionally, but it had no permanent water supply.
About halfway to the top of the slope there is a narrow bench, on
which I thought I could make a small pond. I hired a man with a
bulldozer to dig one. He cleared away the trees and then formed the
pond, cutting into the hill on the upper side, piling the loosened
dirt in a curving earthwork on the lower.
The pond appeared to be a success. Before the bulldozer quit
work, water had already begun to seep in. Soon there was enough to
support a few head of stock. To heal the exposed ground, I
fertilized it and sowed it with grass and clover.
We had an extremely wet fall and winter, with the usual freezing
and thawing. The ground grew heavy with water, and soft. The
earthwork slumped; a large slice of the woods floor on the upper side
slipped down into the pond.
The trouble was a familiar one: too much power, too little
knowledge. The fault was mine.
I was careful to get expert advice. But this only exemplifies
what I already knew. No expert knows everything about any place. If
one's knowledge of one's whereabouts is insufficient, if one's
judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.
II
In general, I have used my farm carefully. It could be said, I
think, that I have improved it more than I have damaged it.
My aim has been to go against its history and to repair the damage
of other people. But now a part of its damage is my own.
The pond was a modest piece of work, and so the damage is not
extensive. In the course of time and nature, it will heal.
And yet it is damage-to my place, and to me. I have carried out,
before my own eyes and against my intention, a part of the modern
tragedy: I have made a lasting flaw in the face of the earth, for no
lasting good.
There are two points I want us to take with us this morning, the
first is ecological. It deals primarily with our relationship with
our environment. We are both its masters and its servants. We have
the power to change the environment, to heal it or to damage it.
Sometimes our best intentions go wrong and the power we intended for
good, leaves a scar. We can change the shape and the content of our
environment but we cannot change the process which govern them. We
have dominion but that dominion does not extend so far as to abrogate
the God ordained laws which govern it. We must learn to limit
ourselves or those processes will enact their own limits. The author
of Genesis realized this, and so should we.
But this experience of being at the same time servant and master
applies to more than our interaction with hillsides, soil, air and
fire. It applies to our interactions with people. We have the
ability to influence people in an amazing fashion but there are
limits to that influence. Mother Theresa had a great positive impact
way beyond the sphere of her physical life and service through the
way she inspired millions. Who would have thought that a simple
Albanian girl could have such an impact? We can also use our power
to harm one another. Every demeaning remark can cause harm. Every
broken relationship a scar of something that went wrong. If anything
it is easier to cause harm than to heal. We need to be conscious of
our calling to be a people of healing and use the power we have been
given to that end.
Meeting people. Engaging people. Getting to know the real person
behind the work-a-day mask. Power, when combined with understanding
and love becomes the power to heal. Once we learn to read the scars
left on the land we are able to see the harm inflicted in the past.
Hopefully we can also see the healing that has been been
accomplished. Whatever the lay of the soul we get to know we should
engage that soul in the hope not of getting more work out of them or
conforming them to the type of person we want them to be but healing
what was created by God and called “good.” Using what power we
do have to heal and nurture that which has been scared by sin.
For the people in our lives I hope that we can have the same attitude
as Wendell Berry to his farm. To leave the person more healed than
when we found them. If it is our goal we do not need more power, to
accomplish it. The fact is that we do not have the knowledge or the
wisdom to use the power we do have effectively. Learning how people
work, how they are influenced, these are the skills we need to help
direct the healing processes of the human soul. They are not
technical abilities to be mastered but wisdom to be learned.
Whether the damage inflicted is ecological or personal it is often
intended as good. The trade off for rural electrification in Egypt
was the damage done to the Nile basin. The efficiency and fast pace
of life we live today is achieved at the cost of social stability.
We do not need to pray for more power, neither in our relationship to
the earth nor in our relationships with one another. What we need to
seek is more love. Love to motivate us, a greater understanding of
the world and people around us to inform us and a greater
appreciation for limits to keep us from doing harm when we intend to
heal.
Love is the ability to reach out to the other, especially when you do
not have to. To love it to put no limit on the grace of God, to love
and forgive the anonymous individual and the infamous criminal as
well as the trusted friend. To love creation is to seek to live
within its limits, even if it appears that they can be abrogated for
a few decades. I do not say that it is easy. Like non-violence it
entails a commitment that holds out the very real prospect of
sacrifice. I am saying that it is the way of God with the living and
it is to be our way. We do not need more power, but more love.
Understanding that the world around us is complex we need to learn to
look at our environment and the people around us with a sophisticated
eye that seeks reconciliation between people and between our
aspirations and the limits of earth's natural processes. What I mean
is that we have, or at the very least I have, a tendency to seek
simplistic answers to complex problems. It may be as personal as
believing someone a jerk when they cut me off on the freeway as if he
were the sole cause of my frustration or that the stresses of life
were not at work on him also. We also seek simple answers as a
culture such as the assumption that world hunger could be solved by
boosting yields without regard for sustainability of farming
practices or confronting the problem of overpopulation. The problems
we face are not simple. The answers will be complex.
Finally, we must learn to find the faithful path in a world of
limits. We like large engineering projects like the Aswan High and
the Three Gorges Dams. We feel smart. We feel powerful, even if
they are built by another nation we like what they have to say about
the human race. But what about the terraced agriculture of the
Nepalese. They fed themselves for centuries in a hard and
unforgiving land while maintaining the health of the soil. An
accomplishment we do not recognize only because we have not reflected
upon it. There's is not an accomplishment of power but wisdom.
Mother Theresa did not eliminate huger or find a cure to any disease.
But she did make the lives of those suffering more humane. She
spent her life doing good in a once forgotten corner of the world.
Hers' is an example of accepting limits while continuing to love and
care for those most deeply effected by the damage evident on the
globe. Her understanding of love did not require more power but love
and dedication.
No one needs to tell us that we have power. We have brought nearly
every available acre of the globe under cultivation and more than a
few that should not have been. We can fly across continents and
oceans in hours. We have harnessed the power of the Nile. When
damage is done by this power it is rarely because anyone intends evil
but results from the use of too much power and not enough wisdom,
love or understanding.
What is needed is an ethic of patient service, both to our ecology
and one another. We know we can destroy with power at our disposal,
what we truly need is the wisdom, understanding and love to heal.
Some problems cannot be solved with more power but require the
application of the wisdom to use the power that we do have
constructively. The universe already has its Messiah and none of us
are him. Creation yearns for redemption, humanity will not bring it.
Both of those depend upon the sovereign action of the Lord: the God
who comes. The world has many who desire to dominate it, often to
ill effect. What the world needs, and what we are called to be, are
servants. It is a role that we can learn and a practice that we can
employ in all area of our lives, if we are willing to learn.
