Welcome to my corner of the web. Here you'll find my ramblings about faith, church, drupal, Geeks and God (my podcast), and my other unrelated interests.

While you can subscribe to all posts here from the Subscribe link on the right, there are two other main feeds. There is the drupal and other technology feed along with the faith and church feed.

Cultivating Support For Nature

Posted on: Tue, 2007-02-20 07:30 | By: matt | In:

After reading the Cranach blog on Nature vs Environment yesterday I was left with a bit to think about. The gist of the post is a comment by one of the readers that says,

This is not entirely on topic, but in my opinion Christians who wish to recover a biblically-based ethic of stewardship of the earth might begin by rejecting the term “The Environment” and actively recovering the language of nature.

Besides being a political slogan often devoid of substance, "The Environment” implies a relationship of opposition and exclusion between human kind and creation. Etymologically, "environment" denotes something which surrounds or encompasses. Thus it makes sense that when people use the term they are generally thinking of that which physically surrounds us and not what is inside us as well. They stress the human obligation to be responsible for how we live, but without a meaningful concept of human personhood on which to base those calls to responsibility, their words generate so much heat without light. In this anti- or non-human sense the term "The Environment," despite its popularity in postmodern circles, is a highly modernistic one. It simply flips the model of Humanity vs. Creation which is the basis of so much exploitation of creation (i.e. the kinds of thoughtless behaviour which allegedly cause global warming).

"Nature," on the other hand, is rich with theological and philosophical overtones, and it comports with such concepts of natural law and human nature. It offers a better model for thinking about the purpose of creation and the obligations of humanity in its role as steward of creation.

The shift in language is extremely important in these postmodern times. Redefining nature as extrinsic to humanity encourages some people to skirt the fundamental contradiction in ardently defending some environments--owl habitats--but not others--the womb, for instance. Of course Christians are free to use the term "the environment" in order to be all things to all people, but at the very least we should be aware of the subtle differences between these two paradigms of creation and the deep import of endorsing one at the expense of the other.

I really like the idea pointed out here and am left wondering how we can cultivate this idea in others. Any thoughts?