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Bold Insights from a Different Francis

Nathan Aaberg —  July 16, 2015 — Leave a comment

Before I began reading his book Pollution and the Death of Man, I had only heard of Francis A. Schaeffer in reference to the Christian pro-life movement. He is one of the founding fathers of the intense conviction that abortion is profoundly wrong and that Christians should do all they can to stop it.

In light of the fact that there are many fellow Christians who are zealously pro-life when it comes to abortion and yet are completely sanguine about the destruction of the rest of life on God’s earth, I couldn’t help assuming that Schaeffer had a similar theological incoherence. This impression was reinforced by the fact that I first heard of the book from listening to Christian radio talk show host Janet Parshall. She regularly refers to Pollution and the Death of Man when she talks in alarm about the growing concern people have for the environment. She reminds her audience that Schaeffer had warned that human dignity would be compromised if humanity was presumed to have anything in common with nature and if humanity’s freedom to use the world in any way was questioned.

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Forty-five years since its publication this book’s arguments still resonate.

Nevertheless, out of curiousity, I ordered the book and read it. I was floored. It certainly conveys a fierce love of God and commitment to the ideas that come from the Bible. But it also fiercely asserts that those ideas uniquely give real value to nature and that Christians have for too long been AWOL in caring for nature the way they should. It contains powerful ideas about what the true relationship should be between humanity and the rest of nature. And these ideas challenge the way Christians have thought about nature and acted towards it for centuries.

Because the book’s essential ideas have been misrepresented and because those ideas are still relevant today, I am using this blog post to share 10 key points about the book. I am including Scheaffer’s own words as much as possible because of their passion and power.

I would also encourage you to learn more about Francis Schaeffer. He was a complex person who led a complex life and challenged, in some way or other, almost everyone.  He was a relentless warrior on behalf of Biblical truth in the world of theology and philosophy. There are, in fact, elements of what he wrote and spoke that I profoundly disagree with. He was also a person who desired to bring people together and engage with them in conversation, fellowship, and mutual learning. He and his wife Edith founded the L’Abri community in Switzerland in 1955 which has become a network of learning centers around the world where people can ask honest questions about the Christian faith while enjoying fellowship and hospitality. He also believed that Christians should be compassionate and engaged with the culture around them even as they hold tightly to Biblical truths. Along those lines, he wrote this startling sentence: “Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”

You can learn more about him here. The best article I read was by Michael Hamilton in a 1997 issue of Christianity Today (you must, sadly, be a subscriber to read the whole thing). Here is an excellent quotation from that article about Scheaffer:

“Ideas were to him literally matters of life and death. History, thought Schaeffer, taught that the intellectual base on which a people build their society will determine that society’s laws and character: “There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people.” His singular message was that a society cannot hope for righteousness and justice without thinking the thoughts of God from the bottom up.”

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This gives you a sense of his intensity and intellectual energy. It also helps you understand a bit why in his view the unmooring of Western civilization from Christian foundations and its movement towards cultural relativism alarmed him.

That same intensity and intellect is displayed in Pollution and the Death of Man. I don’t necessarily agree with every single point he makes.  Yet, there is much treasure and truth here. It makes one wonder what would the world would be like if Christians and the Church had been living out the principles Schaeffer presents in this book over the last two millennia. Above all, this book shows that taking the Bible seriously and reading it carefully leads to a profound commitment to being a good shepherd of the earth who finds wonder and beauty in it.

1. Schaeffer wrote in the context of a growing consciousness that humanity is destroying the world that led some to blame Christianity: Published in 1970, Pollution and the Death of Man was Schaeffer’s effort to insert Christianity into the battle of ideas surrounding the realization that nature was being destroyed. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published and caused America to rethink its relationship with chemicals. In 1966, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released plans to build two dams in the Grand Canyon (can you imagine that?), but the Sierra Club and others vociferously fought those plans and were ultimately successful. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire for the thirteenth time in its history, a brutal symbol for all that was wrong with America’s use of technology and relationship with nature (check out this article about how local responses to the problem of industrial pollution, not necessarily the Clean Water Act, resulted in the 1969 fire being the last on the Cuyahoga).

Thinkers grappled with the ultimate causes of this environmental destruction. In 1967, Lynn White, Jr.’s article “The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis” was published. In it, he centered the blame for Western civilization’s unrelenting exploitation of nature on Christianity. An expert in Medieval technology, White argued that the paradigm-shifting triumph of Christianity had squashed the notion that there was spirit and sacredness in nature. Instead, it established humanity’s proper role as harsh, exploitative dominators. Nature, in other words, existed solely for the use of humanity. This assumption, White insists, has always made Christianity the most anthropocentric religion in the world.

Another key thesis of White’s was that the tsunami of negative impacts brought by science and technology can’t be addressed by applying science and technology in new ways. Christianity is at the root of the marriage of science and technology and is at the root of the idea that a tree is just a tree and is there for our exploitation. If we don’t change how we think of nature morally and ethically, nothing else will change. And because Western civilization’s great moral ideas come from Christianity, Christianity must be part of any solution. White pointed to Saint Francis as offering a better Christian path of faith and life.

2. Neither polytheism nor modern science are the answers, and both threaten the true nature of humanity: In Pollution and the Death of Man, Schaeffer wholeheartedly agrees that there is an environmental crisis. He also agrees with White that the destruction of nature is, at heart, a religious and moral problem. But he asserts that neither pantheism nor a modern, science-based philosophy are good answers either.

A morality based on either results in only a pragmatic concern for nature. “The only reason we are called upon to treat nature well is because of its effects on man and our children and the generations to come. So in reality,….man is left with a completely egoistic position in regard to nature. No reason is given – moral or logical – for regarding nature as something in itself.”

Schaeffer asserts, too, that pantheism and modernism undercut man’s dignity and will indeed bring the death of man in a metaphorical sense because all is reduced to particles and particles have no meaning. When humanity is merely another part of nature, which both pantheism and modern science suggest, then people can be treated like any other element of nature.

3. The wrong kind of Christianity will lead to wrong views of nature: Listen to these words by Schaeffer:

“It is well to stress, then, that Christianity does not automatically have an answer; it has to be the right kind of Christianity. Any Christianity that rests upon a dichotomy – some sort of Platonic concept – does not have an answer to nature; and we must say with sorrow that much orthodoxy, much evangelical Christianity, is rooted in Platonic concept. In this kind of Christianity there is only interest in the “upper story,” in the heavenly things – only in “saving the soul” and getting it to Heaven.”

In one of the best stories of the book, Schaeffer relates how he walked over to a pagan community across a ravine from a Christian school he was visiting. He was told that he was the first person from the school to ever have visited them. What especially struck Schaeffer was that the Christian school was ugly while the pagan community’s landscape and buildings were beautiful. Schaeffer considers this situation and writes: “Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take into account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.”

Later, Schaeffer writes: “God is interested in creation. He does not despise it. There is no reason whatsoever, and it is absolutely false Biblically, for the Christian to have a Platonic view of nature. What God has made, I, who am also a creature, must not despise.”

4. We should respect what God has created: For Schaeffer, understanding nature properly rests on the fundamental truth that God created the world and the cosmos. God is not part of nature. Nature is separate from God. This, Schaeffer asserts, is the basis for science.

But the distinctness of God from nature does not mean nature is of no value. Because God made nature, all of nature deserves our “high respect.” Listen to what Schaeffer writes:

“But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made it as a tree. Christians who do not believe in the complete evolutionary scale have reason to respect nature as the total evolutionist never can, because we believe God made these things specifically in their own areas. So if we are going to argue against the evolutionists intellectually, we should show the results of our beliefs in our attitudes. The Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing with each created thing with a high level of respect.”

To consider the things of this world as worthless or low, Schaeffer asserts, is to insult God.

In addition, we have God’s own example to follow. Schaeffer writes, “… God treats His creation with integrity: each thing in its own order, each thing the way He made it. If God treats His creation in that way, should we not treat our fellow-creatures with similar integrity? If God treats the tree like a tree, the machine like a machine, the man like a man, shouldn’t I, as a fellow-creature, do the same – treating each thing in integrity in its own order? And for the highest reason: because I love God – I love the One who has made it! Loving the Lover who has made it, I have respect for the things He has made.”

5. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension remind us that all things spiritual and material have value and will be redeemed: The things in front of us are sometimes the hardest to see. Schaeffer looks directly at the historic center of the Christian faith – Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension – and sees an affirmation of a principle that is too often overlooked by Christians. He writes: “The resurrection and ascension prove there is no reason to make false dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. That is a totally non-Biblical concept.” In other words, matter matters. Nature matters.

Schaeffer pays attention, too, to the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. “As Christ’s death redeems men, including their bodies, from the consequences of the Fall, so His death will redeem all nature from the Fall’s evil consequences at the time when we are raised from the dead.” In other words, nature is an essential part of the Biblical story of the world from the beginning to the end.

6. Separate from yet united with nature: A core theological concept for Schaeffer is that the God of Christians is unique “in being both infinite and personal.” All of matter is separated from God who is the Creator and who is infinite and who has always been. Yet, God created people in God’s image, which makes them unique. This means that people have a unique relationship with God that the rest of nature does not.

While many Christians stop right there, Schaeffer doesn’t. He asserts that we simultaneously have two different relationships with nature. Yes, we are unique, we are separate, and we do have dominion (the right kind of dominion). But we also have fellowship with everything else in nature. Why? Because we collectively share the same status – we are all creations of God.

“This is the true Christian mentality. It rests upon the reality of creation out of nothing by God. But it also follows that all things are equally created by God. All things were equally created out of nothing. All things, including man, are equal in their origin, as far as creation is concerned.” (Those italics are Schaeffer’s.)

Schaeffer emphasizes this point throughout the book. Here is a startling line in the context of the balance Schaeffer advocates between our right to use nature wisely for our ends and our fellowship with the rest of nature. “Even the moss has a right to live. It is equal with man as a creature of God.”

Humans, especially Christians, however, are quick to assert that we are distinct and separate from the rest of nature. Schaeffer would agree that we are distinct and different and would argue that our ability to have consciousness, choice, and will power are key elements of our uniqueness. This presents a fundamental and spiritual challenge to us. We as humans do have options. We have choices. One of our fundamental choices is whether we do all to nature that we have the capacity to do.

Unthinkingly using all of our unique capacities to manipulate the rest of the created order for our satisfaction and convenience at the cost of nature’s vitality lowers us to the state of the rest of the natural order. Conversely, making the conscious choice to limit ourselves for nature’s prosperity affirms our own humanity.

This is where Schaeffer is making, I believe, a subtle argument that people like Janet Parshall are not picking up. It is easy to conclude that Schaeffer’s title refers only to the idea that pantheism and modern materialism, as reactions to the ongoing destruction of nature, will lead to the death of man. But Schaeffer is also all but saying explicitly that if we do not exercise conscious and moral choices in relation to nature than we are also denying human uniqueness. In fact, if we do that, we are acting with exactly the same values that would flow naturally from an evolutionary, materialist perspective. In other words, not limiting ourselves in how we use our creative powers to extract from nature what we want and not opening ourselves to a psychological relationship with nature leads also to the spiritual death of man even if we have some theologically correct ideas of God.

7. Christians have acted badly: Christianity has, in Schaeffer’s estimation, the answer to the environmental crisis. This is because “It is the Biblical view of nature that gives nature a value in itself…” Nature, in other words, is not just valuable for its practical benefit to us but has its own ethical and spiritual standing. And if we give ourselves to God and allow God to guide our values and actions, then we will treat nature as it should be treated.

But despite having a clear basis for acting rightly toward nature, Christians haven’t. In fact, Schaeffer’s story of the pagan community across from the Christian school captures the sense that Christians have done far worse than many non-Christians in how they treat nature.

“The Christian is called upon to exhibit this dominion, but to exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having a value in itself, exercising dominion without being destructive. The church should always have taught and done this, but it has generally failed to do so, and we need to confess our failures. Francis Bacon understood this, and so have other Christians at different times; but by and large we must say that for a long, long time Christian teachers, including the best orthodox theologians, has shown a real poverty here.”

And Christians have committed sins of omission throughout history by not defending nature.

“They (hippies) were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it, too, a long, long time ago before the counterculture ever came onto the scene.”

Schaeffer even poses this powerful question: “…what would have happened if the church at the time of the Industrial Revolution had spoken out against the economic abuses which arose from it?”

And listen to this critique of Christians and their selective interest in nature that is, 45 years later, as trenchant and stinging as ever.

“Nature has become merely an academic proof of the existence of the Creator, with little value in itself. Christians of this outlook do not show an interest in nature itself. They use it simply as an apologetic weapon, rather than thinking or talking about the real value of nature.”

Amen. AMEN.

Schaeffer takes that line of argument a step further.

“We must confess that we missed our opportunity. We have spoken loudly against materialistic science, but we have done little to show that in practice we ourselves as Christians are not dominated by a technological orientation in regard either to man or nature. We should have been stressing and practicing for a long time that there is a basic reason why we should not do all that with our technology we can do. We have missed the opportunity to help man save his earth. Not only that, but in our generation we are losing an evangelistic opportunity because when modern people have a real sensitivity to nature, many of them turn to the pantheistic mentality. They have seen that most Christians simply do not care about nature as such.”

This is one of the reasons why Schaeffer believes the church has become “irrelevant and helpless in our generation.”

“We are living in and practicing a sub-Christianity.”

In other words, when Christians articulate and live out a faith that is not whole, that does not give proper emphasis to the earth and cosmos, then people are not to be blamed if they find the Christian faith unappealing, inauthentic, and inadequately challenging and so decide not to become disciples of Jesus.

Ultimately, Schaeffer levels a damning suggestion about the impact of a wrong view of nature as well. He suggests, in the form of questions, that our faith in God is not real, that we don’t truly love God (the ultimate Lover), that our faith is not whole and complete and alive in us, if we don’t care for nature.

“If I love the Lover, I love what the Lover has made. Perhaps this is the reason why so many Christians feel an unreality in their Christian lives. If I don’t love what the Lover has made – in the area of man, in the area of nature – and really love it because He made it, do I really love the Lover?”

8. The Church should bring substantial healing to nature: Schaeffer believes that the Fall caused many divisions – man from God, man from himself, man from other people, man from nature, and even nature from nature. These divisions will eventually be completely healed when Christ returns to earth. But we are not simply to wait passively until then. Christians are to believe that with God’s help “substantial healing can be a reality here and now.” “God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community in the area of nature (just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality) is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.” In short, the Church and the local church are to do their best within their sphere of influence to live out God’s healing of all relationships as a sign of what God’s kingdom will look like when fully established in all dimensions of life.

What are some characteristics of the substantial healing the Church and the local church should bring?

One is an emphasis on Creation. It is important and not some secondary, optional, tertiary concern.

Another is the right idea of dominion. Dominion is not sovereignty. “It (nature) belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust.”

And at the heart of the correct understanding of dominion is the concept of conscious, self-imposed limitations in light of the fact that our dominion is under God’s dominion and that nature is something God values. We will accept limits to our freedom for the sake of what is good and holy. We will not do all that we can do with science and technology. We will be patient.

9. The Christian who gets the relationship with nature right will have a psychological bond with it: Schaeffer is careful not to condone a romanticization of nature but in a nuanced way he repeatedly declares that we can and should have a psychological bond with nature because we know that we are distinct from nature and yet part of it.

“Psychologically, I ought to “feel” a relationship to the tree as my fellow-creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation and on the side of God’s infinity and our finiteness we really are one with the trees!”

Elsewhere Schaeffer writes, “In this sense Saint Francis’s use of the term “brothers to the birds” is not only theologically correct, but a thing to be intellectually thought of and practically practiced. More, it is to be psychologically felt as I face the tree, the bird, the ant.”

He also writes, “Because it is right, on the basis of the whole Christian system – which is strong enough to stand it all because it is true – as I face the buttercup, I say: “Fellow-creature, fellow-creature, I won’t walk on you. We are both creatures together.””

10. Making the choice to accept limits and treat nature rightly brings many benefits: When Christians and the Church act toward nature and relate with nature in the way they should, Schaeffer asserts there will be substantial healing. This healing will be seen in a “new sense of beauty.” “The aesthetic values are not to be despised. God has made man with a sense of beauty that no animal has; no animal has ever produced a work of art. Man as made in the image of God has an aesthetic quality, and as soon as he begins to deal with nature as he should, beauty is preserved in nature.”

And the resulting improvement in the ecological condition of the world will benefit the long-term health of our economy as well as the value of humanity.

We will also experience a renewed sense of wonder. I love this line from Schaeffer in connection with this them: “Life begins to breathe.” And, provocatively, he calls attention to the fact that Charles Darwin shared in his notes that as he got older he lost his joy in the arts and in nature. By contrast, people who believe in God’s creative force behind the world’s creation can and should find that nature inspires joy and wonder.

Finally, choosing to relate to the nature as God intended will endow us with psychological freedom and open up an enhanced relationship with God.

My guess is that you already knew that.

 

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A World Vision for Earth (Part 2)

Nathan Aaberg —  February 21, 2015 — 1 Comment

In the last post, I wrote that we need the equivalent of World Vision, the $2.67 billion Christian humanitarian and community development organization, to bring tremendous resources to bear on the effort to preserve and mend God’s earth. I promised to lay out some ideas of the work that new organization might do and how it would be funded.

I didn’t expect to be writing this and the last post. I actually have a spreadsheet chockfull of blog post ideas that I’ve been working through and adding to. This post and the last are not on that spreadsheet.

I had envisioned this blog being a place for me to share ideas, stories, and insights about the whole faith that includes Creation. I hoped it would inspire other Christians to hold onto a whole faith and act on it. Perhaps, I thought, it might let Christians who already care about God’s earth know that they are not alone. I desired, too, that it might show people outside of the Christian faith and who care about this living planet that a whole Christian faith shares their conviction that the world has reason and value for existence beyond serving humanity.

I still believe there is value in all of that and, God willing, I hope this blog will be of value in those ways.

But the more I read and learn, the more I’m convinced that my conception of the blog was too redolent of an ivory tower mentality – safe and theoretical but not incarnational. Getting the small (tiny? infinitesimally small?) number of folks who might read this to take small actions in their individual lives for God’s earth as part of a complete Christian life will hardly move the needle.

A friend of mine once made an offhand comment that has stuck with me. It was something like: “I wish Christians worried more about being effective than being correct about every detail of their doctrine.”

I realize I may well be guilty of that same sin.

Part of my motivation in writing this is that I want to be in the right theologically. I want people to come to realize a whole Christian faith necessarily includes a recognition that God’s Creation is part of God’s redemption plan.

But what does that matter if the truth of that theology is not lived out and does not become the reality we see around us?

Not much at all.

We must bear fruit.

So the test of what I am about to suggest for the activities of this international, large-scale organization is this – will they have a chance of having an impact at the scale of the problems God’s earth faces?

Let’s dive in:

Channel Christian philanthropy to conservation at an unprecedented scale: Giving to religious organizations is the number one category of giving in the U.S. Giving by churches and individuals in a concerted way would be a way in itself for churches and individuals to have powerful impact for the work to restore God’s earth. The organization I propose would need to create a fundraising network and system that would be dynamic, ubiquitous, and compelling. It would use those funds for the activities described below and for selectively funding existing organizations that are already doing key work.

Whole Kingdom projects: Land, water, and community skills are the true source of community wealth. This organization would invest resources and staffing in strategic conservation projects that combine nature conservation with sustainable economies and healthy communities. In some cases, these projects would be started fresh. In some cases, where something similar is already being done, we would invest and support the existing project so it could be done even better. Gorongosa Park in Mozambique is not necessarily a full example but it reveals what a difference investment can make in bringing stability for nature and for local communities. What if, for example, investment was made in working with local communities in Haiti to restore a large forest and to have around that forest core sustainable agriculture and community development that relies on sustainable energy so that people no longer needed to cut down trees for firewood? This would benefit people and Creation. I come from a long line of worst-case scenario worriers so trust me I realize that these kinds of ideas have many variable and many ways to fail and may even be naïve. But ultimately we need to create new economies and new ways to live with the land as communities. Let’s start with where people and God’s earth are suffering the most.

In 1923, over 60% of Haiti was forested. In 2006, less than 2% was. This is a calamity for people and wildlife in Haiti.

In 1923, over 60% of Haiti was forested. In 2006, less than 2% was. This is a calamity for people and wildlife in Haiti. There is an opportunity to integrate community development and ecological restoration there.

Leadership Project: This project will inspire, educate, and train Christian leaders in business, government, and communities to be whole faith leaders. Leaders have a singular and tremendous impact on our world. The potential return in investing in leaders’ hearts and minds might be greater than any other investment. Imagine if Christian leaders throughout the world led their organizations and communities in ways that reflected a whole faith, that valued God’s earth for being God’s, for being vital for the lives and health of our neighbors and especially for the poor? As much as possible, this project would be led by other Christian leaders and would create peer groups among Christian leaders who would support each other and hold each other accountable.

New stories and art: There is a tendency to pursue left-brained solutions to problems in our world, but the right-side of our culture’s brain must also be engaged. In other words, the sickness of our world is not just a question of wrong policies and systems. It is also about the state of our hearts. And what reaches the heart, in addition to God’s Spirit, is art. We need movies, books, graphic novels, television shows, plays, and music that integrate Creation and that celebrate people and communities who seek to mend Creation out of their faith in God. We also need art that challenges and that has a prophetic voice.

Shape Policy and Political Discourse: If you can shape the terrain of ideas and values that frame the terms of a debate, you are more than halfway to shaping what happens in the world. Think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have done just that but have done so, despite their “conservative” labels, with an emphasis on values and thinking that subtly tempt our hearts away from living out values originating in Jesus Christ. We need a think tank that, to build off of the Heritage Foundation’s mission statement, formulates and promotes public policies based on the Christian principles of compassion, justice, creativity, love for our neighbors and for ourselves, and caring for God’s earth. We must think through how those principles can be applied in a fallen world. We must battle, with truth and love, ideas that come cloaked in respectability and sometimes even in Christian rhetoric that are actually antithetical to the incarnational, loving God we find in the Bible.

New church network: As I wrote in the last post, investing efforts in persuading more churches to have and live out a whole faith is not, in my opinion, the most effective way to actually preserve and mend God’s earth at this crisis point. It should be done, of course. I want to help that happen. But there is too much inertia in the current structure of many churches that works against a whole faith in the short term. What if we formed a new type of church or a new type of missional order or a hybrid of both? What if this new form of Christian community integrated God’s earth into the life of the community and the way it worshipped? What if these new churches owned significant amounts of land and demonstrated in each of their particular locations good ways of producing food and creating habitat? What if these new churches also served their communities while also contributing resources to the larger organization? Christian youth could serve and learn at these places during summer vacations and as part of internships, thus incubating new Christian leaders. Christian business people could help make these places well-managed and effective. These would also be communities where people who have sacrificially decided not to have children of their own for the sake of God’s earth could be supported when they adopted and could be linked to other families in covenant relationships if they didn’t.

Prophet protection: When it comes to the borderlands where earth-consuming forces seek to extract every bit of wealth the can from the land and water, the community leaders who speak up against those forces are extremely vulnerable. This is where laws are rarely enforced, where prophets are easy to kill. Perhaps you heard of some of them when they were alive? Dorothy Stang, Edwin Chota, and Chico Mendes are examples. It’s more likely that you heard of them after thy were murdered. Christians should stand in solidarity with those vulnerable prophets. People, resources, economic support, social media attention, leaderships networks should be brought to bear by Christians to protect them. These prophets speak for the most vulnerable communities, the most vulnerable places. These prophets are nerve signals to their communities and to the world as a whole that precious peoples and places are in danger of being lost. We must respond.

Dorothy Stang was a Christian who spoke up for the poor and the forests of Brazil, angering loggers and ranchers. She was shotgunned to death 10 years ago.

Dorothy Stang was a Christian who spoke up for the poor and the forests of Brazil, angering loggers and ranchers. She was shot to death 10 years ago.

A theological think tank & seminary: Within the Church, there is a need for a compelling and tenacious voice that presses the Church in theological and prophetic ways to change its theology and its members’ way of life to reflect a whole faith. This would combine theological vigor with dynamic, challenging advocacy. It would even press for new practices of the faith. It would also be a new seminary that trains church and ministry leaders in an incarnational whole faith for the new church/missional order I described earlier.

Prayer & laments:  This organization would be a catalyst for unceasing waves for God’s earth and the people who are trying to protect it and the people and creatures that suffer due to its devastation. As Christians, we believe prayer opens us to God’s Spirit and changes our hearts. We also believe that God will respond to prayer, sometimes in miracles and interventions that we can see. It is also time to lament. The destruction of the land and water of a community devastates the spirits of those people. People who care about God’s earth, like many scientists and conservationists, and who have seen its destruction are psychologically devastated. They need places to go and laments to sing that will allow them to express their sorrow and loss. Christians should come alongside those people and share their pains with new rituals and songs and pieces of art. They should mourn with them.

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For 14 years, I was involved in fundraising for nonprofit organizations and now I work for a private operating foundation. This has given me a full appreciation for how important funding is to enable organizations to carry out activities and have an impact. With that in mind, I have some thoughts about where funding would come from for the organization.

Christian philanthropy: A fullcourt press would be applied to gathering financial support from Christians, their foundations, and their businesses. The reality, of course, is that many Christians don’t see the preservation and restoration of Creation as important as many other elements of the work of the kingdom. This could be very hard and challenging work. The fundraising would need to be imaginative and compelling in making the case for the importance of this organization’s work.

Non-Christian philanthropy: If this organization is uniquely effective, philanthropists of all sorts will be good prospects for joining in the effort.

Social enterprises: An emerging form of nonprofit funding and nonprofit charitable activityis the social enterprise, a business that advances the nonprofit organization through its actual activities and by generating money. A great example is Goodwill, which helps people with barriers to employment by employing them in their retail operations. The profits made in the stores then help fund other job training and education activities Goodwill carries out. Let’s turn loose the creative entrepreneurial talents of Christians into new social enterprises that are good for God’s earth and generate funding. Examples might include sustainable farming operations (think Newman’s Own but more vertical, from farming to processing), ecotourism, and even art and culture production.

Support of new churches and existing churches: If a new network of churches was developed, these churches would, as part of their establishment, commit to funding the larger organization on an ongoing and significant basis. Extensive efforts would be made, too, to reach out to existing churches and seek out support commitments over time.

Volunteer corps: Having enough resources to do what needs to be done is not just about raising funds. It is also attracting people and resources at no cost or low cost so your dollars can be stretched further. Habitat for Humanity and other organizations understand how to harness the power of volunteers. An army of volunteers and interns would be an important component of this work. Whereever possible, youth from around the world would be engaged in projects that advance the movement as well while giving them skills and experiences they can carry into the rest of their lives.

Endowment: Colleges are big believers in endowments – gifts pooled into funds that generate income for the college in, theoretically, perpetuity. Right from the start, this organization would seek out gifts, especially bequests, that would build this endowment so that the organization would have an assured stream of income to augment other fundraising efforts. The endowment funds would, of course, be invested in Creation-friendly and community-friendly ways, thereby advancing God’s kingdom as well.

* * * * *

I have two last thoughts. One is that the traditional organizational trajectory of starting at a very small level may not be wise at all in this case. The challenges and needs we face are at a tremendous scale. And the long-term success and impact of such an organization would depend in part on starting big and having an immediate impact on a large scale that would attract additional large-scale funding. I know that sounds crazy.  But that is the reality of the situation.

Second, I’ve been reading The One Thing, and it’s made me realize that trying to do all of the things I’ve just proposed all at once might mean scattered, meager progress on a very small scale. Priority should be given to one of those efforts starting out. Frankly, I’ll need to give more thought to which one that would be. I would need wise counsel from other to helps figure that out. What do you think would be the wisest initiative to begin with?

Writing this has made me realize the daunting scale of the challenge in front of us. Can we actually stop the inertia of millennia that has drained and diminished the vitality of God’s earth?

I don’t know. I don’t believe in false hope.

But I do know It’s time for the hearts and faiths of Christians to be fully and energetically committed to bearing fruit in the form of green, verdant, life-filled, justice-permeated communities.

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Needed Now: A World Vision for Earth

Nathan Aaberg —  February 7, 2015 — Leave a comment

If you want to read a challenging and inspiring book, pick up The Hole in the Gospel by Richard Stearns.

In the book, Stearns shares how he was enjoying a successful corporate career when a number of things happened that led him to believe that God was calling him to step out of his comfort zone to become the president of World Vision, the Christian humanitarian aid organization.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that call.

This brought to a head two pressing questions in his life. What was the Christian faith all about? And was he willing to accept a call from God that would require him to accept God’s will and purpose even if they differed from his own?

The “hole” in the Gospel that the book’s title refers to is the tendency among Christians to make Jesus’ message all about getting our bus ticket punched for the right destination in the next life and to ignore God’s desire to advance his kingdom in this world.

hole-in-gospel book cover image

This is well worth reading.

Here’s how Stearns puts it:

“In our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of “fire insurance” that one can buy. Then, once the policy is in place, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living – of wealth and success, or of poverty and suffering. As long as the policy is in the drawer, the other things don’t matter much. We’ve got our “ticket” to the next life.”

A few lines later, Stearns talks more of the whole gospel.

“The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it. Yes, it first requires that we repent of our own sinfulness and totally surrender our individual lives to follow Christ, but then we are also commanded to go into the world – to bear fruit by lifting up the poor and marginalized, challenging injustice wherever we find it, rejecting the worldly values found within every culture, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

And he ultimately did accept what he perceived to be the call of God to pursue the redemption of the world by becoming the President of World Vision. He did this despite the fact that he was enjoying a stable, satisfying, well-compensated professional life as the CEO of Lenox and despite the fact that he felt unqualified. He took a leap of faith.

I call attention to Stearns and his story because his articulation of the Gospel is powerful and connects with the ideas of a whole faith that this blog is exploring. The Gospel is a dynamic, life-changing force that begins our eternal and blessed life right now and in this world.

I also call attention to Stearns because I’m convinced that we need to create an international Christian organization as broad and large as World Vision dedicated to preserving and mending God’s earth which we have stood by and alllowed to be defaced and destroyed for too long.

You might know World Vision through its child sponsorship system, which allows people to sponsor children in poor communities around the world. That sponsorship funding then helps World Vision serve the communities in which those children live.

It serves communities in a wide variety of ways – from offering medical services and emergency aid to helping train community members in agriculture and protecting children from child trafficking, abuse, and neglect.

The scale of World Vision International is astonishing. World Vision International serves nearly 100 countries. It has 45,000 staff. Its revenues in 2013 reached $2.67 billion.

By contrast, the largest Christian international organization that I know of is A Rocha, which carries out education, research, and conservation projects. Its income in 2013 was $5.4 million.

How can we as Christians not be responding to problems of global environmental degradation at the scale of those problems?

World Vision is an inspiration. It brings together the resources and energies of thousands of churches and millions of Christians into one organization that can tackle poverty at a wide scale while working collaboratively at the local community level.

It’s time for a Christian organization to do the same thing for God’s earth. We need to bring our resources to bear on the forces depleting and disrupting God’s world at the scale of those forces.

And in light of the scale and moral urgency of the calamity unfolding in front of us, that organization needs to be as large as World Vision. Maybe larger.

This leads me to the painful conviction that right now the best use of the majority of our energies and resources is not in efforts to awaken local churches to a whole faith.

I suspect I’ve not been alone in long assuming a bottom-up approach was the way to go. I’ve dreamed that if enough churches came to care about God’s earth as part of a whole faith that this would lead eventually to changes in the lives and actions of individuals Christians. This, in turn, would them to bring about changes in their local communities. And this would eventually, gradually lead to changes to the culture and policies of their nations.

But the reality of the situation has come home to me. Even if that sequence would be assured of happening, it won’t happen fast enough nor at the right scale nor with the urgency and effectiveness that is needed.

Certainly, churches should preach and teach a whole faith that includes God’s Creation. I long to see a whole faith flourish at the local church level. I want to help that happen.

What I have seen, however, is that a whole faith typically faces considerable resistance, polite disinterest, or downright apathy. And that’s in the churches where the accepted doctrine would even allow you to have a conversation about the intrinsic value of the earth to God.

Those who do care tend to find themselves in Creation Care committees that do praiseworthy activities but have a hard time inspiring the whole congregation to act in concerted, coordinated ways and to create new habits of living. There are gatekeepers. There is cultural resistance. It’s perceived to be too radical and too costly.

And even if some churches began to move in those directions, individual churches just aren’t be able to deal systematically with the systematic ways God’s Creation is being violently diminished.

Rivers and coral reefs are dying. Creatures are going extinct. Too often the way we raise food mines the wealth of God’s world and doesn’t regenerate it. The world’s climate is changing. People, our neighbors in God’s eyes, are suffering and losing much because of these trends.  It will only get worse if these trends continue unabated.

Aralship2 photo

A ship left high and dry in the former Aral Sea (near Aral, Kazakhstan) that used to be the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world. Read about its slow death and see striking aerial images of the shrinkage since 2000 here.

Patient work at the level of local church is just not enough. Being content with recycling and using more energy-efficient light bulbs (all good things, of course) is like having a satisfied feeling in your heart after throwing a glass of cool water on a roaring fire that is engulfing a neighbor’s house.

And the limited number of Christians who care about God’s earth need to be strategic in where they use their limited time and resources.

It’s time for Christians to push themselves to be leaders in preserving and mending God’s world for God’s sake, for our neighbors’ sake, and for the sake of the diversity of life around us.

It’s time for Christians to bring all of their dynamism, compassion, innovation, and willingness to sacrifice for what is good to bear.

It’s time for the Church as a unified body of Spirit-filled communities to pool its resources in a new organizational arm that focuses on one thing – protecting and mending God’s earth – and to do so with all of the urgency, creativity, and prophetic passion God’s spirit can provide.

What exactly would this international organization do? What would make it uniquely Christian and uniquely valuable? And where would the money come from?

With fear and trembling, I’ll give my best answers to those questions in my next post.

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On Video: Our Father’s World

Nathan Aaberg —  November 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

In 2013 the 15,000-member Northland Church and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Bob Giguere teamed up to produce a video called Our Father’s World.  I encourage you to take the time to view it.  There is much inspiration and insight.

Here are a few things that struck me:

1.  We learn that Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church apologized that it took him 33 years to give a sermon about the importance of caring for God’s earth.  When was the last time you heard a sermon about this topic?

2.  The video contains a very strong vein of thought that the poor are the most vulnerable to the consequences of the degradation of God’s earth.

3.  A note that was heard once but then not picked up again was Matthew Sleeth’s comment that “sacrificial action” is required in the care of God’s earth. This is a profound and challenging insight.  Another speaker,  Dr. Sandy Richter of Wesley Biblical Seminary, notes that being Christian is inherently a countercultural calling but that Christians too often are so embedded in the culture that we the don’t live out what God actually desires.  Ironically, in this same video you’ll note that Bill Hybels seems worried that his message might make SUV owners in the audience uncomfortable.

4.  Tony Campolo puts his finger on something important when he calls attention to the fact that because Christians abdicated leadership on the issue of the environment some time ago there’s an instinctive suspicion of concern for the environment because the issue is now associated with New Age adherents.

5.  I particularly liked the section in which the pastor of Vineyard Boise talked about how some of his parishioners challenged him with the question of how they should vote – for the party that cares about the unborn or for the party that cares about how God’s earth is stewarded.

6.  Did you notice that in this nearly half-hour video wildlife and animals in general are hardly seen or mentioned? The phrase “the elephant in the room” never seemed more appropriate!  You don’t hear about how wildlife are under siege around the world and that habitat is being lost at a tremendous rate.  You don’t hear about God knowing every bird in the mountains and how those birds are disappearing.  You don’t hear that the extinction of species is the ultimate sign that we are failing at good stewardship of this earth.  You don’t hear about how poorly animals are sometimes treated in agricultural production.

7.  Did you notice that voluntary recycling and reduction of energy use are the default ideas for how we take action?  Those are important changes of habit but they do not go far enough in two different ways.  First, we have an impact on God’s world beyond waste and energy use.  One of the most important is what we eat.  Our food choices and our nation’s food policies have tremendous impact on the land, water, and animals that are ultimately God’s. This needs to be wrestled with, but this video doesn’t even touch it, except for a brief mention of thinking about where your coffee comes from.  Second, there’s a failure of logic when the proposed solution to a problem is not at the scale of the problem.  Small individual actions by individual churches and individual churches will not be enough to counter the tide of forces that are depleting and degrading God’s earth.

Finally, it is interesting that if you go to Northland Church’s website you really have to dig (look under Media &  Blogs then click on Blogs and then look for the link in the right column for Creation Care) to find any mention of the importance of caring for Creation.

And it is even more telling that the Purpose/Mission/Vision/Belief section does not address how we treat God’s earth at all.  (And to be fair, after years of looking at church websites, Northland is completely conventional in this way.)

Please don’t get me wrong.  I am very encouraged that a video like this would be produced with the idea of inspiring more people and churches to be good stewards.  It is a reminder that the radical idea that this earth matters is actually an orthodox, Biblically-based one.  It is a sign that perhaps there are seeds of change in mainstream churches. And I do understand that for Christians that have not thought about these issues before from this perspective, hitting them with too much too soon might be counterproductive.

But what we need and what we need quickly is for an active, action-oriented concern for the vitality and flourishing of all of God’s earth to become part of the spiritual DNA of every church and Christian.

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Finding a Church (or, Am I a Zealot?)

Nathan Aaberg —  September 16, 2014 — 2 Comments
©2010 Gospel Gifs

©2010 Gospel Gifs

It began with a breakfast with one of the pastors of a church that I’m considering having our family attend.

It was a warm, wide-ranging, honest conversation. There was much that he said about his church and how he said it that appealed to me. I eventually mentioned my convictions related to Christianity and God’s world. To my relief, the pastor didn’t disagree with me but said several interesting things.   One was that his wife had long desired for her faith life to include God’s earth and that she had had profound spiritual experiences with youth and other believers in the outdoors.

This sounds even more promising, I thought.

The next was not so promising. There had been a person at the church who had been very focused on the same things I am. Because he had been zealous and militant about them, however, the congregation had been turned off by him and by his message. Out of zeal and intolerance, he shut down any effort by the congregation’s members to enter into an open conversation about the topic and to explore all of its implications. Even the pastor’s wife, who would otherwise been energized by the idea of adding this dimensions to the church’s life, ended up being scarred and turned off by the experience.

By this story I believe the pastor was being as open and honest as he could be about what the congregation’s posture was toward the whole range of topics related to how we live in God’s world. I should not, in other words, expect great excitement or interest. Instead I should tread carefully on the topic as it would have some painful memories and emotions associated with it.

I must say that, to his credit, he did not dissuade me from my convictions nor did he suggest that the church would reject any dialog on the topic.

And this is where writing this piece becomes more difficult.

The obvious conclusion is that this is a cautionary tale about the damage to a church family by a believer who comes on too strong and with too much judgmental fervor on any particular topic. A person shouldn’t join a church in order to change it. The church’s traditions and approach to the faith should be honored and respected. And one’s sensitivity to one element of the Christian faith and Christian community life should not be expected to become the primary focus of a church one joins.

Zealotry is antithetical to being a contributing member of a faith community.

But where does a strong commitment to a whole conception of God and the life God wants us to live end and zealotry begin? What are we to do when we are convinced that the integrity and witness of the faith are compromised by how the church is treating (or ignoring) a particular issue?

Let’s consider an extreme example. If you were looking for a church to join in the South in the early 1800s, would you only be looking for a church with the right beliefs and with a warm, friendly congregation? Or would you also be considering what was believed at that church about the compatibility of slavery with God’s purposes? Would you pay attention to whether the church did or did not warmly welcome African Americans to participate as well?

The fruit that a church bears out of its beliefs and convictions says a great deal about those beliefs and convictions.

In the end, I realize that I’m torn between the desire to find a church home for my family and my desire to find a church where a consideration of God’s world is part of its spiritual and cultural fiber.

So does that conviction make me a zealot?

Zealots tend to be oblivious to how intense and disruptive their narrowly focused convictions are. They are not forgiving. They are not practical. They don’t see the whole set of values that need to be brought to bear on any situation.

And Jesus clearly did not make concern for Creation a litmus test on whether a person was worth loving and being with. Jesus did not even explicitly preach that concern for Creation was a fundamental element of following Him. You’d be hard pressed to find many churches throughout history that have given concern for God’s creation much standing.

In the end, however, I don’t think I’m a zealot. I do question myself. I respect the fact that there are many virtues and priorities that guide the Christian life and that we, as individuals and churches, must try to find paths that get everything as right as possible which is a difficult task. I don’t expect any church, all of which are composed of imperfect people like me, to get everything just right for my tastes or even to be in full accord with all that God expects. I am open to discussions about my convictions.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that a whole Christian faith includes concern and consideration for God’s world.

So what do I practically do in terms of finding a church? Here are the choices I see:

1.  Keep looking until I find a church where there is a consideration of Creation and where key elements of the faith are also taught.

2.  Look for a good, welcoming church that fits our family and focuses on other key elements of the Christian faith.  If it is considerate of Creation in even small ways, that’s a bonus.  If it doesn’t, I should just accept the community as it is while being ready to encourage the church (to the degree it’s willing), to gradually integrate its faith life with compassion for God’s earth over time.

3.  Team with others to start a new church or ministry which believes, among many core things, that its members should bear good fruit in their lives from their faith and that the good fruit should include kindness and mercy toward God’s world.

The first option, I fear, would essentially mean that my family would not be going to church or would have to travel very far each Sunday. I’ve visited the websites for many of the churches in the area over the past five years and it’s nearly impossible to find a church where Creation is even on the radar screen in terms of how the church defines its beliefs and what matters.

The second option is probably the most realistic in terms of finding a church fairly soon and in fairly close proximity to home. I’m sensitive to the fact that if everyone expected to find a church that was perfect and that lined up exactly with each person’s finest nuance of beliefs and principles we’d end up with millions of one-person churches. Some effort must be made to focus on the essentials of what a Christian church should be. One of those essential points is worshipping God with joy and awe and gratitude for God’s grace through Jesus Christ.

The reality is that all of the weight of centuries of unconcern for Creation expresses itself in the theology and messages and culture of today’s churches. And what’s more, the culture of our civilization exerts a strong gravitational pull upon our churches. That culture assumes that nature is strictly there for our purposes and must essentially accommodate itself to us. That dominant culture deems it subversive that people (much less communities and governments) would voluntarily moderate their desires and their convenience to allow God’s earth to flourish. In light of those factors, the odds of finding a church with a whole faith are very, very small.

The best that can be hoped for is to help move a church incrementally towards a concern for Creation in ways that make sense to the church community. The zealot can, as the pastor’s story revealed, do more damage than good to the church and to the righteousness that she wants to inspire others to pursue.

The problem I have with the second option is this: after more than a decade of meditation and learning and prayer I cannot escape my conviction that a whole faith inspires a conversion of our spirit into compassion and hunger for what is right in every aspect of our lives.  Not showing compassion and not trying to doing what is right and just for God’s Creation actually impairs and taints the rest of all that we try to do.

Life is short. Time is short. Time is against the natural systems of God’s earth in the face of what humanity is doing. People are being harmed by what is done to God’s earth. Living creatures are being cruelly harmed and destroyed on an epic scale by what is being done to God’s earth. We are dishonoring God by failing to be the shepherd-like stewards of what God has entrusted to us.

So that leads me, reluctantly, to look hard at the third option.

A radical option. It also sounds challenging on a multitude of levels. Could a church or ministry like that be created without losing other essentials of the faith along the way? And what would my children’s experience be? Would I be in any way competent to do so? Could I handle the criticism that would come our way? Would anyone actually show up???

I need to wrestle more with this. I feel untethered, unrooted, and hungry for community with other followers of God. But I see the world in a different way and am unwilling to go along to get along. Perhaps this is how the prophets felt? On the other hand, perhaps there are more nuanced options and opportunities I haven’t considered?

I know I must decide and move forward. I’ll share the journey here with you and welcome your wisdom.

 

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