There are those who have something “akin to a religious experience” in the wonders, or mysteries, of nature. So experiencing a beautiful sunset, staring up at the night sky, holding a new born baby, all tend to do this, at least some of the time. The recipient might not have a full sense of who they are grateful to, might run around the hospital thanking staff for a gift they didn’t exactly give, but they know something of the experience calls to their depths.
Bigger frames emerge, a sense of wholeness, meaning, gratitude and joy. Astronauts also seem to commonly report that sense when they look down on the whole planet – seeing with fresh eyes the sphere we live on, all in one vision.
And here, we have to acknowledge something fundamental, both obvious and difficult. That is, experience changes us.`I like the Avatar film for that picture – you see the marine, a dutiful soldier, gradually awakening to the wonder of the new planet he is immersed on, drawn to its people. His military buddies think he has “gone native” and reckon him as the enemy. Some of the attitudes he used to have, have dissolved. Some new senses have opened.
My daughter showed me a video they watched in biology, of David Attenborough – producing something of a final testament; a witness statement to his life’s work and the state of the world as he sees it. (A life on our planet)
Like most of us, I’ve watched his work on and off over the years, admiring the footage and his wonder, and almost comically earnest, boyish manner.
He is something like, in my view, the father with a new born, finding wonder in creation, and also finding pain – the increasing crisis of habitat destruction – and not sure what to do with either.
He talks of great trauma and loss as he watches the planet suffer degradation, loss of biodiversity, as its species suffer. And against this grim picture, he sees hope we can still change things.
He doesn’t align either of those elements, the wonder, the damage, the hope, into any narrative of creation, or fall, or sense of new creation. He says somewhere that nature is too violent for him to see God in it.
But he is not consistent – he might not believe, but he does borrow from a religious framework. He looks at pre-industrial society as more in touch with nature – more of a “garden of Eden” stage, in his words. He speaks of evolution’s “talent for design”. These phrases hardly square with what a strict atheist might be expected to say –it’s not a disinterested view of a meaningless creation. He also wants to say humanity is culpable of mismanagement.
So these feelings are a bit out of focus – inconsistent both with his atheism and with a full theistic understanding of where humanity has gone wrong. But like many of his age, he seems to borrow, almost unconsciously, from some of that religious framework, uses it for moral and existential resonance even while not fully owning it, or explicitly fighting it.
So what can we say of his passionate concerns? Does theology just censure the great naturalist for not subscribing to a decent doctrine of creation. Surely there is something in his life’s work, exploring the wonders of creation and its suffering.
Can we not agree with those who see the planet suffering and groaning?
So, a question. Don’t we also know that creation is groaning? Take the apostle Paul, in the midst of explaining the new creation state in the believing heart, in Romans 8. There is more happening there than just our new Spirit experience as Christ rescues us from sin, powerful as all that is. The implications of what is started and coming are creation wide.
So Paul, already experiencing the powerful first fruits of the redemptive Spirit, says he groans alongside creation (Romans 8) as he, and it, wait for a greater freedom.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.( Who hopes for what they already have?
Romans 8:22-25
What time line is this? Well, whatever it is, it is parallel to Paul’s current experience – still groaning inwardly even though he has received the Spirit that enacts the freedom him from sin and death. (“no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk by the Spirit” 8:1). And then he chooses a widening of the lens to the say the whole of creation is groaning right at that point.
He doesn’t forget Genesis as the big picture, when he talks of spiritual experience. It’s all still connected.
This wider lens occurs just when it seems his focus has got quite personal, an introspective look at “me and God and the law” in the preceding chapter, and “jews and gentiles” before that. And just when it seems to centre on a new personal experience in Christ , it suddenly opens up to creation wide discussion. He knows the big picture starts with Genesis.
I wonder if a firm “military” understanding of the church will think this discussion is going native, or green, or some other term, here. But, if so, one can only reply that experience changes things. Experience of how the creation is groaning, waiting, to know the reconciliation.
One example – I was quite moved as we watched some whales approach the boat we were on, in Queensland recently. You can’t put it in words, except to say, watching the curious creatures, so massive and sentient, is something like staring at the stars. A sense of wonder, an integrative view just emerges, for many. So some in our group laughed in joy and wonder, while others were also half suffused in tears, as these huge animals rose so near to us, tracking alongside the boat for hours. On some days enough trust builds in both direction that people swim with them.
And to think that particular species (humpback) was hunted to near extinction, and their numbers have now come back, as one of the great success stories of the ecological movement, was also moving. So watching half a dozen of these young males skite along beside us, with dolphins circling alongside, is moving in ways you can’t quite name. The whales travel thousands of miles a year, with complex songs communicating – and the dolphins seemed to be playing, an event that looked like curiosity on all sides, as three species all watched each other, curiously, cautiously.
We would do well, I think, to have a philosophy and hopefully a theology that can hold all this. We might picture ourselves on the Titanic, scrambling aboard salvation life boats – to use a common image. But we should be careful not to imply too much – or too little – here, as if to say who cares about the natural world, or anything else, when it’s all going down, or burning up. That reduction is only useful insofar as we urge the necessary steps aboard – and in that moment, we do have to grapple with choosing a narrow way apart from the vanity of all else.
But taking that essential moment of rescue as the single lens on everything, is too simplistic. We need a proper grounding in the goodness of creation as well, or it can lead to poor thinking. In these polarised times we sometimes see suspicion towards those who have felt the wounding of nature more deeply than we have. “You care more about trees than people’s souls, <or this other hot button issue>” is sometimes the accusation. But it is not a very useful critique. We shouldn’t have to rank things like that; both those who sense the urgency of the human drama and those who feel the cry of creation, have a piece of the story. The salvation metaphors should tell us the ark has room for both. The animals also came aboard, if we want to use that urgent rescue image.
The groaning creation is waiting, according to Romans, for redeemed ones to come forth.
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 1 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God
Roman 8:18-21
It’s not clear to me exactly how the resets and redemptions and resurrections will occur as the promised new age is brought to fullness. I’m not convinced the details of that hope aren’t surrounded in some mystery, to be approached in faith, but more on that anon.
But our basic sense of both wonder and compassion hints that that there is bigger picture at work than just being taken out of creation. All things are made through him, and for him, and are redeemed in him. So, the gospel urges us to enter the new creation that starts around Jesus’ death and resurrection. But the good news echoes to the whole creation. We should pick that up as well, have something in common in those who start by lamenting that deep groaning as well. And instead of waiting for the new heavens before we do anything to address this, to speak and see reconciliation here as well, consider – maybe Revelation doesn’t exactly encourage that. It does give a warning of “destroying those who destroy the earth”. (11:18)” And Paul, rejoicing in the Spirit as Christ makes him free, still knows creation groans, and that something of the (coming ?) glory of God in us is meant to answer that cry. Maybe that only culminates in a future era and state. But seems it also starts now, as surely as the Spirit is given and the new creation starts to come forth in us.
(For an academic theology of this, Jurgen Moltmann was here by 1973 – and deeply orthodox in the usual sense, not that I have read too much of him.)
Antioch Exchange 