Eco Friendly… Or Expectant?

As a newly-wed, I find it exhausting doing housework. It literally never ends. Just once, I’d like to be able to think “and THAT is the last load of washing for 6 months.” I’ve even been thinking about buying more underwear so it can be longer between washes! Coming from a share-house, and before that a mum-house, chores and housework were sporadic and rostered – not constant, and definitely not everything. And the worst is when you leave it, juuuuuust for a little while…. Then BOOM! the house is a disaster area, and I’m looking around thinking ‘In such a colossal mess, where do I start?’ and I end up just sitting in front of the television with my eyes blinkered to all else.

I think lots of things in life are like that: when the problems seem overwhelming, it’s tricky to know how to tackle it. And that is what happened with this ecology stuff; the more I read Baulkham’s book, the more snowed under I felt. I started researching this and that, and realising that the problem is so big, and so complex, and so messy… at the same time as trying to remember the humility of being a creature…that the only thing to do was sit down and have a glass of wine.

That’s why Chapter 5 “From Alpha to Omega” was so encouraging – it re-centred everything around Christ, and helped me to refocus on the end goal: everything truly under the Lordship of Christ.

“Because Christ is the creator of all things, the destiny of all things is bound up with his. Because all things were made ‘for him’, he will ensure that they reach his goal.”

This is where motivation comes into play: what will keep me taking these issues seriously and doing something about them in my life is that a) Jesus will achieve the end, and b) in His doing so, I'm taking part in Jesus' goals. When we lose sight of the bigger picture, things become more complicated or hard or tedious than they need to be. Another example would be that just like when we find it hard to evangelise (although in a sense the stakes are higher there), we need to remember that we're part of what God is doing in the world, and can therefore take joy in doing small things, even in fitful starts. What matters is attitude (or ‘mattitude’ for short): what can we reasonably expect from caring about the creation now as God sees it?

“… to see the creation whole we must see it in relation to the crucified and risen Jesus.”

The answer, as it always is (and it should always be), is in Jesus. In being found in Him, we know where we’re headed – and that means we know where all of creation is headed. And just as our hearts and bodies are being transformed and will be completely renewed, so too is the eco-system that provides for our needs, and that we need to tend to much better than we currently do, for the sake and the name of JESUS.

Eco Friendly…or Greedy?

For most of my life when I was growing up, I had a room to myself. I could do what I liked with the arrangement of my furniture, my toys, my clothes, and my ‘stuff’. I was not a particularly tidy person (still not!), so imagine my frustration when my parents insisted that I keep my room both clean and tidy. Dirty plates and cups would apparently attract cockroaches and rats; leaving my stuff around would get it dirty, damaged, or lost. Instead, I would greedily and selfishly insist “But it’s MY stuff and MY room so who cares?!” Neither the rest of the house, nor the people in it, really came into my worldview.

It’s a little embarrassing for me to admit that as I read Baulkham’s third chapter, “The Community of Creation”, I realised that I haven’t really grown up since then. I still see my things as MINE, the house I inhabit MINE, and the creation I inhabit as irrelevant or merely serving my needs. I would do better, as Baulkham suggests, to have a more theocentric rather than an egocentric or even anthropocentric view of my world, and realise that:

“The presuppositions of Jesus’ creation theology are very far from the wasteful excess and the constant manufacture of new needs and wants in our contemporary society. Jesus intends to liberate his disciples from that anxious insecurity about basic needs that drives people to feel that they never have enough. But in our society… [there is] an obsessive anxiety to maintain an ever-rising standard of living. It is this obsessive consumption that is depleting and destroying the resources of nature and depriving both other species and many humans of the means even of mere subsistence.”

To use the bedroom analogy, as an 8 year old clearly my view of the world was egocentric and greedy: “my” stuff was of course gifted to me or even really owned by my parents, just as the things I have and inhabit now are gifts of a good God to me. And like my attracting gross pests from dirty dishes to one room in the house would naturally bring them to others, or needing to constantly replace the things I lose/break, the way I live my life impacts other humans and creatures. Our society operates on the anthropocentric view of the world, not caring what happens to the creation so long as their “room” is left up to their own devices – even though nobody lives in a bubble, and what happens in their room does affect others.

Baulkham’s chapter poses an interesting tension to walk: how to live with both joy and mourning in this beautiful but ultimately frustrated creation? Again, I think the bedroom analogy helps. If I had been more thankful to my parents, more appreciative of what they gave me, it would have been a pleasure and a joy to not only have them but to care for my things as needed AND enjoy helping the house to be a beautiful (and clean) place! Perhaps instead of expecting or demanding ‘new’ things all the time at their cost, I would have been better to go without, and learn what it means to trust that I can be happy, even without my ‘stuff’. As Baulkham says:

“… if we accept the diagnosis that human wrongdoing is responsible for ecological degradation, it follows that those who are concerned to live according to God’s will for his world must be concerned to avoid and to repair damage to God’s creation as far as possible.”

So here are a couple of exercises I thought of to try and reflect more of the tension of mourning and praising that this chapter suggests:

1.     Imagine your life as a ‘room’ in God’s ‘house’. What are the impacts on the ‘house’ around you that you have been ignoring? How can you show your appreciation more?

2.     What things can you go without replacing, to teach you to mourn for the brokenness of creation and trust Jesus to still provide you with all that you need?

Eco Friendly…or Manipulative?

I am truly terrible at gardening. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy it – I love watching things I’ve planted blossom, and digging away in the sunshine. But I am not a patient person (by any stretch of the imagination!), nor someone who likes to relinquish control, and gardening is the very epitome both of patience and powerlessness. Yes, I pick the location, I water, I fertilize, I watch. But to my ongoing frustration, I cannot command those plants to grow and flourish, any more than I can command my waistline to shrink!

Baulkham’s second chapter, 'Putting us in our place', is a stark and beautiful reminder that not only gardening, but the whole of creation is outside of our control. As I re-read Job 38-41 Job’s story appeared in my mind’s eye. A man who lost everything – family, money, security, even his own health – and who questions God’s justice in taking it away. God’s rhetoric is breathtaking in its scope and authority, as he rightly declares “How dare you! You didn’t create nor do you control those things, for I gave them to you.” Our culture is similarly arrogant and proud of its attempt at dominion over creation as it throws away considerations of humaneness, morality, and sustainability for the gods of convenience, prosperity and security. We attempt to exert a greater degree of control than has actually been given to us! And I think there are two spheres where this is particularly evident.

Sphere one: control of the ‘happens everyday’

This is our attempt to control our everyday activities and needs through the purchasing of stuff in order to be ‘comfortable’. But we rarely spend time researching where our clothes, phones, TVs, and food are made, or under what conditions, or question who actually benefits from the profits? Our culture declares loudly “Who cares?” as long as it’s cheap, and made available to me at whatsoever time I choose. Since reading this book, I’ve been prompted to re-look at everything I own and ask “Is that cheaper because child-labour was used? Are these coffee beans from areas that have suffered deforestation and owned by companies that failed to treat their workers fairly?”

Sphere two: control of the ‘might possibly happen’

This is our culture’s attempt to control the more unknown, potentially damaging events through giving money to companies in order to ‘protect’ ourselves and our stuff. Medical insurance, contents insurance, house insurance, life insurance… all in the event of the mystical "what if" that these companies work really hard to perpetuate in order for us to hand over our money. Our culture fears what ‘might’ happen and believes the solution is having more money.

But if Job (and Baulkham) teaches us anything, all of these attempts at control are laughable. What has been given to us can be taken away at a moment’s notice – and if we believe in a Creator-God, then we need to daily remind ourselves of this fact, and try to see all things – humans and the created world – as loved by Him, not as being subservient to our desires and plans. “What if” we thought about giving our money to our fellow creatures and humans who need it, and making sure that it isn’t going to companies that destroy God’s creation as we grow in humility before the God of dominion?

So, on reflection I’ve decided that I need to persevere with my gardening – as a metaphor of the much grander lesson that it is God who has dominion, and I need to cultivate (haha) patience, powerlessness and humility, rather than manipulation and control.

NB As a small step, I’ve downloaded the app “Shop Ethical 2012” so I can see which companies do what, and are owned by who etc. to get a more accurate picture of where the money that I spend on food goes to. 

Environmentally Friendly… or Apathetic?

I confess that on the issue of ‘environmentalism’ I tend to flip-flop. As a resident of the Inner West of Sydney, I’m very often in conversations (both with Christians and non-Christians) that centre around how important it is to shop ethically, make sure you know where your produce comes from, eat less meat, reduce your carbon foot-print…and on and on it goes. As a Christian, the concept of ‘responsible stewardship’ is thrown around to add weight to the argument. It feels great to care passionately about the environment and be a bit ‘trendy’ to boot.

And then there are times when, quite honestly, I think “What difference does this make?” This world will pass away eventually, and I’m only ONE person in millions, and I like the convenience of mass-produced, right-there-on-the-shelf, in the giant-supermarket-that-has everything-I-need-in-one-shop food, and there are countless more important things to be caring about!

That’s why reading the first chapter of Richard Baukham’s book, Bible and Ecology, hit me square between the eyes: ecology is more than just an issue to care about; it’s a framework for understanding how we operate in the world that God himself has made! And this first chapter helped me to see that the world is not the only thing He has made– we, as humans, are a part of the created world, not demi-gods free to do whatever we like with it. I felt confronted with my own underlying assumptions that the idea of ‘stewardship’ meant that in some sense we are more important than the other creatures because we are ‘made in the image of God.’ I had not considered that he had lovingly crafted this earth into being and cared for all the creatures and life on it, or that

“…we belong to the earth more than it belongs to us, that we are more dependent on it than it is on us, that we are of the earth, not on the earth.”

It was actually a little bit fun to realise afresh that we do in fact need the creation in order to survive. This is a humbling and simultaneously exhilarating thought.

Humbling, because if we see the creation and all its wondrous complexity as belonging to someone else, then we know that we are not in control of it or causing any of it to even exist. We can be less anxious about trying to ‘save’ the world through our efforts, and revel in our creatureliness, enjoying the good things that God has put here for his creatures to interact with. But exhilarating, because as creatures made in God’s image and given a special task to do, we don’t want to be slacking off on the job. And therein lies the beauty – we get to be creative (haha) in humbly thinking of ways to tend God’s creation, using the eyes of our Creator as we look at His world, and ask “How would He have me look after the other creatures and life he has made?” Baukham’s argument has challenged me not only to stop flip-flopping, but to alter my heart and eyes in growing a heart for the whole world that God has put me in, and not just care about the convenience of my immediate life.

About our contributor: My name is Alison Glover, having recently married Richard Glover :) I studied a BA at Sydney University, where I met my husband, but more importantly, where I met Jesus on a more personal and confronting level than I ever had before. Though growing up in a genuinely Christian home, I had never been exposed to the Jesus that the Christian group taught so fervently about at great depth. I felt so many things about life make so much more sense, and I began to care more about the student ministry and their work that was happening on campus more than my studies! After completing my BA, I completed a two-year ministry training course with the same group, and this year am working for a school whilst I prayerfully consider where Jesus would have me be next.

I care passionately about my family (who are wonderful), literature (which I studied), cheese (which is delicious) and church (as vital to my faith).