Why and how Christians care about the Climate, key note lecture by Claire Foster at the "Climate Change: How Christians Respond" conference
Introduction
Having heard the facts about climate change, may I invite you to take a step back in order to reflect on a proper Christian response? I offer the analogy of the bow and arrow by way of justification. The further back the bow is drawn, the further and truer the arrow will fly. Non-governmental organisations involved in the environment have become very interested in the role that Faiths can play, not only because they offer large constituencies of concerned people, but also because they are familiar with the realm of human experience where perceptions can change. When perceptions change action can follow.
Human ingenuity and creativity has shown itself to be capable of having a profound and lasting effect on the elements of this world. There is something about humans - us - isn't there, that just can't bear to leave things along. We want to `pass everything through our hands' as John Zizoulis wrote. We want to experiment, alter, improve, adapt our environment. Unlike other creatures, which on the whole adapt to the environment they find themselves in, or if they can't, go and find a different environment, we have been pretty good at changing the world we live in to suit our wishes and needs, and this tendency has grown with the growing sophistication of our technology. Some prophets see a time coming where this tendency is taken to its logical limit, where we create an entirely artificial environment. EO Wilson predicts this. He calls it the `eremezoic era' - the era of loneliness. For it will happen, he argues, not through our desire or free choice, but through necessity. Humanity will have so poisoned the natural environment, the environment that Rowan Williams calls a gift, that we cannot any longer exist in it.
Growth without limit
Part of the reason for our tampering with the environment is, I would argue, entirely natural. We like doing it, and we can be exceptionally creative about it. Look at the great buildings and sculptures and paintings and other works of art that are the things of the natural world transformed by human hands. Much of the rural landscape we love and enjoy has been shaped by humans. Look at the acts of productivity and trade that people quite naturally engage in with each other, forming communities of shared effort such that everyone doesn't have to do everything for him or her self.
Economic activity, understood in this broad sense, can easily get out of hand, however, and others have written about the causes and consequences of the project of growth without limit, with no end in view except that of growth itself. I'm thinking particularly of the Bishop of London, who's book Tree of knowledge, tree of life (Continuum) has just been published. He deals with this subject most persuasively. We can see in our own lives what a governing idea growth for its own sake is, and how exhausting it can be. Just as speed and competition and busyness wear our own bodies out, so they wear out the planet. See the heat that is created from so much rushing about. Today we are focussing on one particular cost to the environment of such excess, namely climate change. In this address, I should like to offer some suggestions for a proper Christian response to this glorious creation in which we find ourselves. My suggestions are first of all spiritual, contemplative and to do with perception. My hope is that such suggestions will elicit a change of heart, a metanoia, that will ensure an openness to the advice on practical action that much of the rest of the day will provide. We don't want, in our own haste to help, to miss the silence in which wisdom can speak and direct our actions.
The creation covenant
The first principle is the covenant that God made with Noah and the whole creation. This was not just with human beings but with all creatures, the web of relationships that makes our living planet. “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations… When the bow is in the clouds I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” (Gen 9.12,16).
The Hebrew word for covenant, berith, is very similar to the special word used for divine creative activity, bara. The root of these words conveys the sense of binding. Creation is bound to the invisible God and to itself in a web of interrelationship. Sever one part and every other part is affected. Sever enough parts and the whole web falls apart.
Scientists tell us that it is not possible to separate human beings - or any other beings - from the environment in which they developed. That is, living beings did not find their abode on the earth and adapt. Rather the environment and organisms evolved together, so that it is not really possible to separate them and think of one existing despite the other, or as a tenant of the other, or on the face of the other. Theologians and mystics concur with this perception. Hildegard of Bingen wrote:
God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else.
In her description of the first stage of contemplation, Evelyn Underhill takes her readers through a process that leads them to an awareness that `St Francis was accurate as well as charming when he spoke of Brother Wind and Sister Water'.
Jacques Lusseyran, blinded as a young boy, describes his experience of the universe thus:
Yet there was something still more important than movement, and that was pressure. If I put my hand on the table without pressing it, I knew the table was there, but knew nothing about it. To find out, my fingers had to bear down, and the amazing thing is that the pressure was answered by the table at once. Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead. I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplishment of all my wishes… If my fingers pressed the roundness of an apple, each one with a different weight, very soon I could not tell whether it was the apple or my fingers which were heavy. I didn't even know whether I was touching it or it was touching me. As I became part of the apple, the apple became part of me. And that was how I came to understand the existence of things…
Before I was ten years old I knew with absolute certainty that everything in the world was a sign of something else, ready to take its place if it should fall by the way. And this continuing miracle of healing I heard expressed fully in the Lord's Prayer I repeated at night before going to sleep.
This deeply shared history is why we experience nature as restorative, and why the eremezoic era would be so very terrible, so very lonely. We would miss our relations!
The sacrament of creation
Closely allied with the notion of the cosmic covenant is the second Lambeth principle of the sacredness of creation. Creation is sustained and given life continually by the Holy Spirit. It is the expression of God. It is not to be mistaken for God but because God is its true inwardness and being no part of it is without God's sacred presence. Therefore no part of it can be thought of as other, or outside. There is no “away” where we can throw things, no “other” whom we can exploit for our own ends.
Julian of Norwich wrote:
See, I am God: see, I am in all things: see, I do all things: see, I never lift my hands off my works, nor ever shall, without end: see, I lead all things to the end that I ordain it to, from without-beginning, by the same might, wisdom and love that I made it with. How should anything be amiss?
This principle echoes “Word made flesh”. `Manichees despise matter; pagans worship matter; materialists are largely indifferent to matter. It is Christians who, because of the Incarnation, revere matter as it leads them to God' said Richard Chartres in his opening address in the recent debate in General Synod. The very corporeality of Christ and his identification with the cosmos means that we can experience him and his redeeming power through this material world. Similarly, our responsibility is to all of creation; “the least of these my brothers and sisters” of the parable in Matthew 25 did not just mean other humans.
The role of humanity
Some argue that the human species is at best irrelevant and at worst a rogue species of rapacious bipeds that has dominated the planet to terrible effect. A great king went to a priest to ask for spiritual guidance. The priest said immediately, `sleep as long as possible'. The king was astonished. How would that help his faith to grow? `It would limit the damage you are doing to others', was the priest's reply.
What is the proper place of humanity on the planet? The Bible offers three roles: prophets, priests and kings (Hart p 3).
A prophet is a seer: one who perceives things as they truly are, that is, shown by God, and who speaks of what he or she sees.
When people see the world as independent, objective and separate from its Creator, they are like the prodigal son who takes his share of the universe and turns his back on his Maker. After he has finished investigating it and using it for himself he is left with the empty husk of old knowledge, knowing that there is something missing, the most important thing, which is not his material well-being.
To be a prophet is to be primarily receptive. Simone Weil, writing about prayer as attention, said:
Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object… Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it… The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?”... This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.
(Weil p 62)
Once the prophet sees, s/he stands in awe. When asked what he was doing in a place, a monk simply said, `keeping it' (Chryssavgis p 33). The prophet understands the power of silent observation. Intelligent contemplation of things as they really are, restraining the urge to experiment, interfere, change or improve, is a service humanity can offer the whole created order, and its effects cannot be underestimated. What is seen is understood, and what is understood is loved. If no time is made simply to see what is, it will not be missed it until it has gone forever, and then it will be too late. Starets Zosima says in The Brothers Karamazov:
Love all of God's creation, love the whole, and love each grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love animals, love plants, love every kind of thing. If you love every kind of thing, then everywhere God's mystery will reveal itself to you. Once this has been revealed to you, you will begin to understand it ever more deeply with each passing day. And finally you will be able to love the whole world with an all-encompassing universal love.
(Doestoyevsky p 399-400)
Once s/he sees, the prophet must speak. Christ exemplified this. His programme of work, as declared in Luke 4, can be understood in a way that is directly relevant to this theme:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19)
It is a prophetic role to speak of the beauty and goodness of the creation; to make people see things as they really are; and to free the earth (in this context) from the oppression of exploitation, ignorance and plunder.
The priest is primarily active, and this role recognises the human tendency to pass everything that exists through our hands. We may choose to do this in order to transform it, acting as God's servants, and this is to become a priest of creation. Standing between earth and heaven, the priest can bring God's blessing on all the earth, by caring for it as God's steward, not its master. The priest's hands become God's hands, and through Him what is touched is transformed. For some, this is most clearly demonstrated in the eucharistic feast. The elements of earthly reality, the bread and wine, become a means of grace for human beings and also themselves receive new meaning and status as they are offered to God. The offertory prayer acknowledges the balance between what has been given by God and what part humanity has played in transforming it:
Blessed be God through whom we have this bread to offer which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.
The third human role is that of kingship. The servant-king defends the rights of the poor and disadvantaged, but kingship also implies dominion:
And God blessed them, and God said to them, `Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'
(Gen 1:28)
A wrong understanding of human dominion over the earth has had devastating consequences. What might the proper meaning of the verse be? Does it imply, if not tyrannical lordship, at the very least some sort of pivotal leadership role in relation to the earth? Does the earth depend on humans in any way?
Dominion should be an exercise of viceregency: lordship under God. The biblical term for humanity's relationship with creation is `steward'. A steward is a servant who relates to God, on whose behalf s/he exercises dominion. S/he is also called to render an account to God of his/her stewardship of tilling and keeping.
St Paul calls Christ the Second Adam. Remember that the first Adam was created to `till and keep' - to serve and preserve - the Garden before the Fall. In Romans 8 St Paul says that creation was caught in bondage to decay - futility, going nowhere - waiting for the Sons of God, disciples of Christ, to set it free. These `Second Adams' are called to till and keep the land, to restore the fertility of the earth. This is real kingship.
The sabbath feast of enoughness
The fourth and last Lambeth principle is that of the Sabbath - the feast of enoughness. In the roaring voracity of desire that can so consume our waking hours and even our sleep in dreams, our religion calls us to stop. Completely, properly, for a period of time. Not just to pause for breath before carrying on consuming, but to take a deep dive into God's peace. In the Genesis description of the creation, the crown of all creation is not man, created on the sixth day, but the Sabbath, in which God himself took a rest - and one does not imagine he did so because he was tired. Such a rest is to be offered not only to humans but to all creation. Leaving land fallow, forgiving debts and returning goods are all part of the jubilee call to stop awhile and be still. Have you noticed how unbelievably hard that is for us these days?
Conclusion
I hope I have shown that a thoughtful Christian understanding of God's creation and our place in it helps us to see how to respond to its needs. We need to get our facts right, and we need to study our own rich Christian tradition to understand why this is an issue for us to address. First of all, though, what is needed is a change of heart, a shift in attitude, an inner realisation or clearing of perception. With a distorted perception we cannot see what is there. With true perception we can, and we can respond truly. The biggest obstacle to true perception and sincere response is self-interest, born of fear and desire. These are hardly Gospel imperatives.
(Claire Foster kindly sent us the text of her talk)
