Having grown up, as all of us have, in twentieth century America, it is very difficult
to believe that there is anything about the creation that we might have lost. All of our
education has underlined for us the idea that we are at the forefront of progress,
particularly in our control of the physical world. Our science and technology have made it
possible to do things not even imagined a century or two ago. Our economic system has led
to a standard of living inaccessible to the wealthiest monarch of Middle Ages. And,
indeed, it is true that God has given us most remarkable blessings through our science and
technology and our economic and political systems. Our forgetfulness that it is God who
has done this led to our elevating these things to the place reserved only for the Lord
and thus to our becoming embroiled in very powerful modern idolatries.
Neither our textbooks nor our teachers were usually prone to point out, however, that our
advances have had a heavily shadowed side. The inordinate growth of pollution worldwide,
the inability of societies to use wisely the awesome power of the atom, the increasing gap
between wealth and poverty, and the explosive growth of human rights violations have been
parts of the price at which material progress has been purchased.
Nor did our instructors make clear to us that the advent of the scientific revolution and
the Enlightenment marked a radical change in the attitude of Christian Europeans toward
created things. Up to that time the creation had been thought of as a means to both the
knowledge and the service of God. There were exceptions to this attitude, and some of them
were wide-ranging and grievous, but, in general, people did not think of things as ends in
themselves. Now, with the objectification of "nature," nature came to be viewed
as an end in itself. The conquest of nature would lead, it was thought, to new levels of
peace and prosperity in the world.
What was not widely noticed at the time, and is still not widely recognized today, is
something that C.S. Lewis has argued forcefully for in The Abolition of Man. To
conquer the creation we have had to reduce it to "nature," to mere stuff that we
can manipulate at our will and for our pleasure. The logical conclusion to this
development is that humans themselves will be reduced to "nature" and will be
manipulated by whatever humans happen to have the political and military power to do so.
Conquering nature leads in the end to being conquered by nature. The glitter of seeming
immediate gain blanks out the appalling abyss of ultimate total loss. The present century
has seen enough instances of genocide to alarm anyone who is awake and thinking.
Turning nature from a means into an end is a very old practice. It lies at the heart of
sin of our parents in the Garden. The forbidden fruit, which was created thing, became for
them something to enjoy, something to possess, and the spring of an advanced level of
being, but all apart from God. They believed the lie that a created thing could provide
what they had so far experienced only from the hand and the Presence of God Himself. The
consequence was that they lost the Garden. Because they could no longer see it as a
channel for God’s self-revelation to them or use it as a means to serve and worship
Him, they were driven out to make their perilous way in a cursed creation.
The last two issues of The Mind Field have suggested that there are flaws in our
doctrine of the creation, flaws which have effectively prevented us from understanding and
using it as God intended we should. Our gain in control of creation has achieved at the
cost of our true knowledge and use of it. But, thank God, Christ has come to restore the
creation to us and to provide forgiveness for our timing it from a means into an end. In
His life and ministry he understood the creation as God’s means of speaking to us,
and his parables were full of it. He used the creation as an offering or sacrifice to the
Father, ultimately accomplishing the paramount sacrifice in the offering of His own
created human life on cross that we might be forgiven and restored. Luke 9:31 speaks of
this as "his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." In this
issue we want to pursue some of the practical ways in which the recovery of the lost
creation can be experienced in our daily lives.
THE BODY AS A TEMPLE
Let’s begin with the physical world, and, within that world, the part most
intimately known to us - our own bodies. In a world of ultrasound fetal scans, of aerobics
sophisticated to the last pulse beat, and of nutritional awareness - not to say hysteria -
unimaginable even fifty years ago, could it be that we have "lost" our physical
bodies? We feed them scientifically, exercise them, (or know we ought to) religiously, and
medicate them by the best doctor’s advice we can find. But in the process have we
robbed of the sense of what they really are? As T.S. Eliot puts it in "The
Rock," "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we
have lost in information?"
The first thing we claim to believe about our bodies, if we are professing Christians, is
that God created them. It is not that He made our first parents by creative fiat and then
left the process of procreation to continue mechanically and automatically to the present
day. He created you and me just definitely, albeit a little differently, than He created
Adam and Eve. The breathtaking odyssey in which sperm and egg unite to form the cell in
which lie imbedded the labyrinthine complexities of full grown human being are not the
product of autonomous human sovereignty or of "natural law." God still breathes
into each newborn human being the breath of life, and it becomes a living soul.
The implications are far reaching. However strongly I may feel about my own body, it is
not finally mine, but His who formed. However independent I may feel, especially when well
buttressed with financial and emotional security, I am deeply dependent being. I may
cherish the right to direct my way, but it is a right I really do not have.
But there is more to being created. The ongoing wellbeing of my physique is not the
product of merely natural forces - good food, exercise, medical care, and social
protections. I am held in being moment by moment by the powerful, loving Word of the
Living God. Digestion, breathing, and the circulatory system are not "natural
laws" which operate with some kind of inherent autonomy. They are part of God’s
covenant with His creation (Genesis 9:15; Jeremiah 33:20), and, like all other things,
they "hold together," only in Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:17). In words of the
hymn, "To all life thou givest, to both great and small; in all life thou livest, the
true life of all." This is not pantheism, and it must be held along with a constant
remembrance of God’s transcendence, but it is part of Biblical doctrine of God’s
immanence in the world. It is a part that we deeply need to remember. I find, for example,
that the rising surge of anger at a knotted shoelace is relieved by the recollection that
the lace, too, is simply responding faithfully to covenant with the Word of the Lord.
There is another side to a Biblical view of the body. It is created, but it is also
fallen. It belongs to a fallen person who is part of a fallen race living in a world under
God’s judgement. Already the forces of dissolution are at work, and, unless our
Lord’s return intervenes, death is inevitable. This is why Alexander Whyte suggested
that the obituaries ought to be the first page of the newspaper that we read. Sin is real,
and its consequences, physically, are terminal. It is a humbling thought, but one which
carries a healthful reminder of the temporary nature of all our efforts and of the
importance of seeking the kingdom in them all.
Thank God, that is not the end of the story. If we are Christians, our bodies have been
redeemed. One day they will be changed into bodies like that of Christ Himself. In the
meanwhile, lifting Ripley’s "believe it or not" to a higher plane, they are
the actual habitations of the Holy Spirit of God. Don’t you know, Paul says "
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? And
ye are not on your own . . ." When this reality is rescued from the limbo of accepted
conservative theology and translated into an experiential awareness, it has a powerful
influence on our care for and use of the bodies God has provided us with.
THE REST OF CREATION
Let us turn now to consider the rest of the creation, remembering all the while that
what is true of it is true as well of our own bodies. What is the practical impact of an
awareness that the creation is held in being by God’s Word that reveals God and is to
be offered up to Him in our use of it? Several things can be observed here.
Provision.
"Nature" is a bountiful provider. Air, water, food, clothing, shelter - all
that we humans need is found, in varying degrees and forms, within the thin layer of
earth, water, and air which surrounds our earth. "Nature," however, is a shabby
substitute for the living God, from whose lavish hand our daily needs are met. The Bible
sees these provisions as evidenced of His loving care. Breath, both the first one and all
succeeding ones, is His gift (Genesis 2:7). Food is not wrested from an uncooperative
environment; it is His gift, too (Psalm 136:25; 147:9). Sleep is not merely the response
of tired cells to the cessation of physical activity; it is a gracious gift from God
(Psalm 127:2).
The way we view these provisions is significant. Modern man sees nature as an enemy to be
conquered. Since the Enlightenment, the prevailing concept has been domination. Now we are
reaching the limits of God’s norms for the use of creation and are experiencing His
judgment in a warming atmosphere, polluted air, water and earth, and a thinning ozone
layer. Non-Christian environmentalists are becoming concerned, though the church has
provided little leadership here. On the other hand, the Biblical attitude has always been
one of thankful, stewardly collaboration with the God who provides for us in and through
His creation (Psalm 104:10-24). Jesus spoke to the storm and the wind, and the waves
subsided (Mark 4:39). He blessed the bread and it sufficed a multitude. Again, he blessed
it in the Emmaus household and in doing so revealed Himself. Creation is not an enemy to
be conquered; it is a medium through which our loving Father reveals Himself, and it
should be regarded and handled in that light. Which might, incidentally, do a great deal
to reduce out insatiable appetite for technological "progress."
Possession.
Nine points of the law possession may be, but it makes a difference whether we are
talking about the statues of a modern nation state or the unalterable law of God. One of
the three temptations in the Garden was that the fruit was a delight to the eyes. In the
original instance, of window shopping, Eve’s eyes were dazzled by the specious
suggestion that she could possess this fruit without regard to God’s ownership of it.
She was wrong, but her children still have not learned the lesson. The absolute right of
private property is a principle that lies at the very base of the modern understanding of
economics. It came about when economics was cut loose from theology and assumed to contain
its own meaning in total independence from the Lord. The Native American’s idea of
land ownership was much closer to the Biblical one than ours is today.
The Biblical view of possessions, however, is not that we cannot possess anything.
Naboth’s refusal to sell his vineyard to King Ahab (1 Kings 21) clearly evidenced the
Old Testament’s support for private ownership, and stood in spectacular contrast to
the rights of royal seizure which characterized the surrounding nations. But it was
possession under God. The land, and everything else, finally belonged to Him (Psalm 8:1).
Things could be truly possessed by people only in their humble acknowledgement of their
total dependence on His mercy and care. His people owned things in a stewardly and not an
absolute sense. That made all the difference in their attitude toward use of and
preservation of the things that God had given them. For us, today, that is still the norm.
Redeemed creatures in a created world possess their possessions in order to use them for
the advancement of God’s kingdom. That’s why the kingdom belongs to the poor in
spirit (Matthew 5:3).
Pleasure.
One of the most important things about the environment is the pleasure it provides.
Some psychologists go as far as to identify the human being’s basic drives as the
pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This is hardly a satisfactory analysis of
the human makeup. The heart’s longing for God, almost totally unrecognized in the
modern world, is a far more solid and reliable touchstone of basic humanness. But,
nevertheless, pleasure bulks large in today’s idea of what life is all about.
Indeed, pleasure is important. God gives every of us multiple moments of pleasure every
day. The important thing to remember is that the pleasure comes through, but not from, the
creation. Pleasures are, in C.S. Lewis’ words, "shafts of glory as it strikes
our sensibility" (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, p. 90). No one is
able to create pleasure except God (Psalm 16:11; James 1:17). The realization of this
becomes a form of unvoiced prayer of worship and adoration, and so helps us toward the
Biblical goal of praying without ceasing.
Power.
One final aspect of the promise of the peril inherent in the creation lies in the power
associated with it. Whether we think of the power of an Olympic champion, or of domestic,
political, economic, or military power, creation contains power, and people want it. They
will go to all sorts of lengths to get it: steroids for athletes, corporate takeovers for
entrepreneurs, competitive jockeying in business or government or the military. Power is a
big thing in the human world. It has been that way ever since the temptation. The appeal
of wisdom from eating the forbidden fruit was really an appeal to achieve power outside
that which is given by the Lord.
The Christian approach to power in and through the creation is radically different. Jesus
could have had twelve legions of angels to protect him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Instead, he chose to submit to arrest, unjust condemnation, and crucifixion. But he rose
from the grave with all power and all authority in heaven and on earth. He said that our
path should be like his. Paul learned that God’s strength was made perfect in his
weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). So he said he would glory in his weakness that the power of
Christ might rest upon him. It is a difficult lesson for us to assimilate, especially in a
time when evangelicals and Christian conservatives are becoming active again politically.
But it is well to remember that Christians have not, in the past, handled political power
well, and they are not likely to do so now either. We would not be able to solve the
problems of our day if we were to get 51% of the popular vote. Active in politics we
surely should be, but with a healthy recollection of our own fallibility and so with a
deepening dependence on God and an awareness that social problems are primarily solved at
the heart level and only secondarily in the legislature.
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE CREATION, THEN?
Let’s answer this question in ways: attitude and actions. As far as attitudes go,
we need to respect the creation. It is not our enemy, nor is it merely a neutral source of
raw materials for our consumption and pleasure. It is God’s world, made and upheld by
Him in loving sacrifice and service. We ought to love it, not for what it is in itself or
can do for us, but because it is the medium through which God makes Himself known. The
climax of the self-revelation came in the incarnation at Bethlehem, but the entire
creation is revelatory of the Lord. As such, we can quite properly love it. And we ought
to celebrate it. It is a wonderful creation! That is why the psalmist so constantly calls
on all things to praise the Lord. As we learn to realize what the creation is really like,
we too will find praise welling up in our hearts. And doesn’t the Bible say something
about God’s inhabiting praises of His people? (Psalm 22:3) That is an awesome promise
when you stop to think of it!
The other part of the answer is that we are to understand it, shape and use it, and enjoy
it - all redemptively. By the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, we ought to look at the
creation in an entirely different light than the world does. It is God’s creation,
given to us as a means, almost the sacrament, of communion with Him. Through it we can
know Him, and to know Him is to live eternally (John 17:3). Then we are called to shape
and use it (Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15). We do that every day, anyway, but we could not be
doing it with a much deeper sense of God’s nearness. Thus our very use of the world
could become a communion with the Lord. And we are to enjoy it. God gives us pleasures
through it, abundant pleasures. When we realize where they come from, the pleasures life
affords become precious indeed. And these are pleasures that will stay with us forever!
These are some of the first steps - but only the first ones - by which we can recover the
created world which we have lost through making idols of it (Romans 1:25). May God give us
grace to regain it, to recognize its revelatory nature, to return it to God in lives of
loving service, and so to raise the halls of heaven some of the paeans of praise which
area foretaste of those hallelujah choruses that will delight us forever when we reach
those halls.
Editor: Al Greene
Alta Vista College
