The Angelic Glacial Backdrop to Christianity

 

The Angelic Glacial Backdrop

The angelic glacial backdrop to flower-strewn Cavell Meadows. The unprecedented melting of the polar icecap. The bugling cry of this year’s prize bull elk. The carcass of a dead bear beside the highway. The carved walls and frozen waterfalls of the canyons. The cyclone that drowns thousands and leaves many more destitute. The crunch of an Autumn apple, fresh peas from the garden. The quaking earth that rubbles whole cities into dust. The wondrous entrance into the world by a newborn child. The savannah turning into desert, scorching winds, withered trees, yellowed grass, cattle gaunt by boney people.

To deify Nature, to claim her as Mother, naturally leaves one with the question: “Why is dysfunction written into this most very basic of all relationships: this supposed parentage of Earth over Mankind?” On Mother’s part there is her catastrophic contrariness of nurture and negation, of life and death. A Caribbean island can make for an idyllic vacation spot, but when the hurricane hits –watch out!  On her offsprings’ part, there is likewise an ambivalent, if not similarly schizoid, honouring and ravaging, preserving and decimating kind of response. Because a Caribbean island can make for an idyllic vacation spot big corporations move in and buy up all the beachfront and throw up hotels and timeshares, often with only lip-service to the environment.

The nations that once addressed God as Father, but now call upon the Earth as Mother – today’s secular Naturalists and neo-Pagans - have an inadequate understanding of how our environment can both nurture and undo us, and why the human race, seemingly at its pinnacle of achievement and progress, is fast falling into matricide. The former make a god out of Mankind because of our growing mastery over Matter and natural Forces, while the latter sense something desecrating about modernity and make a goddess out of Matter and natural Forces. Are we to place our confidence in technique and management skills so as to continue exploiting the raw resources of the Earth with as little ill consequence as possible or are we to personify and pacify Nature and find a way to live more instinctively and simply?  

There are attractions and compelling arguments to both approaches, yet they both fail to address the issue that children are the product of both a Mother and a Father. For almost the entire History of Mankind there has been the sense that we are more than animals and yet obviously not our own Creator. There is more to our unique identity, than dear old, Mother Nature has contributed; there has to be a Father somewhere in this picture! Some have imagined a great emancipation in doing away with God, but a people that did not hesitate to commit patricide will not be safe from falling into matricide. The planet is not safe in our hands, nor are we secure in her care alone.

If neither a reversion into rain-dance Paganism nor a two-dimensional Scientism is likely to bring security to our society this is because Paganism makes the mistake of conferring Personhood and Deity to that which cannot deliver, (the Earth is only the product and vehicle of the Personal God), while Scientism(Naturalism) makes the mistake of refusing to acknowledge the evidence of Personhood and Deity, (an Intelligent Designer) that the Creation delivers, as a way back to the Force behind all Natural Forces. The irony in all this is that Christianity largely delivered the world from the bonfires of paganism until Scientism harnessed that fire to steam its way into our present age of ecological crisis.

 Despair is written into both of these approaches, for no viable plan for reconciliation exists. There is no credible Paradise Island, no future utopia, to either retreat to or strive for. No one is advocating a mass exodus back to the forests to live as hunter/gatherers, while many are making back-up plans to colonize space when the Earth is no longer habitable, a la “Wall-e”. Pierced lips, bongos and spirit appeasement only go so far, just as colonies on Mars are likely to be failed endeavours also. And so we give Peace prizes to those who tell us we have good reason to be Anxious! To answer our dilemma we need to think outside of the Naturalistic/Pantheistic box.

The great contribution of Christian thought to these issues over the last two millennia, has been the insistence that there is a God, a Father, who is both within Creation and yet not bound by Creation. He is neither so close that God and Matter are interchangeable, nor so distant that we are left to figure things out on our own. Before it fell into this fractured duality, it was a good and perfectly secure and harmonious Creation. The responsibility for the planet’s troubles is Mankind’s, because of our desire for a destiny only within the Earth and a mastery over the Earth apart from this Father God, Earth’s Author and Sustainer. A restoration process is now under way to renew the Earth, but it is a divine initiative. Our primary contribution is our faith.

As such, the Christian worldview can account for the unique nature of men and women, the validation of spiritual awareness, an explanation for evil, and a secure direction for the future for both planet and people. When worship is no longer in Material Benefits nor in the Matron of Matter, but in the Eternal Maker, then balance and order can be achieved, and the limits of Time and Space, of the here and now – that which panics people into conspicuous consumption, and tempts them to re-define themselves as either gods or animals – can be superceded. Once again the Earth and our place in it is put into proper perspective. Only the Father can reveal to us our true parentage and make our Earthly Time into a deliberate step towards Time without end in an Environment untainted, a Security unthreatened. The Great Spirit has shown us how.

The journey begins here, it begins now.