Chapter XIV - Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology; Embryology; Rudimentary Organs
Classification
Analogical Resemblances
On the Nature of the Affinities Connecting Organic Beings
Morphology
Development and Embryology
Rudimentary, Atrophied, and Aborted Organs
What are the Odds: Memo to an Eleven-Year Old Boy
Purpose of Eastern Religions
Pantheism
Buddhism
New Age Beliefs
Modern Psychology and Eastern Religion
The Jews and Christianity
What Science Says about the Nature of God
The Anthropic Principle
Complex Molecular Machines in Living Organisms
The Complex Specificity of Cellular Components
Big Bang Theory
Darwinian Gradulaism is Dead
The God of the Bible
The Character and Purposes of God
Why did Jesus Die on the Cross?
Addendum - The Appearance of Necessity
About the Author
Preface
Controversial ideas challenge us today as they always have. We as Christians often find among these ideas an evolving worldview in conflict with our walk of faith. In logical concert with our walk of faith, which has to be reasonable, we find when we dig deep enough, that sound science and logic are some of our best friends. That is, we find our faith in God increases as our knowledge of the world and how it operates increases. We find with our growing interest and knowledge that most of the controversy between faith and "facts" originates not from the facts but from those who interpret findings and observations through the sieve of their philosophical assumptions and personal biases.
The world today is awash with information, interpretations, and hypotheses that compete for our allegiances. However, we as individuals can access information from books and other publications and some sites on the Internet to judge everything from the psychology of religion to the enigma of the origin of life. What we find upon examination of many accepted theories and "constants" is that the established worldview is often questionable, hypothetical, or incorrect. But with what does that realization leave us? One can observe that reason is on the side of God's existence and, by contrast, worldviews are often built upon incorrect assumptions, hubris and bias; not reason and logic.
On the heels of investigations in the fields of science, philosophy, history, and theology, you will be confident and content, as were your spiritual forefathers, to hold on to your Christian faith. You will understand that some educated elite have a territorial imperative to protect scholastic turf and their belief systems. They may assert that only the specialist turned generalist is qualified to investigate the details of data and integrate those findings into a philosophical worldview. However, simply because a person is gifted in mathematics, has a good memory for facts, and has knowledge related to his/her specialized profession, it does not necessarily follow that he/she is especially adept at the objective analysis or integration of research findings into a larger, logical framework. Rather, any wise person with an analytical mind can read the research and analyze and dissect ideas to derive his/her own opinion of them. One does not have to rely on the pundits of and marketing of ideas. Read the essays below and analyze and decide for yourself.
Because each specialty has its own jargon, I included definitions and notes at the end of essays, where necessary, to facilitate understanding. Most of the problem with understanding scientific, historical, and philosophical concepts relates to the use of a specialized vocabulary. In many cases, the ideas and speculations of researchers and synthesizers/philosophers will appear straight-forward and understandable, though not necessarily believable, once the reader has a grasp of the jargon.
In the light of dissection and analysis, I selected several topics that, according to the present worldview, many/most people consider to be non-controversial and settled. On the contrary, these beliefs are still open for discussion. An amusing result of my analyses is the realization that many of the formally educated in the world have based their careers upon and written stacks of books based on shaky, unproven, and weak assumptions. The other surprising part of these studies is how readily we as Christians tend to mix our inherited philosophies and culture and incorporate them into our religion. Do most Christians in America hold unbiblical views and attitudes toward God's creation? The first essay A Biblical View of Nature explores that question.
The second essay The Nature of Belief compares materialist assumptions (see Definitions/Notes at the end of this second essay for explanations of philosophical materialism) and theories about how the world operates with faith as experienced by Christians. We note in this essay that intelligent design often is the most powerful explanation for numerous modern scientific findings and observations. At the same time we discover that materialist generalizations to account for the same natural phenomena call for a lot of loyalty and hope.
The third essay, The Selfishness of Virtue?, examines why people cooperate with or help each other. For this essay we will compare scientific studies and Darwinian assumptions with biblical teachings on ethics. We will compare facts of cooperation and philosophical materialist assumptions with biblical critiques of human cooperation and the higher standards of Christian doctrine. Oddly, we will find support in Scripture for some materialist conclusions and discover by contrast the logical basis for the existence of an absolute morality.
In the fourth essay, I define the miraculous simply as God or mind intervening and changing otherwise determined chains of cause and effect. The difference between the miracles of God and the miracles of man is in orders of magnitude; granted, magnitude means a lot. Of course, God's order of magnitude is so big that he even authors and can alter the basic playing rules, the laws of chemistry and physics. Because the supernatural applies every time mind at some level alters determined cause and effect relationships, the spooky finger of God is repeatedly and constantly at the heart of our everyday use of information, judgment, and will.
Analysis of the gay lifestyle in the fifth essay finds its validity primarily in research studies. Review the studies; make up your own mind. If it is, and it is, primarily environmentally derived, should the church encourage homosexuality and continue to promote those conditions that produce it? We as the church must love homosexuals and at the same time reject the gay lifestyle as unbiblical and dangerous. Is homosexuality the problem or merely a symptom of poor choices, poor parenting, abuse, divorce, and cultural promotion? Does not the divorce rate in the Christian community render the church a promoter of homosexuality?
The sixth essay addresses the fact that rates of radioactive decay, used by geophysicists, paleontologists, and archeologists to age rocks and other materials, are mutable/changeable. That is, in certain environments, the rates of radioactive decay for some, possibly all, radioactive elements speed up and then slow down as ions pick up electrons to become atoms. Historical scientists in the fields of archeology, cosmology, paleontology, and geology, know this. Why do they not give more attention to this apparent "anomaly"? What if geophysicists and other historical scientists dated rocks by reference to the decay rates exhibited by radioactive elements in the common plasma or ionized state? What would those investigators conclude about the age of Earth, our solar system, or dinosaur fossils?
Are there good reasons to believe that radioactive elements in the Earth may have experienced long expanses of time in ionizing environments? Is it reasonable to hypothesize that they and their daughter elements in situ in the solid state rose through plasma environments to be encased by crystallizing processes in Earth's mantle? And/or weathering and erosion by water at the earth's surface may have subjected those same materials to cavitation and additional ionization. Were ancient meteorites, now radioisotope-dated to be 4.5 billion years old, subjected to millennia of ionizing solar and stellar radiation i
n space before falling to earth? Did streams of ultraviolet and cosmic radiation ionize materials at the earth's surface during repetitive interruptions of Earth's protective magnetic field and prior to the appearance of the planet's atmosphere? All those inevitable, recurrent events should lead a reasonable person to question whether the rocks are as old as we are told?
Consistent with inconsistencies in dating techniques, in the seventh essay, I ask how astute; how correct was Darwin? How good was his historical "science"? Were the details of his "science" reasonable? How do his speculations of the 1850s match with contemporary findings? What did he literally say and believe and was he an icon for truth or just another philosophical materialist with an agenda, a weak case, and a ready audience?
In Darwin's time it was the game of the day to write in a flowery, stilted, wordy, repetitive style. Apparently, such a prose style illustrated the education and intelligence of the author, who thereby hoped to sell himself and his ideas and opinions as complex and compelling. Unfortunately, such a style lacked clarity and made reading a boring chore. To render (take the fat out of) Darwin's rambling, stilted style, I boiled his ideas down to the meat of their meaning and then clarified and critiqued each idea. So, though I know my readers will find On the Origin of Species as dry as Death Valley, California, they can perhaps find entertainment with each Critique. Therefore, I suggest the reader first read the Critique under each topic and then, if interested, go back and read the summations of Darwin's thoughts. On the other hand, "left-brain" masochists may even choose to read the whole On the Origin of Species for themselves? Well...retired, "left-brain" masochists.
Finally, for the last essay, I included a memo that I wrote to an 11-year old boy who questioned the exclusivity of Christianity. We will note that though the universe and the life it supports are complicated, the message of God is simple enough for a child to reasonably chose whom he/she follows.
This essay will serve as a personal summation of numerous conclusions found in the other essays. Of course, intelligent design, as evident in the fine-tuning of constants that enable the universe to support life and the enigma of the origin of life and of the digital information required to run the cell and sustain biological life, says little about the character of the Designer. Hypotheses about the character of the Designer remain in the theological, philosophical, and logical speculations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and deists who embrace the science and logic of intelligent design. This essay assesses the odds that the Judeo-Christian view of the Designer is correct.
These essays are primarily for the Christian community. But I encourage philosophical materialists and post-modern relativists to read and analyze them. I welcome reasoned critique though ad hominem attacks are irrelevant because they are logically fallacious. Feelings, accreditations, and affiliations have no particular significance. Rather, let us hang our hats on evidence and reason. I invite you to step outside the noise of the herd, be it ever so formally educated and culturally embraced, in the box and observe what a host of pesky details have to say about widely accepted, but poorly examined worldviews.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge my wife Mary Margaret for proofreading parts of the manuscript. Aside from my spouse, I would like to thank numerous individuals for their encouragement and edit of this collection of essays. However, there is virtually no one else to credit for such actions. The topics are largely abhorrently technical/boring to the general public and my take on the contents is often anathema to the specialists. So, there is no one else to thank.
No doubt, I occasionally violated specialized jargon while exploring controversial subjects that required the integration of various disciplines. For example, I communicated with a local professor of geology and asked her to review my essay Mutable Rates of Radioactive Decay. She was gracious enough to read the essay and informed me that geologists do not "age" rocks. They "date" rocks. This surprised me because as a biologist, I had dated women and "aged" hundreds of deer, elk, antelope, quail, doves, and squirrels. I did alter that essay to fit the jargon of geologists. My geologist friend did assure me that geophysicists did the right thing in dating rocks and used comparative controls but the specifics of those processes were outside the purview of her training. She offered no comments on my research citations and logical conclusions.
A good aspect of producing an e-book is that the author can go back and edit his/her work as new information becomes available. If a wider readership should sniff out obvious error in this collection of essays and can substantiate their findings with research studies and/or logic and reason, I will be glad to amend my work. At that point, I shall have additional persons to acknowledge for their contributions.
A Biblical View of Nature
During the last 2,000 years, Christian missionaries wrestled with the question of how to incorporate Christianity into the cultures of the local peoples without diluting the fundamentals of biblical Christian faith. Most cultural practices by local peoples had no particular religious significance. For example, planting wheat by hand, oxen, or tractor had no bearing on a farmer's potential to practice Christianity. But if the local culture approved child sacrifice/abortion, adultery, fornication, murder, male and female prostitution, and/or idol worship, these practices were not compatible with Christian faith. Converts to Christianity were instructed that such practices were a sin against God and therefore forbidden. If one was a Christian convert, he/she either gave up sinful practices or was working toward that end.
In other areas of morality, there was room for compromise. For example, if one was a new convert to Christianity in first century Palestine and he had more than one wife, he could be a member but could not hold a position of leadership in the church (1 Timothy 3:2). Apparently, having more than one wife was not as bad as divorce at a time when a single woman on her own had few work options beyond prostitution.
In some cases, the language or idioms of the local people made it difficult for them to understand the Bible. I recall a missionary who read to his congregation Revelations 3:20, about Jesus standing at the door and knocking. Of course, this story is a metaphor for the concept of Jesus knocking on the door of one's heart (a phrase that is also a metaphor). Jesus said that if you will open your heart's door he will come in and be your friend and spend time with you and will enjoy your company. The problem for the local people of this particular culture was that thieves in their culture frequently knocked on the door to see if anyone was home. If one was home and walked toward the door, the thief would hear the home owner coming and would run away to safety. If no one walked toward the door, the thief would, after close inspection, break in and steal items of value.
The missionary realized that he would need to change the specific words of the Bible to help the people understand that Jesus does not approach the individual like a thief. He changed the words in the Bible to say something like this: "Behold, I stand at the door and call your name. If you open the door, I will come in to be with you...." With this change, the locals understood the real meaning of the scripture and the good will of God.
A review of historical and contemporary events and evidences suggest that history is replete with various adjustments Christian ministers made to appeal to local peoples. Some of these changes were reasonable and others polluted the Christian faith with extraneous non-scriptural ideas.
Mixing Culture and Christianity
Listed below are a few examples of the mix and confusion of Christian faith with established cultural beliefs and practices:
Gargoyles
Five summers ago, I was in Paris, France. While there, I visited the Cathedral Notre Dame. I could not get inside the cathedral at the time because of some kind of labor dispute but walked around the exterior of the building. An observation of interest was the line of ferocious gargoyles along the edge of the roof of the building. The original purpose for placing gargoyles around a church building was to scare off demons. It occurred to me that the making of
images to scare off demons was not a biblical application of Christianity. The Church had made Christianity more acceptable to local cultures by mixing Christian beliefs with established pagan fears and practices.
A Non-biblical Prohibition
When I was a boy growing up in Texas, most Baptist churches there taught that it was a sin against God to drink any kind of alcoholic beverages. One Sunday evening when I attended a small Baptist church in east Texas, I recall the testimony of an obese lady on the subject of alcohol: "Ole king al-kee-hol has never passed these lips!" My mental response: "No, but many a buttered biscuit tarried there!"
When I was old enough to read the Bible, I realized that the prohibition against alcohol in the Baptist Church was not biblical. For example, Jesus' first miracle was the changing of the water to wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11). Note that after tasting the water that had become wine, the chief steward told the bridegroom (verses 9b-10):
Everyone serves the good wine first. And then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.
Because imbibing in alcohol can make people drunk, it is reasonable to assume that the "wine" served at the wedding contained alcohol.
Spend your tithe on strong drink? Deuteronomy 14:22-27 recorded proper uses of the tithe. If an Israelite lived too far from Jerusalem to carry ten percent of his farm produce to that center of worship, he was to sell the produce and take the money to:
...the place that the Lord your God will choose; spend the money for whatever you wish - oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your household rejoicing together.
Here the scripture allows use of tithe monies for a family feast and the purchase of food and "strong drink". Oddly enough, I never heard these scriptures read in a Baptist church to support the doctrine of tithing.
Though the scripture condemns drunkenness, (1 Corinthians 11:21, Ephesians 5:18; 1 Peter 4:3), it supports the spending of tithe monies for strong drink taken in moderation. Why do Baptists refuse to believe the Bible in this case? I suspect the main reason is that Baptists in the South, in particular, descended primarily from Irish ancestors. Because "ole king al-kee-hol" ravished many an Irishman; the Celts in the American South added to the scripture their cultural beliefs in an attempt to protect themselves from a cultural weakness. They felt compelled to label the use of alcohol in their culture as evil and chose to ignore biblical approval of moderate use.
A Substitute Goddess?
Numerous examples exist of churches elevating cultural preferences to a scriptural level. It did not escape my notice that the Church met at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD to determine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, should have elevated status. At the time, 200 bishops convened to make a decision on Nestorianism. Nestor insisted that Mary was the mother of a man, not of God. According to Nestor, God merely inhabited the physical man we know as Jesus. The Nestorian heresy subdivided Christ into two separate beings instead of his being a person both God and man. To undermine Nestorianism, the bishops voted to proclaim Mary "Mother of God" rather than simply the mother of a man. As a result of her new title, Mary vaulted to the height of being an intercessor between God and mankind. By contrast, most Christians outside the Catholic Church believe that the New Testament allows only Jesus/the Holy Spirit to serve as intercessor between mankind and God the Father. Reference: 1 Timothy 2:5, John 14:6, Matthew 6:6, Luke 11:2, Luke 11:13, John 6:37, John 14:16-17, John 14:23, Acts 2:38, Acts 4:12, Romans 8:26-27, Romans 8:34, Galatians 4:6; Hebrews 7:25. Notably, the Bible, Old and New Testaments, contains not one reference to a legitimate prayer offered to any angel nor to any saint, living, dead, or ascended. All biblical prayers were offered only to the Triune God.
Prior to the arrival of Messiah on Earth, God chose various prophets, priests, and judges to communicate his messages to his people. These religious leaders acted as God's messengers to the people. However, following the triumph of Jesus' death on the cross, the intermediary role of the priesthood vanished forever. No person or organization after Jesus' death on the cross stands between the individual and God. After the cross, the relationship between God and the individual required direct, personal communication between that human being and a member of the Triune God.
But let us return to the designation of Mary as "Mother of God" and intercessor between God and mankind. Why arrange a meeting in Ephesus to discuss the Nestorian controversy and the religious significance of Mary being either the mother of God or the mother of a physical body occupied by God? I suggest that the bishops discussed the religious significance of Mary at Ephesus because the cultural climate there was ripe and friendly toward women religious figures. Prior to the arrival of Paul and Christian doctrine in the first century (Acts 19:23-28), the Ephesians worshiped the Greek goddess and virgin huntress Artemis. Ephesus was a good meeting place to discuss the religious significance of a particular woman because of the city's historical and cultural ties to the worship of another virgin goddess. Apparently, the bishops used cultural influences to help turn the political tide against the Nestorian heresy.
Pandora's Bible
One group that split away from biblical teaching in the early 1800's were the Mormons. The Bible contradicts the fundamental beliefs of Mormonism directly and obviously and repeatedly. I recall when I participated in Bible discussions with a Mormon friend on a daily basis. This was many years ago and at the time, I knew less about Mormon beliefs. Our daily discussions lasted thirty minutes. My Mormon friend had free rein the first fifteen minutes of the discussion to teach me about his beliefs and I led the discussion the last fifteen minutes. I learned a good deal about Mormonism from my friend, "Jim". For my part of the discussion, I simply picked up the Bible each meeting and read systematically through the book of Romans in the New Testament.
I had a lot of fun with Jim when I read the Bible. He increasingly and repeatedly grew upset and regularly interrupted my reading so he could explain what the Bible really meant. I would stop reading, listen attentively, and then thank him for his explanation and say: "Well, Jim, thank you for explaining what the Bible really means. I thought it meant..." and then I would simply read again the passage I had just read. Often I would chuckle out loud. Over time, Jim explained why the Bible was faulty and could not be trusted. My thinking was that Mormonism is a good example of a religion's ability to embrace biblical writings and then to totally ignore them or otherwise distort them to fit post-conceived ideas.
Our Mormon friends' only salvation in remaining Mormon and embracing the Bible is to not read it. Of course, it helps if one only has access to the old King James Version, which is printed in older English and is therefore more difficult to understand. For the Mormon, opening the New Testament is like opening "Pandora's box".
Pagan-Christian Mix
When I read National Geographic, I frequently note how rural peoples in many parts of the world embraced a form of Christianity that is woven into the fabric of their pagan past. Certain New Testament characters are added to the old list of respected gods. Rituals incorporate the new gods and the old ways continue much as in the past because people can lose their personal identity when their gods die. Miller et al. (1979) reported that Chief Seattle "After becoming a Roman Catholic...incorporated some of the Catholic rituals into Indian ceremonies." Chief Seattle (1786-1866) was chief of the Squamish and allied Indian tribes of the Northwest, USA. The mixing of Church tradition (not biblical teaching) and native beliefs also occurred in the Southwest.
In a recent visit to the Pueblo Indian Reservation at Taos, New Mexico, I noted a similar case of interfaith coevolution. I entered the San Geronimo Church in the center of the Reservation plaza, a site the Pueblo Indians have occupied for a thousand years. Inside the church building behind the pulpit, a large mural covered the back wall. This colorful and beautiful painting depicted basic beliefs of the pueblo occupants. In the center of the
mural was the Virgin Mary and on each side of Mary were large fruiting corn stalks. Mary had risen to the status of the Native American "Corn Goddess" or "Mother Earth" who provided bodily sustenance for the faithful. Mary's diminutive son Jesus wore a crown but was off to his mother's left instead of center-stage.
The mixing of native beliefs and Church tradition by the Pueblo peoples is not surprising when one considers the Pueblos' first exposure to applied Christianity by the Spanish. The occupying Spanish enslaved the Native Americans and forced them to erect the first church on site in 1619. Slavery was deemed necessary to make good traditional "Christians" of the Indians. And, cheap labor reduced the cost of spreading the faith.
Another example of the pagan-Christian mix is the Santeria faith, now extant in the United States. Santeria represents a combination of the Yoruba faith from West Africa, Roman Catholicism, and Native American Indian traditions. Yoruba arrived with slaves, entering the United States through Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean. Practitioners worship Catholic saints and/or the Orisha. The latter are considered spiritual beings who are manifestations of God (Olofi). Leadership in the religion is based on strength of communication with the Orisha. Rituals include animal sacrifice, commonly chickens.
The Church Incorporates Patriotism
Note the turn of the German church to the dark side under Hitler in the 1930s as recorded by Metaxas (2010:325):
...Germany celebrated Hitler's fiftieth birthday, and once again the sinuous Dr. Werner tied himself into a ribbon for the epochal occasion: he published another glowing tribute to Hitler in the official journal of the German Reich church: "We celebrate with jubilation our Fuhrer's fiftieth birthday. In him God has given the German people a real miracle worker...Let our thanks be the resolute and inflexible will not to disappoint....our Fuhrer and the great historic hour.
Another example of the patriotic propagandizing and distortion of biblical Christianity is reflected in one of our most cherished patriotic songs. I refer to the Battle Hymn of the Republic written November 1861 by Julia Ward Howe to the tune John Brown's Body. Here is the third verse:
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As you deal with my contemners so with you my grace shall deal."
Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
The "hero born of woman" as recorded in Genesis 3:13-15 is commonly believed to signify Jesus who defeated Satan and the power of death by his death on the cross and resurrection to new life. The new "fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel represents the force/will of God as seen in the rows of armed Yankee soldiers with their steely rifles and gleaming bayonets. God's grace for salvation shall come upon those Yankee soldiers in direct proportion to the number of Southern Baptists and Methodists they can shoot with their rifles and stab with their bayonets. That is the meaning of the third verse, second line: "As you deal with my contemners so with you my grace shall deal." The aim of this verse was to make the northern troops believe that killing Christians from the South would ingratiate them with Jesus and his saving grace. The war was presented to the invading northern troops as a Christian holy war. This is not to say, of course, that slavery in the South was a holy institution.
I have read that slavery as practiced in the South in the 1800s was generally/frequently horrible with separation of families, sexual abuse, torture, and humiliation. We marvel that the German church put up with Hitler and we marvel that Southern Baptists and other Christians tolerated slavery and slave trading.
The Bible provided specific guidelines on slavery. Those who would be leaders in the church were to be the servants of other Christians (Mark 10:44) and "whoever wants to be first must be slave of all." Social position meant nothing in the early church: "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body - whether Jew or Greeks, slave or free... (1 Corinthians 12:13). The master who was a Christian and his slave who was a Christian were to be brothers in the Lord (Philemon 1:16) for "here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all" (Colossians 3:11).
The punishment for kidnapping a brother Israelite and selling that person into slavery was death (Deuteronomy 24:7) and the Mosaic Law prohibited the return of a slave to his master (Deuteronomy 23:15). Slave trading was considered a sin in New Testament times (1 Timothy 1:10). Why did Christians in the South embrace states' rights and the "unsound doctrine" of slave trading over biblical Christianity? They, like so many German Christians during Hitler's rise to power, had mixed their culture and economic well-being with their Christianity. Patriotic feelings, tribal loyalties, and economic well-being trumped the Bible.
Evolution of Religious Traditions to Divine Mandates
The New Testament records the confrontations between Jesus and certain Jewish leaders for their elevation of human tradition to the level of scripture. For example, Pharisees and some scribes criticized Jesus' disciples for eating without ritually washing their hands. According to Mark 7:6-8:
Jesus said to them: "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.' You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
Thus, the gambit of enculturation of biblical "Christianity" has covered a wide spectrum from the biblically valid to the diabolical. The mix continues today.
A Note on Compromise
We can understand the need to apply Christian principles to a culture without denouncing benign aspects of that culture. To do otherwise would be to dilute and pollute the basics of the Christian faith with our own ideas and the non-Christian aspects of our own culture.
Ironically, once a people embraced Christianity and applied Christian beliefs to their cultural ways of life, over time, they evolved to believe that all or many of their cultural beliefs and practices to be Christian. The only way to preserve the basics of the Christian faith is to separate in our minds the difference between the benign or neutral aspects of our culture from the basics of our Christian faith. We must objectively sift our cultural assumptions through the sieve of biblical analysis. God's word will sever bone from marrow.
Criteria for Christian Faith
Basic Christian beliefs come from the Bible, that is, from the Old Hebrew Bible and from the Apostolic Doctrine, the New Testament. The basic tenets of Christianity appear, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Philippians 2:6-11, and Colossians 1:15-20. These words recorded/verified the beliefs and practices of the Church within a decade or two of the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, the beliefs and practices of the Church preceded Paul's recording of them. Other traditions, "revelations", and cultural beliefs that people attached to "Christianity" over the last 2,000 years are valid only insofar as they are in concert with the Old Testament and the Apostolic Doctrine as expressed in the New Testament. Traditions, revelations, and cultural and philosophical beliefs may be benign in appearance but still they can detract from the Christian faith if a people assumes them to be Christian in origin. In light of this last statement, I would like to critique some common American religious beliefs that we often assume to be Christian but which I believe to be unbiblical.
A View of Nature from the Right
I have been a Bible-oriented Christian since the age of nine and a lover of nature all my life. To me nature is the work of God and evidence of his existence. To love nature is to acknowledge God. However, throughout my life, I regularly encountered Christian people as well as atheists and agnostics and people of other faiths who thoroughly disagreed with my values. The Christian segment commonly repeated man's mandate to rule nature, from the first chapter of Genesis, to justify their view that nature was either evil or irrelevant. When it came to paving, drilling, channeling, damming, bulldozing, developing, or exhausting natural resources for immediate economic gain, God
was on their side. In fact, so doing was the Christian thing to do and destroying the animals or where the animals lived was the will of God. It was God's will that, as stated by the Greek Protagoras some 2,500 years ago: "Man is the measure of all things."
One observation of interest did not, however, escape my notice. My observation was that when nature was in the way, the developers, whether atheists or agnostics or theists, expressed the same philosophical arguments about the destiny of man to conquer nature. The main difference was that the atheists and agnostics left the Bible out of the discussion. As a result, the elevation of short term economic gain prevailed and fewer natural resources and less of nature was left for the present and for future generations to enjoy and ponder and manage and use wisely.
Because the basic beliefs of agnostics, theists, and atheists were similar, I questioned whether their philosophies about the role of mankind and of nature actually had a biblical origin. I had been a student of the Bible for decades and decided to study the book in more detail to see who was closer to the biblical view, they or I. If I was correct, where had these, my fellow Americans, obtained their philosophy?
Non-biblical Origins for Arrogant Attitudes toward Nature
I confess that I am thoroughly American. I love where I live and how I live and the people I live with. I have a full set of Americanized values and am comfortable with them. However, I recognize that many of my values are cultural, not biblical. These values are mostly theologically neutral, though some are likely anti-biblical and are therefore non-Christian. This knowledge keeps me somewhat humble in my happy, somewhat hedonistic state - of being individualistic and free in the American sense.
I trust I have set the stage to analyze our American heritage without offending too many people. But be that as it may, I am going to do a little cultural undressing anyway. The discussion to follow encompasses hypotheses and observations that I believe could explain the origin of human arrogance toward the gift of natural resources, particularly in the industrialized West.
The Beginning of God?
Many Christians have a limited view of God. They cannot believe that God has the depth/capacity to genuinely love or appreciate anything except human beings. Coupled with this small view of God is the assumption that, though God is eternal, he was eternally inactive and then woke up to a new beginning one day and decided to finally become active and do something worthwhile by making mankind.
One of the favorite Augustinian arguments used to dismiss everything else that God did in that eternity before he got the idea to create man is that "God exists outside time." That is, to God the past and the present and the future are the same because he has perfect knowledge of all events. Thus, God's full occupation has eternally been and always will be his agape love for mankind.
This argument assumes that God is not big or talented enough to love mankind and also have interest in any other things or beings he has made. Thus, the whole basis for meaning in God's existence is mankind. That is, God's meaningful eternity only began with the creation of mankind.
I suggest St. Augustine's (AD 354-430) hypothesis that God was inactive for an eternity would mean that God was basically nonexistent before he made man. Can any form of spiritual or physical life have absolutely no movement or activity in its mind for an eternity and really be thought of as being alive or conscious? I think not.
Time may well be relative, however, God's "time" in the sense that I use it in this essay simply means that in his "time," God was active and did things and had duration - an active past eternally before making man.
I am fully aware that logic is a poor substitute for experience, but because our origin is fairly recent, we can only generalize about what God did before he made man in his image. Let us guess that because God has always existed, he always made things and beings. That is not to say that those things and beings lasted but only that they existed at one "time" and that over the course of eternity, God made an infinite number of them.
The Bible gives us a hint of God's eternal activities. It notes that God made myriads of beings we know as angels (Luke 2:13). And, in Isaiah 51:6 and Psalms 102:25-27, the Bible refers to the earth and heavens as a garment that wears out. In the latter reference, the earth and the heavens "wear out like a garment" and God changes them like clothing. The implications are that the universe wears out and God makes a new one. If God has always existed, he has always done things like this.
Of course, there is no basis for a theology based on what God did before the creation of our universe. It was God's plan that we should only be privy to a limited amount of information. Only a fool would attempt to concoct a theology on the basis of non-information. We can only know the love of God in the mystery of the lives we live but we should also allow that God may have interests and experience that extend beyond the mankind project.
I do believe that God loved us enough to put us right with himself through the Cross. On the other hand, I suspect that God has been around an eternity and that he has had interests other than mankind over the course of his eternal life and activities. This hypothesis gives God room to be God and keeps me from relegating him to a myopic, robotic view. The small view of God suggests that the only thing important to God is man and therefore, man can do as he pleases with all the other things that God has made. That is: "Man is the measure of all things...," and not God. Man's existence defines the total past, present, and future interests of the eternal Creator. But, as we shall see, mankind's arrogance extends to the metaphysical world of secular society as well.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"Men are not animals erect, but immortal gods." These were the words of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Similarly: "You will be as God (or gods)..." were the words of Satan in his appeal to the pride of Adam and Eve to rebel against God and to define for themselves what was and was not ethical (Genesis 3:5b). Their decision to rebel against God introduced both death and the ideology of humanism into human history.
Francis Bacon, a strong proponent of mankind's imminence, was the father of metaphysical empiricism. Metaphysical empiricism, which houses the basic tenants of God-less, philosophical materialism, is a humanistic philosophy that embraces the following assumptions and values:
1) Antecedent conditions completely determine all events. This is a basic tenant of philosophical materialism.
2) Nothing exists except what man can detect with his five senses and measure.
3) The application of scientific method can solve all problems.
Francis Bacon was not a researcher; he was a philosopher of science. His great dream was to integrate science into all facets of human culture for the conquest of nature and empowerment of man. He believed that "knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind." Man would become the Supreme Being in the world as "we put nature on the rack and compel her to bear witness even against herself, so that we may control her to our ends."
The aim of such a harsh view toward nature was to provide "freedom" to the individual. The individual would live in a world where war was waged against nature, not against other classes of people or political subdivisions. Through science, man would obtain economic freedom, property, health, and happiness.
We find these ideas appealing for two reasons:
1) Man is viewed as the dominant power in the world through his application of science and subsequent control of nature. We are proud of our "progress".
2) In first world countries, the application of science provided increased longevity, wealth, and leisure for a large and growing middle class.
John Locke (1632-1704)
Though possibly Christian (McDowell 1972:192), John Locke was philosophically a metaphysical empiricist who followed the lead of Francis Bacon. In accord with good empiricist script, Locke stated that the only things that exist can be known through our five senses. This view fit well with Locke's general opposition to authoritarianism. All the pomp and power and the esthetic cultur
e of the aristocracy was often safeguarded by ethereal and impractical religious beliefs and historical traditions based on "nonsense". Non-sense ideas that could not be touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen were not only beyond sense, they were invalid. What really mattered were the five senses of the individual whose basic motivation was to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It was therefore the focus of ethics not to prop up the nonsense of a theocracy, aristocracy, or monarchy but to protect the rights of the individual to seek pleasure and avoid pain. One can understand the suppressed members of society applauding the writings of John Locke. One can sense "Americana" in his ideas.
The rising middle class embraced the words of John Locke because he was the philosopher of their freedom. To them and to their rising influence in the world, Locke's' words attained prominence of biblical proportions. The following are some of Locke's ideas that many assume to be the words and ideas of God Almighty.
The private ownership of property is paramount because property is the source of wealth of the upper classes:
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property and the protection of... their inalienable rights to pursue "life, liberty, and property."
Locke further explained how to acquire property:
...and the labor of our body and the work of our hands properly belongs to us. So, when one picks acorns or berries, they thereby belong to the person who picked them up.
That is, whatever we wrest from nature by our labor becomes our personal property. In Locke's view nature has no value, esthetic or otherwise, until mankind manipulates it and brings it into use and possession as property. Thus, a tree supporting a nesting pair of bald eagles has no value until it is cut down and transformed into toothpicks, 2X4 boards, wooden spoons, and coffins for the dead. Then and only then, man bequeaths value to that tree. Many Americans readily embrace John Locke's views on the utilitarian, and only utilitarian, values of natural resources. And, they assume that his political beliefs and economics are Bible-based.
Locke's idea of getting property from nature applied well to North America in the 1700s and 1800s because the vast land and all its wealth, not "owned" by nor brought into possession by the Native Americans, was simply there for the taking and claiming. Newly arriving Europeans under the loved Lockean creed to turn labor into personal property attacked the vast natural resources of America with a passion. Application of technology and the acquisition and development of and acquisition of personal property became ethically goods in and of themselves. In a word: "progress." What was so Lockean and Baconian metaphysical empiricism became so biblical and the manifest/obvious will of God.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
In the arena of ethics, Bentham held that science could adequately describe the basis for all morals and legislation. His theory of psychological hedonism insisted that the motives of pleasure and pain explained all human behavior. Therefore, the primacy of the individual and of his right to pursue pleasure/happiness was the supreme good. At the social level, Bentham's practical or utilitarian philosophy stated that the right act or policy was the one that provided "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."
What could be more "American" than Bentham's emphasis on the supremacy of the individual and his/her rights to pursue pleasure/happiness? We Americans also appreciate Bentham's negative view of law: "...liberty is the absence of restraint" and "Every law is an infraction of liberty." To quote Henry David Thoreau: "That government governs best that governs least."
Again, I do not suggest that philosophers like Bacon, Locke, and Bentham were good or bad, correct or incorrect. My point is that their writings are what the rising middle class of their times wanted to hear. I further suggest that many in all socio-economic classes in the modern world continue to incorporate these ideas and values as the heart of their cultures. In America, we Christians have integrated these ideas into our concept of "Christianity" and ascribed to them the authenticity of "Scripture." Thus, we American Christians often judge the ethics of a situation based on the philosophical writings of hedonists, deists, atheists and cultural "Christians" rather than on the Bible. That is so because we assume that American philosophical ideas are God's ideas and his willful gifts to us. In the next section, I will cite a few examples how "Christian" America justified some actions that were obviously not biblical.
Emergence of the Middle Class
Following the philosophy of Bacon et al. and initiation of the technological war against nature in the late 18th century, the ideology of "liberalism" emerged. Liberalism was a movement away from rule by monarchy, aristocracy, and theocracy. Law, politics, and economy evolved to favor the primacy of the individual and the importance of self-determinism instead of the family, state, or church. The shift included the emergence of the middle class and movements toward secularism. The rising middle class embraced the writings of non-Christian philosophers to combat oppressive theocracies and/or the "divine right" of kings and the aristocracy. It appears that the ideas of Western European philosophers were not particularly original but rather that they were in tune with the spirit of the time. These philosophers merely wrote well what the populace was eager to hear.
Thank the Western European Philosophers for Writing What We Wanted to Hear
When England experienced heavy debt in the latter part of the 18th Century and taxed the Colonies to help pay that debt, the Englishmen in the New World got angry. They were taxed by a government that did not allow them to participate in that government's decisions. Subsequently, they pitched the English tea into Boston Harbor and united themselves to make war with their native England. When the Americans wanted to justify war with England, they did not go to the Bible. They called on their favorite Old World philosopher to justify their actions. They recalled Locke's words:
If a government subverts the ends for which it was created then it might be disposed; indeed, revolution in some circumstances is not only a right but an obligation.
Thereby, the Americans believed God justified their corporate actions. The words of John Locke were just what they/we wanted to hear to justify war against both our English brothers abroad as well as the Native Americans at home.
Genocide of Native Americans Justified
If we were good old boys in Georgia in the early 1830s and had a good-old-boy president like Andrew Jackson, it would be easy to look over with lust at land set aside by government treaty with and for the Cherokee Nation. We would see that the Indians had in many ways adopted the American lifestyle. Many had become Christians and built wooden houses for their homes and were wearing cotton clothes. But one thing we would also notice is that they had not really gone in and wrested "property" from nature. A good bit of the land was "wasted" because the Indians had not "brought it all under the plow". The Indians had not populated the land like the Anglos but still used much of it to support the hunting and gathering aspects of their culture.
In their hearts, the Georgia boys believed in Bacon's metaphysics of science:
We must put nature on the rack and compel her to bear witness even against herself, so that we may control her to our ends.
They would hear Bacon whisper in their ears:
Land that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
Of course, Bacon used the word "knowledge," not "land" but a one word difference was not that significant of a change in Georgia. The basic idea was the same: be practical and do something useful with knowledge and land or it is wasted. And, it is a sin against God to waste anything thing when human beings, defined as "we," need it.
Again, the Americans in Georgia perhaps recalled the words of John Locke:
...the labor of our body and the work of our hands properly belongs to us. So, when one picks acorns or berries, they thereby belong to the person who picked them.
That is how we get property - we go out and take from the lan
d that is not used and with our labor we wrest private property from nature. We work it and it belongs to us.
Being a rugged Bentham individualist and the good American and Baconian and Lockean that he was, President Andrew Jackson saw to it that we disposed of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma. Jackson ignored efforts, legal and otherwise, by Chief Ross to keep his people on Cherokee lands. Instead, the President collaborated with the Indian Major Ridge, his son John, and Elias Boudinot to sell out the Cherokee Nation. Major Ridge and some 500 followers represented less than three percent of 20,000 Cherokees but Jackson, pretending this small group legitimately represented the Indian Nation, signed a treaty with the few collaborators.
The forced removal of some 20,000 Cherokees from their homes in north Georgia to the Oklahoma Territory resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 men, women, and children. The infamous forced march from the Georgia Indian Reservation to Oklahoma became known as the "Cherokee Trail of Tears." The Cherokees en route died from disease and privation. Subsequently, the Cherokee killed Major Ridge, his son, and Elias Boudinot for signing the "treaty" of New Echota, which Jackson used to drive them from their homes and land. Massive and forced removal from the southeastern United States of other Native American groups in the 1830s to the Oklahoma Territory included the Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and portions of the Seminole people.
Disposing of the Cherokees from the land sickened Congressman Davy Crockett and he subsequently fought President Jackson on the issue. As a result of his anti-American view of "progress," Crockett's political career ended and he headed west to Texas and the Alamo. By contrast, President Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, remained in power and today we honor his memory by placing his hero face on our American $20-bills. We honor his memory in the face of his genocide/ethnic cleansing.
The purpose of the example above is to show that the expressions of philosophers like Bacon, Locke, and Bentham are so much a part of who we as Americans are, that we live them and express them and make business and politics and love and war with them. As a nation, as a people, we have with our cherished, non-biblical beliefs performed heroic feats and won justice and, we have with those same beliefs often justified the most horrific atrocities against the powerless and the land. I suggest that often our basic American values are in conflict with the covenant values as recorded in the Scriptures.
Covenant Values from the Bible
Did you ever read God's communication with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Did you read about God's precious promises to them; that their descendants would grow into a great nation and that through them and their descendants, all the nations of the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3; 22:15-18; 26:24; 28:10-14)? When I read about how God promised to bless the patriarchs, I was astounded; I was shocked.
I was surprised our spiritual fathers felt wonderful about God's blessings because such blessings applied to other people, not just the patriarchal recipients themselves. What was there to get excited about? To my way of thinking, if God is going to bless me, then I am the person I want to benefit from the blessing. I want God to bless me with great relationships, love, and wealth and adoration. Future generations and all the nations of the earth? Who cares? Bless me if you are going to bless me, not all those other people all over the world or people that do not even exist yet. Let future generations worry about themselves. My personal pursuit of happiness is more important. After all, the "pursuit of happiness" is one of my "Unalienable Rights" as an American as per the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.
And, may I remind you that people who are under covenant-type relationships with the community (whoever that happens to be), are easier to exploit. They feel obligated to others and tend to worry about the needs of others. And, certainly, history is rife with exploitation of the masses controlled by religious and/or political ideas and obligations and perceived covenants.
Indeed, it is a mixed bag and there are multiple ways of looking at the pros and cons of comparing Mother Teresa with John Wayne. Which would you rather be? Which is more American? This is not to say that John Wayne was not Godly nor that Mother Teresa particularly was, though I think she was. I am only saying that I feel more comfortable with the former than the latter image. And, I suggest this is true because a lot of who I am derives from the ideas of philosophers who championed American middle class values (personal freedom) rather than the Bible. Now, let us therefore do our best to ignore our middle class philosophical champions for a while and delve into God's Word to question what our attitudes toward nature and land use and future generations would be if we had a more biblical point of view.
"And God Saw that it Was Good"
According to Genesis 1, God made the dry land and the seas, the plants, the stars, the planets, the fish, the birds, the sea animals, the land animals, and "every creeping thing of the ground." After God created these various things and collections of things, he repeatedly observed his work and said that "it was good." Note that before God added mankind to the mix, he saw that his work "was good." After creating mankind, God referred to his work as "very good," thereby distinguishing between what was "good" and what was "very good." My point is that nature was proclaimed by God to be "good" without man, which means he loved and appreciated his work before making man in his image.
Some will argue that God was merely stating that his work was "good" because that "good" was in reference to its being beneficial to man. However, the Bible in Genesis makes no such distinction.
Some Christians try to restrict God's full attention to mankind. They say that man has erotic love and fraternal love and God has agape love for mankind. Agape love is that self-less love that always does what is best for the other person. In this case, God would selflessly love man in a way to always do what is in the best interest of man.
I am not suggesting that God does not express agape love. He does. Giving of himself on Calvary was the supreme example of God's self-giving agape love for mankind. On the other hand, it appears self-evident that God loves beauty, symmetry, order, and living things because he made them throughout eternity. I suggest that God had an eternity to produce things he loved and enjoyed before he made man and that he therefore loves not only man but other things and beings, too. The only other conclusion one can draw from the existing set of biblical premises is that God was totally inactive for an eternity before he made man. How likely is that?
Man's Mandate
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." (Genesis 1:28).
Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Anonymous 1993) defines "subdue" as a verb meaning 1) to conquer and bring into subjection, and 2) to render submissive. The lexicon further defines "dominate" (have dominion over) as a verb meaning to rule over; govern; control. The command to control and govern are managerial concepts, not commands to extirpate and vanquish from the landscape. In like manner, parents are to subdue and control their own children and to integrate them as important parts of our human culture. To subdue one's offspring does not mean to exterminate them.
Man is therefore in a managerial position to control and conserve the world of nature. The Bible further describes man's position in the natural world by contrasting that position with God's mandate for nature and the importance he, God, placed upon his creation.
Wildlife's Mandate
God commanded the aquatic animals and birds to:
"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth" (Genesis 1: 22). Furthermore...God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:25).
When we combine God's mandates for man and for wildlife, our logic suggests that man is to manage wild
life so that species are fruitful and multiply on the earth. And furthermore, biodiversity of species is important because God said that everything that creeps upon the ground is "good." But these good species existed before the "fall" of mankind as discussed in Genesis 3.
The Fall of Mankind
Genesis 2 discusses some details not covered in the general description of creation in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, God selected a specific part of the earth called "Eden" where he provided a particular habitat for the introduction of Homo sapiens. The Bible did not record what was going on outside of Eden, but it did note that conditions were favorable for certain life forms in the project area.
Familiar to us are the conditions of the fall. God gave Adam and Eve permission to partake of all the fruits of plants throughout the Garden except that of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Shortly thereafter, Satan appeared in the form of a serpent and explained to the pair that they could determine what is good and bad for themselves without God if they ate of the forbidden fruit. That is, they could transgress God's law and set up their own systems of ethics and therefore be as gods or God.
Eve and Adam ate the fruit and mankind became, as noted by the Greek Protagoras (480-421 .BC.), "the measure of all things." God promptly ran them out of their wonderful living conditions and into a larger but "fallen world". What were the effects of the fall on man and beast? What were world conditions outside the Eden project?
Beyond the "Eden" project area, nature was in a state of disunion where such functions as predation, parasitism, decay, disease, death, and recycling mechanisms provided the biological community a semblance of "balance". Of interest, the death of the individual played a critical role in maintenance of the natural system. And the modification and most often injury of genetic material frequently led to congenital deformations and inherited diseases. In this "fallen" world, the fossil record indicates that species appeared and disappeared abruptly; at times regardless of climatic conditions (Stanley 1998). Our species also appeared abruptly in this world. Geneticists traced our origin through DNA studies of mitochondria to a single woman, who supposedly lived about 200,000 years ago. They called her the "Mitochondria Eve" (see "Mitochondria Eve" on "Wikipedia" Internet site, Rohde et al. 2004).
Retention of Biodiversity after the Fall
Genesis 6-9 records the story of Noah and the Flood. God observed "that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually." Genesis 6:6 records:
And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created - people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."
It is noteworthy that the evil deeds of humanity grieved the heart of almighty God in his heaven. This was obviously a picture of a Creator-Father so distraught with humanity that he also decided to scrap the other associated life forms. Why would God take out his anger on wildlife species when man was the species God saw as evil? Could it be that those life forms were stepping-stone models he used on the way to creating man? Or, perhaps man's behavior paralleled that of other organisms? Was God like the sculptor who destroyed his flawed work in fury and then flung the remaining pieces of marble across the floor?
But God had too much love for his handiwork to destroy it all. He decided to save from the flood his beloved and righteous Noah and Noah's family as well as species of wildlife. God loved nature so much, even the wildlife of a fallen world, that he commanded Noah in Genesis 6:19-20:
And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive.
One may argue that God was only interested in retaining wildlife species for man's overall benefit. If that is true, then we must conclude that all wildlife species benefit mankind in some way and that therefore, assuring their survival is in our best self-interest.
I think, however, that the Bible is showing us that not only does man benefit from the presence of other species but other species exist simply because God cares about them and enjoys them as magnificent and wonderful works of interest. They are a "good" in and of themselves.
Also note that God involved man in God's plan to retain biodiversity. Because God is all-powerful, he could certainly have saved wildlife species without the help of mankind. What could have been God's motive for involving us in species rescue? Could it be that God involved us in his wildlife management project so we would feel responsible for and would learn to love and respect the natural world that he created?
God Loves Nature
In Genesis 9: 9-11 God told Noah:
As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
Note that God made his promise to never again destroy living beings across the earth with a flood. Note that he made this covenant with Noah and Noah's descendants. Note also that God made his promise directly to address domestic animals and wildlife species that he created - because they were of value to him in and of themselves. Why else, would he address wildlife in the presence of man? I suggest that God's covenant with wildlife was a message for man who was in the position to care for and manage those species.
Other excerpts from the Bible show that God cared for and enjoyed wildlife. The Mosaic Law (Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25:1-7) stated that the Hebrew nation must not cultivate vineyards or farm lands for one year in every seven years. The volunteer crops that came up and the grapes that the vines produced every seventh year were to be left for poor people to glean and for the feeding of livestock and wildlife. It was not clear to me whether each parcel of cultivated land had its individual "sabbatical" year or whether the whole country of Israel practiced a "sabbatical year" once every seven years. The point is that taking care of livestock and wildlife needs in ancient Israel was a part of God's law.
The book of Jonah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) also addressed God's concern and care for animals as well as for people. Of course, we are all familiar with the story of Jonah and the "whale," though the Bible (Jonah 1:17a) states "But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah..." Nevertheless, according to the story, God told the Jewish man Jonah to go to the gentile city of Nineveh and advise the citizens there to repent of their wickedness or they and their city would perish. Jonah did not want to do that; likely because he was a Jew and the Ninevites were not. So Jonah ran away from God and God forced compliance through storm and gale and incarceration of Jonah by a large, specially prepared fish that finally puked him up upon the sea shore at the city of Nineveh.
Jonah preached repentance and to his surprise and displeasure the gentiles of Nineveh from the king on down believed him. To show repentance, the king of Nineveh decreed that all the people and (note this) all the animals in the city were to refrain from eating food or drinking water. The king of Nineveh felt God might care for and empathize with the animals that would also be destroyed if God's wrath fell upon the city.
Both man and beast were to wear sackcloth and to:
cry mightily to God...and turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands...(Jonah 3:8).
The king of Nineveh was correct about God's concern for the animals as well as the gentiles. After the citizens of Nineveh repented and God forgave them, Jonah was pouting and was upset with God for sparing the city. In Jonah 4:11, God answered Jonah's private
pity party with a statement of God-values:
And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah also believed God loved animals and their habitats. When God punished his people Israel with drought because they turned away from him, Jeremiah made an interesting appeal. He pleaded with God not to punish the land and the wildlife because of man's evil deeds:
How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of those who live in it, the animals and the birds are swept away ...(Jeremiah 12:4).
Jeremiah hoped God would ease the punishment of people for the sake of the wildlife and their habitats. We may assume that the prophet knew God well enough to know that his prayer was a powerful appeal to the interests of the Creator.
God further showed his compassion for domestic animals when he established the "Sabbath" day. Exodus 23:12 recorded:
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your home-born slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.
It would appear that the main reason for the seventh of the Ten Commandments was to honor the needs of animals, slaves, and aliens in ancient Israel.
In Psalm 36:6-6, David commented on the vastness of God's love that encompasses mankind as well as other organisms:
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.
If God's steadfast love extends to other parts of his creation beyond us, perhaps we too should show genuine respect for the other things God has made - even in a fallen world.
Respect for God's Creation
The song-writer of Psalm 104 and Psalm 147:8-9 praised God for his care of livestock, wildlife, and habitats:
You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills giving drink to every wild animal... By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the cattle....the trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees...The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.
Of interest, the writer of Psalm 104, likely David the sheep herder, did not curse nature for interfering with man's "progress". He did not complain to God about wildlife pests and predators. Rather, he praised God for taking care of wild creatures, even the predators of his livestock. He wrote in Psalms 104:31: "May the glory of the Lord endure forever." He recognized that wildlife and the natural world were creations of God and "God's glory" and that therefore, man must show respect and care for them in perpetuity.
Nature's Witness
My observations of humanity over the last seven decades led me to hypothesize that the religiosity of a person is often a measure of that individual's link with the natural world. With few exceptions, "primitive" peoples in hunting and gathering societies are religious. Likewise persons in agricultural societies tend to be more religious than those in urban settings. Scientists who are metaphysical materialists and urban populations tend to be humanists and embrace Protagoras' idea that "man is the measure of all things." This is not to say that philosophical humanists/materialists do not live in rural areas nor that religious persons do not live in cities. I only suggest that the prevailing beliefs of one faction or the other is often related to a people's relative exposure to nature compared to exposure to "sophisticated" human culture and to manmade objects that dominate landscapes in urban settings.
One could posit two explanations for land-based religiously vs. urban-based humanism. The first explanation is that urban areas are the seat of education and modern culture and that urbanites are simply better educated and more knowledgeable and have therefore reasonably cast off primitive and ignorant and irrational ideas, including beliefs in God or gods.
A second explanation for the general contrasts between urban and rural belief systems is the impact of contrasting environments. The constant bombardment of the senses with man-made objects and human culture in an urban setting are often enough to convince a person that indeed, "man is the measure of all things." In urban society, the individual often confronts the possibility of ultimate causes only in the face of personal trauma at the onset of old age or other forms of declining health or injury.
In agricultural and other more natural settings, man's influence is relatively small and the natural world looms large. That other world beyond man confronts the individual constantly. He/she senses that other world and knows by experience that in time and space, man is small. He/she senses complexity and reality beyond one's self and within one's self - complexity, self-evident mysteries, and self-awareness that words of "explanation" simply describe or gloss over.
Science has acted as a two-edged sword. Historically, humankind used scientific method to exorcise "demons" from various natural phenomena. By contrast, over the last three or four decades, scientific investigations unleashed a veritable torrent of new information that revealed complexities in nature beyond natural explanation. In virtually every field of science, microbiology, paleontology, and cosmology, the data cry out for operations of mind as the most reasonable and ultimate cause for natural phenomena (see essay Darwin - Truth in Detail below). However, because materialism is a metaphysical belief often held with religious tenacity by numerous members of the community and because of long-term personal and corporate investments in materialistic philosophies, the heavens and the earth will continue to declare the glory of God to a people with their eyes narrowed and their foreheads furrowed.
The Glory of God
The Bible repeatedly states that nature points to the creative process of Mind; that is, to God: "The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). In Romans 1:20, Paul advised that people have a revelation of God in nature:
Ever since the creation of the world his (God's) eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.
Paul further insisted in verse 20 that, given the revelation of God through nature, people who reject the existence of God "are without excuse..."
Toward the end of the story of Job in the Old Testament (Job 38), God revealed himself but not the reasons for Job's suffering. Using various examples from his creation, God explained to Job that he, God, had with a great show of expertise and power created the universe and the earth and all the habitats, plants, and animals on the earth. Among God's illustrations of his power, he discussed the origin of light, the sea, and control of death and weather and human physiological processes.
God further advised Job that he, God, took care of wildlife in those areas uninhabited by man. God provided prey for the lion and her young and provided food for the raven and its young ones when they cried out in hunger. And, God knew when the mountain goats and deer gave birth. God had "let the wild ass go free..." and "given the steppe for its home..." God, not man, had cared for ostriches, wild oxen, and eagles. God's power was obvious in those areas not inhabited by man.
In Chapter 40, God advised Job to consider "Behemoth" (possibly the hippopotamus):
...which I made just as I made you. For the mountains yield food for it where all the wild animals play. Under the lotus plants it lies, in the covert of the reeds and in the marsh. The lotus trees cover it for shade; the willows of the wadi surround it. Even if the river is turbulent, it is not frighten
ed; it is confident though Jordan rushes against its mouth. Can one take it with hooks or pierce is nose with a snare?
In concert with "Behemoth" of the Bible, a number of species of large wild animals, predominantly African species at present, continue to defy domestication, to their glory and to God's. If it is wild, it is of God.
God's last illustration of his majesty and power and expertise in the book of Job was that of "Leviathan". We can only surmise the species that was "Leviathan". The "Leviathan" of Psalm 104:26 was a large beast that frolicked in the sea and Job's "Leviathan" could not be taken with a "fishhook". In Job 41:20 God said: "Out of its nostrils comes smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes." The "smoke" from a boiling pot possibly referenced a whale's breath of air and water spray when the animal surfaced to exhale and inhale.
However, Job 41:19 described another "Leviathan" as the fire-belching dragon of old Eastern and European legend. Perhaps this "Leviathan" was a metaphor for the power and controlling fury of those parts of nature that ultimately remain beyond man's control - weather, disease, the aging process, and death? Whatever "Leviathan" was meant to be, it was clear that God's intent was to illustrate his power and glory in nature and contrast that with man's comparative vulnerability and weakness. Nature was the evidence of God's power and glory and of God's existence.
More Praise
Psalm 104:
O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great...These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works...
Psalm 148:
Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!
Isaiah 43:19-21:
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Our biblical review insists that an important purpose of nature is to glorify God and remind us of his existence. The Psalmist's desire was: "May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works..." We must conclude from our review that as Christians, one of our biblical obligations is to insure that the works of God endure. We need to conserve natural resources so that future generations can see and enjoy the glory of God as revealed in the things he has made and that the Lord may continue to rejoice in his creation.
Values of Wildlife to People
Wild People are Good People
There is a cultist assumption among some Christian groups that nature is evil and a work of the Devil. On one hand, Christians praise God for the beauty of the earth and on the other, every creature that is not edible or wearable or very friendly to mankind is considered evil. Much of this prejudice against nature reflects the writings of Francis Bacon and other European materialist philosophers of the 17th and 18th Centuries. By contrast, the Bible states that God was responsible for all creation and that God accomplished creation of the present universe through the direct, hands-on work of the Son, Jesus (John 1:2-3).
One may ask why a good God would create a world that harbors violence, pain, and death. While violence, pain, and death are often unpleasant, those aspects of life in themselves are not evil in the sense of being sin. They are rather the result of sin or separation of man from God. They appeared with mankind's fall from the fellowship of God and subsequent ejection from Eden. God's plan was to allow disunion; that is, death and destruction in the world, a state of nature that would one day share the redemption of God's children (Romans 8:19-23). Thus, exposure to nature in all its complexity and beauty and in its subjection to pain and death, points us to God. We see the earth and the plants and the animals and we love them and we see them thrive and we see them die and we long for the Author of that transient beauty that we see in them and in ourselves. We want life and beauty to last and we turn to God who we hope will make our lives endure and thrive in harmony with nature.
Pardon my romantic Rousseau diversion. My point is that nature is not evil but exposure to nature is good for us. For example, consider David, one of the central figures in the Old Testament. Our Jewish friends often wear the Star of David about their necks because David was poet, hero, and king of Israel. His exploits were legendary. God referred to him as: "a man after my own heart" (1 Samuel 13:13-14; Acts 13:22). When we look at the human being who was so close to the heart of God, we see a shepherd who spent much of his youth following sheep across the hills and valleys of Israel. David wrote much of his poetry, many of the Psalms in the Bible, while spending years of days and nights out in the wild lands of ancient Israel. We know the country was wild because the Bible records that David protected his sheep from large predators, Asiatic lions and bears.
David's exposure to wild country and to nature enabled him in his youth to remain close to God, to face natural adversity, to acquire courage, and use his talents to write some of the most beautiful religious poetry ever recorded. Observations of the beauty of nature, of the landscape, and the stars; of life, birth, and predation did not turn David away from but to God. David was a wild man and to some extent was a good man because of his exposure to the wild lands of ancient Israel.
One of David's descendants, both through the blood of his mother and adoptive father, was the Hebrew known as "Jesus". This is the historical Jesus of Christendom, who focused on his ministry of revelation with religious zeal. During his brief public ministry of some three and a half years, Jesus spent the greater part of his time conversing with his disciples and with individuals and groups of various sizes within two hundred miles of Jerusalem. However, when Jesus wanted to talk to God face to face, he frequently fled the people and retired to the surrounding hills to seek relief. He was familiar with wild country and particularly so because he had personally put it together (John 1:1-4).
Of interest, Jesus went into the desert to be tempted by Satan (Luke 4:1-13). While there, Satan offered Jesus political power, religious popularity, and food. Jesus rejected all three but stayed in the desert where the Bible (Mark 1:12-13) records that the angels appeared and cared for Jesus, who remained for some time with the wildlife species in the area.
Jesus had a cousin named John, who was a wild man. Matthew 11:11 quotes Jesus: "Truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist..." Jesus' words described a preacher who survived in the wild lands of Israel by eating wild honey and grasshoppers. A favorable recommendation from God Almighty for a wild man should be adequate to let us know that a wild man can be a good man and that the trappings of "civilization" and human "progress" have no particular Godly significance in themselves.
My last example of a good wild man is that other son of Abraham, Ishmael. Genesis 16 records that Ishmael would be:
...a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.
One might ask how anyone can love a wild boy who is so fiercely independent that he generally disliked other people and was disliked by them. However, we do not know the wild heart of Ishmael. We can assume that though he got along poorly with other people, Jehovah God still favored him. Note in Genesis 21:20:
...God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.
The father of Arabia was not a Muslim but Jehovah God of his father Abraham was his God and cared for him. Ishmael was a person of worth to Jehovah God and he was "a wild ass of a man".
Educational and Esthetic Values of Nature
Adam may have been the first taxonomist? Genesis 2:19 states:
So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.
God's motive for having Adam name/classify the different "kinds" of animals was because "it is not good that the man should be alone..." (Genesis 2:18-19). God's plan was to help Adam feel at home by naming other animal "kinds" that occupied the Eden project area. Familiarity with the species of native fauna and flora where one lives helps him/her to feel at home and a degree of belonging, connectedness, and contentment. It apparently gave God joy to see Adam participate in God's creative activity by classifying/naming other species and thereby becoming familiar with the same things God created and enjoyed.
We want to know about our flora and fauna simply because God made us to be interested in the other life forms about us and how they function in their environments. For example, 1 Kings in the Bible notes that Solomon was a person of wisdom and a man of diverse interests who composed three thousand proverbs and was well known for his views on how nature worked. As is true today, knowledge of the natural world was of vital interest to people who lived three thousand years ago. 1 Kings 4:33-34 notes that Solomon:
...would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish. People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.
The Bible also shows that man could gain theological incites by observing nature. Paul stated in Romans 1:19-20 that people who reject the existence of God are without excuse:
...for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are have been understood and seen through the things he has made.
In the book of Job, participants in Job's ordeal repeatedly cited natural phenomena to address his inexplicable suffering. Job observed that God was responsible for his personal suffering because the life of every living thing and likewise the breath of every human being is in God's hand. Job noted that the animals and birds and plants live and die by the will of God (Job 12:7-9). Why should man be different?
In Matthew 6:25-34 Jesus presented his famous "sermon on the mount." To the people gathered about him, he advised them to observe nature in order to reduce stress and anxiety tied to getting a living and struggling for status and acceptance in a competitive world. In verse 26, Jesus advised his listeners:
...look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Thus, a person is more valuable than a bird, but though man is worth more than many sparrows (Matthew 10:31), birds still have value to God because "...not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father" (Matthew 10:29).
Jesus stated in Matthew 6: 28-29 that Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as well as the wild lilies and that "if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you..." Of course, Solomon and all his glory was accessible to the few while even the poor of ancient Israel had access to the glory of wild flowers, which in God's opinion were more wonderfully glorious than King Solomon and his obvious wealth.
When the prophet Isaiah joyously wrote about the restoration of the people of Israel with the Lord their God, he pictured a natural setting for the medium of that reunion (Isaiah 55: 12-13):
For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Apparently, escape from man and his constructs and exposure to natural or near-natural settings was an esthetic and Godly experience for Isaiah. We could ascertain from these biblical references that retention of natural landscapes is of importance to the exercise of Judaism and the Christian faith.
A Biblical View of Fishing and Hunting
Hunting, fishing, and gathering were traditional and enjoyable activities in biblical times. Part of the joy in hunting is not only taking the animal for food but preparing the meat for personal and corporate consumption. The Scripture states that to obtain game through the hunt and then to fail to prepare that meat represents the epitome of unnatural laziness. The Scripture always condemns laziness and, in the case of Proverbs 12:27, supports hunting as a legitimate pursuit: "The lazy do not roast their game, but the diligent obtain precious wealth." Thus, the meat hunter is diligent and value-driven.
In Genesis 9:3-4, God told Noah and his family:
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
Thus, God allowed humankind to eat the meat of animals so long as the hunter did not consume the blood of the killed animal: "...who hunts down an animal or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth" (Leviticus 17:13). This prohibition against eating/drinking blood likely reflected the idea that the life was in the blood and God was the giver of life and owner of life in all living things. Therefore it was a sin against God to acquire life in a godless, Draconian way by consuming that life-force.
The Law of Moses further restricted the killing and eating of "unclean animals". Leviticus 11 defined "unclean" animals as "all creatures that swarm" - "whatever moves on its belly," "whatever has many feet," "every animal that has divided hoofs but is not cleft-footed or does not chew the cud," etc. These restrictions appear odd in light of God's previous plans to assure retention of all these "unclean" species through the Great Flood in Noah's time and in light of the fact that God created them in the first place. Possibly, God knew that the marvels of his created life forms would lead to worship of the animals unless 1) the people killed and ate the species or 2) the species were "unclean"?
Of interest, God once again declared all creatures "clean" and suitable for human consumption through the apostle Peter, at least from a religious standpoint, after the resurrection of Jesus. It is now, therefore, "profane" for trout fishers to look down on catfish fishers. Acts 10:11-15:
He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, "Get up Peter; kill and eat." But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." The voice said to him again, a second time, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
In the Old Testament, God gave special recognition to persons who were good hunters, e.g., Nimrod, and Esau. Genesis 10:8 provides a note on the hunting prowess of Nimrod:
Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord".
Genesis 25 - 27 tells the story of Esau and Jacob and of parental favoritism in a dysfunctional family. Esau made a number of bad decisions, including marrying the wrong women (two of them) and trading his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of oatmeal. Esau acted unwisely and made stupid mistakes but the Bible also recorded in Genesis 25:27 something positive about Esau: "... (he) was a skillful hunter, a m
an of the field..." and "Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebecca loved Jacob." Note that being a "skillful hunter" was a concept given positive recognition in the Bible in spite of Esau's poor choices. Because of the positive recognition given hunters and hunting in the Bible, we can assume that God approved of hunting, at least for the purposes of obtaining food.
The classic hunter and gatherer in the Bible was John the baptizer. John was the cousin of Jesus, as noted above in Wild People are Good People, and he lived outside the mainstream of society. He obtained food by simply gathering what he could find in the hills and streams of Israel. His main sources of nutrients were grasshoppers and wild honey (Mark 1:6).
Gathering grasshoppers requires considerable stalking ability and a quick hand. The gathering of honey in the wild requires climbing trees and cliffs and confrontation with bees - uneasy labors for the faint-hearted. Today, we would tend to look down on such an uncivilized anomaly as John but, again, Jesus praised John as the greatest human in the history of mankind (Matthew 11:11). Hunting and fishing and gathering were obviously acceptable activities in Bible times.
I'm Going Fishing
When Jesus selected his twelve disciples, four of the twelve he chose were commercial fishermen: Andrew, Peter, James, and John. Catching and eating fish were activities approved by God as vital parts of ancient Jewish culture.
One of the most picturesque stories in the New Testament followed the resurrection of Jesus. In John 21, the Bible records that the disciples of Jesus had some free time and Peter decided to get out on the lake to relax and consider all the impacts tied to the recent crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. John 21:3 notes: "Peter said to them (other disciples): "I am going fishing." Six of Jesus' disciples were with Peter at the time and they agreed to go fish with him.
Peter and the other six men fished all night with their nets and caught nothing. About daybreak, they approached the shore and saw a man standing near the water's edge. The man on shore asked them if they had caught any fish. They replied that they had not. The man on shore told them they would catch some if they would throw the net on the right side of the boat. They did so and the net encompassed one hundred fifty-three large fish.
While they were straining to bring in the load of fish, John, who was perhaps more sensitive to his surroundings than some of the other disciples, made a creative leap in his mind. He realized that the man standing on shore about a hundred yards distant was the resurrected Jesus. He turned to Peter with his revelation: "It is the Lord!"
Peter grasped the idea immediately. He threw on his fisher's coat and dove into the water and swam that hundred yards to shore. One of the interesting things about Peter's actions was that he no longer needed to experience the miracle of walking on water. Rather, he knew he could swim and he knew he could get to God without another show of the supernatural. He no longer needed to prove anything but just wanted to be with Jesus.
On shore, the resurrected Jesus was doing something heavenly. He was cooking fish and hushpuppies (bread) on a charcoal fire for the mortals. Jesus also told Peter to "bring some of the fish you have caught" and "come and have breakfast." On the shores of the Sea of Tiberius, over a breakfast of fish and hushpuppies, the resurrected Jesus gave Peter his marching orders for serving the church.
The implications of the resurrected Jesus cooking fish appear obvious. There is something heavenly about what we might consider mundane earthly tasks like catching and cooking fish. Such an observation can provide hypotheses about the earthly aspects of the heavenly life. The obvious conclusion from the story of the resurrected Jesus cooking fish is that catching, cooking, and eating fish are legitimate pursuits insofar as the biblical record is concerned.
Predators and Wildlife "Pests"
Use of Predators to Punish Mankind
God used various wildlife species to warn and/or punish evil people in biblical times. For example, God addressed "faithless" nations in Ezekiel 14:15. He said that he had the option to "send wild animals through the land to ravage it, so that it is made desolate, and no one may pass through because of the animals..." In our day and time we have eliminated or controlled large, dangerous predators to the extent that God has little left with which to threaten us, or so it would seem? But let us not forget that small microbes still loom large and dangerous and God can still call on other life forms to punish faithless nations and human arrogance. Some other references on the subject of God's using wildlife to warn/punish humankind include: Leviticus 26:22, Deuteronomy 28:26, Ezekiel 14:21, Psalms 36:13, and Revelation 6:7-8.
God Cares for Predators
Psalms 104:21 states that "...the young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God" and God inquired of Job (Job 38:39):
Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert?
The message in these verses is obvious: God makes predation possible. He cares for predators and assures their continuance. Of course, such theology might confuse a wildebeest at the personal level unless the individual understands the role of death and the will of God in a fallen world.
Large predators are powerful animals and in their power, they glorify God. In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis noted that Jesus is a lion and he is not a tame one.
Predators as Symbols of Power
Peter admonished the early Christians (1 Peter 5:8) to:
Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.
In this case, note that the devil is "like" a lion by way of analogy or comparison. That is, the devil's behavior reminds one of the hunting and stalking behavior of a lion. This is not to say that the lion is demonic or "evil" in any way. In fact, in Hosea 5:14, God uses the same lion analogy to describe his own behavior. He said to Israel during one of that nation's periods of faithlessness:
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I myself will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
These two analogous stories illustrated the ferocious aspects of the authors of evil and of good to a people familiar with the powers of a large and living predator.
By contrast, Revelation 5:5 referred to the conquering Jesus as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah". As noted above, the Messiah is not "like a lion"; rather, he is the Lion. His power, attitude, and ferociousness to protect good and to dispense with evil are closer yet to that of the large powerful predator who sends chills down the spine.
God Abhors a Vacuum
In the book of Ezekiel, God took upon himself the task of punishing the nations who mistreated his people Israel. God explained that he would use Babylon to punish Egypt. He said in Ezekiel 32:13-14:
I will destroy all its livestock from beside abundant waters; and no human foot shall trouble them anymore, nor shall the hoofs of cattle trouble them. Then I will make their waters clear, and cause their streams to run like oil says the Lord God.
God's plan as noted in the Bible was to remove both people and their livestock from the land and waterways. Once the people and the livestock were gone, hoof action along the stream banks would cease and the streams would clear up. The riparian clean-up was a good tradeoff in comparison to having the land occupied by a nation who had polluted the land and had mistreated Israel. This story indicated that God cares for people, he will punish people by removing them from the land, and he views ecosystem health to be more important than having the land occupied by an evil generation of human beings.
The Old Testament records several other instances where God displaced evil peoples from the land and replaced them with wildlife. In Isaiah 13:19-22, God was angry with the kingdom of Babylon. God said that hyenas, jackals, ostriches, "goat-demons," and "howling creatures" will replace human beings. In Isaiah 34, God expressed his plan to replace human habitation with wildlife in the land of the Edomites. Wildlife speci
es that would fill areas formally occupied by humans would include the hawk, the hedgehog, the owl, the raven, the jackal, the ostrich, the wildcat, the hyena, the "goat -demon," and the buzzard. Verses 16 -17 included the Lord's comments on the reproductive success of these wildlife species:
Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without its mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his spirit has gathered them. He has cast the lot for them, his hand has portioned it out to them with the line; they shall possess it forever, from generation to generation they shall live in it.
Some additional references to God's replacing humans with wildlife species include: Jeremiah 9:11, Jeremiah 50:39, and Zephaniah 2:13-14.
Predator Control
The Israelites left slavery and the land of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, possibly in the thirteenth century B.C. God's promise, as repeated to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 13:14-18; 15:4-5; 13-18; 17:1-8; 18:17-19; 22:15-18), was that through Abraham's descendants, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Christians view this promise as God's plan to reveal himself to humankind through the introduction of the Jewish Messiah or Christ. A key part of God's plan was for the Israelites to enter the land of Canaan west of the Jordan River and displace the inhabitants. Displacement of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Girgashites, Perizaites, Hivites and Jegusites was considered necessary by God because they were "wicked" (Deuteronomy 9:4). Worship of idols and practices associated with idol worship angered God, including the sacrifice of children, cult male and female prostitution, and "sex with other flesh" (Deuteronomy 12:31; 23: 17-18; Isaiah 5:5; 57:5; 1 Kings 14:24; 2 Kings 23:7; Jude 1:7).
Of interest, the "promised land" or land of Canaan was fertile and relatively productive and God could simply have removed the indigenousness peoples there and made way for occupancy by his chosen people, the Jews. However, God chose to displace the inhabitants of Canaan in portions in order to leave a remnant to control wildlife pests and predators. Deuteronomy 7:22 states:
The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to make a quick end of them, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you.
Predator control by God was promised as one of the rewards for obedience. In Leviticus 26:6, God said:
And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.
Asian lions and bears and hyenas were common enough in ancient Israel to endanger human beings and to make raising livestock a tenuous industry. The black-backed jackal, a coyote-size canine, was and still is abundant in the land of Israel and is capable of predation on adult sheep, lambs, and goat kids. Also, numbers of herbivores that supported the large predators were common enough to depress the production of agricultural crops. Therefore, local control of large predators and other wildlife species was necessary to protect food production in an agricultural society, particularly one armed with spears, bows and arrows, and sling shots.
Local control and management of predators and wildlife pests of agricultural crops appear to be practices ordained by God for the protection of food production and people's lives. However, as noted earlier in this essay, God cares for large predators and other wildlife species and selective control and management, not species extermination, appear to be God's goal.
Metaphoric Predators
The Bible used predators as metaphors for powerful forces, both good and bad. Ezekiel 34, for example, describes the return of the Israelites to the Promised Land. God referred to the Jews as "sheep" and of himself at the "shepherd". The "sheep" are brought back into the land of Israel and God reestablishes the Davidic kingdom (verses 23-25):
I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken. I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely.
The scripture appears in these verses to announce the return of the children of Israel, the "sheep," to the Promised Land, where the Messiah or Christ, "my servant David," will feed them and be their "shepherd." God will eradicate enemies of the "sheep"; that is, "wild animals" from the land. Because God used several metaphors in this text, it is probable that the "wild animals" to be eradicated are not literally wild animals but human enemies.
Natural Resource Management
Definition of "Land"
The word that we interpret as "land" appears in the Bible about 1,700 times. When we see "land" in the Bible, we understand the meaning of the word because of its place in context. The concept of "land" in the Bible was often interchangeable with the word "home". Listed below are several phrases that illustrate use of the word "land" in the Old Testament and probable contextual explanations:
1) "Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth..." (Genesis 11:28). Haran lived and died where the landscape and way of life were familiar to him.
2) "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.' " (Genesis 12:1). Land in this case is a geographical area with fertile soils and adequate precipitation for the production of livestock and crops.
3) "...so that I may give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you may enjoy the fat of the land" (Genesis 45:18). The most productive soils in Egypt were in Goshen, the delta area of Egypt.
4) "They covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was black; and they ate all the plants in the land..." (Exodus 10:15). A plague of locusts covered the physical landscape occupied by the political, racial, and cultural population that was the country/nation of Egypt.
5) "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees..." (Deuteronomy 8:7-10). Israel is to take possession of a geographical area that is fertile and well-watered.
6) "So the land had rest forty years" (Judges 3:11). The people/nation/country of Israel under the leadership of Othniel were free from enemy aggression for forty years.
We can see from the notes above that the word "land" had multiple meanings to the people of ancient Israel. Land meant landscape, a way of life, a geographical location, fertile and well-watered soils, prosperity, and human beings of a particular culture... home. Why did the ancient Hebrew use the word "land" in various contexts with a variety of meanings? They did so because the tie between the familiarity and fertility of the landscape and the happiness and well-being of the people was so intermixed that the people did not separate their natural or community surroundings from their personal identity. They were so close to the concept of "land" that they did not separate who they were and how they lived from natural resources. Your land was your field, the pasture for the sheep, the flowing Jordan River, the lions in the wilderness, the religious and political leaders in the local synagogue, family and community, and the presence of God almighty who was everywhere. Theirs was a land-based economy and culture.
Contrast that concept of land-based identity with current values of "land". The ability of the land to provide food, clothing, culture, and a sense of identity mean little today where so many people live in totally man-made worlds of industrial parks, suburbs, and massive urban centers. The productivity of the soil compares poorly with its monetary values for the construction of shopping malls, housing developments, and golf courses. Ultimately, of course, the productivity and availability of the land will determine our health, happiness, and ability to survive. In the long term, wisdom and management not unbridled entrepreneurial development will provide hope for the future. We must not forget the value of God's gift to us of the land and all its meanings and significance to people. The land is
worth far more than its exploitation and speculations for short-term monetary gain. Land is not just a commodity for sale but our life and cultural identity.
Ownership of Land and Water Resources
Who owns the land? God owns the land. In Leviticus 25:23, God says that he owns the land and he would not allow the people to sell his land:
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.
The ancient Israelites were to retain possession of the land but they were to remember that they were aliens and only temporary managers of land resources. They had to manage the land within the guidelines allowed by God on God's land. One of the caveats for being a tenant on God's land was that a family was to retain ownership of the land in perpetuity. Leviticus 25:25-28 provides guidelines for the family member who "falls into difficulty" and sells land. A next of kin was to make every effort to buy back the land to keep it in the family. If the original seller's economic conditions improved, he was allowed to buy back the land where he once was God's tenant. Obviously, God wanted people to develop family pride and identity in their care for specific partials of land to assure care, wise use, and conservation - for future uses. He wanted people to feel a strong tie to the soil and other natural resources.
The scriptures noted above define the kind of attitudes we should have toward land ownership and management. We never "own" the land and other natural resources. We cannot simply do with the land whatever we want. We must consider how important the land is to God and to God's purposes and we must manage land in line with the scripture and God's values. God has a plan for and concern for future generations and he wants his land managed for the long term welfare of people and the wise use of natural resources. Selling God's land for short term economic gains and ignoring the value of that land for future generations is not biblical.
Psalm 95:5 further states that marine and land resources belong to God: "The sea is his, for he made it, the dry land, which his hands have formed." In this scripture God affirms his ownership of all marine resources as well as land resources. Again, management of natural resources must reflect God's long term view for management and care of those resources for future generations as well as for present human populations. We must also recall that nature is valued by God as a good in itself. Sacrifice of long-term economic and cultural needs by tenants for short-term economic gains is wrong - in light of the fact that God owns the resources and requires that those resources be managed in line with his values. Those values include the wise use and conservation of current resources for the sake of future generations of new tenants.
Ownership of Wildlife
God owns wildlife, not the state and not the people. Psalm 50:10-11:
For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills, I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.
Comments made above concerning the management of other natural resources also apply to the management of wildlife by the "aliens and tenants" who are on God's land.
Carrying Capacity
The carrying capacity of the land is a measure of the ability of the land resource to sustain a species of animal over a long period of time. The ability of the land to sustain life forms can vary greatly from season to season and from year to year. In desert and semi-desert environments, carrying capacity often varies with and is positively correlated with the amount of precipitation.
Excessive use of the vegetation on arid and semi-arid lands usually reduces the number of plant species that are palatable to grazing and browsing animals. As a result of over-use, less palatable and less nutritious plants replace more desirable, more nutritious plant species on the land. With excessive stocking rates of herbivorous animals on the landscape, the long-term ability of the land to sustain those animals diminishes significantly. Overstocking the land with domestic herbivores can produce short-term economic gains but reduces the ability of the land to provide for the needs of future generations of people.
The Bible records an incident where excessive grazing brought conflict within a family. When Abraham and his family, including his nephew Lot, moved from Iraq along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and westward to the area that is now Israel, they had hundreds of head of cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and camels. The families of Abraham and of Lot used the land as though all the range was open for grazing and browsing by their livestock. Genesis 13:5-12 records that the land could not support both the families and livestock of Abraham and his nephew Lot in the same landscape. The Bible also indicates that there was a kind of social carrying capacity that the two families and herds of livestock exceeded because of competition and strife that arose between the two families over grazing locations and water use.
Because the land was not overpopulated with people, Abraham solved the problem of competition for grazing and browsing areas by asking Lot to select where he wished to pasture his animals. Abraham would then move his family and livestock to another location some distance from his nephew's family and grazing and browsing animals. Lot selected the well-watered plain of the Jordan River, which included the city of Sodom, and Abraham retreated to the hills and oaks of Mamre where soils were relatively shallow and water was less abundant.
Of interest, Abraham recognized that "...the land could not support both of them living together..." soon after their arrival in the area. That is, Abraham took action to solve the conflicts before land abuse reduced the abundance of palatable plant species. He recognized negative social interaction as a valid reason for solving land use conflicts.
Protecting Carrying Capacity