My calling is to help the church communicate the doctrine of Creation, which is key to the theological task we will find therein: which is that the Earth is under siege from humankind and it’s technologies. It is , in total, and act of utter selfishness for the most privileged (many of us fall within that class) to hoard massive portions of the world’s resources, including those portions that have been necessary to the lives of those who live on those lands that produce that bounty. Colonialism has plundered away their life’s resources. This class of plunderer/extractor has “Overshot” the capacities of the Earth to provide balance and sustainability for ALL life.
This is a supreme and unprecedented ethical crisis, this ecological crisis we now face. The science is clear. Warnings about the many “upsets of balance” have created multiple “tipping points” that generate cascading effects of ecological disasters that keep compounding, making it more difficult and hardly possible at all in some places , to grow food, live on the land, and provide for communities.
This earth, God’s Good Creation, was set in motion as a Paradise; a miracle of interlocking systems that produces life supports for all manner of life, which is all INTER-dependent. Through the rebellion of humanity where we seek to “make a name for ourselves” (Babel) , or oppress others (and the earth suffers along with the people (multiple Biblical passages echo this connection between injustice and travails of the earth). We now have the actual sciences at work for us that identify these connections, and our theology needs to be re-equipped (Reformed) . We need an Eco-Reformation that makes it clear that God’s people must turn radical attention to the task of turning this around, or humanity will be facing increasing and intensifying ecological tragedies of a scale unprecedented in human history.
I’d say that’s a pretty serious theological task. We must, as a people, RESIST the three centuries old story the world of the privileged has been telling us about success and economies, and insist that the costs to the earth must be accounted for in our economic assessments and plans. Our world needs a new ecological set of priorities if we are to be able to “manage the household” for the greatest good and to the glory of God the Creator. If the Scriptures were being written and collected today, those places that have been there all along would have to be further highlighted and further explained along the lines of what God intended for the good of the Creation over which God “hovered” (Genesis 1:2) .
This is my task, and the task of those who seek to “speak a word” for today, as we have entered into a new ecological epoch (the Anthropocene) which could not have been anticipated by the Biblical writers. But we can harvest those assumptions about God’s Good Creation and the importance of it, seen in the tight knit relationship that always existed in the minds of those writers as they spoke of Covenants between God, Humanity, and the Earth. They usually knit the three together, AS IF there was a deep , perhaps “spiritual”: bond between the three that we best keep intact and honor. Eco-Reformation. The 21st Century “Re-imagining” and honoring of Biblical Tradition that we need to proclaim, and show the world how to LIVE (as sustainable, faithful People of God)
