” …theologians would be foolish not to focus on sin. We human beings fail to love, both ourselves and others as ourselves. Relationships disastrously break down in individual lives and shared social life. Violence breaks out on international and domestic fronts. Voracious greed, racism, sexism, human trafficking, and other unspeakable injustices become solidified into social structures and create havoc. Suffering multiplies in a human world prone to selfish infidelity and hatred. Not content with harming our own species, human sin spills over into the natural world, ravaging habitats and destroying other species for personal and corporate gain. We profoundly need divine forgiveness. Out of the depths we cry for salvation. Yet over the centuries Western theology’s focus on sin became so intense that the wideness of God’s saving mercy throughout the whole created world was by and large overlooked. Any connection between the cross of Christ and cosmic redemption came to seem esoteric. As a result, the natural world was ignored in doctrine, liturgical prayer, and ethical practice. It is hard to take cosmic redemption seriously if redemption is only about forgiveness of human sin. How did this come about?”
— Johnson, Elizabeth A. (2018-02-20). Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril (Kindle Locations 126-134). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.