The Planet’s Pandemic

At the beginning of the coronacrisis, we heard terrifying stories of death and despair. At the same time, we heard encouraging stories of a recovering planet. Wildlife wandered into silent cities. Dolphins returned to the canals of Venice. Actually, they didn’t. But the water of the famous canals was cleaner. Satellite readings showed air pollution disappearing from the area around Wuhan, China.

Photos showed clear skies above Kathmandu, Los Angeles, and other cities usually socked in with smog. (True story: the smog was so thick that I lived in Los Angeles for three weeks before I realized there were mountains a few miles from our apartment). “Coronavirus hit the world’s reset button,” people said. “The planet can breathe again.” Some said, “Humans are the virus.”

Coronavirus lockdowns around the world made our environmental questions more pressing. It also made them more promising. Seeing how air and water quality can improve simply by pausing our economy and transportation, can we reverse deforestation, desertification, pollution, climate change? From a Christian perspective, what impact should human beings have on the planet? What role and responsibility do those with the Spirit of Christ have towards the planet? The Bible actually has quite a bit to say about the issue, but applying the Bible’s framework today takes hard work and wisdom, because we live in a more complex and complicated world.

We start in an unexpected place, the book of the prophet Hosea, but Hosea will quickly take us to God’s commandments, his covenant, and his creation. I was reading through Hosea pre-corona and this verse struck me: “the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea are swept away” (Hosea 4:3). Hosea wrote about a land polluted by sin. How perfectly it apples to a planet polluted by plastic garbage and greenhouse gases.

Hosea famously married an unfaithful woman, as an illustration of God’s relationship with his unfaithful people. In the fourth chapter, the prophet speaks for God, who brings a case against those “who live in the land.” Through the prophet, God says, “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” God’s charges against his people refer back to the ten commandments (found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). The lack of faithfulness, love, and acknowledgement of God reminds us of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The next series of charges brought through Hosea refers specifically to four of the commandments related to our treatment of others: bearing false witness (lying), murder, stealing, and adultery. Sounds like a terrible place to live. Those commandments were given for our own good.

As a result of the failure of God’s people to live out God’s commands, “the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea are swept away.” The inhabitants of the land do not acknowledge the God of the land, therefore the land and all its human and animal inhabitants suffer. God had promised to bless the land that was a gift to the people. The people were to bless the land for God by living out God’s way of life.

The gift of the promised land and the gift of the law were a part of God’s covenant, an all-inclusive way of life centered on God. God spoke to Moses, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God…And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob” (Exodus 6:7-8). Those given the land were also given a mission. “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).

The covenant gave direction on worship and holiness, which was to be lived out in “the land the Lord your God is giving you,” as it says in commandment about honoring father and mother (Exodus 20:15). Most people today would define holiness in terms of personal morality, but it is bigger than that. Holiness does include one’s self, but it also includes one’s neighbor. The laws and the prophets constantly emphasize holiness in the social realm. We are to do justice, care for the poor, welcome the foreigner, and so on.

Holiness didn’t just include the human inhabitants of the land; it included the animals as well. The weekly day of sabbath rest specifically included animals (Exodus 20:10).

Sabbath rest was even extended to the land. “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left” (Exodus 23:10-11). The practice of the sabbath year was intended to benefit the land, the poor, and the wild animals – three things that are still easy to overlook. The land never did belong to the people. It belonged to God. They were to live in it and treat it the way God wanted. The presence of God’s people should have a positive impact on the land and all its inhabitants. That idea did not begin with the covenant and commandments; it began with the creation of the world.

Careful readers of Hosea notice that he refers not only to the ten commandments but to creation: “The beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea” is an echo of Genesis 1, where these creatures are each put into their spheres of land, sky, and water. And humans, last of all, are given authority to reign over them as the image of God in the earth. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,” God says (Genesis 1:26). A lovely line from my favorite communion liturgy sums up the responsibility and authority given to humans, “You formed us in your own image, giving the whole world into our care so that, in obedience to you, our creator, we might rule and serve all your creatures.” Rule and serve. That’s what it means to reign with and for God on the earth.

The whole Bible assumes this role of human beings. Where human beings are present, the planet should thrive. Our presence should be a blessing to the whole creation. The first humans were placed in a garden. They were to be fruitful and multiply, extending the garden out into the whole earth. The Biblical writers are also all aware that something has gone wrong with the image-of-God rule of human beings on the earth. Genesis 3 says that instead of keeping their trust in God and his goodness, the first humans wanted to become like God. They tried to cross the infinite gap between created, finite beings and uncreated, infinite God. An outrageous thing to do, yet we all do it. We refuse to trust the good Creator and choose instead to trust in ourselves. A sense of nakedness and shame entered them immediately and they hid from God. They were expelled from the garden. They were to fill the earth, but now the woman’s pregnancy and labor would be more difficult and painful. They were to care for the earth, but now the man’s labor was made wearisome with thorns and thistles. Worst of all, they would die.

We still sense our role and responsibility as human beings. And we still sense our failure. The people of Israel were supposed to give the world an illustration of God’s kingdom at work, blessing the poor, the animals, and the land. One piece of American history illustrates how things have often gone on the planet instead.

Below is a map showing the interior plains of North America. This enormous grassland once held up to 60 million bison. One observer claimed that in the mid-1800s it took five days for one herd to pass by a spot of land.

Native Americans had hunted bison, of course, and ate them from nose to tail. European settlers had a taste for just the tongue and a use for just the hides. The rest of the animal was left to rot. The decline in the number of bison is unbelievable: in 1889 there were 541 bison left alive.

The destruction of these millions of animals had an unintended consequence. Grassland thrives when grazed periodically. It does not do so well without. Among other factors, the destruction of this ecosystem led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when the soil literally dried up and blew away, just as Hosea described. The victims of the drought and dust headed west to California to work in the orange groves. (My wife’s family were Okies. They say a hitchhiker’s cigarette caused a fire in the back of their vehicle that burned up all their belongings en route to California.)

The slaughter of 60 million bison was not “ruling and serving all God’s creatures.” That was not reigning as God’s image on the earth. It was reckless destruction. It was bad for the animals, bad for the land, bad for the economy, bad for agriculture, bad for those who like hunting, bad for humanity. Thankfully we have move beyond that attitude. Or have we?

We have never killed a bison on the great plains, but we have eaten meat from animals raised in confinement and butchered by immigrants.. We have discarded countless thousands of plastic bags, plastic spoons, plastic everything; you can find it in the oceans, where it is killing the creatures of the sea. We pollute the air, despite the fact that it’s changing the earth’s entire climate. Even if it wasn’t, who like to see or breathe smog? We are not hunters, we are consumers. The cost of our consumption is the same as what Hosea warned: “The land dries up, and all who live in it waste away.”

For those who love the Lord Jesus and are filled with his Spirit, what can we do? Christians live under a different covenant with God than the people in the time of Hosea. Those who received the covenant through Moses were to live out their holiness in the land God gave them. The land suffered when they failed. They were exiled from the land when they refused to return to God. Finally, the Messiah came to the land. Before his death, he instituted a new covenant. This one was put into effect through his blood, the once-and-for-all sacrifice for sin. Our approach to God comes through Christ, who died for us.

The new covenant does replace the old covenant, but not by discarding it. The new covenant in Jesus Christ amplifies the old covenant. Jesus clarified and deepened the will of God given to us in the 10 commandments; read the Sermon on the Mount. Abraham was given the promise of land, descendants, and blessing. We who are not descendants of Abraham by birth can become children of Abraham by faith in Christ. The promised land is understood to refer to the new earth, not just one piece of this planet.

The sin of humanity led to planet-wide misery. Those who are in Christ wait for a new planet, a new creation. The Apostle Paul picks this up in Romans 8, saying that “the creation was subjected to frustration” and that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” The creation is groaning for the time when it will be “liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-22). The Bible’s vision of the future is a new creation ruled by human beings, the glorious children of God. The presence of re-created human beings will once again be good for the earth. We will take our rightful place and exercise our authority in wisdom as we rule and serve God’s new earth with all the creatures it contains. The creation longs for this. So do we. What shall we do as we wait?

I will assume that you agree that we should take good care of the planet – for God, for others, and for ourselves. This will take our will, our wisdom, and our work. Caring for the planet requires our will because it’s so inconvenient. We like eating meat. We like buying cheap things. We like driving. And flying. We’re not the ones running the major polluters, like factories and tanker ships, but we like their products. We are consumers. Changing our habits of consumption is extremely inconvenient. It might mean choosing what you eat with more care (I miss the man who raised a few cows each year in Central California – happy cows, happy land, happy farmer, and happy eaters).

Caring for the planet also requires wisdom, because it’s endlessly complicated. In the time of the Bible, there was no oil drilling or oil spilling. Transportation was by foot, horse, or sailboat. Humanity didn’t have the potential to inflict such great damage on the earth as we have now. Today, if you want to care for the earth it’s complicated from the moment you brush your teeth. Your toothbrush is a plastic stick with plastic bristles. The tube of toothpaste is plastic too. After a few months you throw it all in the trash. It will all sit somewhere for hundreds of years. How can you avoid this though? Do you need to brush your teeth with your finger? (I mentioned this in my sermon and my co-pastor pointed out that in Ethiopia they brush their teeth with a thin branch from a certain type of tree. That afternoon he looked at a tree in our backyard and said, “This is it.”).

Smart people are coming up with creative ways of improving the land. This screenshot from a Ted talk by Allan Savory shows the impact of bringing in grazing animals and managing them well.

Other improvements are coming through technological innovation. A Dutch teenager named Boyan Slat has invented a machine that cleans up plastic from the ocean.

For those of us who are not farmers or inventors, our contribution consists of small steps. The solution requires our will, our wisdom, and our work. The work will be small, inconvenient steps. My wife is a master at this. Years ago she began slowly changing the way we eat. Then she began hanging our laundry to dry instead of using the dryer. I choose to travel by bicycle whenever possible. To be honest, it’s usually more convenient than driving, even when it’s raining.

But it’s not my job to tell you exactly what steps to take, or what policies our governments and corporations should put in place. My job is to preach Christ! When we talk about the role of human beings on the planet, Christ is the one to look at.

Psalm 8 refers to Genesis 1 in a beautiful reflection on the place of human beings in God’s world. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the starts…What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.” The glory and honor are connected to the role of human beings on the earth: “You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.”

The author of Hebrews quotes this Psalm, but observes, “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them” It’s true. Diseases like COVID are not under the feet of humanity. Poverty, inequality, and injustice have not been overcome. Pollution, climate change, extinction of species, the depletion of animals to hunt and fish to catch – all these things are not under the feet of humanity. Worst of all, death is not subject to us. We are subject to death.

We do not see everything subject to humanity, which should be the case. “But,” the author of Hebrews continues, “We do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:6-9). Jesus has fulfilled the role that was meant for all humanity. Jesus shows us what we will be. Our eyes are on him as we care for the earth and all its inhabitants.