It was a beautiful day in Malibu when my dad and stepmom picked me up from volleyball camp. Since we were in the area, they asked if I’d be up for going to a get together hosted by one of the environmental activist groups they associated with. Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, something about oceans…I don’t remember which one. It was the mid 1990’s and I was apathetic toward all of that. I was a seventeen-year-old surfer who was into photography, so my Venn diagram of interests overlapped theirs often enough that I didn’t mind the green politics. Plus, they offered to get Subway on the way there, so I agreed.
I don’t remember the schtick of the meeting. It was an outdoor hippy kinda deal and undoubtedly there was a guitar. I remember meeting a drummer guy who called himself Sticks. Whatever. The Subway BMT was fantastic and I’m pretty sure it irked some of the meat-is-murder people in attendance (Sticks mentioned something about not eating things that have a face). I felt good as I took another bite.
As we were leaving, my Dad and I happened upon one of the ladies and her two young children. They all wore vintage style dresses and large brimmed hats. They looked nice. But the youngest girl took off her hat and in doing so must have committed one of that family’s unpardonable sins. The mother raged at her with a Joan Crawford level blast of hot air, “Put that hat back on! Get your head covered from this…ozone…dangerous…put it on!” She grabbed her child by the arm and shoved the hat back on the beautiful little girl’s head.
My Dad and I shared a look that revealed what the other was thinking: That lady is wacko.
Since then, I’ve experienced numerous wackos in the environmentalist ranks. No doubt you’ve seen this type of thing play out as well. It’s not merely pseudoscience-initiated wack that drives these people – the mother might have had a point about being in the sun too long – it’s that in their passion they miss the mark. Sometimes by miles. They have just enough information about a topic like UV radiation or retreating sea ice to be concerned into hysteria; so much so that they’re willing to damage the people they love in much greater degrees with more habitual methods, like yelling at a daughter in public and implanting negative associations with dressing pretty on sunny days.
Even money says that girl stopped wearing hats outdoors the day she turned eighteen.
The worst thing about the perpetual overreach of the environmental movement is that if you boil down the politics and pantheism, you’ll find that most people share a common ethic about conservation. We all want clean water. We all want abundant food and clear air that doesn’t stink. When we swim, we don’t want garbage floating around us and when we walk a path we prefer it free of soda straws and empty beer cans. Oddly enough, hunters and tree huggers have a lot in common. The disparity lies in rival understandings of preservation; one camp would worship the creation and blame man for infringing upon it, driven more by hate than love. The other understands the need to steward creation and understands our role in attending to it. It’s a responsibility rooted in love. God created Adam and gave him dominion over the land and the animals but also the responsibility to care for them. To name, plant, eat, and enjoy the creation God designed. It’s a simple system that’s innately good to those close to the land. No wonder then that it’s the technologically insulated city folk who believe the oceans and the skies answer to them.
When Aslan creates Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew, he chooses Frank, a working class cabby from London, as king over his new creation:
“You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them, and protect them from their enemies when enemies arise. And enemies will arise, for there is an evil Witch in this world.”
The Magician’s Nephew
“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “and thanking you very much I’m sure (which my Missus does the same) but I ain’t no sort of chap for a job like that. I never ‘ad much eddycation, you see.”
It may come as a surprise to some people but stewarding the land doesn’t require much eddycation. In fact, a lifetime of dirt under the fingernails is a far greater credential than a flimsy degree from a lefty college in any discipline but especially in environmental science. Want to know what’s good for the earth and sea? Ask a farmer or a fisherman. Those whose livelihoods are inextricably connected with the land are the most devoted to it – because that’s the way God designed it, and them.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
– Colossians 1:17-20
C.S. Lewis understood that a man raised in the simple ethic of tending the land and loving his horse is best suited to take on a greater stewardship role.
No doubt he and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien discussed the matter at length, because the theme of supernatural stewardship is all over scripture, and all over the stories they created.
The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein.
For He has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the waters.
– Psalm 24:1-2
Lewis used King Frank to demonstrate Biblical stewardship over Narnia. Tolkien chose Tom Bombadil.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, when the hobbits discuss Bombadil’s role in Middle Earth, his wife, Goldberry, sets them straight:
“He is the master of the Wood, water, and the hill.”
The Fellowship of the Ring
“Then all of the strange land belongs to him?”
“No, indeed!” she answered and her smile faded. “That would indeed be a burden,” she added in a low voice, as if to herself. “The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master.”
Christians don’t think of ourselves as masters over something so grand and impressive as the natural world, because we’re not. We know God alone makes the seeds grow and the heavens shake. We know God alone sustains the birds and the sharks and for some unknown reason He lets the mosquitoes thrive. It’s easy enough to let Him handle all that nature stuff and go about our lives as consumers of His bounty, but he laid on us stipulations.
You shall. You shall not.
All thorough scripture God says, “You shall,” or “You shall not,” and he said it first regarding the manner of stewarding His creation, because it’s the most important. How we steward the natural world reflects how we do or do not honor Him. Adam failed to steward the garden as instructed. He placed himself as master instead of steward and ended up tainting what God made perfect. Modern environmental activists do the same in placing themselves as master, missing the mark and causing misery to the masses by honoring Mother Earth more than the people who live on it. Throwing soup at a priceless works of art demonstrates a disregard for the beauty of creation. So does releasing balloons into the sky at a wedding or failing to secure your garbage on a windy day. We indict ourselves by caring more about our missions than the beauty around us, and like that Mrs. Jellyby style mother with the hat, we miss the point entirely. If we don’t honor His creation, we dishonor Him, and ourselves.
But God’s creation has a way of outlasting the people who mistake themselves as masters in the present. The stones of lost and forgotten civilizations testify otherwise, as do those buried in lava, washed away by waves, abandoned in the deserts, or forever encased in ice across the world’s highest peaks.
“They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the briers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and grass grew over it all.”
The Fellowship of the Ring
Recently I took my kids out shooting. We have a few options for indoor ranges in Alaska, but most people shoot out of doors. The shooting area I took them to that day is little more than a dump with a high dirt background. Red solo cups shredded by numerous calibers were easy to find. Old doors with multiple holes, fragments of paper targets, broken bottles and punctured cans were everywhere. Someone had brought up an old hot water heater and shredded it with thousands of rounds.
I have no problem with shooting old stuff. In fact, I rather enjoy it. We shot our targets and carried our garbage out with us, but I lamented the fact that very soon the winter winds would be carrying away the mounds of discarded junk left by others, elsewhere. I felt better about myself and annoyed with those others. Until last weekend, that is.
Last weekend we shot along with my wife at a private range. The setting was beautiful, the mountains picturesque and the trees brilliant and frosty; there was no garbage to be seen. We shot our targets and carried them home like always. Later that evening my wife handed me an empty 9mm cartridge that had fallen into her pocket while shooting. She was intrigued and proceeded to spend some time online seeking out crafty ideas for spent brass.
Something stung, and I tried to calculate how many empty cartridges I’d contributed to the landscape over the years. Some were probably recycled by guys who collect them for reloading, but certainly not most. It got me wondering about all the other small ways that I – like that lady with her little girl and her hat – may be missing the mark while advocating for our passions, and yet oblivious to it. But maybe we could do something about that.
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