Most people probably give only a
passing thought to the worldview through which they interpret the world around
them. It’s simply there, a basic orientation of mind and heart absorbed from
their culture, shared by their peers, and confirmed or modified by experience. For people of faith, good religion will inform
and enhance their worldview, bad religion will distort it. That’s also true for
those who reject religion: their worldview will be shaped by whatever takes its
place.
Till recently, two distinct
religiously-based worldviews have moulded westerners’ view of the relationship
between human beings and the planet that sustains them.
The first is that the world is
there for humans to use to their advantage, a stance rooted in the opening
chapter of Genesis. There God is depicted as a divine being over and beyond
creation, a supernatural artist, superb designer, supreme craftsman, inventive
physicist, masterful chemist, innovative biologist – in sum, maker of all that
is.
The chapter is a resounding
poem of praise, affirming the world as good in every part, from the sun and
stars to plants and trees, birds and fish, beasts and humans.
Then Adam and Eve, symbolic of
men and women in every age, messed up. Despite that, it was to humankind that
God had given dominion over every other creature. They were to fill the earth
and subdue it (though always within the constraint of their responsibility to
God). That was the natural order of things.
By the Middle Ages, however,
this rosy view of the world and humanity’s place in it had gone sour. In stark
contrast to that emphasis on Earth blessed by the goodness of God, the church
had burdened everyone with the appalling horror of sin. Earth had become a vale
of woe, a sink of iniquity, the basest part of the universe. One medieval writer lamented that we humans
are “lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the
worst and deadest part of the universe”. Human fulfilment lay not here, but in
the soul’s release from this squalid dump into the everlasting bliss and purity
of heaven. Of course Earth had its uses in providing food, clothing and
shelter, but beyond that, why bother?
In the modern world that grim
view has faded, but it hasn’t disappeared. Some fundamentalist Christians,
especially in the United States, have given it new life. They see the biblical
injunction to exercise dominion over nature as the green light for exploiting it
without restraint. By way of example, an American Secretary of the Interior
during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, James Watt, wanted to give developers
unlimited access to national parks and resources. His reasoning was that the
earth “is merely a temporary way station on the road to eternal life. It is
unimportant except as a place of testing to get into heaven. The earth was put
here by the Lord for his people to subdue and to use it for profitable purposes
on the way to the hereafter.” That is execrable theology.
More recently, President Obama
gave the green light to take advantage of the retreating northern icecap by
drilling for oil in Arctic waters. European companies are also staking out oil
and mineral prospecting interests in ice-bound Greenland and the surrounding
sea. Meanwhile the New Zealand
Government has approved research to establish what mineral resources lie buried
in our national parks. It would be naive to imagine this is simply to add to
the sum of human knowledge.
Of course the big mining and
manufacturing companies don’t rely on a theological argument to pursue their
interests. Making money for their shareholders is reason enough. But common to
both the medieval attitude and that of many international corporates is the
view that nature has no intrinsic value: it is there to be exploited and serve
its human masters in whatever ways they wish. In today’s world, that mindset is
dangerous. Earth is suffering from massive population growth, portentous
climate change, the pollution of air, land and water, and extinction of
species. Unprecedented technological power is being applied to achieve
exponential industrial growth. This is making a few people unbelievably rich,
while depleting Earth’s resources and threatening not only our human future,
but the earth’s.
Lump all this together, and it
is obvious that the relationship of the human species to the earth has changed
radically – and in the new environment, those old Christian perspectives that
helped produce the crisis are overdue for a paradigm shift.
That
is happening: more next time.
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