HIDDEN BEAUTY

There is maybe nothing more magically beautiful than going outside just after or during a hearty snowfall, especially if the sun or moon illuminates it or if ice forms a mirror coating on everything.  There is just something about the "sparkle" of nature that touches us in more than just our brains. For me, it is a deep down desire to be part of that beauty somehow. I believe it is from wherever that place is, in our spirits or souls, that our fantastical stories come...shimmering vampires, glass slippers and emerald cities.

Right now I am looking out my window at a five-day old snowfall on the front yard. It hasn't yet turned brown and slushy from the imminent melt, but it isn't quite a winter fairyland, either. Yet, what I know to be true is that there are trillions of snowflakes just within this window view with designs as unique and intricate as any artist could imagine...trillions upon trillions of them. This glorious architectural tracery surround us. We are driving on it.  Shoveling it.  Cursing it. Yet no human ever saw this microscopic, Artistic work up-close, not until aided by a 20th century invention. Why is that?

In December we went to Sanibel Island, Florida to vacation with family. I'm a minority...I like winter...and would have preferred to be snowflaked-in on a mountain in Tennessee or North Carolina, but that's OK, some folks are "equator people" and some are not. However, scouring barefoot on the beach for seashells is always a highlight for me. After picking up a few pen shells, I began knocking off the brown outer layer, revealing bright, iridescent colors of the rainbow. This bi-valve creature lives blended-in to the dark rocks of shallow ocean water. No one ever sees them, unless they die and a storm current washes them up on a beach and someone takes the time to peel it. Yet they are adorned as with extravagant jewels. Why is that? 

There is so much beauty in nature that most people, through the ages, have never seen. Only now are we beginning to see the glory of what is in outer space.  In fact, few people know that some of our most rare and expensive gemstones come from meteors that hit the earth. Within the last decade a NASA telescope recorded a green crystalline Peridot rain falling on a star in the Orion constellation. Maybe a handful of people will ever see that phenomenon, and no one before 2003 ever did.  Why is that?

And don't even get me started on Geodes. 

So where am I going with this and all these questions? I am asking those who are suspicious of anything "environmental" or "scientific" to take a second look at our role in Creation care. And here is why.

One of the biggest 21st century criticisms of Western Christianity is its anthropocentric view of the universe by the majority of its followers, and how that view has affected American culture over the last few centuries. Anthropocentric is defined as; "regarding the human being as the central fact and final aim of the universe...viewing and interpreting everything in terms of human experience and values."  

Scriptural support for this interpretation has come mainly from the book of Genesis...being created in the "image of God," having been given "dominion" over nature, and told to "fill the earth," etc. And of course the more recent theological belief from The Revelation that God, at some point in the future, will destroy this Earth and create a new one. 

This idea has permeated culture over the last centuries, leading to the devaluation of this earth as something temporal and to be used it up, while waiting for the other one to arrive, which of course every generation sees as imminent.  This was evident, looking back, during the Industrial Revolution and beyond, when profits were put before both workers and the earth. More recently it continues to permeate the sectors of politics, industry and agriculture, not to mention being at odds with science. I actually had a Christian farmer ask me once, "What good is a tree if you can't cut it down and do something with it?"  Maybe he should have directed that question to God instead of me...or maybe I should have held his nose to see how long he could go without the oxygen trees produce.

Here is where I have always differed in my thinking about where humans stand in the great Creation. Let's suppose all the above theology is true...we are inherently special as God's children, we have been given the responsibility to rule the earth, we are to populate it with our species.  But what about that other great theological tenet of the faith called, Humility?  The dictionary describes Humility as, 

 "a modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc."

I think this is an important point to reflect upon. Perhaps we should revisit the question in our churches and seminaries, "What is our rank in the universe and how should we behave in that ranking?"  

When David in Psalm 8 is pondering the big questions of "who is God?" and "who am I?," he writes this:

"LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens...  When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?  You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.”  

So humanity falls somewhere below the angels in the hierarchy, as did Jesus temporarily after incarnation. Yet, thanks be to God, the angels' attitudes toward us are not like that of my friend the farmer. 

Some have even used the words of Jesus, when he gently admonished his listeners not to worry about their basic needs, to claim an arrogant brand of superiority.  But the last sentence does not negate the first.

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

God has developed a system (or allowed one to develop) that we call ecology. This system is filled with wonderful timings, symbiotic relationships, dependencies, seasons, currents, movements, etc. that keep things healthy and in balance; that keeps the birds fed. Unless of course, we mess with it.

When Job is going through his trials and has exhausted all his and his friend's answers, he beseeches God. And God, in great wisdom, does not answer him directly...God questions him...pointing out in each query how marvelous nature is, and who it is that made it. I think that is significant, because as one reads down the list, humanity seems rather puny and incapable, and God seems to be making that point.

“Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?
    Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?
Do you count the months till they bear?
    Do you know the time they give birth?
They crouch down and bring forth their young;
    their labor pains are ended."

"Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds;
    they leave and do not return."

Can human young "thrive and grow strong in the wild?"  No, in fact we are the only species on the planet that has to clothe ourselves to survive...we must take the lives of other creatures and alter the earth...the others were created to survive on their own.

"Who gives the ibis wisdom
 or gives the rooster understanding?"

Pretty high praise from God for some waterfowl and a rooster. Attributes God does not readily ascribe to humans most of the time. Wisdom and Understanding are things we are always told in scripture to get, find, and search for.

"Do you give the horse its strength
    or clothe its neck with a flowing mane?
Do you make it leap like a locust,
    striking terror with its proud snorting?
It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength,
    and charges into the fray."

Our strength cannot compare to the strength possessed by wild horses, or elephants or bears...we are at their mercy in every encounter. We even measure the strength of our inventions by "horsepower."  And the only way we can tame them is through our inventions of violence. But without those...we're kind of low on the food chain, really.

^"Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom
    and spread its wings toward the south?
Does the eagle soar at your command
    and build its nest on high?
It dwells on a cliff and stays there at night;
    a rocky crag is its stronghold.
From there it looks for food;
    its eyes detect it from afar.

Can we fly?  Are our eyes like binoculars...seeing both close up and far away?  Would we even know instinctively how to build a structure on our own for survival?  No, no, and not likely.

And what about all that beauty...the sea shells, the snowflakes, the scarlet ibis and the wild mustang?  Since the beginning of time, most of the marvelous creatures and dazzling events have gone unnoticed by anyone... except for God.  Why is that? 

Maybe it's because God delights in the "sparkle" of nature as much as we do, and why the glory of nature is elucidated so specifically in Job.  Maybe God has put nature just "a little lower than the humans," yet highly values the very things we take for granted, dismiss and often destroy, thinking we are superior. If you've ever heard a movie director, a musician, or any artist answer the question of which creative work was their favorite, they cannot give an answer.  For God so loved the Kosmos...

Yes, God loves us and has crowned us with glory and honor. That belief should give our souls wings.  It should give us the desire to be the most compassionate, the most wise and the most understanding of all the creatures...not the most destructive and arrogant.

Yes, Genesis says we are created in the image of God...but "male and female" are the only illustrations given as to what that means...the rest is open to interpretation, causing some in power to believe they have rights and privileges never really given to them. 

But if that "God image" does not reflect humility (about the gifts we do and don't possess), or compassion (towards humans and animals), or an understanding of the need for true community (learning to live graciously and sustainably on this earth together), or the understanding of a rooster, then we have lost our way like Job, and every other flawed human recorded in scripture.  Most of the time in Scripture God is rerouting, rehabilitating, redeeming, reeducating and rebuking humanity (I'd put the Aurora Borealis light show way up in the middle of nowhere, too, if I was God, just to take a break from us). 

In today's world, these ancient stories of faith are increasingly seen as "Hocum," as Sheldon Cooper would say.  And if the effects of these stories, when interpreted anthropomorphically, are also seen as hurting the world on which we depend, then the faith is poised for criticism and dismissal. I think E.O. Wilson had it right. Wilson, a renowned Harvard entomologist and Pulitzer-prize winning author, once said,

  "Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world.  Having them at odds...is not productive."

I think he may be merely stating, in a more direct way, the artful words of the poet, John Keats,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Knowing the truth about the "sparkle of nature," that it is just light refracting from or reflecting off of a surface, doesn't take away its beauty...or even its mystery...we still long to be part of it. But though science has sincerely asked and conclusively answered the question "How is that?," perhaps the faithful have yet to sincerely ask and convincingly answer the "Why is that"...that so much of nature is breathtakingly beautiful...even when no one sees it?