Is Christianity just an emotional crutch?

Another religion of one blind and religious man leading another blind and religious man into a spiritual consciousness that has no correspondence to ultimate reality?

Or is it something more? Like the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg where hundreds of doors all lead into the same building, so there are hundreds of doors we could pick from to answer this question. But because a beautiful white oak is sitting outside my window, let’s enter the door of trees.

Tree-hugging versus Tree-devouring

There was a day when trees were considered a nuisance. That day has changed. According to one resource, catalogs alone cause the death of 80 million trees per year, with typically very little of this recycled. With the fast shrinking of planet earth and foreseeable resource exhaustion ahead, the last century (thanks partly to President Theodore Roosevelt's leadership in preserving the wildlands), has seen a replanting of literally billions of trees and plants.

But, "As late as 1771," observes Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, "after many of the great London squares had already been built, the anonymous author of a polemic called Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London wrote, icily, 'A garden in a street is not less absurd than a street in a garden; and he that wishes to have a row of trees before his door in town, betrays almost as false a taste as he that would build a row of houses for an avenue.'"¹ This pundit represented the thinking of many from the ancient days: civilization and nature don't mix. If civilization must expand, take out the trees in your way.

But the nineteenth century introduced a new era of tree-preserving (and consequently, those who upped it a couple hundred notches to "tree-hugging") where trees were no longer rejected as aesthetically damaging, but "beautiful and health-giving." Thus, the birth of modern-day arborism.³ Some take it another mile and literally worship nature. I remember as a child my Dad taking the family up Mt. Shasta, as far as the road would allow. At the top we encountered people praying, chanting, and bowing to the snow-capped mountain.

How one views, chops, plants, worship, or eats (okay, maybe not) trees is not simple as applying the utilitarian test, "What do we need to do to survive?" for this assumes that survival is a universal necessity, even a moral duty. Who's not to say that the extinction of the human race is not another step toward the natural evolution of the world to produce a higher species than our own?

Nor can this topic be settled by the modern claim (countering the 18th century poetizing pundit quoted above) that, "Trees bring an aesthetic quality to life, thus, we must preserve them!" for whose to draft the right definition of natural beauty? After all, if beauty was entirely objective, would everyone not follow the same landscape pattern for their front lawn and would women not brush on makeup after the model of beauty? Of course, beauty is far more complex than that, and trying to define beauty itself requires something more than mathematical reasoning.

Cat-worshipping versus Cat-eating

To illustrate the challenge of how to address environmentalism, it's the same difference between what moved Egyptians to worship cats centuries ago and what moves a car driver to stick a bumper sticker on the rear of his car today that says: "I eat kitties." The Egyptian and the driver are acting out two completely different worldviews, and until we realize this, we cannot hope to settle the more immediate question: How am I to treat the world of plants and animals around me? Am I steward or invader? Caretaker or user? Am I on earth to preserve nature or is nature on earth to preserve me?

So we must go to the mat with a bigger question: Where do trees come from and what is our proper relationship to them? World culture has swung from one extreme to the other, as Jacob's observes,

"London's arboriphobic [tree-fearing] pundit was concerned that the presence of trees interferes with the well-being of people—their aesthetic well-being, anyway—but the modern conservationist takes the opposite position: that the presence of people interferes with the well-being of trees. As Oliver Rackham notes, much conservationist thinking takes as its starting-point an idealized image of woodlands untouched by humanity—the true ‘wildwood.’”²

Idealized indeed. But why does being "untouched by humanity" make the ideal wildland? On what authority is this claim made? Why can't someone else come along and say, "The ideal wildland is touched by humanity"? When there is no basis for a sweeping statement, that statement must be tested and proved or disregarded altogether. Consider this: If the ideal wildland is untouched by humanity, then are humans the worthy judges of what the ideal wildlife should look like? If we are the "tainters", who are we to announce the rules for what an "untainted" forest really is?! That's like a thief setting the rules for a charity organization.

An Answer That Works

No matter which way we look at it, it is impossible to set up a "solution" to environmentalism without addressing the bigger issue of who we are and what our role is to the wildlands around us.

But the Bible provides an answer—an answer that dissolves the tensions. God told Adam, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen 1:28). The next chapter tells us, "Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it" (Gen 2:15).

Instead of asking Adam and Eve to invade the world and blindly devour its resources, and instead of asking them to tiptoe around trees and plants as if they were gods to avoid desecrating, God told them to rule the earth and cultivate its resources. According to the Bible, God views humans as stewards of His creation, superior to creation but responsible to use it resourcefully. Truly, all of creation is a gift to us from God, and clearly the gift is inferior to its receiver. But this does not sanction abusing that gift.

Intellectually Reasonable. Experientially Satisfying

I am more convinced than ever that Christianity presents a worldview that is both intellectually reasonable and experientially satisfying. It is intellectually reasonable because it explains the tensions, heartaches, thrills and questions of life. It answers why humanity is both noble and cruel at the same time. It helps us to know why we crave wickedness and long for holiness all in the same day. It explains why all people have a sense of morality and feel the duty to do good to others, yet why it's so hard to achieve. It answers why our world is full of death, pain, suffering, injustice and even cruelty, without making it necessary for God to be evil. It explains our crave for something beyond this life and our thirst for answers to who we are and why we are here.

It is also experientially satisfying because it offers a joy far deeper than the high of a drug or the ecstasy that sex could ever produce. It provides the path to knowing God intimately, even as sinners unworthy of His mercy. It shows us how we can revere God and even tremble before Him in awe as we worship Him, yet at the same time savor the presence of His gentle love and fatherly care. It shows us how to enjoy God's creation yet never at the expense of using it responsibly. And it presents Jesus not as the movement-starter, religious salesmen, or the gutless philanthropist who ignores life's cruelties and answers tears with superficial smiles and incantations, but instead as the mighty God and humble man who came from glorious heaven to sin-cursed earth to live the life we never could have lived and to die the death we should have died.

Endnotes

1. Alan Jacobs, "The Life of Trees" in Books and Culture: a Christian Review, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/004/1.14.html, cited 7-21-2008.

2. Ibid.

3. Arborist: a specialist in the cultivation and care of trees and shrubs, including tree surgery, the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of tree diseases, and the control of pests.