On not raping the earth

Recently I walked the back acres of our new land with some of my sons. We have a lot to do. Some hilly fields need to be cut soon, and there are beavers trying to dam our creek. There are a couple of fallen trees, and poison ivy in more places than I'd like. Lots to do. We came to the outer edges of acreage that has been taken over by hedge -- twisted trees that spread out over the ground and yield long thorns. I thought about how we might reclaim that land in time, or perhaps forge a walking path through it. I only thought these things, but I noticed my boys beginning to beat down a thorny branch in order to make a path.

It's wired into us, perhaps, this impetus for dominion over creation. But we don't define that word very well. A thoughtless woman who gets more air-time than she should -- and worse, is taken by millions as a representative of conservatism and Christianity, once said, of mankind and creation:

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"

It's a reprehensible view, yet I wonder sometimes how often we Christians -- especially those with a more conservative stripe -- fall prey to it, especially if our theology tells us that God will soon whisk us away to a better place. We start treating creation as this broken play-toy that needn't concern us (so long as it will yield up oil and coal a bit longer). Or we let our political affiliations drive our thinking, such that we dismiss the possibility of global warming, for example, because Al Gore said it's so.

Even if we don't give in to these biases, I know I, at least, often think about God's creation as something for me, to be managed for my well-being. I've found Wendell Berry a valuable corrective in that regard:

"It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one's neighbor in order to borrow his tools."

That doesn't mean I should exalt nature over myself, any more than I should exalt myself over nature. But it suggests that dominion means stewardship, which in turn implies that the master will one day return, and he will ask: "How have you treated my creation?"

I don't know about global warming, and energy sustainability, or any of the other things that virtually none of the talking heads seem to debate honestly. But I do know about my twenty acres. Before he signed the papers, the man selling us the land said he hoped I would be as good a steward as he had tried to be. I told him I would certainly try. And my family and I will, and not just because we want to enjoy the land ourselves. We'll do it because some day there will be a reckoning, and "Rape the earth" will be judged for the crime that it is.