Spiritual Hiccups - All Creatures Great and Small

There is a popular form of Christianity, one well known in the media, that has little use for the earth, its creatures, the environment, and so on.  This Christianity is so focused on the disposition of "souls" that it deems everything else superfluous.  Why care for the earth when it's just going to end some day soon?

This sort of arrogance deservedly gives the faith a bad name, and it clearly misses the wonder and awe the Bible has for Creation and its creatures.  In today's Psalm 104, God's glory is manifest in "your creatures... These all look to you to give them their food in due season."  Lions roar, asking God for food, and God tends to them.

Faith that presumes God is only concerned with me and those like me, strikes me as terribly arrogant, egocentric, and utilitarian.  It demands that God be focused on me, and that my needs are the business God should be concerned with.  Such faith cannot see far beyond itself.  It cannot deny itself as Jesus demands.  It cannot lose its life for the sake of the gospel.  Neither can it truly join with the psalmist in being awed by God's creation.  Creation matters only insomuch as it is of use to me.

Albert Einstein once said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."  And I think that someone who has never looked at Creation and its creatures and found themselves feeling, "This is too wonderful; it must be preserved," knows the death of which Einstein speaks.


But this loss of awe and mystery has ramifications far beyond issues such as the environment.  Egocentric faith easily views other people as having less worth than me.  During the recent protests in Egypt, which have brought hope of freedom and new life to people in that country, many self professed Christians in America have viewed these events solely with reference to how it impacts our security or the "war on terror."  The Egyptians themselves seem not to matter.  And indeed, American foreign policy, regardless of the party in charge, is usually pragmatic and utilitarian, reflecting the same sort of arrogant, egocentrism that too often perverts Christian faith.


I could easily work myself into deep pessimism about the state of things, except that God is at work, reaching out in love despite our failing to see very far beyond our own interests.  Jesus continues to call people to follow him, to find their lives transformed and reshaped by the example of his life.  And even now, I see American Christianity being renewed and reborn into something a little less utilitarian, a little less arrogant and egocentric, as here and there, signs of God's coming reign continue to show forth.


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