A Responsible Position
When I prepare a sermon, I often look around to see what other people have made of the passage I am about to preach on. Don’t worry - I could no more preach most other peoples’ sermons than I can fit into my old size 10’s - and for much the same reason. They just DON’T FIT ME. But sometimes I get a new insight into a passage that I may have become too familiar with. So I have a dozen or more Internet sites that I can go to... And the more I looked, the more astonished and frustrated I got. Because nobody - and I mean, NOBODY - was focusing on the aspect of this Psalm that I wanted to talk about. And it’s not that I’d misinterpreted it, either.
As I looked at it, Psalm 8 seems to fall into three distinct parts.
Part 1 emphasizes God’s majesty and power.
Part 2 acknowledges our own sense of insignificance.
And part 3 lays out the job God has given us to do.
Well, I’ve been focusing a lot lately on God’s power and our utter dependence on him, and so I figured it was time to come at the text from a slightly different angle. I decided to preach on part 3, the job God has given us. Well, I’m still going to preach on part 3, but from a slightly different perspective.
After I’d gotten over my initial surprise, I checked out a couple of reliable commentaries to see if I’d somehow gotten it all wrong, that I’d over-interpreted or mis-interpreted or otherwise generally messed up, - something entirely possible, by the way, although usually not at this stage of sermon prep - and discovered that no, I had gotten it pretty much right.
So I went back to the Internet and started looking up sermons dealing with environmental stewardship - and couldn’t find one! Now, I’m sure there must be some out there, but I looked under "dominion" and "earth" and "environment" and "creation" - I must have spent half a day fruitlessly looking to see what if anything my colleagues had to say about the Christian’s responsibility to the world we live in. And I came up empty.
Then I went searching for articles - background, quotes, outrageous behavior. On Christianity Today’s website I found only one article in the last 6 years on environmentalism; well, that’s not quite fair, they had also sponsored an essay contest and printed the winning one (which was, by the way, excellent). I did a little better in World Magazine, which had three editorials. But then I did a general search of the web and found site after site after site for everything from low-energy architecture to animal rights activism. And I started wondering, "Where is the Christian voice in this cause?"
If, as Fred Krueger, director of the Christian Society of the Green Cross claims, "Environmental activism constitutes the "fastest-growing form of Christian ministry," [Christianity Today November 11, 1996] why aren’t we talking about it more?
Why do the animal rights activists seem to have so much more passionate a commitment to their cause than Christians do?
Well, that’s a silly question, actually. I should know better than to ask it. We worship God, not God’s creation. And most of us are - and I think rightly so - more concerned about our fellow human beings, who are created in God’s image, than animals, which although are created by God and are therefore worthy of respect, are nonetheless somewhat lower on our scale of values. Furthermore, we do have a certain sense of humility about how much we can or should tinker with God’s design. But that doesn’t excuse the near total silence that I found on the subject of our role vis-a-vis creation.
I noticed another thing, too... all of the reference to Christian environmentalism had to do with plants and ecosystems, farming and energy use. [read excerpts from Christianity Today article from Nov 11, 1996] There was nothing on how we should relate to animals. And yet today’s Psalm speaks directly to that issue: "...You have put all things under their feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas." [Ps 8:6b-8] That covers ALL creatures - domestic animals, wild animals, ostriches and egrets, salmon and sharks - and even, probably, plankton. The well-being of animals is in our job description. And the subject is not even on our radar screen.
Some of the things that I read on the various web sites were so farfetched as to be almost funny, but some were really rather alarming.
A quote which has already become a classic in the animal rights movement is activist Ingrid Newkirk’s line: "...a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." She sees no difference between their demands upon us. And in case you think that’s an extreme view held only by a fringe minority, Peter Singer, the bioethicist appointed to Princeton last year over storms of protest, believes that animals have a greater claim upon us than unborn children. In 1997, Brian A. Dominick wrote in Animal Liberation and Social Revolution that
Let’s face it, the dichotomy between human and animal is more arbitrary than scientific. It is no different than the one posed between "whites" and "blacks" or "reds" or "yellows"; between adult and child; between man and woman; between heterosexual and homosexual; local and foreigner. Lines are drawn without care but with devious intent, and we are engineered by the institutions which raise us to believe that we are on one side of the line, and that the line is rational to begin with.
That’s one end of the spectrum...
Another view of the relationship between humans and nature is represented by William Inge in The Theory and Practice of Hell:
There is only one long-term way to abolish the ghastliness of suffering ... Such a strategy entails eradicating its biological roots. This can be done only by using genetic-engineering and nanotechnology. This major transition in the evolution of life will replace the DNA-driven pain and malaise of our evolutionary past. The molecular architecture of the old Darwinian Era will be succeeded by modes of consciousness that are more beautiful than anything we can currently imagine.
Now, I would have rejected this as being one of the "so far-fetched as to be ridiculous" positions except for the fact that Îve been running into references to nanotechnology in the mainstream press lately... And don’t ask me to explain it, I haven’t the technological background - but it’s going to present us with some real ethical dilemmas.
Both of these movements represent a total rejection of the relationship between the creator and the creation that Scripture teaches. Dominick rejects the idea that human beings are superior to animals; Inge rejects the idea that we are inferior to God. In fact, Inge seems to believe that we ARE God - or at the very least, can do a whole lot better. The piece of Psalm 8 which he needs to take to heart is part 2, the acknowledge of our insignificance. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings...?" The fact of the matter is that there is a hierarchy in creation, and we are NOT at the top of the heap.
It really is rather astonishing, isn’t it, that God has given us humans as much power and authority over creation as he has... As much as the idea of dominion has been misused and abused in the past, the fact remains that God has indeed "put all things under [our] feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas."
We’re not at the top, but we’re not at the bottom, either. We occupy a middle position, with connections upwards and downwards both. To respond means both to act and to answer. We are answerable to God for how we have acted with regard to the well-being of his creation. How will you answer, how have you acted?
The idea that Christians should care for our animals is not new. In fact, the idea that kindness to animals and kindness to our fellow humans are linked is not new. In the 5th century St. John Chrysostom said, "The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves." And of course St. Francis’ love for the animals is well known... he said, "If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men."
Both men were absolutely right. Cruelty toward animals does seem to lead to cruelty toward human beings. The teenage murders of 1998 and 199 all had a prior history of cruelty to animals, from Kip Kinkel in Springfield, Oregon to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine notoriety.
These are, of course, extremes. But the sins we commit by turning our heads and closing our eyes are also real, and important... At the turn of the century crusading journalists exposed the appalling and brutal conditions in our nation’s slaughterhouses, and things changed... But are things much better today? Not in the factory farms where the conditions are often so grim and revolting that they should not be spoken of in front of the children among us. There are still some things we need to protect our children from. Do you know where your fried chicken was last week? Do you care?
The question of how we are to treat our animals is age-old, as far back as Noah. Some scholars believe that the prohibition against eating animals with their blood still in it refers to something still practiced among herdsmen with no refrigeration... of cutting off that day’s meat from the still living animal, to keep it from spoiling.
But new challenges come before us every day, as science and technology multiply our choices. Are we ready to think about - and act upon - the issues that accompany the final decoding of the human genome? Not to mention the multitude of other scientific advances that are getting less coverage in the press... We are responsible. As voting members of a democratic society, we are responsible for what we - as a nation - are doing with our science. Remember that science - our ability to understand and work with the natural law that is the reflection of God’s own complexity and order - is as much a gift from God as the earth and all it contains. And we will answer to God for how we have used it.
As Christians we cannot close our eyes to these issues. If we do, we will let some of the most important decisions of the coming century be made by people who neither acknowledge nor fear God.
If that doesn’t scare you, it should.
But if we engage these issues, taking our responsibility to God and his creation seriously, then we have nothing to fear. Because Jesus Christ, who is our head, doesn’t just rule over people. He also rules over the rest of creation, and works toward its redemption. If we act with him and for him, we will have the answer we need.
