By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director
The following are excerpts from opening remarks at “All Things Reconciled: Considering Christ and Creation” a select gathering co-hosted by A Rocha and Kilns College in Bend, Oregon, October 21-13, 2014.
This summer my family and I had the great joy of two weeks camping in the Canadian Rockies. We started in Jasper National Park where the Athabasca River originates at the toe of a glacier in the Columbia Icefield. Full of glacial flour—fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock generated by the grinding of ice against earth—the river has a beautiful milky look when flowing and an equally beautiful turquoise when pooled. Sadly, the waters of the Athabasca also contain mercury, lead and other toxins downstream of the Athabasca oil sands.
My guess is the fish don’t have a clue, discerning neither flour nor toxins. They are acculturated to it all. Oblivious. It’s all they know and don’t know anything different.
And to a large degree, that describes us. We—even we Christians—have lost our ability to see many of the things floating in our cultural waters–some of them quite toxic. That’s particularly true when it comes to what some call the environment and what we call God’s creation. Our vision of God’s good creation and our proper role in it has become clouded.
- Clouded by political partisans who sought and to a great extent succeeded in casting the care of creation as a leftwing, big government, anti-business, sometimes anti-human wedge to separate many Christ followers from our responsibilities as Christ’s stewards.
- Clouded by consumerism’s throttling grip on our lives and lifestyles—insidiously defining our self-esteem, comfort, security and status, if subconsciously, by what we possess.
- Clouded by our frenetic pace of life, our busyness that robs our ability to slow down, appreciate, take stock and, as Jesus commanded, consider—really consider–the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Indeed, time may well be the most abused part of God’s creation in our society today.
- Clouded, perhaps most tragically, by bad theology that truncates the gospel to start with sin and end with personal redemption, ignoring creation and new creation and in the process distorting our God-given, service-oriented dominion modeled by Jesus himself into something else entirely.
All of which damages not only the creation, but also our gospel witness and, I would argue, our very relationship with God.
Repentance is needed. Thankfully, it’s happening. The Church is awakening. The task before us now is to encourage that awakening and turn it into meaningful action on the ground and in the people. Into lives that reflect Christ’s glory and intent for His creation—the ALL things he created, holds together and reconciles.
My prayer is that we might together filter out some of the cultural flour, clarify our vision and invigorate our commitment to join Christ in His reconciling work in three ways:
Celebrate. Working in the Christian environmental arena often feels a lot like trudging uphill,…with a heavy pack, no shoes and no map. The statistics are grim (species extinctions, poverty, environmentally induced diseases, climate change and more). And the church has been and still is hesitant to engage. Nonetheless, we can and should celebrate the world that God created in both the general and the particular (this place, this moment and these people) and the Word that describes our proper view of that world and our role in it.
Learn. The notion that those of us trudging uphill in this arena have it all figured out is hubris and even dangerous. Each of us, every single one of us, has something to share and, I think, every one of us has something to learn. I look forward to learning from all of you. In this critical work, we need your ideas, your experience, your constituencies and your shoulders to the wheel. The care of creation—because it encompasses all that God created—people and planet–is and should be a big tent with room for all.
Invite. And because it is a big tent, I invite all of us to join in the celebration and learning and then prayerfully act upon what we have learned. To really engage in the place, with the place and the people where God has placed you. For many of us that’s here in Bend, Oregon. Whether Bend or somewhere else, I invite you, if the Lord leads, to link arms with A Rocha. Let’s talk.
I close with a note of great hope: first, in Jesus Christ’s ultimate redemption of all He created and second, in the potential of Christians worldwide catching this vision. Imagine what Christ’s church inspired, equipped and engaged could do!
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