GOD  IS  GREEN

“Ebben’s  Garden” is a half-acre plot, named in my honor (over my objections) by project director, Cassim Bilali.  The plot is part of Care for the Earth Environmental Resource Center and is specially designated as a quiet, peaceful space to celebrate and reflect on the wonders of God’s creation.  From that space I offer this reflection.

Caring for the earth is doing justice for the poor.  To serve the earth is to serve the poor.  The two are inextricably linked.  The very origin of the Christian faith tradition in the creation story of Genesis imposes on us the sacred duty and responsibility to care for the earth.

Despite the ambiguous meaning of the word “dominion” in the first creation account (Gen 1:28), the second creation story (Gen 2:15) unambiguously calls us “to keep” and “to till” the earth.   It is important to note that the same word in Hebrew (la-avod) is often used to convey the religious sense of “service to God”, for example, in observing the Sabbath.  Keeping, tilling, serving God’s creation, it is our honor and responsibility to act as God’s agents on earth, thus ensuring the continuation of the earth’s unfolding.  While the earth is indeed the Lord’s and everything in it (Ps 24:1), we humans are blessed with the privilege to serve it as God’s deputies.

It must likewise be noted that very early in the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g. Ex 23:11; Lev 19:10), the Creator gives the agrarian faithful detailed instructions on how to exercise that privilege in such a manner as to ensure sustainable justice for the poor of the land.  This combination of care for the earth and justice for the poor, already at the very beginning of salvation history, is the earliest expression of God’s “preferential option for the poor”.  As we move further into the 3^rd millennium of Christianity this essential linkage becomes ever more critical when globalization gives unfair advantage to wealthier trade partners;  unbridled consumerism places ever heavier burdens on the earth’s poor;  rapid climate change threatens the very existence of the poorest countries on the planet.

The developed world’s demand for more and more luxuries comes at the expense of the developing world’s necessities.  In other words, the already limited resources of the poor are often exploited to support the lifestyles of the rich.  As I have witnessed many times over, the poorest of the earth literally live on wealthy people’s garbage.  Many of us have seen 60 Minutes’ expose how toxic waste, both from the U.S. and Europe, had been dumped on West African countries, thereby jeopardizing the health of their children and their land through lucrative economic transactions in bypassing federal requirements for toxic waste management in the developed countries.

Over and over again the poor of the world are compelled to bear the unbearable burdens demanded by our Western lifestyles.  The oil spills in the Delta Region of Nigeria continue to devastate the land and ocean shores, destroying the livelihood of thousands of peasant farmers and fishermen.  The Union Carbide industrial catastrophe in Bhopal, India, which 25 years ago exposed a half million impoverished villagers to deadly methyl isocyanate gas, left 10,000 dead within 72 hours, another 25,000 died later from gas-related diseases, and tens of thousands more suffer daily from cancer and serious birth defects.  390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the Union Carbide plant continue to leak and pollute the ground water.  To date no one had been prosecuted for this crime against humanity and against the earth.  The Freeport-McMoRan Grasberg mine in Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea), after decades of operation, still dumps every day 120,000 tons of untreated tailings (refuse from copper mining) directly into several rivers, contaminating drinking water and destroying an alarming number of aquatic species.  This grave abuse of God’s beautiful creation continues with impunity.

The true cost of our lifestyle is not so much measured by the cash register but by what we have done to other people’s lands, other people’s rivers, other people’s valleys, mountains, villages and lives, to the impoverished 2.8 billion people of this world, many labeled “environmental refugees”.  It should shock us all to realize just how the poor show up in our daily lives, even in such a simple way as in a cup of Starbucks!

Why are the poor always forced to live on the margins of our world?  Might the reason be found in our inordinate attachment to a consumerist lifestyle with its falsely exaggerated promise of pleasure, possession, power and privilege?  We trample on the poor of the earth and block our ears to their cries, even as preachers of the “prosperity gospel” encourage their followers to pursue wealth as a right by equating a “free-for-all grab of the earth” with God’s design for creation.  A Christian can never win at that game precisely because the poor lose.

Thousands of years before our selfish cultural pursuit of wealth, God called us to care for the earth and to be compassionate with the poor who totally depend on the earth for survival.  “When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongues are parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them” (Is 41:19).  “Speak for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.  Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Prov 31:8-9).

Let me summarize with a question: What would you do if you knew Jesus were coming back tomorrow?  I know what I would do.  With Martin Luther I’d plant a tree as an act of spiritual worship, an act of faith and the manifestation of God’s image.  Reverently tending God’s earth and securing justice for the poor are inextricably united.  The two together must be the frontline of our work today.  Every time we recycle an aluminum can or newspaper, every time we switch off an unneeded light bulb, every time we use water responsibly, search for a renewable source of energy, help clean up the environment, protect a forest or an endangered species, refuse another unnecessary purchase, we are serving God’s creation and serving the poor.

Is God really green?  No doubt!  Sacred Scriptures abound with references to the Creator’s love and care for the earth and for the poor of the earth from the tree of life in the garden of Genesis (2:9) to the tree of life in the garden of Revelation  (22:2).  Created in the image and likeness of God, we all had best GO GREEN!

Bert Ebben, O.P. 

Care for the Earth

10 December 2009