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Judeo-Christian Foundations of Earthcare

Article 1. Right Relationship
by Lisa Gould

(from Caring for Creation, Reflections on the Biblical Basis of Earthcare,
Quaker Earthcare Witness, 1999)

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

—Matthew 6:21

You see, I am alive.
You see, I stand in good relation to the earth.
You see, I stand in good relation to the gods.
You see, I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful.
You see, I stand in good relation to you.
You see, I am alive, I am alive.

THIS NATIVE AMERICAN POEM expresses a joy of living in balance, in right relationship to the Creator, other people, and all Creation. What does it mean to stand in good relation to the earth? In good relation to all that is beautiful? In good relation to one another?

Are we standing in good relation to the earth? Here are a few of the facts:

Each second a forested area the size of a football field is cut down; we lose an area a little smaller than the state of Kentucky each year.
Billions of tons of topsoil are lost from cropland each year. As the quality of agricultural land diminishes with topsoil loss, there are also decreasing water supplies available for irrigation and increasing conversion of farmland industry and other forms of development. World grain production in 1995 was 5 percent below the 1990 harvest, and carryover stocks declined.
The increase in C02 and others gases’ concentrations in the atmosphere may cause as much as a 5- to 7-degree Fahrenheit rise in mean global temperature by the year 2040; this is as much change in mean global temperature as has occurred since the last ice age, but it will occur in 50 years rather than in 20,000. 1995 was the warmest year on record; the ten warmest years of the past 130 years occurred during the 1980s and 1990s.
Air pollution damages crops, livestock, human health, and ecosystems all over the world. “What goes up, must come down”: the pollution that comes from one place ends up in another. Soot from the oil fires in Kuwait made the snows in the Himalayas black and oily, the fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster fell on Sweden and Norway. There has been a 40 percent increase in the asthma rate in the industrialized Western world since 1982, one third of the victims children—air pollution, both indoor and outdoor, is considered to be the major major factor. (4)
The presence of chloroflourocarbons in the atmosphere is breaking down the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet radiation; there are concerns that this will affect both agriculture and human health.
Thousands of barrels of toxic and radioactive waste have been buried in landfills or dumped into the ocean; these are time bombs for future generations.
Each year, three million children under age five die of diarrheal diseases, related to poor water quality, a direct result of poverty and the unequal distribution of the world’s resources.
The human population reached 5.8 billion in 1996, and is predicted to reach nearly 10 billion by the year 2050; at the same time, the planet will be facing major changes in climate, with unprecedented effects on agriculture and coastal habitations. The ongoing loss of topsoil will act in synergy to have an impact on human ability to produce food.
Current estimates suggest that each hour anywhere from four to eight species go extinct (compare this to the “massive” die-off of the dinosaurs, which occurred at a rate of one species every 1,000 years); we believe that by the year 2000 20 percent of all existing species will be gone (the tiger and the rhinoceros likely to be among them). We have named only a small percentage of these species, and know very little about how they function within their ecosystems. Some scientists have likened most species to rivets in the body of a jet plane: you don’t see them, or think about them, but they are crucial. How many rivets can an airplane lose before it crashes? How many species can be lost before ecosystems crash, with unpredictable effects on all life on the planet, including human life?

OKAY—ENOUGH. We have been bombarded with such facts for many years now. I first saw Mark, my future husband, at an organizational meeting for the first celebration of Earth Day at the University of Rhode Island in 1970; in 1995, at the 25th anniversary celebration of Earth Day, we were still saying the same things. And you know, they have been said, in some form, for thousands of years! I have already written about the many Bible passages that talk about God’s laws for protecting the Creation. But God also gave some clear instructions on how to be in right relationship with the land itself, through laws that required a year of rest for cultivated land every seventh year:

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.

—Leviticus 25:3–4

There was also to be a year of rest every 50th year, the jubilee, when all slaves were to be freed and land leases would expire, everyone returning to their ancestral holdings and their families. God says quite firmly that people cannot own the land forever:

23 The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.

24 Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.

—Leviticus 25:23–24

And the Bible tells us, in quite clear terms, what will happen if we don’t follow God’s laws, including our covenant relationship with the land, in these lines from Leviticus:

19 I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.

20 Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit....

33 And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword against you; your land shall be a desolation, and your cities a waste.

34 Then the land shall make up for its sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, while you are in the hands of your enemies, then the land shall rest and make up for its sabbath years.

35 As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your sabbaths when you were living on it.

—Leviticus 26:19–20

Proverbs also reminds us of the land relationship:

20 Therefore walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just.

21 For the upright will abide in the land and the innocent will remain in it;

22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

—Proverbs 2:20–22

Of course Isaiah has something to say on this:

4 The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish together with the earth.

5 The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken their everlasting covenant.

6 Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt....

—Isaiah 24:4–13

as does Hosea:

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

—Hosea 8:7

APPARENTLY THESE LAWS involving land redemption were mostly ignored by the Israelites from the beginning (Metzger and Murphy 1991). Ever since then, it’s curious how little we have heard from the religious community about the Levitical laws involving the sabbath for the land, and the fact that the land ultimately belongs to God, while other Levitical laws, such as those against homosexuality, have been widely trumpeted.

Do we have some selective vision here? How easy it is to attack a practice when we believe it has nothing to do with us, but oh how scary things get when our money is involved, and how contorted the denial becomes! We have people in our country now who will not admit that the actions they take on “their” land affect adjoining lands and waters (or perhaps they simply do not care about those effects). Can you imagine what might happen if the religious community were to begin to preach about sabbath for the land? Sixty years of “cold war” already inform us of how terrified capitalist society is at the idea of communal land ownership—and the failure of industrial communism informs us that different models are needed. There is much new thinking to be done, for the area of private property rights—and our culture’s belief that it can take endlessly from the earth—needs all the spirit-led thought and action it can muster.

Wendell Berry, in Home Economics, states: “The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage.”

Even if you’ve never read the Bible, you couldn’t have helped but know, as part of our culture, that the Bible is ambivalent about wealth. Solomon and Job, for example, are rewarded with great wealth, but those who let the pursuit of wealth become the driving force in their lives are warned over and over again. How familiar to all of us are these lines from Scripture:

9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

—1 Timothy 6:9–10

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust dost corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also...

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

—Matthew 6:19–34

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

—Mark 10:25

Nor are admonitions about loving money only to be found in the New Testament:

15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

16 They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes but they do not see;

17 They have ears, but they do not hear, and there is not breath in their mouths.

18 Those who make them and all who trust them shall become like them.

—Psalm 135:15–18

The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain.

Ecclesiastes 5:10—

You have sown much, and harvested little;
You eat, but you never have enough;
you drink, but you never have your fill;
you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm;
and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.”

—Haggai 1:6

THE ENTIRE BIBLE IS A TREATISE about right relationship, warning over and over about the sins of excess wealth, lust, power, and religious apostasy. The Old Testament is full of God telling people how to behave, explaining over and over that God expects responsible behavior—and the people ignoring the laws, and being punished over and over. The New Testament is about the Divine Spirit coming to earth and showing people how it’s done, trying to capture their imaginations in a totally new way....and people are still ignoring God’s message.

John Woolman was very concerned about the right relationship with wealth, and right relationship among people:

Look, my dear friends, to Divine Providence, and follow in simplicity that exercise of body, that plainness and frugality, which true wisdom leads to; so may you be preserved from those dangers... such as are aiming at outward ease and greatness.

Treasures, though small, attained on a true principle of virtue, are sweet; and while we walk in the light of the Lord there is true comfort and satisfaction in the possession; neither the murmurs of an oppressed people, nor a throbbing, uneasy conscience, nor anxious thoughts about the events of things, hinder the enjoyment of them.

Notice that Woolman is talking about the ability to enjoy life to the fullest, when we are in right relationship with our possessions.

Woolman recalls in his Journal a discussion with a Friend who was defending the slave trade, saying it was a biblical imperative that the descendants of Cain, whom God made black in punishment for killing Abel, be enslaved:

I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, and in some pressure of spirit said, ‘The love of ease and gain are the motives in general of keeping slaves, and men are wont to take hold of weak arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable. I have no interest on either side, save only the interest which I desire to have in the truth. I believe liberty is their right, and as I see they are not only deprived of it, but treated in other respects with inhumanity in many places, I believe He who is a refuge for the oppressed will, in his own time, plead their cause, and happy will it be for such as walk in uprightness before him.’

As Woolman traveled throughout the eastern U.S. during the mid-1700s in witness against slavery, he worried about the effect of slavery on both the slave and the enslaver. He wrote in his journal “...the white people and their children so generally [live] without much labour... I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though now many willingly run into it, yet in [the] future the consequences will be grievous to posterity.”

Should we hear “the murmurs of an oppressed people” or have “a throbbing uneasy conscience” as we go about our lives? Well, do we know where our electricity comes from? Do we know if people have been forced off their lands, deprived of their hunting grounds, and seen their cultures disintegrate so that we here in America can forget to turn out the lights? Do we know where our garbage goes—whose community it is buried in or who breathes the smoke from the incinerator where it is burned? Do we know whose impoverished country accepts the toxic wastes that we refuse to have on American soil? It seems to me we continue to make that age-old assumption that, in Wendell Berry’s words, “it is permissible to ruin one place or culture for the sake of another.” (Home Economics)

SO WE CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE with “the love of ease and gain,” both in our relationship with our fellow human beings and our relationship to the rest of Creation. We still reap the bitter fruits of slavery, even now, 130 years after its abolishment: how long will we reap the fruits of our treatment of the earth? Friends are very proud of Quaker achievements in helping to right our relationship with the slaves; to hear some Friends, you’d think that abolition happened just yesterday and they’d been part of the Underground Railroad themselves! Let us turn around, Friends, and look forward into the future: in the year 2126—130 years from now—will Friends look back so proudly at Quaker achievement in righting our relationship with Creation? What are—and will be—the spiritual consequences of our disconnection from the earth?

Realize, Friends, that we’re not trying to “preserve” the earth! That sounds like we’re going to pickle it, put it neatly in a jar and keep it on a museum shelf somewhere, to be dusted off and gawked at every now and then. That’s how we’ve been treating the earth for far too long—as “Other.” The Earth will likely do quite nicely preserving itself—we’re trying to save ourselves, by bringing ourselves back into right relationship with Creation and the Creator.

Christ tells us:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

—Matthew 5:48

I struggled with this word “perfect” for many years: I knew there was no way I would ever be perfect; that was simply unattainable for any person, and certainly for me. But then a Friend in our Meeting, who had studied Hebrew, said that another translation for “perfect” was “whole.” “Be ye whole,”—Now that has potential; that gives us hope. What if we focus on wholeness—holiness—the bringing together of all Earth communities?

How do we begin to create wholeness? We begin in the most obvious place, ourselves. As I mentioned in the first chapter, one area that seems to be out of right relationship in today’s world is time. But this, too, is an old problem.—Look at that wonderful story of Mary and Martha that Luke tells. In the story, Jesus and the disciples are traveling:

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.

—Luke 10:38–42

Now can’t you just hear Martha muttering in the kitchen and banging pots for the next hour: “Of course she’s got the better part; she’s in there sitting on her duff while I’m in here cooking dinner for a small tribe!” What woman doesn’t resonate to that story, and while fully understanding Jesus’ message, still sympathize with Martha? How to balance the Mary and Martha in all our lives is crucial to coming round right with time!

And yet, I cannot help but wonder what Jesus might have to say about the dishonoring of Martha—of all that relates to the so-called feminine side of us—in today’s society. Rearing children, cooking meals, cleaning the house, caring for our neighbors, tending the sick and elderly—the keeping of a home and caring for a community—are so devalued now that people who do these things full time often apologize for not “working”! Modern society has a deep prejudice against work that does not earn a wage. After all, time is money, right?

John Woolman also wrote on right relationship with time: “So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth the creation at this day doth loudly groan.”

Woolman found ways to make clear his witness against slavery, such as wearing undyed cloth (so he would have no connection with the trade of indigo dye, which used slave labor), and refusing to write bills of sale for slaves. Today things seem murkier; it’s often harder to make those clear witnesses. But how did Woolman know when he was not in right relationship? He listened to the Inner Light, constantly, to assess what he should do. When he was not in right relationship, he knew it, he would be “in considerable agitation of mind.” If we are to discern our place in Creation, we must also take that time to listen, to be open to that “still small voice.” This is the reason I stress the need for us to get into right relationship with time.

ONE OF MY GAUGES for right relationship is beauty. I don’t mean the way that we people usually label beauty, calling a rose “beautiful” and a tarantula “ugly.” I mean the true beauty of integrity. If something is beautiful, there is a harmony to it—it radiates integrity, whether we speak of an animal or plant, music, a child’s toy, a meal we serve. We know when we have had a beautiful day: The pieces fit together, and we flow from one part to another. If we live in a beautiful way, we know it. I think it is especially important that we surround children with true beauty—in our homes, our schools, our Meetings—that we envelope them with that integrity, both as a spiritual shield against the crumbling integrity of our wider society, and as a germ of hope.

Isaiah has a lovely, Quakerly phrase about what will happen when we are in right relationship:

17 The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

—Isaiah 32:17

Ecclesiastes also reminds us of the beauty of the pattern, of being part of the inner stillness:

3 What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?

4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.

—Ecclesiastes 1:2–11

WE KNOW IT IS NOT EASY to change our ways, our patterns of living. But I like to think that even our mistakes and backslidings have a use. The analogy of gardening came to my heart in worship one First Day—of how I need to root out bad habits, like I need to weed the garden. Some habits are like chickweed and easily uprooted; although they may pop up again from seed, they can again be removed. Others habits have deep taproots and grubbing them out is sweaty and difficult. How easy to remove only those parts which show on the surface and leave the deep roots to sprout again! Weeds will always pop up in any empty space, any place in the heart left neglected and untended. But I had a happy thought: the weeds can be thrown onto the compost heap of the soul, fertilizing one’s life and adding richness and depth to the soil. It is from that compost that we grow.

Friends, let us keep these words in our hearts, let us allow them grow in our imaginations as we seek the path back to right relationship.

You see, we are alive.
You see, we stand in good relation to the earth.
You see, we stand in good relation to the gods.
You see, we stand in good relation to all that is beautiful.
You see, we stand in good relation to each other.
You see, we are alive, we are alive.

Lisa Gould is a member of Westerly (R.I.) Monthly Meeting and has published a number of booklets and leaflets for Quaker Earthcare Witness. She serves as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey and also does quite a bit of informal writing, lecturing, and teaching about the natural world.

Questions for Reflection

• Am I careful to avoid spending and investing money in ways that result in others doing things to the earth that I would not do myself?
• Do we work together to educate ourselves about the care of the Creation’ in order to make responsible choices?
• Do we work to improve sharing of resources with everyone?
• Am I careful to avoid spending and investing money in ways that result in others doing things to the earth that I would not do myself?

Illustrative activities

Form a Meeting or congregational Earthcare Group.
Re-study the Bible with Earthcare in mind.
Study Lisa Gould’s book, Caring for Creation, Reflections on the Biblical Basis of Earthcare, Quaker Earthcare Witness, 1999.
Explore Quaker Earthcare Witness queries.
Create new queries.