Quick . . . what National Park lies between the Great Smoky Mountains NP and the Everglades NP?

I have to confess that I didn’t know the answer to that question until a couple weeks ago. 

After completing plans to join our youngest son and daughter-in-law, Dave and Ruth, for Thanksgiving in Columbia SC, Ruth expressed her eagerness for Marge and me to join them for a hike in the swamp—the BIG swamp formed by the Congaree River some twenty miles south of Columbia.  It was then that I learned about one of our newest national parks: the Congaree NP, which is mostly a designated wilderness area of some 15,000 acres and filled with all the creatures that one might imagine occupying a Southern swamp.  Marge was not too eager to venture into the realm of swamp denizens until she heard that we would be walking a two-mile, elevated boardwalk—”elevated” being the key word!

So walk it we did—on a splendid, cool but sunny day on Tuesday.  We had no major wildlife encounters but did enjoy the birdlife in the now leaf-bare deciduous trees that make up one of the tallest of such canopies in the world.  Although midday in the late fall in a deciduous forest is not dramatic, the silences and solitude of such a place were themselves a joy. 

When I’m back at my home computer, I’ll share some photos which should give you an idea about the nature of the park—which will be more impressive once the drought in the Southeast has run its course and the cypress roots will again protrude from the water like the knees of bony teenagers bathing in short tubs.

Just outside the park, we stopped at a small church—Baptist, or course—to take photos of its old cemetery overtopped with live and red oaks drapped, in picture-book fashion, with Spanish moss.  One tombstone stood out with its curious epitaph:

MEMORY
OF
MARGARET GLENN
BORN–1878
DIED  MAY 24  1940
SHE HATH DONE
WHAT SHE COULD

It didn’t seem at first to be very respectful of Margaret, but when you think about how different our civilization would be if all of us did what we could—in the Baptist understanding of our duties before God—the world would indeed demonstrate more of its original goodness. 

God bless your soul, Margaret Glenn, for doing what you could.

See you outdoors!

Dean

One of the sad misconceptions of many within the conservative evangelical church has been the understanding that we are “aliens and strangers” on the earth.  The truth is, however, that we are to be aliens and strangers to the world—to the ungodly and rebellious world system ruled over by Satan.  The Scripture informs us that this world system is going to be destroyed and its diabolical ruler vanquished for eternity.  And as a long and glorious celebration of our Savior’s victory, we are going to reign with Him on this very earth which so many of us now abuse and malign.  When we attain our final and complete adoption as children of God, we will embrace a good earth healed from the curse where thorns no longer “infest the ground.” 

So the second coming of the Messiah is bad news for this world system, yet glorious good news for the earth and for those of us who will reign with Him upon it.  I’m convinced that it is time that we imagine with C.S. Lewis the moment when “that hideous strength” of the enemy of God and man is finally wrestled into defeat and submission, and when all the elements, plants, and living creatures of a restored earth join in one grand united doxology with redeemed mankind in praise to our Savior and Creator, Jesus Christ: It will be the return of shalom—of the peaceable kingdom.  The apostle John shared with us his vision of that moment:

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever! (Rev. 5:13, NIV).

Note in that passage how John explicitly includes the entire biosphere: creatures in the sky, on the earth, under the earth, on the sea, and in the sea.  Imagine the scene: larks, dragonflies, rabbits, badgers, moles, trap-door spiders, Portugese men-of-war, sharks, and sea stars all attending to the Savior-Creator and singing!  Who says Narnia is fiction?  Remember that Aslan is the Lion of Judah! Think of the joy that will fill the Hundred-Acre Wood.  Tigger will jump higher than ever and Eeyore, then the eternal optimist, will “bouncy-bounce” with him.  Earth will be Peralandra, and Neverland will become Everland!

Many of us may need to repent of our careless lack of camaraderie with the other creatures of the earth and of our lack of care for the marvelous handiwork of God that has faithfully given witness from the beginning of His divine nature and eternal power (Rom. 1:20).  With our hearts and with our hands, let us work toward the anticipated restoration of the good Earth.

As we approach the busy holiday season, I’ve been thinking: wouldn’t it be a grand thing if believers came to truly understand that Thanksgiving is the Christian “earth day” when we celebrate the bounty of God’s good creation.  Imagine how the holiday seasons from Thanksgiving through New Years would take on a whole new meaning if we got off the materialistic juggernaut and celebrated the first advent of the Messiah with an active expectation of His second advent when we will join hands with all the redeemed entities of the restored cosmos.  I’m not sure how it would look, but here are some things we could do.

1.  We could make the day after Thanksgiving a fast day when we repent of our careless attitude toward God’s good earth.  Instead of helping to make that day the busiest shopping day of the year, we’d turn the eyes of the world away from Mammon and toward God.  For those of us who live in the north of the United States, a walk in the woods marked by the death of summer and the chill of coming winter would increase the significance of our fast.

2.  We could celebrate Christmas by using God’s great gift of creativity to us by making gifts for one another.  Revive the old custom of creatively taking of the bounty of the earth and turning it into something that will remind us with each use of the good earth and its coming day of victory: nature craft items, jams and other preserves, bird houses and bird feeders, and a single orange to remind us of the past when celebrations were homespun and simple.  We could consider not burdening ourselves with expensive toys that will only take more of our time and money—and unnecessarily make a negative impact upon the natural world.  We could shun big-ticket items that in the long run reduce our ability to truly be stewards of the earth.

3.  We could celebrate the new year with resolutions that compel us to look forward to the restoration of the good earth when Jesus comes to reign.

Being thankful for God’s good earth,

Dean

My recollections of the sixties are often poignant and painful—memories of protest songs and marches; of “liberation” from the establishment and its values; of a bloody, frustrating, no-win war; of naked Woodstock revelers; of unkempt, barefoot hippies storming the fences of nuclear power plants, and of radical college professors berating Christianity for bringing civilization to the eve of doomsday.

It was an agonizing time of soul-searching for the Church, and one of the important commentators of the time was Francis Schaeffer. Thousands of Christians pored over his books to discover the reason for unreason and to understand why Western civilization had come to such a state. At the end of the process, we all asked with Schaeffer, “How should we then live?” Much of what this philosopher/theologian said about the demise of Christianity in the West was quickly understood and accepted as the basis upon which a revitalized Church could once again make its message heard in a “post-Christian” world.

Curiously, however, one of Schaeffer’s books was overlooked or, perhaps more correctly, ignored as an aberration of an otherwise astute thinker: it was titled Pollution and the Death of Man (published in 1970 by Tyndale House). The book title and the cover itself likely added to its lack of popularity: a photograph of a skull on a pile of dirt. Were not the rants of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden enough? Did we really need another negative message to add to our burden of bad news? We had ministries to run and families to raise; how could we be expected to be enthusiastic about another message of impending disaster—this time from the environment?

Those who took the time to read Pollution and the Death of Man discovered, however, that its message was not just another commentary on the decline of Christianity, but it was a challenge to the Church to apply biblical principles to the world’s environmental crises. It’s subtitle reflected that: A Christian View of Ecology. Sadly, the book was published some thirty years too soon, for only since about the turn of the century have a significant number of believers come to the point where we are willing to examine the premises of the book—some of which now appear to be prophetic.

Because conservative Christianity readily attached itself to the economics of progress and prosperity and a virtually unregulated free market, and because many of those of a Dispensationalist stance [my own background] believed God is going destroy this earth utterly, it was felt by many that Christians might just as well ignore the earth’s physical condition and concentrate instead on saving souls and ushering them to Glory, as the hymn says, “on flowery beds of ease.” Others appeared to feel that since Jesus was going to return in a few years and fix things, there was little need for us to do anything.

Jesus never intended the promise of His future return to be an excuse for ignoring our present responsibilities.

Well, Jesus did not return in the seventies, nor in the eighties or nineties. And, in part because of the Church’s failure to apply the scriptural principle of stewardship to our use of the earth’s resources, the world’s environmental problems have compounded. We have had to relearn this important lesson: Jesus never intended the promise of His future return to be an excuse for ignoring our present responsibilities.

Should the Church remain indifferent to the social and environmental consequences of a worldwide free-market economy unchecked by the Christian principles of justice, compassion, equity, charity, and stewardship? Freedom, capitalism, and democracy did not make America great; it was those factors tied to biblical principles—the decline of which is now devastating our economy and our environment.

I believe we must all come to recognize what the Christian farmer/philosopher Wendell Berry articulates so well:

Charity cannot be just human. . . . Once begun, wherever it begins, it cannot stop until it includes all Creation, for all creatures are parts of a whole upon which each is dependent, and it is a contradiction to love your neighbor and despise the great inheritance on which this life depends. . . . The divine mandate to use the world justly and charitably, then, defines every person’s moral predicament as that of a steward. But this predicament is hopeless and meaningless unless it produces an appropriate discipline: stewardship. . . . Is there not, in Christian ethics, an implied requirement of practical separation from a destructive and wasteful economy?

See you outdoors!

Dean

Check out this YouTube video. A great pre-Christmas message!

Click on the title below:

The Advent Conspiracy

Many thanks to Bob Rowe, Karen Crepin, and Gary Fawver for their great additions to the “Wonder Kids” page.  This kind of contribution makes it just what we want it to be: a community!

A good discussion is taking place on the post of November 16:  “Why Care For Creation?”  Scroll on down to the post and click on the “comment now” tag at the top of the post if you’d like to read or join in the discussion.

It’s our desire to see the “Wonder Kids” page become a sort of community for parents, grandparents, and other caregivers where there is a good deal of idea sharing.  We have added a response box at the bottom of the “Wonder Kids” page where you can suggest ways to help children learn about God’s creation and develop a biblical worldview regarding the care of creation.

Click on the “Wonder Kids” menu item at the top of this page, and when you get there, scroll down to the bottom to find the comments box where you can make these suggestions.

On the top of the “Articles” page is a new entry titled “The Lion, the Curse, and the Evangelical.”  If you want to give it a look, click on the “Articles” menu item at the top of this page.  It will be the first article preview you see.  At the end of the preview, click on the “Read More” link to get to the full article.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

Witnessing for Christ means not only sharing God’s salvation plan for man; it also means that we demonstrate renewed appreciation and care for the natural world that God will also restore, renew, and reunite.  Simply put, nature is also going to be “born again.”  Do we hold that joyous truth in our hearts as a motivation to cherish creation’s fellow worshipers who are also recipients of God’s attention and compassion?  If we saw the other living creatures as fellow worshipers of Christ the Creator, would our callousness toward them not diminish?

One of the activities I try every year is climbing trees—regardless of my “senior” status.  I’m often amused at the reactions I get when I’m spotted in a tree.  A few years ago I tried to get as far up as I could into a great climbing tree we had in our front yard: a sycamore.  The first response was from a robin that landed about three feet from my nose.  I’m not sure exactly what shock looks like in a robin, but from the loud squawk and feathers-flying retreat it made when it spotted me, I know it was shocked.  When Marge, my wife, pulled into the driveway from the store, I know she was surprised at being hailed from about 25 feet over her head.  Her response was a bit different.  Something like, “Get out of that tree, you old codger!  You’ll break your neck.”  (I think she actually used a bit more colloquial term for me.)

Well, the thing is—I love trees!  I have ever since I was old enough to climb one.  And you have to hug a tree to climb it; so, yes, you could call me a literal “tree hugger.”  Much of what I appreciate about trees was written in one of RBC’s booklets.  You’ll find it on this blogsite by clicking on the “Author Resources” page in the right-hand menu under “Discovery Series.”  While I highlight in the booklet many of the benefits of trees to the environmental health of the earth and to our own health, we didn’t have space for a number of those benefits.  Below is an enumeration of the things trees do for us.

Twenty Things Trees Do for Us

1.  Provide oxygen.  Trees, in a sense, inhale sunlight and carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.  They’re the “lungs” of the planet acting in counterpoint to living animals which inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. As consumers of carbon dioxide, trees are our first line of defense against global warming.  Not only do they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, they also store up carbon in their wood, sometimes holding it for hundreds—even thousands of years.

2.  Moderate temperature.  An abundance of trees reduces the extremes of heat and cold.

3.  Enhance rainfall.  By transpiring moisture into the air and by cooling the air, trees increase rainfall.  For instance, the normally arid land of Jordan has increased its annual rainfall by 15% through reforestation in about 40 years. This transpiration is a vital part of the earth’s water cycle that makes our planet suitable for life.

4.  Collect and absorb dust and other atmospheric pollutants.

5.  Protect the earth from rapid climate change.  This is the natural result of the previous vital ecological functions of trees.

6.  Produce and protect healthy soil.  Decomposed leaves and wood make up a substantial part of the topsoil that all living things require for life and health.  Leaf litter insulates soil from temperature extremes. Roots aerate soil, add nitrogen to soil, bind soil, circulate water through the soil, and protect soil from erosion and thus enhance stream flow so vital for the life of aquatic creatures and plants.  Trees provide windbreaks to protect soil from wind erosion.  In mass, trees reduce flooding by holding soil and absorbing and collecting as much as 20 percent of rainfall.

7.  Provide food.  Tree fruit provides much of the food and nutrients that humans require and provide most of the food for several other living species.

8.  Provide shelter and/or cover for most animals and birds.

9.  Provide protection for thousands of species of sun-sensitive plants.

10.  Provide healing products.  Many of our medicines or medicine components come from trees, as do other vital nutritional necessities.

11.  Provide building products.  Nearly every home in America owes its structural integrity to wood.  Add to that the tree products and tree cavities that provide homes for birds, animals, and insects vital to life on earth.

12.  Provide paper products.  Consider your quality of life without books, magazines, newspapers, cardboard boxes, match sticks, printer paper, maps, wrapping paper, and toilet paper!

13.  Provide wood for furniture and dozens of other household and workplace products.

14.  Provide fuel.  Half of the earth’s population uses wood as fuel for heating and cooking.

15.  Provide “sensory candy.”  Trees in their multiple shapes, colors, and landscape contours are among the most beautiful things that people can see.  Tree fragrances are among the most pleasant that people and animals can smell.  Tree flavors are among the most appreciated tastes of people around the globe.  Trees act as sound buffers and as sound producers (the sound of wind and rain in the trees being vital to the human sensory experience).

16.  Produce a sense of rootedness and community.  Consider how many streets and community developments are named for trees.  Sadly, we find that people often name their streets and developments for the natural features they destroyed to build their communities.  Nonetheless, flying over America, we can see that our most cherished trees are the ones that line our streets, encircle our homes, and festoon our parks.  People who have grown up in the company of familiar trees understand how important they are the day the trees fall.

17.  Provide living fences that hold back drifting sand and snow

18.  Reduce light intensity from the sun.

19.  Provide privacy.

20.  Protect watersheds for communities.

How To Care For Trees

1. Learn about the forests (in order to appreciate their role in our lives).
2. Remember the forest’s relationship to people as mutual creations of God.
3. Remind yourself regularly of your personal responsibility in creation stewardship.
4. Stay aware of forest policies and uses.
5. Recognize the forest’s vulnerability to needless consumption and abuse.
6. Become intimate with a few nearby trees or forests.
7. And climb one every chance you get!

You might also want to read my essay on “The Trouble With Trees” which is also found by going to “Pages” on the right-hand menu, then to “Articles.”  When you get there, scroll down to find the article.

See you outdoors!

Dean

“I have not yet been able to put your environmental concern into my view of eschatology [the "end times"].”

So said a good friend. He comes from the same Dispensationalist background I come from. I appreciate his candor. I know what he means: Since the earth will “wear out like a garment” (Heb. 1:11); since some of it will “melt” (2 Pet. 3:12); since Jesus will return for us; since our future home will be heaven; since man is most important to God, why should we care about the state of the earth?

My answer has to be this: We have have been looking at the wrong end of the Bible to understand our relationship to the creation. We need to look at the beginning. While how creation happened is constantly debated in Christian circles, there is seldom an argument about the early mandates found in the first two chapters of Genesis about how we use and relate to the creation: the dominion mandate in 1:28 and the marriage mandate in 2:24. Sandwiched between those two, however, is the stewardship mandate in 2:15. We seldom question the dominion mandate or the marriage mandate. But I don’t think we do well with the stewardship mandate.

Here we are told that man and woman were put into the Garden to cultivate it and to take care of it. The full sense of those infinitives in the Hebrew includes being a husbandman, or steward, of it—a task that means putting a hedge around it, protecting it, serving it, preserving it, and saving it. I feel that this command is often the forgotten mandate. If we had been heeding this divine requirement as enthusiastically as we do the dominion mandate, I think things would be significantly different—at least in the Christian community today.

So why should we care about the state of the earth?

1) We should care because it is the obedient thing to do. Nowhere in Scripture do I see that the original mandates have been rescinded. Although our dominion is often abused because of the Fall, the dominion mandate remains our ideal. Although our marriages suffer because of sin, the marriage mandate remains our ideal. Although the task of stewardship is difficult in the presence of evil and because of the curse, the creation care mandate remains our ideal. We indeed glorify God in our obedience to all three mandates.

2) We should care because it is the loving thing to do. In Psalm 145 we have this revealing verse: “The Lord is righteous in all His ways and loving toward all He has made” (Psa. 145:17). That verse follows right after the one that says God opens His hand and satisfies “the desires of every living thing.” At the very least we can understand from these verses that if God is righteous and loving toward all He has made, we can attempt to be the same. As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, “If we love the Lover, we will love that the Lover has made.” Further, when we care properly for the earth, we also demonstrate love for our neighbor and for ourselves—so that all aspects of the Great Commandment can be carried out.

Certainly there are many unanswered questions about the future state of the earth, the material final state of the believer, and the nature of heaven. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that Jesus’ promise of future bliss must never be an excuse for present carelessness regarding His creation. If the atoning sacrifice of the second Adam is going to result in the reconciliation of all things ruined by the sin of the first Adam (Col. 1:20); if all of creation is on tiptoe groaning for the day when it will be released from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:20-22 Phillips); if Isaiah’s Messianic peaceable kingdom is yet to come, how can I be less than a loving and careful steward of God’s creation handiwork.

So since we are no doubt closer in time to the restoration than we are to the time of the curse, our outlook should be that of Isaac Watts who wrote of the coming return of Earth’s true King,

Joy to the world! The Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing. . . .

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found.

See you outdoors!

Dean