Last evening I plopped into our old recliner and picked up another of my used-book finds: The Wilderness World of John Muir, a collection of accounts from Muir’s journals and books.  I was soon captivated.  Here’s an account I enjoyed of one of John’s experiences in Tennessee:

Once I was very hungry and lonely in Tennessee.  I had been walking most of the day in the Cumberland Mountains without coming to a single house, but in crossing a dark-shaded stream whose border trees closed over it like a leafy sky, I found the frail Dicksonia [a southern hemisphere tree-fern very rare at that latitude] that I had looked for so long, and the first magnolia, too, that I had ever seen.  I sat down and reveled in the glory of my discoveries.  A mysterious breathing of wind moved in the trees, and the stream sang cheerily at every ripple.  There is no place so impressively solitary as a dense forest with a stream passing over a rocky bed at a moderate inclination.

Feelings of isolation soon caught me again among these hushed sounds, but one of the Lord’s smallest birds came out to me from some bushes at the side of a moss-clad rock.  It had a wonderfully expressive eye, and in one moment that cheerful, confiding bird preached me the most effectual sermon on heavenly trust that I had ever heard through the measured hours of the Sabbath, and I went on not half so heart-sick, nor half so weary.

Although I have read many snippets of John Muir’s writings, I am feeling compelled to dig much deeper into this man’s thoughts to see what he might teach about the tension that evangelicals have in seeking to reconcile the truths of God’s general revelation (His works) and His special revelation (His Word).  Muir is ideal for such a study, since his father was an outspoken, but cruel, Christian fundamentalist who believed that the natural world and its creatures were gifts to mankind to use as we wish and that to study the natural world instead of the Bible was sinful.

This thinking was common among many of the Christian pioneers of the upper Midwest.  For instance, after a great slaughter of passenger pigeons near the Muir farm in Wisconsin—for pigeon pies—one of the children said, “It’s awful like a sin to kill them.”  Muir goes on: “To this some smug, practical old sinner would remark, ‘Aye, it’s a peety, as ye say, to kill th’ bonnie things, but they were made to be killed, and sent for us to eat as the quails were sent to God’s chosen people when they were starving in the desert.’” [Ironically, the world's last passenger pigeon and John Muir died within four months of each other in the fall of 1914.]

John Muir went on to question that purely utilitarian view of God’s creation in many ways over the following decades, much to the displeasure of his father, Daniel, who to his dying day sought to turn John from celebrating the wonder of God’s creation to preaching the Gospel to the lost—as though one had to be sacrificed for the other.

So I’m making a New Year’s resolution early: to, in part, use the year 2009 to learn more from the life of John Muir and his struggle with the twisted form of Christianity demonstrated by his father. Along the way, I will likely share a bit with the friends of WOC.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Because the earth is an object of worship for many of those given to New Age beliefs and other modern forms of pantheism, it’s logical for them to demonstrate devoted concern for the earth. That’s all they believe they have that is worthy of their reverence. Many of these individuals have followed the natural path of paganism illustrated by the apostle Paul: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen” (Rom. 1:25, NIV). There is a world of difference, however, between those who care for creation because they believe the earth itself is divine and those who care for creation because they honor and worship the divine Creator and desire to obey Him.

It’s good to keep in mind that it’s only natural for those who worship the creation to want to care for it—and to be disturbed by those who don’t care about it or for it. Pantheism (believing that God is everything or that He is the impersonal force that inhabits everything) is significant today among non-Christians concerned about the degradation of the earth’s environment. In fact, forty years ago Francis Schaeffer warned the evangelical community that if we did not begin to address these real crises, the philosophy of the environmental movement would come to be based on pantheism. He was already voicing that concern when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (in June of 1969—because of extreme pollution by flammable liquids dumped into the stream by careless industries). This shocking event sent many non-Christians into a search for a philosophy or worldview that would address the abuse of our environment because, sadly, they did not find it in the Church where it should have been evident.

Chuck Colson in his book The Body told us that, “we should be contending for truth in every area of life. Not for power or because we are taken with some trendy cause, but humbly to bring glory to God. For this reason, Christians should be the most ardent ecologists.”

Christians should be able to demonstrate to those who have fallen into the error of neo-paganism and pantheism that the Christian faith provides ample support for creation stewardship. Foundationally, Christians care because earth stewardship has is our responsibility of service to God. Further, many followers of Christ who are outspoken advocates of creation care—”good earthkeeping“—have had significant opportunities to reach non-Christians with the truth of the Gospel—providing them with the fundamental reason for environmental concern: respect for and obedience to the One who created the earth. I’m convinced that many “earth worshipers” might be drawn to the message of the Gospel if more believers lived out the meaning of the Gospel in all its aspects—including respect and care for the Creator’s handiwork.

This was taken from the Articles page—from the article Questions Christians Ask About Environmental Issues.

See you outdoors!

Dean

We’ve had a beautiful December this year—with snow either falling or fallen since the first day of the month.  I say, “If we have to have winter, let’s have it with snow!”  Some of the snowfalls have been of the mesmerizing sort: the air filled with giant flakes ambling downward tipping and twirling slow enough that you can follow one flake from sky to touchdown.

It was during just one of those snowfalls several years ago that a thought suddenly overwhelmed me: materiality is the miracle. What I was blessed to understand is that we are living in the miracle.  If God is all, is spirit, did create and is creating and sustaining, then the ultimate reality that makes our existence possible is the spiritual realm, which we cannot see.  The material world that we do see—feel, hear, smell, taste—is God’s persistent miracle.  Hence for a material being to ask if miracles are possible is really a ludicrous question.  Our senses are the material gift of our Creator that allows us to know in a limited way just one small part of a reality so far beyond comprehension that our reactions to it must chiefly be humility and wonder.

It’s this truth that is the motivation for this blogsite and the chief reason we don’t get into the debate on how and how long ago God created the material world.  For more that forty years I argued and debated and debated and argued—mostly with other Christians—about what the Genesis account of creation was telling us about the scientific fashion of God’s creation work.  I was convinced, of course, that when the arrogant and self-centered ungodly person denies the Creator but is awestruck by His cosmos, he is led, as Paul tells us in Romans 1, into idolatry—to worshiping the creation instead of the Creator.  What I didn’t see, however, is that when Christians pretend that we know how and how long ago our Creator did it, we too are proud and can easily fall into a sort of “righteous idolatry” of the material world.

Frankly, I believe if anyone, Christian or non-Christian, ever claims he knows anything more than an inkling about God’s creation miracle, he ends by adding speculation to ignorance and calling it knowledge. For that reason I’m not much interested anymore in the “Great Creation Debate.”  I’m just going to be content to merely celebrate the miracle and wonder of His Creation and follow William Blake’s advice:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Robert Frost, hands down, is my favorite American poet.  For many reasons.  For many poems.

While I grew up in Michigan, not New England—and grew up the generation after Frost—I often feel like he felt, see like he saw, and ponder like he pondered.  No poem overwhelms me with nostalgia like “Birches.”  It paints a portrait of my childhood better than any artist could.  The first time I read it, I felt as though Frost had been behind some tree making notes on the activities of the “OAK boys”: pre-striplings Ohlman, Andrews, and Kenfield (Dean, Dickie, and Lanny).

The opening line of the poem captures one of the OAK boys favorite activities: tree bending.  Our woods didn’t have birches, so we used tall but thin beech, maple, and hickory trees.  We would shinny up these skinny saplings that already had rough lives striving to reach the canopy for their share of sunlight before dying from lack of light.  We would climb some twenty feet or so until we felt the sapling begin to bend.  At that point, gripping with both arms and legs, we would start the tree to swaying, like those circus performers on the tall poles, and attempt to guess at which point we could allow our legs to swing out so our weight would overcome the resistance of the woody trunk and allow us to ride gently down to the ground.  Letting go of it, the tree top would then snap back up—but always bent in the direction of the boy it had gently let down.  Never again would it bend but in that direction.  When we had made it so limber it could no longer give us the thrill we wanted, we’d go to the next inviting prospects.  A few hours of that would leave a dozen or so saplings bent every-which-way in the woody landscape.

There were, of course, a few risks in this sport.  First, you had to know that it was not smart to chose a box elder or a willow, which would snap instead of bend.  And your grip had to be strong.  But the biggest risk was what Frost referred to as learning not to “launch out too soon.”  Because what would happen if you let your legs swing out before your weight would overpower the resistance of the trunk is that instead of dropping you to the ground in the direction you had intended, it would snap you back like an apple on a twig and try its best to throw you off in the opposite direction at about twice the speed of your original thrust.  If you failed to get your legs back around the trunk and hold on literally for “dear life,” you were going to be flung somewhere into the woods at the victorious sapling’s discretion.  My worst crash was into the branches of a thornapple tree, the result of which was a late afternoon visit to the doctor’s office where a inch-long thorn had to be wrenched from my skinny arm with a medical “pliers,” my mother’s tweezers having failed to make it budge.

All those memories stirred up from my having read the news this morning about the wicked ice storm in Frost’s beloved New England, where in the next day or so, the ice-encased birches will be shedding their “crystal shells.”

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows–
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
—From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Last week I mentioned the opportunity I had to visit one of the few groves of old cedars left in Lebanon.  As it is with valuable trees everywhere, our human stewardship of them has often been disgraceful.  They were so valuable in ancient times that even by the time of Christ they were badly depleted.  In the second century, the Roman emperor Hadrian placed a ban on cutting them—except, of course, for imperial Roman use!  Reforestation has happened sporadically since that time.  Modern industrial times took a great toll on them, and they were again badly depleted by the middle of the 20th century. 

Since the Bible begins with unfallen man living in a Garden and ends with the redeemed sinners living in a Garden City, and since, in between, the natural world plays such an important role in the biblical narratives, I find it curious that Christians typically do not seem very interested in the natural history of the Bible lands.  I guess that because I’ve been blessed to visit Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan with Day of Discovery, I’m fascinated with the natural world of the Bible.

About a year ago I picked up in a used-book store a wonderful old tome by Henry Van Dyke, the author of The Other Wiseman and the First Christmas Tree.  He’s also the writer of the lyrics we sing to the music of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You.” This book is a chronicle of his own trip to Israel, Jordan, and Syria in 1907, and it is titled Out-Of-Doors In the Holy Land. In the preface he expresses what I have come to feel about the importance nature in the lands of the Bible:

There are two things in the book which I would not have you miss: the first is the new conviction—new at least to me—that Christianity is an out-of-doors religion.  From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem (where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors.  Except the discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words, from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples, were spoken in the open air.  How shall we understand it unless we carry it under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship with nature?

I’m sure, of course, that you and I have received most of our biblical instruction indoors—in our churches, and so forth—but because I have experienced the out-of-doors in the Holy Land and can still vividly recall its vistas, smell its odors, and even savor eating “St. Peter’s fish” on a table beside the Sea of Galilee, when I read the Bible today, it relates to me in a physical as well as a spiritual manner.  One does not have to visit the lands of the Bible, however, to gain that perspective.  Merely picturing Jesus as walking shoulder to shoulder with you through your favorite outdoor place will go a long way toward helping you grasp the reality that your Savior is also the Creator of all you love.

Van Dyke went on to say that, “the second thing that I would have you find here is the deepened sense that Jesus Himself is the great and imperishable miracle.  His words are spirit and life.  His character is the revelation of the Perfect Love. This was the something new and wonderful and welcome that came to me in Palestine: the simpler, clearer, surer view of the human life of God.”

Today we typically spend all but a few brief minutes of each day entirely indoors—in car or building—surrounded by human artifacts.  I feel that in keeping ourselves from intimate interaction with what He has made, we rob ourselves of a sense of what is real, meaningful, indeed miraculous about our Creator becoming human.  We have been rescued from the effects of sin upon the physical world because the One who made us Himself became physical and material—clothed, like us, in atoms and molecules that had once given living materiality to cicadas, cuttlefish, and cedars. 

Probably only a few remember the old song that was a favorite of mine: “Down From His Glory:”  You can listen to it and read the words here.

Without reluctance, flesh and blood His substance,
He took the form of man, revealed the hidden plan;
O glorious myst’ry sacrifice of Calv’ry!
And now I know He is the great “I AM”!

Oh how I love Him!  How I adore Him!
My breath, my sunshine, my all in all!
The great Creator became my Savior,
And all God’s fullness dwelleth in Him!

 See you outdoors!

Dean

There are several new ideas on the “Wonder Kids” page
from the pages of Richard Louv’s book,
Last Child in the Woods.
Take a look.

One of the Christian authors whose books I collect is Jacques Ellul, who died in 1994.  He was a very complex individual with some positions that I do not accept.  Nonetheless, he was a deep thinker and a constant critic of how the modern world is more the victim of technology than the master of it.  Charles Ringma, professor of missions and evangelism at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, has written a wonderful devotional booklet using the thought of Ellul: Resist the Powers: With Jacques Ellul.  It sits on my desk for an easy reach when I need to be challenged.

Now let me challenge you with Ellul.  Here’s a snippet from one of his articles that relates to the theme of this blogsite.  Let me know what you think about his views on this.

Stewardship and Love of Nature
 

Jacques Ellul

Since nature is no longer sacred, man is taken to be the lord of nature.  But the essential thing has been forgotten: This nature is the creation of God, who handed it over to Adam and Eve—not to do as they pleased, but to manage and care for in the absence of God.

What does this mean?  From the perspective of the Hebrew Scriptures it means two things.  It means that God does not want to rule over His creation directly; He does not want creation to be an object that runs exactly the way He sets it up like some automatic mechanism.  God places people in nature precisely so that everything will not be submitted mechanically to some over-riding power, but in order “to give room to play.”  This in turn means that humanity (in the image of God) is called to act toward creation in the same way God does, although without His total power.  And this God is given the name love.  If God created, it is through love; if He gives independence to creation, it is through love.  We must treat nature in the same way, managing it not for blind and egotistical profit, but through love.  Such are the implications of the first chapters of Genesis.

“Christian Responsibility for Nature and Freedom”
by Jacques Ellul
From Cross Currents Spring 1985 pp. 49-53

 

See you outdoors!

Dean

Several years ago my son Dave and I were on a trail ride in one of southwestern Utah’s seemingly endless awe-inspiring canyons: Kodachrome Basin.  Riding along with us was a California family that included the grandparents, par­ents, and children.  Our trail boss, Bob, a good-humored, experienced wrangler, patiently put up with our amateur horseman­ship on the trail and even took time to give us the natural history of the land and the vegetation.  One of the unusual plants he pointed out was what he called “corral grass.”  Its unique feature is that it grows in circular patches and, as he explained, by making a ring of tight growth, it pro­tects its root space from other encroaching plants.  When Bob finished his explanation, the grand­father, who had been matching wits with the trail boss, quipped, “Yes, but what’s it good for?”  And we all chuckled.

As the horses plodded on toward the next spectacular vista, I thought about the grandfa­ther’s comment:  While I knew it was meant to be funny, almost unconsciously it influ­enced three gen­erations to continue thinking, like the majority of the Western world, that natural things have little value unless we can identify some practical use for them.  If they have no obvious value for me or for mankind in general, they are mere curiosities—not worth much, if anything.

Ecological studies, however, are providing overwhelming evidence that the survival of the earth’s ecosystems depends upon a vast diversity of plants and animals that interdepen­dently maintain life.  Living things once considered worthless, or even harmful, are now known to be vi­tal ingredients in the recipe for a healthy environment.

In fact, Christians can declare without fear of contradiction, “God believes in biodiver­sity.”  How else can we interpret the account of Noah’s ark?  Since God created the earth with biodiver­sity, we can logically conclude that he in­tended for that biodi­versity to continue.  All of us who claim the authority of the Bible as the Word of God should be willing to accept biodiversity as a basic fact of creation.  Further, I believe we have a responsibility to honor all things created because God has reasons that we have no knowledge of.

 We also have an important statement in Scripture about biodiversity and the place of human utility in relationship to what God  has created in Genesis 2:9: “The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.”  Here there is biodiversity in “all kinds of trees,” and the beauty of the trees is mentioned before their utility.

I feel it’s wise for us to gain knowledge of all things God created.  Consider all that was included in the gift of wisdom God gave to Solomon: “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. . . . He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish” (1 Kings 4: 29, 33).

Hyssop

So, anonymous California grandfather, if you want to match wits with Solomon, you’ll probably have to care more for such things as hyssop—and corral grass.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Before I took on the job of “professional blogger” with WOC, I served as an associate producer with RBC’s Day of Discovery television.  During my time with DOD I had the neat opportunity to help in the production of two TV series on the wonder of creation.  The first was a four-part series on the wonder of a tree, done in 2002.  This required video shoots in the Pacific Northwest and then in Lebanon, where I had the unforgettable experience of visiting with our crew one of the oldest groves of the biblically “famous” cedars near the summit of Mt. Lebanon.

The second was a three-part series on the wonder of soil that aired just last month on the three Sundays leading up to Thanksgiving.  The timing of those broadcasts was ideal— my considering Thanksgiving to be the true Christian “Earth Day.”

Now you have the opportunity to watch both of those series online—right where you now sit!  Each program is about 25 minutes long. If you do watch any of them, I’d love to have you tell me what you think.

See you outdoors!

Dean

The Wonder of a Tree:

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/09/29/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/06/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/13/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/20/program.aspx

The Wonder of Soil:

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/09/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/16/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/23/program.aspx

For the past eighteen years I’ve been developing and honing a graphic presentation of the biblical worldview to use as a teaching tool when I speak.  It’s now in PowerPoint (which, to the disbelief of 18-year-olds, did not exist 18 years ago!).  It has also been titled the “Two Ways Worldview.”  That title indicates that the thrust of the presentation is to compare and contrast The Way of Truth and Life with The Way of Deception and Death.

This “two roads” metaphor, of course, is taken from the gospels’ characterization of the way that leads to life and the way that leads to destruction—or the broad and narrow ways.  My studies on this have made it clear to me how God’s “two books” (special and general revelation / the Bible and the creation) are interrelated and are both significant to the way we live our lives.

The presentation box below gives you a limited version that provides the content in static slides.  The full PowerPoint presentation is “animated” in that it progresses point by point through each slide instead of coming up with the page full of content as it does on this Slideshare version.  If you are interested in having a copy of the full presentation and/or a Word document that gives its rationale, you can do this:

Make a comment on this post with just one of these words:  If you want the presentation, simply say “yes.”  If you also want the rationale document, say “both.”  As administrator of the blog, I can pull your email address from your comment and then email it to you.  I realize that’s a rather unorthodox use of the comment box; but shucks, it works!  And if you want to comment on the presentation at the same time, that would be great.  Please don’t hesitate to critique it—because it’s a work in progress.  Thoughtful and biblically sound comments will no doubt make it better.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Click on the box below to activate it.  At the bottom right-hand corner of the presentation box is an icon of a projector screen.  If you click on that icon, the presentation will fill your computer screen—which makes it much easier to read.  Just press the “Esc” key on your keyboard to get back to the standard view.