|
"Pollution and the Death of Man" By
Francis Schaeffer & Udo Middelmann Copyright
1970 (Quotations
used by permission of Crossways Books, a
division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL) ON
APPRECIATION OF BEAUTY (page
number) 9
Near the end of his life, Darwin acknowledged several times in his
writings that two things had become dull to him as he got older.
The first was his joy in the arts and the second his joy in nature.
This is very intriguing. Darwin
offered his proposition that nature, including man, is based only on the
impersonal plus time plus chance, and he had to acknowledge at the end of his
life that it had had these adverse effects on him.
I believe that what we are seeing today is the same loss of joy in our
total culture as Darwin personally experienced ... The death of "joy"
in nature is leading to the death of nature itself. 73
the church has not spoken out as it should have done throughout history
against the abuse of nature. But
when the church puts belief into practice, in relationship to man and
to nature, there is substantial healing.
One of the first fruits of that healing is a new sense of beauty. 22
Aldous Huxley, in his last novel, Island
[wrote], "Elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism." 31
the unity of everything that is is expressed with some form of the
religious connotation word pantheism, or with purely secular terms, in reducing everything to
energy particles. ... Pantheism gives you an answer for unity, but it gives no
meaning to the diversity. ... A man who begins to take a pantheistic view of
nature has no answer for the fact that nature has two faces: it has a benevolent
face, but it may also be an enemy. The
pantheist view nature as normal. In
this view, there is no place for abnormality in nature. 32
in Camus's The Plague ... "if he joins with the doctors and fights against
the plague, he is fighting against God, or if he joins the priest and does not
fight against God by not fighting the plague, he is not being
humanitarian." 34
a pantheistic stand always brings man to an impersonal and low place
rather than elevating him. ... eventually nature does not become high, but man
becomes low. ... In the Eastern countries there is no real base for the dignity
of man. ... there is no reason to distinguish bad nature from good nature. ...
What is, is right. 47
if we return to the Reformation's view that nature is worth painting, so
the nature which we paint is also worth something in itself. ... All things were
equally created out of nothing. All
things, including man, are equal in their origin, as far as creation is
concerned. ... man is separated ... from nature because he is made in the image
of God. That is, he has
personality, and as such he is unique in the creation; but he is united to all
other creatures as being created. ...
man is made in the image of God, who is personal; thus he has two relationships
- upward and downward. 54
we should treat each thing with integrity because it is the way God made
it. ... The value of the things is not in themselves, autonomously, but that
God made them - and thus they deserve to be treated with high respect. ...
we certainly cannot think the material low when we realize that God created it.
... To think of them as low is really to insult the God who made them. [emphasis
added] 58
our conscious relationship with God is enhanced if we treat all the
things He has made in the same way as He treats them. ... Modern man has no real
"value" for the ocean. All
he has is the most crass form of egoist, pragmatic value for it. ... The man who
believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real intrinsic
value. ... As a Christian, I am consciously to deal with every other created
thing with integrity, each thing in its
proper sphere by creation. 61
[Gen 9:8-17] "I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed
after you; and with every living created thing."
So God says this, His covenant, was with mankind, but equally with all
creation. ... God makes a promise here that embodies all
creation. 64
[Rom 8:20] "creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of
God [the Christians]." What
Paul says here is that when our bodies are raised from the dead, at that time
nature too will be redeemed. ... the blood applied to the doorposts saved not
only the sons of the Hebrews, but also their animals. 67
the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who - with God's
help and in the power of the Holy Spirit - is treating nature now … the way
it will be [after Christ returns] … we should establish a substantial
healing here and now, between man and nature 68
In Novum Organum Scientiarum
Francis Bacon wrote: "Man by the fall fell at the same time from his state
of innocence and from his dominion over nature.
Both of these losses, however, even in this life, can in some part be
repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and
sciences." 68
Man has dominion over the "lower" orders of creation, but he is
not sovereign over them. Only God is Sovereign Lord ... In the parable of the
talents, told by Jesus (Matthew 25:15ff.), the talents or money did not belong
to the man with whom they were left. He
was a servant and a steward, and he held them only in stewardship for the true
Owner. It is the same when we have
dominion over nature: it is not ours.
It belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things
not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust.
We are to use them realizing that they are not ours intrinsically. 73
Christians should be Y dealing with things according to the world-view
and basic philosophy of the Bible, they can produce something that the world has
tried, but failed, to produce. The
Christian community should be a living exhibition of the truth that in our
present situation it is possible to have substantial sociological healing -
healings that humanism longs for, but has not been able to produce. 82
it usually takes longer to treat the land properly.
... factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and
time - or to say it another way, greed and haste. 84
Science today treats man as less than man, and nature as less than
nature. And the reason for this is
that modern science has the wrong sense of origin;
and having the wrong sense of origin, it has no category sufficient to treat
nature as nature any more than it has to treat man an man. Udo Middelmann ON CIVILIZATION 100
The urgency of the immediate perils addressed by many environmentalist
groups have often obscured the fact that the loudest advocates of change have
also wanted to change our view of the human being, and of life itself, away from
the Biblical basis of our culture and our moral concerns. ... they went to the
root of what we know as Western civilization - the value of each person under
God, even in a fallen word characterized by a broken nature.
Not only the acts of man should change, said these environmentalists:
man's understanding of himself should be radically redirected to a more Eastern
view, where man merges with everything. [emphasis added] 101
Man is the crown of creation. Males
and females are stewards responsible to God, not to nature. ... Western culture,
with its high view of individual responsibility, its drive to advance itself
technologically and democratically, has its roots in the Bible. ... is now
blamed for all the evils of society - even though without it none of the
problems would have been noticed and fought against in the first place. ... For
the environmentalist to deny the Biblical notion of individual worth, and to
prefer the Eastern view of man, is to saw off the branch on which he sits. 102
technology and rationality having taken the place of spiritual values -
evidence of a lack of moral concern in a world reduced to the pursuit of profit
and technological advancement. 105
their own worldview and nationalistic fervor were often the greatest
hindrance to development and a concern for their citizens.
Once we put aside the myth of equality of all cultures and religions, the
darkness and frequent inhumanities of non-Christian worldviews become clear.
An older form of pollution, resulting from disregard for human life and a
resignation to natural suffering, surfaces in many native and non-Christian
cultures. 106
restraint must go hand in hand with a reexamination of worldviews whose
traditions have not lamented the loss of life, but rather have accepted it as
normal - merely one more spin of the wheel of fate. 109
[Schaeffer] was forever against any survival program for nature or for an
impersonal future "humanity" when that program denied the value and
needs of real individuals living today. ... there were for him "no little
people" 110
Man is not to be wrapped into a larger eco-system.
That would only prevent him from making those critical judgments about
the world and himself which life in a moral universe requires of each of us. ...
In the actual teachings of Eastern religions and in the practices of cultures
bound to their outlook about man in the cosmos, human beings have not fared
well. ... human and social pollution from lack of sanitation, short life spans,
and arbitrary legal rights have created an unacceptable and unnecessary mountain
of human suffering. ... neither human beings nor nature are treated with any
great sympathy. Nature suffers
together with man quite unnecessarily. 111
The Biblical answer that we live in a fallen world without easy solutions
is the most sympathetic and concerned answers - and the only one which
motivates people to resist an abnormal nature. ... These orientations are
all impersonal. None of them
justify an moral concern for the environment, or even for the rights of
individual persons. This explains
why movements addressing pollution as well as other moral concerns have
originated in the part of the world historically most influenced by Biblical
thinking. And it explains why our
scientific data and eyewitness report of the worst form of pollution now come
from the Second and Third Worlds. [emphasis
added] 113
When nature is [wrongly] viewed as the will of God, when circumstances
are animated by spirits ... human death and natural pollution are accepted as
just consequence of life itself [part of the natural "survival of the
fittest" struggle] 113
The only adequate basis for environmental activism was laid in the
teachings of historic Judaism and Christianity. ... Only capitalism can afford
making investments toward a protected earth for the sake of protection human
life. ... But viability is not the result of nature left to itself, but of human
effort to tackle problems. ... great foresight is necessary to foster both
effort and restrain, both use and preservation, both consumption and
restoration. To protect both man
and nature requires a high view of human beings ... Solid reliable laws,
based on a comprehensive philosophy of life and not subject to democratic whims
under short-term goals, must reflect this high and long-term perspective.
[emphasis added] 119
rather than seeing himself as out of tune with an impersonal, uncaring
"Mother Nature," he sees himself as being loved by the God in whose
image he is made. Nature no less than man, suffers under the tragic results of
the Fall. ... And this is why the Bible speaks of the need to live not only by
bread, nuts and berries, which nature might provide. Instead, every word from the mouth of God is to given
direction, correction, and encouragement. ... that word alone tells us of a
reality not readily apparent in ... birth and death.
[emphasis added] |