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Love Nature, Because God

Love Nature, Because God

Last updated on: October 24, 2016 at 7:15 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Love Nature, Because God 2016-10-23T17:51:23-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We could buy a pumpkin, but our college chooses to grow a pumpkin.

Aristotle had a problem. His students did not wish to do science, because mucking about with things like “worms” was not a worthy project for a gentleman. He wanted them to do research and science, but the delicate students thought it was beneath them.

He says:

If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man. For no one can look at the primordia of the human frame-blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like-without much repugnance. Moreover, when any one of the parts or structures, be it which it may, is under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is its material composition to which attention is being directed or which is the object of the discussion, but the relation of such part to the total form. Similarly, the true object of architecture is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal object of natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their composition, and the totality of the form, independently of which they have no existence.

This was a major impediment to science and Aristotle’s attempts to stop the snobbery never really worked. Gentleman preferred the clean work of mathematics over taking to digging up worms.

Meanwhile the Jewish and Christian tradition had a different point of view:

The mark of pride is to deny that God is the author of virtue and nature; the mark of self-esteem is to make divisions in nature and so to treat some things as worthless. Conceit is their natural off-spring, being an evil state composed of a voluntary denial of God and ignorance of the equal dignity that things possess by nature.*

This is the attitude we must have to do science and more than any other view of reality, Christianity created this attitude and so allowed and continues to allow scientific, joyful exploration of the dirty, physical, wonderful world. When God became Man at Christmas, matter was ennobled. How could matter be “yucky” if God took on matter?

God made the cosmos and said: “It is good.” To call yucky what God called good is wrong! This is one reason we have the students at the college and in the k-12 school at The Saint Constantine School go outside. Sweat is sweet. The grasshopper that jumped on me is good. The caterpillar that is dangerous (those spines!) is to be respected, but is good in its place. Look at her. Think about her. Respect her. Don’t touch her!

Too often schools are trapping students inside or are doing faux experiments that are simulations of the actual world, but not the actual world. Gardeners can become scientists, but gamers . . . not so much.

Nothing is worthless in God’s world and so we dare not let polar bears or microbes go extinct by our action, because we do not know what they do. We do not know their purpose in God’s economy. Who would dare suggest that we do not need the emu or the sloth?

We know some things have degenerated and that nature is no longer as it should be, because things are broken. Yet extinction is forever and no Christian can be happy with extinction. Even a broken thing that God made should not be wiped out without great thought and care.

In education we have seen the death of recess and the control of the student. We do not let ourselves sweat or get dirty. We do not let them climb trees (the law suits!) or touch worms unless we have purchased them at Worms Are Us.

We are the people Aristotle warned against, the Wall-E people that sit in their chairs and watch a simulacrum on reality while hiding from the real. We must do better for science sake and for our own sake.

Science is sweaty, dangerous, and real. God says: “It is good.”

____________________________

*Philokalia, Volume 2, page 262

Κεφάλαια διάφορα Θεολογικά τε και Οικονομικά και περί Αρετής και Κακίας, ΕΚΑΤΟΝΤΑΣ ΠΕΜΠΤΗ

στ΄. Ὑπερηφανίας ἴδιον, τό ἀρνεῖσθαι τόν Θεόν ἀρετῆς εἶναι γενέτην καί φύσεως· κενοδοξίας δέ, τό μερίζειν τήν φύσιν πρός ὕφεσιν· ὧν ὁ τῦφος εἶναι γέννημα πέφυκεν, ἕξις κακίας ὑπάρχων σύνθετος, Θεοῦ ἄρνησιν ἑκούσιον ἔχουσα, καί τῆς κατά φύσιν ἰσοτιμίας ἄγνοιαν.

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