Learning to speak about creation

I think that issues of justice and ethics are not simply about deciding what to do, or making choices between options. Making moral choices and engaging in action is first of all about learning the narrative that forms moral people and shapes the moral landscape. We need to know the central stories of the Christian tradition because it is they which both help us know when and why an issue really is an issue, and how to explore the meaning of the words and practices that are part of moral discourse. That is, we need to learn a way of seeing the world.

For example, when Christians enter into the conversations which happen right across our community about global warming or a carbon tax or the pros and cons of coal seam exploration, we need to be clear about our shaping story.

A lot of conversations are about the impact of humans on nature, or the need to protect the natural world. I don’t think there is a natural world for Christians. For Christians the world is always ‘creation.’ That is, there is no place that is simply natural or just earth, but the world is always a theological place because it is related to the action and purpose of God.

It is interesting that in the second account of creation in Genesis 2 the point is made that before God made the earth and heavens there were no plants of the fields or herbs. The reason for this is partly that God has not sent the rain, but also because there was no one to till the ground (Gen. 2:5). As it says in verse 15, human beings are to till and keep the earth. The earth cannot bring forth life without those who care for it and protect it.

This doesn’t make land simply real estate or a place where we can dig up minerals. The task is not simply to till the ground, but to till and keep it. It is to build those practices that sustain the land as creation, as God’s place.

Dawn Bessarab talks of the way that waterfalls dried up in the Dampier peninsula, and how the Aboriginal Elders understand this to be not simply an issue of rain,  but of people pushed from the land. “’Dat country is lonely, is people dey all gone, no one dere to look after it anymore, so dat country im lonely, im sad, dat why dat water bin dry up, ee missing ees people’.” (Dawn Bessarab, ‘Country is Lonely,’ in Sally Morgan, Tjalaminu Mia and Blake Kwaymullina (eds), Heartsick for Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation. Freemantle Press, 2008, p. 46)

There are some actions which better express this guiding narrative than others, some that better enable human beings to both till and keep. That’s why I support alternative energy sources, reckon that a carbon tax is a good things, and am deeply skeptical about coal seam exploration.