An Aid To Memory

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I will spare you my commentary on this one. I think the article points to a very interesting and troubling phenomenon in churches: men are dissatisfied with churches (if they are even around to begin with). In the mainlines while people have been bailing left and right over the last 30 years perhaps we forgot to notice that men have been running toward the exits the fastest, and often are being replaced by women (college guys don’t get your hopes up…stats show that it is mostly older women). Of course the same is true in evangelical churches. If I didn’t have 15 minutes before Bible study starts I might have more to say now. Otherwise, the problem is far bigger than 15 minutes, and far more complex than a blog entry!

Mention Earth Day around some Christians and the result could be a tongue lashing! Earth Day is controversial in Christian circles because it celebrates our planet. This makes many think back to a whole host of pagan religions where the earth was worshipped as a god. Many Christians say our planet, being a temporal created thing, does not deserve a day. Others dislike the day because many “liberal” leaders have latched onto the ideas behind earth day, while many “conservatives” have brushed them aside. Some Christians, perhaps after reading the latest Left Behind novel ask, “why should we preserve the earth; God’s just gonna destroy it later anyway?” The reasoning is kind of like “why clean my room, it’s just going to get dirty again anyway,” only on a cosmic scale. I seem to remember Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt making a similar argument.

Needless to say I disagree with these objections to earth day. God has called His people to be stewards of creation ever since mankind was created. God has given humans dominion over creation, and as lords of creation we must heed God’s standards for kingly behavior by caring for our “subjects.” The Scriptures have harsh words for kings who exploit and oppress their subjects. If we are to be good lords, we must treat the creation fairly.

As catholic Christians we believe that God became human in Jesus Christ within the created order, and thus sanctified all of creation and rendered it a fitting vehicle for his divine activity. Creation is now the vehicle for divine activity (the mysteries and sacraments). We will be hard-pressed to explain to God why we humans have destroyed so many of His sanctified vehicles. A sacramental and incarnational theology demands that we care for creation.

St. John Chrysostom argued that through conscience and nature unbelievers discover God. St. Paul argues the same thing, that nature is a witness to God’s existence. St. Augustine knew that to view the handiwork is to get a glimpse of the architect. Very few people have gotten a glimpse of God after seeing a polluted river. Please bear in mind that Paul, John Chrysostom, and Augustine were hardly liberals, in fact, they were (often overbearingly) the opposite!

Also, the cosmic plan of salvation, according to St. Paul and the early Christians, involves not just humanity, but all of creation. All creation groans for redemption. Thus nature, in addition to being full of divine symbols, is somehow a part of the grand mystery of salvation and redemption.

Being good stewards of the earth also helps the poor, those “blessed” ones that Jesus and the Old Testament prophets urged demanded that we care for. When we conserve energy and resources like water, we free up these for poorer nations to use, to help build their nations and economies. A side benefit is that we also decrease dependence on foreign nations whose ultimate goal is our eradication! There are plans underway to produce oil from pig waste, and currently oil is being made from turkey by-products. This is a win-win scenario: unwanted trash is turned into something we, and the developing world, desperately need. Also, vehicles are being made to run on processed fish oil. This fish oil has been used to make Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and would have been thrown away. Now it serves a purpose that benefits almost everyone. Perhaps not the oil companies…but a 10 billion dollar profit this year instead of a 28 billion one is still a nice chunk of change.

So without resorting to earth worship, or paganism, we Christians can, and really should, take the preservation and care of the earth seriously. Let’s try to preserve our planet, being the stewards that God calls us to be, caring for the divine sacraments and symbols that God uses for His plan of redemption and salvation.

This blog is the successor to my old blog, Lux Dei Christian Rants. While I enjoyed writing the old blog, it often became a place relating to news and views about the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop in the Episcopal Church. While this is still a big concern of mine (and will still be engaged from time-to-time, seeing as how his consecration violates every part of St. Vincent’s canon), there are many other fine news sources and informational pages designed to discuss and protest this action.

This site takes its name from St. Vincent of Lerins’ 5th century work, A Commonitory. The term technically means "instructions given to preserve the memory of something." Vincent uses the term in this fashion, meaning "An Aid to Memory." It is in this work that he lays out his famous canon, called the "Vincentian canon." The true catholic, i.e. universally Christian, faith consists of beliefs and practices that have been believed always, everywhere, and by all. This means beliefs and practices must be ancient, cross-cultural, and universally held. Thus when a belief or practice is novel, only present in one region or culture, or held by a small minority within the Church, such beliefs and practices are not catholic.

I thought An Aid to Memory was an appropriate title for this blog, since it is designed to be an aid to memory for postmodern Christians, many who have forgotten their roots. This occurs in all sectors, from modernist "seeker" evangelicalism, to modernist Western "liberalism." I hope this page will be a kind of journal for me, where I can attempt to apply the ancient faith to postmodern situations, without having to hash out an entire article (these will be posted at the main site, Ancient-Future.Net).