chapter5: A Substantial Healing
In Romans 8 Paul looks ahead to what is going to happen when Jesus Christ comes back again. He writes: “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God [the Christians]. For the creation was made subject to vanity [i. e., frustration], not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit [i.e., the Christians], even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body.”
What Paul says there is that when our bodies are raised from the dead, at that time nature too will be redeemed. The blood of the Lamb will redeem man and nature together. There is a parallel here to the time of Moses in Egypt when the blood applied to the doorposts saved not only the sons of the Hebrews, but also their animals.
As we stressed in the last chapter, the Bible has no place at all for Platonic distinctions about nature. As Christ’s death redeems men, including their bodies, from the consequences of the Fall, so His death will redeem all nature from the Fall’s evil consequences at the time when we are raised from the dead.
In Romans 6 Paul applies this future principle to our present situation. It is the great principle of Christian spirituality. Christ died, Christ is our Savior, Christ is coming back again to raise us from the dead. So by faith—because this is true to what has been in Christ’s death and to what will be when He comes again, by faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit—we are to live this way substantially now. “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” So we look forward to this, and one day it will be perfect. But we should be looking now, on the basis of the work of Christ, for substantial healing in every area affected by the Fall.
We must understand that even in our relationship with God, a distinction has to be made here. By justification our guilt was completely removed, in a forensic way, as God declared our guilt gone when we accepted Christ as our Savior. But in practice, in our lives between becoming a Christian and the second coming of Christ or our death, we are not in a perfect relationship to God. Therefore, real spirituality lies in the existential, moment-by-moment looking to the work of Christ—seeking and asking God in faith for a substantial reality in our relationship with Him at the present moment. I must be doing this so that substantially, in practice, at this moment, there will be a reality in my relationship with the personal God who is there.
This is also true in other areas, because the Fall, as the Reformation theology has always emphasized, not only separated man from God, but also caused other deep separations. It is interesting that almost the whole “curse” in Genesis 3 is centered upon the outward manifestations. It is the earth that is going to be cursed for man’s sake. It is the woman’s body that is involved in the pain of childbirth.
So there are other divisions. Man was divided from God, first; and then, ever since the Fall, man is separated from himself. These are the psychological divisions. I am convinced that this is the basic psychosis: that the individual man is divided from himself as a result of the Fall.
The next division is that man is divided from other men; these are the sociological divisions. And then man is divided from nature, and nature is divided from nature. So there are these multiple divisions, and one day, when Christ comes back, there is going to be a complete healing of all of them, on the basis of the “blood of the Lamb.”
But Christians who believe the Bible are not simply called to say that “one day” there will be healing, but that by God’s grace, upon the basis of the work of Christ, substantial healing can be a reality here and now.
Here the church—the orthodox, Biblebelieving church—has been really poor. What have we done to heal sociological divisions? Often our churches are a scandal; they are cruel not only to the man “outside,” but also to the man “inside.”
The same thing is true psychologically. We load people with psychological problems by telling them that “Christians don’t have breakdowns,” and that is a kind of murder.
On the other hand, what we should have, individually and corporately, is a situation where, on the basis of the work of Christ, Christianity is seen to be not just “pie in the sky,” but something that has in it the possibility of substantial healings now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall. First of all, my division from God is healed by justification, but then there must be the “existential reality” of this moment by moment. Second, there is the psychological division of man from himself. Third, the sociological divisions of man from other men. And last, the division of man from nature, and nature from nature. In all of these areas we should do what we can to bring forth substantial healing.
I took a long while to settle on that word “substantially,” but it is, I think, the right word. It conveys the idea of a healing that is not perfect, but nevertheless is real and evident. Because of past history and future history, we are called upon to live this way now by faith.
When we carry these ideas over into the area of our relationship to nature, there is an exact parallel. On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, 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 in the direction of the way nature will be then. It will not now be perfect, but there should be something substantial or we have missed our calling. God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature (just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality) is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.
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.” It is a tragedy that the church, including the orthodox, evangelical church, has not always remembered that. Here, in this present life, it is possible for the Christian to have some share, through sciences and the arts, in returning nature to its proper place.
But how is this to be achieved? First, as we have seen, by the emphasis upon creation. Then, second, by a fresh understanding of man’s “dominion” over nature (Genesis 1:28). Man has dominion over the “lower” orders of creation, but he is not sovereign over them. Only God is the Sovereign Lord, and the lower orders are to be used with this truth in mind. Man is not using his own possessions.
A parallel is the gift of economic possessions. They are to be used as God means them to be used. 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. Man’s dominion is under God’s dominion.
Whenever anything is made autonomous, as I stressed in Escape from Reason, nature “eats up” grace, and soon all meaning is gone. And that is true here. When nature is made autonomous, either by the materialist or by the Christian when he slips over and sits in the wrong place, soon man eats up nature. That is what we are seeing today. Suddenly man is beginning to scream, and I am convinced God is permitting these things to come to pass. The problem is not the growth of population alone, nor technical growth alone— those could be handled. The problem, as White correctly points out, is the philosophy with which man has looked on nature.
An essential part of a true philosophy is a correct understanding of the pattern and plan of creation as revealed by the God who made it. For instance, we must see that each step “higher”— the machine, the plant, the animal, and man— has the use of that which is lower than itself. We find that man calls upon and utilizes the animal, the plant, and the machine; the animal eats the plant. The plant utilizes the machine portion of the universe. Each thing in God’s creation utilizes the thing that God has made under it.
We must also appreciate that each thing is limited by what it is. That is, a plant is limited by being a plant, but it is also limited by the properties of those things under it that it uses. So the plant can only use the chemicals on the basis of the boundary condition of the chemicals’ properties. There is nothing else it can do.
But this is true also for man. We cannot make our own universe; we can only use what is under us in the order of creation. But there is a difference, and that is that the animal, for example, must use the lower as what it is. Man has to accept some necessary limitations of what is under him, but he can consciously act upon what is there. That is a real difference. The animal simply eats the plant. He cannot change its situation or properties. The man, on the other hand, has to accept limitations, but nevertheless is called upon in his relationship to nature to treat the thing that is under him consciously, on the basis of what God has made it to be. The animal, the plant must do it; the man should do it. We are to use it, but we are not to use it as though it were nothing in itself
Now let us look at it in another way. Man was given dominion over creation. This is true. But since the Fall man has exercised this dominion wrongly. He is a rebel who has set himself at the center of the universe. By creation man has dominion, but as a fallen creature he has used that dominion wrongly. Because he is fallen, he exploits created things as though they were nothing in themselves, and as though he has an autonomous right to them.
Surely then, Christians who have returned, through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, to fellowship with God and have a proper place of reference to the God who is there should demonstrate a proper use of nature. We are to have dominion over it, but we are not going to use it as fallen man uses it. We are not going to act as though it were nothing in itself or as though we will do to nature everything we can do.
A parallel is man’s dominion over woman. At the Fall man was given dominion in the home over the woman. But fallen man takes this and turns it into tyranny and makes his wife a slave. So first in the Judaic teaching—the Old Testament law—and then later and more specifically in the New Testament, man is taught to exercise dominion without tyranny. The man is to be the head of the home, but the man is also to love his wife as Christ loves the church. Thus everything is back in its right place. There is to be order in the midst of a fallen world, but in love.
So fallen man has dominion over nature, but he uses it wrongly. The Christian is called upon to exhibit this dominion, but to exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having value in itself, exercising dominion without being destructive. The church should always have taught and done this, but it has generally failed to do so, and we need to confess our failure. Francis Bacon understood this, and so have other Christians at different times; but by and large we must say that for a long, long time Christian teachers, including the best orthodox theologians, have shown a real poverty here.
As a parallel example, what would have happened if the church at the time of the Industrial Revolution had spoken out against the economic abuses which arose from it? This is not to suggest that the Industrial Revolution was wrong, or that private property as such is wrong, but that the church at a point in history when it had the consensus failed (with some notable exceptions) to speak against the abuse of economic dominion. So also 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. The aesthetic values are not to be despised. God has made man with a sense of beauty no animal has; no animal has ever produced a work of art. Man as made in the image of God has an aesthetic quality, and as soon as he begins to deal with nature as he should, beauty is preserved in nature. But also, economic and human value accrue, for the problems of ecology that we have now will diminish.
Christians should be able to exhibit individually and corporately that on the basis of the work of Christ, dealing with things according to the worldview 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 healings—healings that humanism longs for, but has not been able to produce. Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it. And the same thing is true in regard to a substantial healing where nature is concerned.
So we find that when we begin to deal on a Christian basis, things begin to change—not just in theory but in practice. Man is not to be sacrificed, as pantheism sacrifices him, because after all he was made in the image of God and given dominion. And yet nature is to be honored, each thing on its own level. In other words, there is a balance here. Man has dominion; he has a right by choice, because he is a moral creature, a right by choice to have dominion. But he is also by choice to exercise it rightly. He is to honor what God has made, up to the very highest level that he can honor it, without sacrificing man.
Christians, of all people, should not be the destroyers. We should treat nature with an overwhelming respect. We may cut down a tree to build a house, or to make a fire to keep the family warm. But we should not cut down the tree just to cut down the tree. We may, if necessary, bark the cork tree in order to have the use of the bark. But what we should not do is to bark the tree simply for the sake of doing so, and let it dry and stand there a dead skeleton in the wind. To do so is not to treat the tree with integrity. We have the right to rid our houses of ants; but what we have not the right to do is to forget to honor the ant as God made it, in its rightful place in nature. When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him. He is a creature, like ourselves; not made in the image of God, but equal with man as far as creation is concerned. The ant and the man are both creatures.
In this sense Saint Francis’s use of the term “brothers to the birds” is not only theologically correct, but a thing to be intellectually thought of and practically practiced. More, it is to be psychologically felt as I face the tree, the bird, the ant. If this was what the The Doors meant when they spoke of “our fair sister,” it would have been beautiful. Used correctly in the Christian framework, that expression is magnificent. Why have orthodox, evangelical Christians produced few hymns putting such a beautiful concept in a proper theological setting?
One does not deface things simply to deface them. After all, the rock has a God-given right to be a rock as He made it. If you must move the rock in order to build the foundation of a house, then by all means move it. But on a walk in the woods do not strip the moss from it for no reason, and then leave the moss to lie by the side and die. Even the moss has a right to live. It is equal with man as a creature of God.
Hunting game is another example of the same principle. Killing animals for food is one thing, but on the other hand they do not exist simply as things to be slaughtered. This is true of fishing, too. Many men fish and leave their victims to rot and stink. But what about the fish? Has it no rights—not to be romanticized as though he were a man—but real rights? On the one hand, it is wrong to treat the fish as though it were a human baby; on the other hand, neither is it a chip of wood or a stone.
When we consider the tree, which is “below” the fish, we may chop it down, so long as we remember it is a tree, with its own value as a tree. It is not a zero. Some of our housing developments demonstrate the practical application of this. Bulldozers have gone in to flatten everything and clear the trees before the houses are begun. The end result is ugliness. It would have cost another thousand dollars to bulldoze around the trees, so they are simply bulldozed down without question. And then we wonder, looking at the result, how people can live there. It is less human in its barrenness, and even economically it is poorer as the topsoil washes away. So when man breaks God’s truth, in reality he suffers.
The hippies of the 1960s were right in their desire to be close to nature, even walking in bare feet in order to feel it. But they had no sufficient philosophy, and so their views drifted into pantheism and soon became ugly. But Christians, who should understand the creation principle, have a reason for respecting nature, and when they do, it results in benefits to man. Let us be clear: this is not just a pragmatic attitude; there is a basis for it. We treat nature with respect because God made it. When an orthodox, evangelical Christian mistreats or is insensible to nature, at that point he is more wrong than the hippie who had no real basis for his feeling for nature and yet sensed that man and nature should have a relationship beyond that of spoiler and spoiled. You may or may not want to walk barefoot to feel close to nature, but as a Christian what relationship have you thought of and practiced toward nature as your fellow-creature?
Why do I have an emotional reaction toward the tree? For some abstract or pragmatic reason? Not at all. Secular man may say he cares for the tree because if he cuts it down, his cities will not be able to breathe. But that is egoism, and egoism will produce ugliness, no matter how long it takes or what fine words are used. On this basis technology will continue to take another twist on the garrote of both nature and man. But the Christian stands in front of the tree and has an emotional reaction toward it, because the tree has a real value in itself being a creature made by God. I have this in common with the tree: we were made by God and not just cast up by chance.
Suddenly then we have real beauty. Life begins to breathe. For us the world begins to breathe as it never breathed before. We can love a man for his own sake, for we know who the man is—he is made in the image of God. And we can care for the animal, the tree, and even the machine portion of the universe, each thing in its own order—for we know it to be a fellow-creature with ourselves, both made by the same God.