Divine Ecology
The land mourns and pines away, Lebanon is shamed and withers; Sharon is like a desert plain, And Bashan and Carmel lose their foliage. Isaiah 33:9
Pines Away – The essence of sin is chaos and destruction. Sin is not simply the violation of moral requirements. Sin destroys order in the world. That means sin affects all of the order God put into creation. Sin is the opposite of life because it is the operating principle of death. Wherever we find sin, we will find disharmony, corruption and loss. We must expand our concept of sin in order to see that it is not merely a human spiritual problem. Sin infects the earth too.
Notice that God’s words to Isaiah clearly articulate the consequences of sin for the land. Did the dirt rise up against God? Did Lebanon, Sharon and Bashan commit adultery? Did Carmel practice idolatry? You might answer, “No, of course not. How can geographical places be moral agents?” But the biblical view is far more intertwined. What men do in these places has a direct effect on the geography. The land suffers the consequences of our disobedience. That was true for Adam. It was true for Isaiah. And it is true for us. When sin dominates the moral landscape, infertility dominates the physical landscape. In the Hebrew worldview, spiritual conditions are directly connected to physical consequences.
The Hebrew word ‘amal means “to languish, to be feeble, to pine away.” Notice its pictograph: “Control the strength of chaos.” This is slow deterioration, not instant destruction. It takes time to move from fruitfulness and harmony to desolation and ruin. Sometimes the process is so slow that we don’t see what is really happening. We accommodate to the incremental change like we accommodate to the steady rise in the price of energy. Sudden spikes cause alarm, but subtle changes go almost unnoticed. The land doesn’t suddenly stop producing, but over time the scenery changes. The beauty evaporates with the dew. The signs of infertility become more pronounced. The work to produce gets harder. Then one day we realize, “Something is wrong. Something’s changed.” But because we had no standard of rightouesness, no vision of harmony, we aren’t ever sure how we got to this state of decay. ‘amal is slow death.
Ezekiel uses the same word (Ezekiel 16:30) to describe the slow deterioration of God’s people. Inch by inch they moved from Torah to idolatry. Inch by inch they lost their love for the one true God. Inch by inch their lives became a desert. It took a prophet like Ezekiel or Isaiah to reveal the whole picture; a picture they could not see as they put one small dab of color on the canvas each day. The antidote for ‘amal is a commitment to measure every act by the full scope of Torah. Tiny aberrations will go unnoticed unless we constantly step away from the minutia of our lives and view the whole canvas. Anyone can make a small shift justifiable, but the ground on which he stands will take a fatal blow. Death by a thousand tiny cuts is still death.
When I was in Haiti I witnessed a family preparing a meal of goat meat. Behind the house, the goat was held while the father made a small incision in the neck. The blood flowed onto the ground, not in a gusher, but in a small, steady drip. Soon the goat went to sleep – and died. The tiny incision was not enough to cause great pain so the goat didn’t buck and fight. But the moment that knife pierced the skin, the goat was dying without realizing the danger. God put more sense in the land. It recognizes ‘amal. It knows when it is feeble and pining away. We are perhaps more conscious than a goat, but we are certainly less aware than God’s good earth. It’s time to wake up and see the blood dripping into the soil. Death is coming with each drop. If we had ears to hear, we would attend to the sound of the dirt crying out for justice.
Maybe today is a day for some gardening. Maybe today we should put our hands into God’s good earth and ask forgiveness for polluting the ground by disobeying His instructions for living. Maybe we should look at that blood soaking into the soil and ask ourselves why we don’t feel the pain.
Topical Index: ‘amal, pine away, land, sin, Ezekiel 16:30, Isaiah 33:9
This is so powerful. We just don’t seem to LOOK at what’s going on in our world and see the connection; or know that we can do otherwise.
Why are wild animals entering residential areas so often nowadays? This week, two snakes from the nearby wheat field found their way into my yard. I believe it is because of the chemicals being used on their rightful habitat, that it is no longer sustainable for them to live there. Taking this thought a bit further, the wheat has cattle grazing on it, then later is harvested and sold for food (as are the cattle). I am disturbed that it is not even given a second thought.
Several years ago, after the tsunami in Indonesia, a talk show host had some ‘spiritual leaders’ on a discussion panel about why G-d would allow such tragedies to occur. One of them, who teaches from a perspective of Eastern religions, explained that these upheavals on our planet are simply the physical results of what is going on in human consciousness. The earth is ‘acting out’ according to our own desires. I was blown away that such a perspective would make so much sense. And, even more so every day.
Another excellent teaching. Many instances in scripture on how we treat our fellow man and with not keeping the commands of YHVH directly affects the planet on which we live. The earth is groaning for restoration! When man turns back to YHVH’s ways is when the earth will be healed of it’s deterioration from the moral decay. The more corrupt mankind gets the more the earth will shake, erupt and have drought and floods.
Shabbat Shalom !!!
A hard message with difficulties. How do I step back to see without disengagement? If I disengage, do I have a right to complain? If I participate in the world, hoping that my engagement will make a difference, am I still guilty for the suffering of the earth? Like Pauls statement about the earth groaning, I too better understand why it groans.
Muy cierto lo de esta enseñanza, Dr. Moen. En Guatemala sucedió algo milagroso: El pueblo de Almolonga se unieron en un mismo espíritu, adoraron al Señor, se hicieron una mism Iglesia, los pastores ya no pelearon y el Reino de Dios se instaló en ellos. ¿Resultdo? El milagro de la agricultura. Grandes zanahorias, grandes repollos, grandes cosechas. La tierra se sanó. ¿Cuando? Cuando la gente se limpió de su maldad. Cerraron la cárcel. Cerraron la policía. Cerraron los juzgados. Ya no hubo divorcios. Cerraron los bares y cantinas. La tierra fue sanada cuando la gente se consagró. ¡Cierto! Dios no pide que se hagan marchas por Jesús, no pide tres días de oración ni pide que se “tome la nación” para que Él sane la tierra… lo que pide es: “Si mi pueblo sobre el cual es invocado mi nombre se humillare, se arrepintiere de sus pecados, pide perdón y se aparta… Yo sanaré su tierra”. Con dolor veo este país de El Salvador que no se sana de la violencia, de las maras ni de las muertes, por una sola razón: La iglesia está marchando, buscando programas de TV, comprando radios y canales de TV pero no está pidiendo perdón ni buscando la santidad. Gracias por La Palabra de Hoy. Haré mi parte con la ayuda del Señor. Bendiciones.
This reminds me of the book “Jurassic Park” (not the movie). At the beginning of each chapter Ian, the chaos theory guy talks about how one or two tiny aberrations begin to cause massive, catastrophic change later as they become more and more pronounced. That was his theory about why the dinosaurs started reproducing, etc. (man can’t control nature).
This is even more obvious today. We’re like the frog in the pot… it’s getting hotter and hotter and we don’t even realize it. Fortunately there are some spikes and some people start to realize that things are not as they were. There are so many ways we’re poisoning ourselves and the earth we live on, but most people’s paradigm is so strong they don’t see it. The hard part is, once the paradigm shifts for a person, how does he/she implement all the things that suddenly make sense when those closest to them still think they’re a little loopy?
The butterfly effect for good or ill… Great post!
What perceptive insights from the comments!