Gardens and wilderness: man, the invasive species
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
-Henry David Thoreau
My grandson has been assigned a senior thesis on the related motifs of wilderness and gardens. Loved by many of us, these two geographies are some of the least examined subjects in Scripture. The absence of careful, Biblical consideration of these themes is particularly noteworthy given our secular society's fevered concern with "Nature's" wellbeing.
Heated political conflicts today concern issues raised by the almost-universal consensus of the degreed class, that our present approach to this world is best described as Man vs. Nature, and this must be reversed. Man's rape of the earth has to be stopped. Nature must be restored to her virginal purity. Man's rule over Nature is over.
Flashpoints of national and international politics concern control of the world's natural resources, protection of species, shutting down the use of fossil fuels in the name of "climate change," protection of the "wilds," and much parading of that nebulous moral virtue called "sustainability."
Since they consider man (gender inclusive) the evil aggressor who has been oppressing Nature, one might expect our ruling classes to rejoice that he is in drastic decline. Despite his pride of position as the world's most valuable natural resource, humanity is suffering such a widespread drop in fertility that demographers regularly issue dire warnings of population decline cataclysmic in its present and future impact on the world's political economy and social contracts. The Lancet warns:
[R]esearchers estimate that by 2050, 155 of 204 (76%) countries and territories will be below the replacement level of fertility [increasing] to 198 of 204 (97%) by 2100. [These forecasts] underscore the enormous challenges to economic growth in many middle- and high-income countries with a dwindling workforce and the growing burden on health and social security systems of an aging population.
Gardens are man's creation but wilderness is its own creation. Gardens serve man but wilderness serves herself. The only service man provides wilderness is guarding herself from himself. Wilderness doesn't exist to serve man. Man exists to serve wilderness.
Which raises all sorts of questions. When the guardians of our wilderness decide to issue wilderness "permits" allowing man to canoe, hike, and camp on her, for whose good is this done? The wilderness herself, or the few men being allowed into her territory? Maybe the actual beneficiaries are the men who make their living off guarding the wilderness, taking money for permits to visit her? In other words, who speaks for the wilderness and how do we know she is thankful for his paternalistic approach to her?
We could imagine a conversation between tree huggers, the DNR, park wardens, and Wilderness going something like:
My dear wilderness, I am not trying to deny your autonomy. You certainly may do as you wish just as long as you assure us you won't allow invasive species into your waters, suffer the wolves to destroy the moose, and permit any fires to consume you. Whether or not they are started by lightning.
If these things threaten your wellbeing, we'll have no choice but to help you. We know when your virginity is pure and when it is being trampled, whether by nature or by man. Trampling is trampling, and in our great wisdom and understanding, we will decide how best to protect you. Please trust our goodwill. We're only interested in returning you to your pristine original state.
Yes, of course. And what was that pristine original state?
We read its history in Scripture, which begins, "In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). After recounting God's creation of both Nature and man, a few sentences later we read that God commanded man:
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)
This is quite embarrassing for us to read in the midst of our pagan society today. We will have no talk of "multiplying" our numbers. We will not "fill" or "subdue the earth." No, we will not "rule" over "every living thing that moves on the earth."
Our age has restored the decadent idolatry pervasive across the Roman Empire in the time of the Apostle Paul who described it: "they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever" (Romans 1:15).
Man is forbidden to rule or subdue the earth and her creatures today. This is the terrible sin we are all in agreement we must leave behind. We must repent of our centuries of ancestors who obeyed God's command. They were terribly wrong and it is our highest moral calling to repent of such chauvinistic speciesism.
"Highest moral calling?
Absolutely. Having lived in Germany for a number of months last year, I can say with confidence that nothing does a better job of parading a German household's moral rectitude than placing a full sheet of paper next to the countless kitchen trash receptacles explaining each category of waste and what color container it must be placed in. Placing it in the wrong color of container is verboten!
Other than crossing the street against the light, it's my observation nothing is more necessary for one's reputation for righteousness than the religious observance of Germany's recycling sacrament. Pity this poor tenant out in the backyard trying to figure out which of the five or six containers in their own fenced-in section of the yard is gray, yellow, green, or brown. Standing there opening each in turn, trying to ascertain the specific contents of each and where what I was holding should go, the lady of the house came out her back door and asked me if she could help?
She was so kind. I was so flummoxed. I explained that I was color blind and couldn't tell where to put any of my multiple parcels of trash because I didn't know what color any of the recycling containers were. Oh my, well of course she would help me. That one is brown, that one green, that one grey, that one yellow, and so forth. But of course, I was so embarrassed that as soon as she pointed out which was which, I forgot which was which, so we resolved the situation by my allowing her to place my foul packets into the right-colored containers, then saying goodbye and my crawling back into our front door, promising myself I would never take any trash out of our apartment again.
Germany doesn't need religion. She has recycling and it serves her sense of moral duty and good citizenship as well as Americans taking their old lady Birkenstock fabric bags to the farmers' market and the checkout at Whole Foods.
It's often been said that when one throws out the big laws, what's left is not the absence of any laws, but the multiplication of petty laws. Environmental laws and rules are ground zero of the exponential growth of petty laws today, and all of us never feel as self-righteous as during our scrupulous observance of them.
Are they all bad? No. There are some which are niggling goods, but they provide us virtue cred out of all proportion to those very small goods we would recite. We all deny it but we all know it.
Yet we've been whupped and, with regard to man and nature, we live in submission syndrome, looking for places and ways to confess our sins and parade our repentance. We have a rescued dog. We refuse to touch single-use plastic bags (which, by the way, have never been single-use). We take our dog to the dog park. We carry our own non-disposable straws. We're concerned about the threat crypos and AI pose to the environment due to their insane consumption of energy. We buy our dogs bling in animal jewelry stores. We sign neighborhood covenants promising we'll grow our tomatoes in raised bed gardens using only neem oil. We go on walks with our "partners," taking turns pushing our dog in his baby carriage.
The list could be multiplied, but honest women and men know God's laws against sodomy, lesbianism, divorce, fornication, child sacrifice (abortion), greed, and envy, as well as His commands to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule the earth have been thrown out and we now live under a tyranny of the endless petty rules which have replaced them.
And again, the center of those petty rules is keeping Nature untrammeled, pristine. Returning Nature to something approximating self-government (necessarily aided by our superior wisdom.)
Wilderness is in vogue, now.
Gardens have become outrageous.
Yet God placed man in the world He created, then commanded him to be fruitful, multiply, and fill that world with his descendants. "Fill it!" He Himself said.
God did not command Adam, Eve, and their descendants to be creation-keepers, but creation subduers and rulers.
Why man over nature and not nature over man? Why turn the wilderness into a garden and not the garden into a wilderness?
Because man alone among all God's creation was created by God in His Own Image and Likeness. Which is to say God created man the top of the heap and commanded him to subdue and rule everything and everywhere under him.
Until the nineteenth century, most everyone agreed man was the crown of God's creation, but we have turned from God. Now we worship the creatures, not the Creator, and we demand that God's image-bearers spend their days paying their respects to the cult of Nature and wilderness.
God has given us over.