The Preacher’s Guide on Pesky Passages
“The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it.”
–Psalm 24:1
When Professors Mary Tucker and John Green of the Forum on Religion and Ecology (currently at Yale University) were working on a project of collecting data on what world religions had to say about the environment, they were delighted to have sizable tomes of material from every major religion of the world–except Christianity. As it turns out, this religion of the Bible does not just suffer from paucity to offer about nature. The little it has to say is often shamelessly anthropocentric or violently abusive. This article touches upon some of those Bible passages that have been preached to sponsor the destruction of the world only to invite ire from our young people. They have all the right to do so, for they are called to inherit the earth before the world comes to an end.
In our time, sadly, many have turned away from the Bible, but the Bible always welcomes another look. The same dynamic propelled Martin Luther and his followers into the Reformation. Luther demonstrated that neglected parts of the Bible could make all the difference in the world, and the Lutheran theologians and others proffered “the canon within the canon” as a meaningful approach to the biblical corpus. Of course, the theological formula should not be construed as sponsoring selective reception of the Bible, for the whole Bible is equally the word of God, although some parts of the Bible are “more equal than others”—to borrow from George Orwell. In this article, I propose to take another look at a few verses that we have chosen to avoid in the name of faithful ecology. While I am sure not every friend or foe is going to find my arguments as convincing as they are to me, I am being true to my reputation of being a defender of those who could not defend themselves, and sometimes even those who should not be defended.
In this deliberation, we can start from the very first part of the Bible. Many sermons have cited Genesis 1 to assert that, according to the Bible, human beings are the focus of divine creation. One could perhaps read the passage with humans at the center of attention, but the poetic function of the chapter is not so much the glorification of humans as the appreciation of the wondrous way God created the whole universe. Join the poet of Psalm 8:4, who shouts, “[Oh là là!] What are human beings that you [God] are mindful of them, mortals that you [God] care for them?” Some feel this verse says that humans are super-special to God, but the ancient poet filled with wonder may also be saying, “God! You really shouldn’t!”
Today many a reader or audience shares that they are appalled at Genesis 1:28, in which God says to newly created human beings, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”—so far, so good—and the euphoria is eclipsed by the next clause (or clauses): “and subdue it” and “have dominion” (v. 28a). The text and its interpretation have yielded disastrous outcomes—so horrible that today they threaten the very existence of all beings on earth. Whatever the text means could not have been what the abusers of nature thought it meant in an outright disregard for God’s created world.
We acknowledge that the images of subduing the earth and having dominion are abrasive, to say the least. However, this text was written down in the days when the ancient empires ran over small states like Israel. The command to subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the animals of the land in Genesis 1 may well have served as a critical comment on the unnatural arrangement of imperialism in which some humans used their military prowess to claim ownership over other humans.
Lexicographers also point out that the Hebrew word that translates “subdue” (kbš) is associated with another, a near homonym (kbs), which means “tread,” whose semantic range includes “treading” for cleaning (cf. kbs“wash” in Modern Hebrew). This language environment that includes the sense of maintenance is somewhat different from the English-speaking world where the word “subdue” is grouped together with “submission” or “subjugation,” all of which point to oppression. More important, to have dominion in Genesis 1 may refer to the charge given to the stewards of the creation, just as the king who receives a dominion is supposed to take care of the people in the kingdom (hinted at in 1 Kings 12:7). Most kings in history misunderstood their job description and earned the eternal condemnation as “rapscallions” in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, chapter 23.
Out of the New Testament, Christians often bring out Matthew 6:26 (par. Luke 12:24) for their anthropocentric preoccupation. Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly [Parent] feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” The Greek that translates “[you are] of more value” (mallon diapherete) in English Bibles does not necessarily concern pricing. It can simply refer to some who can carry more than others. In the basic needs of clothing, food, and housing, humans may display greater dexterity than other living beings. By contrast, in the arena of mobility, birds may be rated as more capable than humans. More important, the thrust of Jesus’ teaching in the pericope is not the human-avian competition in evaluation but the assurance of God’s care that makes worry totally pointless.
In the life of believing communities, the Bible is important, but a preacher’s training in exegesis recommends rigorous conversations rather than slavish observance. If God desires the latter, in the Bible there would not be a prophet and other servants of God who engage God in the name of justice and mercy. In Genesis 18, Abraham ventures to argue with God for half-dozen rounds, even though some ancient rabbis fault the patriarch for stopping at ten. How can Abraham imagine that he would find ten righteous people in the impious place, when such a number may be hard to come by from the entire earth? Jacob wrestles with God (chapter 32). One prophet basically says to God, “That makes no sense!” (see Habakkuk 1:12-17). Job fights with God for most of the book. In the Gospels, Jesus says to God on Mount Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:39; par. Mark 14:36). We can imagine that the conversation must have taken longer than this sentence. A bit later Jesus says to Peter, “So, could you not stay awake with me one hour?” Maybe Jesus’ session with God, which must have lasted at least an hour, included a discussion on how unjust the cross is—although the miscarriage of justice in the crucifixion is more prominent in Luke-Acts than in Matthew. Regarding many servants of the Lord who argue with God in the Bible, biblical scholars have a term for that. They call it the tradition of expostulation. It is a distinctive feature of the Bible. By contrast, ancient Greece, for example, has many stories of dealings with the deities, some of which are outright unjust; however, in Greek stories, tragic protagonists bear the burden of misfortune without protest. Not so in the Bible! God’s servants pick a bone with God whenever there is an occasion. Preachers may want to consider doing the same that the figures of the Bible do.
Undoubtedly, the Bible includes many troublesome passages. The preacher’s call is perhaps not to resolve the difficult passages but to wrestle with them along with the people in the parish. In this exegetical campaign, we can boldly take another look at those burdensome passages in light of overarching teachings of the Bible, such as the shema of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might”). Jesus combines the “greatest and first commandment” with the love command (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”’; Matt 22:35-40; par. Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28). According to the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke, neighbors are made when one shows care (10:37). It is time for human beings to be the neighbors with the ecological system. Moreover, given the ruinous track record of humans in nature, we owe it to God’s created world. Surely, a revised understanding of certain passages will be of service to our pursuit of faithful stewardship of all that belongs to God.
