The idea of the earth as mother is not as alien to the Bible as one might have heard. It is quite clearly present in Job 1:21, when Job says “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there.” It is also in the background when God, in Genesis 1:11 and 1:24, is said not to create living things directly, but by commanding the earth to bring them forth out of its creative potency.
Yet having pointed this out, I wish to also express my hesitancy about the usefulness of this idea in our present context. While reading What Does God Look Like in an Expanding Universe?
If one looks at India, for example, the belief that the Ganges is the manifestation of Ganga and is divine did not serve as a sound basis for protecting the river from pollution. On the contrary, it was hard for anyone to imagine that human beings who depend on the benevolence of the goddess could be doing her harm. The Christian idea of ‘dominion’ can be interpreted so as to emphasize stewardship, and the Hindu idea that rivers are expressions of the divine and above needing our care can be interpreted so as to emphasize the need to show honor to the life-giving Ganga by not mistreating her. Neither is inherently in line with either science or environmental concerns, but both have the potential to be, assuming those who adhere to these ideas actually care about the world of which we are a part and the shape in which we pass it on to our children. In the end, it all comes down not to mythology or dogma, but to compassion or the lack thereof.
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