Blessed are the Poor in Nature: Call to Conversion on the Environment

My uncle took me out squirrel hunting at 5 in the morning. Sitting with my back to the tree, we munched on sausage and biscuits as we waited. Not knowing what to do with the napkin in my hand, I just threw it on the ground in front of me.

My uncle turned to me and said in a Southern Indiana drawl, “Pick that shit up. God’s creation is not your trash can.”

Surprised, I picked it up and stuffed it into my pocket. I resented him for the rest of the morning, but I never forgot the lesson. My uncle is a Catholic and reads St. Thomas Aquinas.  Raised by Catholics, they taught him that waste, polluting, and carelessness was a confessable sin. On that cold day in the woods, my uncle corrected my disordered theology of creation grounded in my youthful pride.

As I look at the incoming Trump administration and Republican platform, I see the same disordered and sinful views on the environment and human beings. They look on creation and natural resources as something to be exploited for their own pleasure and sacrificed on the altar of Baal Economy. Creation is only considered good because it’s “useful” to humankind.

This platform, I’m sure, was constructed at least in part by conservative evangelicals and Catholics who’ve bought the culture’s credo that American capitalism is the final arbitrator for theological truth. And, they believe that creation is separate and lower, not as important as human beings. It’s why Christians in American can approve of gassing, hosing and shooting with rubber bullets the protesters at Standing Rock in the name of an oil pipeline. It’s why they can allow coal plants to pump pollution into the air and justify themselves with a half-baked understanding of the Bible and church teaching.

The reality is, not only are their views disordered, but they are sinful. Indeed, you might call them heterodox, worthy of condemnation.

Heresy seems like a strong term, so let’s dig a little deeper. In Genesis, God creates humans in His image to be stewards and rule over creation. Christians who embrace the current Republican platform supported by Donald Trump must believe this means that mankind is somehow lords over creation, like the arbitrary gods of Greek mythology. While many won’t say it straight out, they believe we can do whatever we want because we’ve been given “dominion” over creation. They demonstrate this by their actions and words when they claim that economy should be the final deciding point in the use of our resources, as if the mere mention of that word settles all arguments.

But, the reality is, we do belong to creation. We’re created beings, and God gave us this earth, not as a toy that we own, to tear it apart when we feel like it. Instead, God gave us creation like children are given to parents. A sane parent would never consider abusing a child the way we abuse creation. To make a horrific point, parents who abuse their children say things like, “You’re mine. I can do with you what I like. I can stomp you, kick you, and make you obey me.”

My children don’t have worth because they’re mine. They have worth because they’re beings created in the Image of God. The same is true of creation. As the U.S Catholic bishops wrote in Renewing the Earth, “It is appropriate that we treat other creatures and the natural world not just as means to human fulfillment, but also as God’s creatures, possessing an independent value, worthy of respect and care.”

And, in case people want to accuse the U.S. Bishops of being “liberal” (said no one ever), St. Pope John Paul II said basically the same thing in his address on World Day for Peace.  And, lest conservative Catholics decide to trot out Benedict, they won’t find a friend there. He was called the green pope by National Geographic magazine. You’ll noticed that I didn’t even quote or use Pope Francis’s Laudato Si, because everything he wrote is founded in the previous statements by the previous popes.

This treasure trove of Catholic teaching contains the truth that when we love creation, we’re also loving people and the dignity of the human person. When we destroy creation, we’re striking out at the very Image of God.

Given the teachings of the Bible and the church, why do many Catholics scoff at Laudato Si or believe any sort of environmental talk is “left liberal nonsense?” In the end, it’s because of an unconverted heart that needs to embrace the sacraments and the teachings of the church on a deeper level. We need a conversion that begins with a heart grounded in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus starts his sermon by saying, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit.” The translation here is a weird verb/noun combination that means, basically, “spirit-beggars.” It means we’re to come into the Kingdom, throwing off all arrogance and pride, so we may be taught by Christ and His Church. This means no more taking direction from any party, Republican or Democrat. This means that we cannot subscribe to the myth that America is the greatest thing to ever exist on the history of the planet and therefore has the right to do whatever it wants. This means the idol of unrestrained capitalism is not to be served.

Instead, we must lay down our arrogance at the feet of Christ and learn from Him how to take care of what he has created. We must embrace our cousins the animals, cultivate the forests, and make sure our water is clear. To do anything else is to be disobedient to God. To harm the world means we are behaving as less than human and have disordered affections.

So, I’m calling on my brothers and sisters to have a conversion of the heart, one like I had when I was seven. Let Christ and His image really rule over your heart. Ask St. Kateri to to pray for your conversion when it comes to how you view the Created order.

To do anything less is to sin and believing the false teaching that embraces commerce over the good of God’s image and the earth. And to recognize this will take a step of profound humility and repentance for many.