Jesus Died to Save the Whales

Saint Francis of Assisi is famously known for referring to nature as his siblings when he called them “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” From his theological perspective, he shared the natural world with the animals and birds. God was the creator of all, and loved everything and everyone and he believed he should love with the same indiscriminate love that God lavishes on all of creation..

The Western church has shifted a long way since then. In our post-reformation view of personal salvation, we make binary judgements, and unsurprising believe that we are the ones who will be saved and everything and everyone else will be lost. Couple that with the remnants of the ‘left behind’ rapture theology of the 1980’s and 90’s, we have a theological framework that makes humans the only important part of God’s creation with no room for anyone or anything else.

Christians have never really cared about the Amazon rain forest, or the whales, or the elephant and baboon habitat which is sacrificed for Palm trees to make Palm Oil. Leave it for the tree-huggers and the environmentalists, we are busy saving souls for God. Everything else is going to burn and God’s going to make new heavens and a new earth so why care about this one. That’s what the Bible say, doesn’t it?

No, not really, not when you understand that God loves all creation; not when you realise that creation groans as with birth pangs anticipating what is to come (Romans 8:22). Not when you realise that the rocks will cry out “Hosanna!!” if we don’t (Luke 19:40). Everything that exists is created by God (1 Col 1:16-17).

Have you ever wondered why it is easy to feel close to God when you are by a quite stream, on a bush walk, or walking on a beach? In her new podcast, Christine Sine discusses why people feel God’s presence more easily in these situations than they do in church or when having structured ‘quite times’ of prayer and Bible reading. In church, we isolate ourselves from the world, in our private devotional times, we close ourselves off from others. Yet we often don’t feel as close to God in those times as we do when we are putting ourselves out into the world of God’s good creation, amongst the flora and fauna of nature and the fellowship and friendship of other people. Why is that? Are we missing something important in our theology?

I’ve known Christine for 40 years and am delighted to highlight her new podcast “Liturgical Rebels.” The Liturgical Rebels podcast is for spiritual seekers who no longer feel comfortable with a traditional approach to Christian religious observances. It empowers followers of Jesus to creatively reconstruct their faith and spiritual practices. She is also the creator of Godspace, a meditational website with a focus on Celtic Christianity.