Our Crazy Ancient New Religion 2

It was almost as if someone was crying, injured and unloved.

I turned to the bush and something made me look around behind, under the leaves and branches. There, stuffed in among the limbs close to the ground was an old rotting paper bundle, a multiple rocket launcher from some previous Independence Day celebration. It as all charred and brittle as I pulled it out. The bushed heaved a sigh of relief.

Fanciful imagination? Fine, but I did remove some pollution from the bush outside my apartment breezeway and felt a sense of divine approval in my heart. It’s the same when I pick up cigarette butts and other trash from the breezeway and grass around the building. I don’t do that because I’m some kind of prissy middle-class grouch who worries about appearances, nor is it merely because I can’t forget the military training that makes it almost an instinct to police up litter. I do it because it’s right for me.

It feels the same to me if I eat right or do something to assist my neighbors. It feels the same as reading the Bible or writing a blog post about my faith. It feels like riding my bike and taking pictures of beautiful landscape. It feels like blessing my Father’s name.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:19-23 NKJV)

Westerners today call it anthropomorphism, but I assert that Hebrew minds took it seriously, sometimes quite literally, that Creation is alive and has a strong thread of God’s moral character. All Creation, your body included, cries out for redemption. The whole business of God’s revelation is to allow us some level of participation in that redemption by ameliorating the effects of the Fall. The Fall is how “creation was subjected to futility.” We embrace the Flaming Sword of divine moral truth, let it burn away our sinful nature, and strive to bring our world back into Eden.

It’s not a question of remaking the world to be like Eden, because the full measure is not possible without God’s final act of judgment on all sin. It’s taking the leverage that God places in your hands and doing what He has called you to do. I can pick up trash around my residence. I can stop on my bike rides and move large objects out of the road, or push aside broken glass. I can eat wild foods and exercise in ways my body tolerates. I can pray and read the Bible and tell others about my faith. But pulling trash out of my friend, the bush, is no less evangelism and redemption than writing books and giving them away.

Holiness is holiness, and the Law of Moses made it plain that God regards sanitation and health as loyalty. We need to break the very bad mental habit of compartmentalizing our religion. God created the heart to hear all of Creation groaning for relief so that we could get involved in His redemption.