We belong; we were created as an integral part of the Garden of Eden.
Burn that into your mind, because your heart already knows it. We are elements of Creation, not a separate thing. In this we are most thoroughly opposed to Western mythology. On the surface, Westerners say that Creation is inanimate and waiting our use. Behind the scenes, we instinctively treat the natural world as a threat that must be conquered and tamed. That taming is rather like a street thug abusing a crack-whore; it’s all about maximizing the misery of the victim. Western thinking has led to some horrific abuses of the natural world, and the corporate-government ethic is no different than than street thug and his whore.
The only time large powers such as corporations and governments claim to have an interest in being environmentally friendly is to placate critics and ward off a very real threat from activism. But that activism is inevitably the Green religion type, worshiping Mother Earth. In Scripture, Creation is not sacred in that sense, but a friend and ally. We are God’s managers for the rest of Creation, a role that presumes a shepherd’s sacrificial care and nurture, but at the same time a free use of the blessings offered. Our compassion for Creation is compassion for ourselves; it is us and we are it, all one tribe.
So we already have within our hearts an instinctive knowledge of how Creation works. What we need is to teach our minds to convert all of our learning over to a content and structure consistent with revelation. That way the mind isn’t struggling to obey the moral guidance of the heart. Our intellect has no trouble asserting its own agenda, so we need to bring the mind into subjection to the Spirit, and He works through the heart. The best antidote to an unruly life is the discipline of Biblical Law.
And it is part of Biblical Law that we learn to accept a certain amount of background sin-noise from the fallen world in which we live. We are under the Covenant of Christ; the world is subject to Noah’s Covenant, but rejects all covenants a priori, so we are several steps removed between our world and where our hearts belong. We must take for granted a certain amount of moral failure in the world. It’s a violation of reality, so we must formulate an expectation of consequences based on that violation. It’s more than just the general wrath of God against sin, but a fairly predictable expectation of how things will go wrong based on fairly specific violations. Reality has built-in responses, a duty to God to enforce His will, and it does so like any other person would.
If you can understand that polluting ground water brings a pervasive sickness according to the biochemical workings of the pollutants, then you understand how government immorality results in certain kinds of wrath based on the nature of the moral pollutant. The ground cries out to God against our crimes. It’s more than mere biochemistry; there’s a distinct and pervasive moral chemistry, too.
For example, if you as a government official abuse your subjects, they will destroy you. Even if they don’t plan it that way, their natural fallen human response to various kinds of oppression will engender an instability in the governing system consistent with their sorrows. You cannot segment the human response into compartments with a limited reaction to limited stimuli. All of Creation is a complex system of interdependencies, and if you tweak one thing here, you’ll find reverberations all through the system, and you’ll never have a clue as you keep trying to react to the symptoms alone. But if you learn to read these things with your heart, you begin to see how the problems of human life cannot be solved.
The best we can hope for is that we accept God’s “good enough” for us — which is far, far better than anything the mind of men can dream up. That “good enough” starts with the Covenant of Noah for this world, and that in itself points toward Biblical Law. Those of us who seek God’s face to know His desires will receive a rich bounty of help and mercy in understanding the organic nature of reality. He will release into our hearts the vast wisdom of His Creation and we will soon realize why things turn out as they do.
From there, we stand in the place to know how government (and corporate de facto government) decisions will result in failure. This is not a question of gearing up to fight our government necessarily, but to know where we belong in relation to the system. For most of us that means infiltrating the system. You are the only one who knows, but in general terms, we are prepared to work with and within a damned system like the US government and American life. We know how it will turn out and are prepared to handle it with the wisdom of God. We can store up a shepherd’s compassion and prepare for the looming disaster. We can’t derail it, but we can make the most of things for His glory.
This is an adventure, doing what we were made to do. All the while Creation itself is speaking to us, sometimes weeping and sometimes laughing and giggling at how silly it all is. Stay in close communion with Creation and you’ll seldom be surprised by what’s coming.
