Fire and Knowledge

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

–E. B. White, “The Ring of Time” (1956) in Essays of E.B. White (1977), 147

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

–Woody Allen, Without Feathers (1975) in The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, 10

5. Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.

–Jonathan Edwards, “Resolutions” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, lxii

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

–John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952), p. 411

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10¹⁸ joules of potential energy – enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point. Everything has this kind of energy trapped in it. We’re just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb – the most energetic thing we have produced yet – releases less than 1 per cent of the energy it could release if only we were more cunning.

–Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), 109.

Joel Hunter, an evangelical Christian pastor, has an article in the Christian Science Monitor about how “faith and science can compliment each other to accomplish a common cause,” namely, caring for creation. I wish we had more pastors talking and caring about our responsibility to serve others by not poisoning their air and water. Christians are not enemies in ecology, but important allies. An excerpt:

The earth is not heating up nearly as fast as the debate about its climate. We can blow up so irresponsibly that we lose the steam we need to act constructively. Or we can respond to this environmental challenge in a way that increases respect and effectiveness, while decreasing the hot error.

Every major religion has a moral mandate to take care of the Earth. For those who look to the Bible for instruction, it is the first responsibility given to man: “The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep [protect] it” (Gen: 2:15, NASB). Our moral obligation, then, does not depend on the rate our planet is warming, or even whether the main cause is human activity. We are to refrain from harming God’s creation – period. Few Christians or persons of other faiths (or no faith) would disagree with that statement.

But the latest reports indicate the need to move the care of creation up the priority scale. The great news is that individually we can help as much as we have harmed the physical environment, but we must watch out that we don’t poison the environment of relationships in the process….

People can get so fixated on one issue that they become like a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” A fanatic has been defined as one who won’t change his mind and won’t let you change the subject. The environmental issue can become a substitute religion. Our faith has to do with obeying God and loving our neighbor. Hugging trees is not the point. Creation care is important to many Biblical themes we need to address, including sanctity of life, disease, poverty, and conflict.

Some conservative Christians have been reluctant to get involved with creation care because they think it belies some sort of failure of belief that God is going to take care of us. Of course those same Christians don’t expect God to change their baby’s dirty diaper (pray all you want, it’s still your job). Caring for the Earth is not a lack of faith; it is an act of faith. Faith guides us to do what is good for others, knowing that the results are ultimately up to God.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.

–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Jay (Aug. 23, 1785)

In the kitchen cabinet is a bag of oranges for morning juice. Each orange is stamped “Color Added.” The dyeing of an orange, to make it orange, is man’s most impudent gesture to date. It is really an appalling piece of effrontery, carrying the clear implication that Nature doesn’t know what she is up to. I think an orange, dyed orange, is as repulsive as a pine cone painted green. I think it is about as ugly a thing as I have ever seen, and it seems hard to believe that here, within ten miles, probably, of the trees that bore the fruit, I can’t buy an orange that somebody hasn’t smeared with paint. But I doubt that there are many who feel that way about it, because fraudulence has become a national virtue and is well thought of in many circles.

–E. B. White, “On a Florida Key” (1941) in Essays of E.B. White (1977), p. 139