Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Elizabeth - Intro 0:28
The Spirit of God is in the natural world, in the entangled bank, makes the natural world a place of encounter with God. It makes it a place where God is present where one can speak with God hear God's word. And I would say anybody who has had an experience of God in nature would know this, and I'm just putting language to that.
Seth 1:31
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I'm your host Seth. Today I have the honor of discussing our planet, our world, the history of creation. Whether or not evolution and science can commingle, are those even proper terms to use, and ways that our church and our communities can live in harmony with creation understanding that Christ did not die for humans alone.
That creation and salvation is bigger than you or I. And the decisions that we make today have ramifications for generations after us.
A bit about Sister Johnson. She is a distinguished professor at Fordham University in the department of theology in New York City, and writes specifically on systematic theology, the mysteries surrounding the God that we worship and what is Jesus's meaning for salvation and ecological ethics and the dialogue that exists between science and religion. I'm excited for you to listen. So let's do this.
Seth 2:56
Professor Johnson, thank you so much for joining us on this week's I episode of the Can I Say This At Church podcast, it is a pleasure to have you.
Elizabeth 3:05
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Set 3:06
I have spent over the past few months since we've been talking by email, trying to get to know you a bit and researching you a bit and listening to other interviews that you've done. Not everyone listening will have had that experience. So can you quickly or briefly, give us a bit of your history kind of your upbringing, your faith and what you do now and then we'll we'll delve into the topic and and at hand, does that work?
Elizabeth 3:33
Surely, yes. So I was raised, Catholic, grew up in Brooklyn, in a large Irish Catholic family. proceeded to teach got a doctorate and now I'm teaching at university level I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses and students at Fordham University, which is in the Bronx.
Seth 3:57
The Bronx, New York.
Elizabeth 3:59
New York City.
Seth 4:02
Are you from New York?
Elizabeth 4:02
I am from Brooklyn.
Seth 4:04
There you go. So born and raised
Elizabeth 4:06
Born, raised, educated, and now still live in the city…so New York..
Seth 4:12
And you are-the sect of faith that you are is a Jesuit Catholic, is that correct..or am I wrong?
Elizabeth 4:21
I would not think that that's the way to put it. I'm a Roman Catholic, in other words, a member of the Catholic Church. And I teach at a university that's run by the Jesuit order. But it's how shall I say this? They also are Catholics.
But I think everyone would just go by the overall idea of being a Catholic, and then there are different spiritualities, within the church and so on that you can break it down to.
Seth 4:54
Sure. So you wrote a book a few years back. And I have fallen in love with that book, predominantly, because the faith tradition that I grew up as Southern Baptist, we weren't allowed to question science. We weren't allowed to question faith. And those two never meet, not allowed to meet, and they shouldn't even be in the same realm. And so the topic of your book, or the title of your book is Ask the Beasts, Darwin and the God of Love. And it's that second part of that title, Darwin and the God of love, you know, I was taught growing up that we don't mix. You know, Darwin is the antithesis of God. He's someone that's trying to break apart the faith that we have. And so can you just tell me a bit about the genesis of how you or the beginnings of what made you want to get into this topic? Because at least in in the, the the world that I live in, this is a not taboo, but a very sticky topic?
Elizabeth 5:57
Surely. But let me just give a quick background of where I'm coming from, and then a more immediate answer to your question. In the Catholic teaching about human beings, there's always been an emphasis on the fact that faith can work cooperatively with reason. And the idea behind that is that God, there's only one God who created the whole universe, and created us as human beings, with intellect, good minds, that can figure things out. And if you think different scientific methods, people can figure out how this universe works, that is not going to fundamentally be in conflict with the faith that holds that God is the creator of the whole thing, because God is also the creator of human reason, and its capacities to understand the universe.
The Catholic Church hasn't always lived up to that idea, you can point to the Galileo crisis as an example of how the church failed. But in recent times, especially in the 20th century, and going forward, there has been great efforts on the part of the church to be in dialogue with scientific discoveries. The Vatican established an observatory, it's called the Vatican Observatory. There are many astronomers, who are in fact Jesuit priests and other dedicated people in the church, studying the heavens, you know, making discoveries that contribute to cosmology and how the whole universe works, and also how the earth works. So fundamentally, this is, by the way that you described as your own upbringing has been true in to some degree also in the Catholic Church.
But there's been this other river running of discovery and welcoming these discoveries, because they are done by human reason, which is also created by the same God who created the universe. That's one big piece of background faith and reason can be friends rather than enemies. The other background point is that again, in the 20th century, the Catholic Church began to teach that the Bible should be read using literary methods, as well as course under the umbrella of faith. But to understand what the original writers had in mind, what was their context, the historical reasons for writing, and with that approach, the book of Genesis has been interpreted for, you know, going close to a century now in the Catholic Church, as written by people who want to teach a religious truth. Namely, let's say Genesis chapter one, that God created everything that exists, so that creatures whom other religions thought might be gods, for example, the sun was the sun god Ra in Egypt; no, they're creatures of the one great God.
So reading Genesis in that framework, does not set up a conflict with science, let's say in this case, evolution. Because God created everything that exists is the teaching of Genesis one. But it doesn't aim to teach how God did it. So God created the world by empowering the world to create itself, which is really the story of evolution. That doesn't diminish the teaching of Genesis, in fact, it in one way makes it greater that God shared the power of creativity with creatures. So those are two big background pieces in the tradition from which I come. And then the immediate reason for taking up this work for me was the 150th anniversary, of Darwin's publishing of On the Origin of Species, which put out the idea of evolution, in a whole series of beautifully written and very convincing chapters.
On that year, which was 2009, because the book was published in 1859, the Dean of Fordham college where I teach, invited any faculty that wanted to join a reading group and read that book, because everyone thinks they know what it says. And basically, I found out we really don't. And we read it throughout the year, couple chapters each month. And it was interdisciplinary discussion, because you had the scientists there, the philosophers, the economists, the historians, and I, myself a theologian, and so on. And I just said, you know, this is so interesting the way he did the way Darwin describes the way evolution works. And I just kept seeing with the eyes of faith, more and more, if you will, Glory being given to God, this narrative. And so I decided, in the end to write this book, trying to lay out how the two could work together, the story of evolution from science, and the face narrative of God is creator, and how they could in fact, increase our understanding of both the world and of God's greatness.
Seth 11:27
I will say, I learned more about the Origin of the Species from the first three or four chapters of your book than I did in most of my school. Now to be fair, they don't really teach a lot of that in high school, and then I went on to go to Liberty University, and they definitely do not teach anything from the Origin of the Species.
Can you for the benefit of the listeners just kind of give us some of the highlights of what struck you as you read through origin of the species? Because you say in your book that you've read it cover to cover many times? And what you write about it is beautiful, and I'm ashamed to say I haven't read it. What are some of the things that stuck out to you that you could bring to the faith.
Elizabeth 12:04
Well, let me just say two things. One is how everything happened. So relationally, everything is connected with everything else. So the fact that a certain let me give it a concrete example, a bird developed some mutations for a stronger beak. And in that area, there are seeds that have tough shells. Well, that bird with the stronger beak is going to be able to eat better than birds with weaker bills, and therefore be stronger in the reproductive area. And that quality will get passed on to the chicks. And they'll pass it on to their chicks. And eventually, there's going to be a lot of birds with strong beaks taking advantage of the strong seeds in the area. So the sense that what happened throughout evolution, it was a straight line development that was not, you know, automatic. Everything happened slowly and in relation to everything that was around. Some scientists down a Galapagos Island some years ago did some studies about the birds there. And then one year, there was a tremendous amount of rainfall, when they were doing this study, and a lot of grass sprung up on the dry island. And the birds with the strong beaks weren't as successful that year, it was the birds with the weaker beaks who could eat the grass seed, which was softer that had been a reproductive success.
So it just put to my imaginations. This whole story of evolution, the way Darwin tells it. That nothing stands alone everything is connected. If I that's a quote from Pope Francis's encyclical, On Care For Our Common home—that the atmosphere, grass, the all the vegetation, all the plants, all the animals, plus the water, the air and the soil, everything is as flow of life back and forth, throughout the whole thing, and we are so connected. It gave me a tremendous sense of communion or community on this planet. That's one thing that the story of evolution brings forward. That sometimes it's presented simply as you know, survival of the fittest as if it's all this struggle. And that, in fact, is how some 19th century philosophers interpreted it. But when you read the book, actually, it's not that it's at all it is survival of those who can get more food. But the whole thing is relational Lee happening. It isn't all conflict.
Set 14:49
Yeah.
Elizabeth 14:53
So the sense of relationality and the other sense. The second thing that really struck me is the gradualness of this length of time, that life began on our planet three and a half billion years ago, and then evolved over this process, into what Darwin calls, complex forms most beautiful.
So I sent my students that will be studying this, just go for a walk around the campus, look at the trees, look at the squirrels, look at whatever else you see, every single one of these forms, including our human form, have come through this process of slowly, gradually, adapting to our environment and being these magnificent creatures that we are at this point, all interrelated. So the gradualness that developed so much beauty, and so much… it just leaves me with a sense of wonder.
Seth 15:48
What would you say to someone that says, Well, that's all well and good Professor Johnson. But if I take away if I just placed the earth in such a position that God just gave his creative juices to it, and now it's able to continue to create on its own? How is that a worship of a God as opposed to just deism? Because you'll hear that from people saying, ”well, you're taking the supernatural“ is not the right word. ”You're taking God out of the creation”, you're just making him a big, huge juggernaut that pushes the ball forward, and then it doesn't touch it again.
Elizabeth 16:28
Yeah, well, that again, I'm glad you brought that up, Seth, because there's a fallacy in the way Christian doctrine has been taught, that seems to say creation is what happened in the beginning, and leave it at that. But the whole Bible and also the Christian tradition, many of the Fathers of the Church, the medieval, mystics, and so on, as well as Christian doctrine says, No, that is not right. Because there is also what we call continuous creation. That the Spirit of God dwells in all things, and is empowering evolution, if you want want to use that word, is empowering the ongoing development of the cosmos, with infinite patience, and power, and strength, and love. So it's an ongoing presence of God in the natural world as it develops, that's the piece that's been missing. And if I can talk about it in terms of God, its the Holy Spirit we're talking about here or otherwise called Pneumatology , the Greek word pneuma meaning Spirit.
The Spirit of God dwells in the world, God is not simply a distant, as you said, juggernaut, who started the whole thing, and said, you know, go on, have an adventure and that's it. But accompanies is with it is within it is empowering it. So when Paul says to the Athenians, in Acts 17, you know, for in God we live and move and have our being, and he's quoting some Greek poets, but he's adapting it to the Christian way of envisioning. That God is in the world we are in with God with God, overall, in with and under the whole entire process, that's also creation.
And if I may add a third, there's new creation, which will come at the end, the transforming of everything into a new heaven and a new earth, where justice dwells. And this will be the transformation of all of creation, into the Glory of God as you we can read some of this, in the book of Revelation, all creatures are singing, to the praise of God. So it's the beginning, it's all the way through. And it's the final goal. And if you leave any of that out, you haven't done justice, to the fullness of the doctrine of creation. So if I can put it in a simple word, that I really love to use, it's a very God-centric view of the world, a Theo-centric view of the world that sees God present every moment.
Seth 19:13
And, He's never done. He's constantly making things, I guess, redeemed, or better is a better word, unless I'm taking that out of context, which is entirely possible.
Elizabeth 19:24
No, you're not. But also, let's not leave out of the picture that everything dies. And this is suffering and pain and, yes, tragedy in the world. And where is God? That's such a question people ask when this happens, but in terms of the natural world, the suffering of creatures, who are the prey of the predators and so on the whole way, it's developed.
Seth 19:47
Building on that a bit, everything dies, it's, it's part of life, it's appointed, it's going to happen. So what, what do we do then with stuff that is created that is horrible, like mutations that cause cancer or things like that? How can we not point to that and say, “Well, this is inherently not good. This is this is not the way things should be?
Elizabeth 20:12
Right? Well, there's two things to say that one is that God gave human beings, intelligence, and ways to deal with that, not perfectly we’re still working it out, but to heal, to be able to deal with illness, and to know there a plan. I’m thinking of medieval midwives, who had which herbs to give a woman in labor that would ease the pain, and so on. So all the medical discoveries that we're making, how to make these illnesses bearable, or even curable, that's one thing. So a lot is it's the same story as before, a lot is in our hands.
But in addition to that, where the theology is going today, you use the word before, redeem, that God is with every creature in that suffering of cancer, let's say, and is encouraging, and is supporting and empowering them through that. Some theologians want to say God is even suffering with them.
That's more of a controversial idea.
But what we can't leave out of this story of evolution, if I may use Christian language, again, is the cross. That you have Jesus crucified, is one with human beings and all creatures in their suffering. He learned obedience through what he suffered, I'm quoting Hebrews there. And he was made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness.
In other words, the suffering and death of Jesus put into this framework, once again, shows that God is with those who suffer with us in our pain and agony, it doesn't take it away. It doesn't make it that people aren't sick or don't die of cancer. But there's a presence of God, in and through that, that can console and comfort and in the end, bring people through with their integrity intact.
Seth 22:23
You said something there that I don't want, it's easy to let it slip through, and the word you used was, Jesus on the cross is, redeeming all creatures. And I feel like that is not the way that the cross is usually preached, it's normally Jesus died for human beings. And I have a feeling this is going to lead to where the title of the book comes from. So what do you mean when you say, all creatures, or I guess to put it more plainly, the entire planet or the entire universe? What are you getting at there?
Elizabeth 22:53
I'm getting at the Incarnation right there. The fact that John's gospel, the prologue says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. Flesh, and it doesn't say that the Word became a human being, but it uses a more general term that the Bible uses both for human beings, and also even vegetation if you Isaiah. So it's this back to my earlier point, everything happens relationally, we are all connected, that the same air and soil and water, the same vegetation, comes into our bodies, and flows through us and all creatures. That when Jesus became among us, as Emmanuel, God with us-one of us, he came as a member of our race wasn't just connected with humans alone, but in so far, and because we humans are connected with the whole rest of life on our planet, Jesus became a member of the community of life on our planet, and sanctified it, and showed that it was sacred, and filled with the Spirit of God. And when dying comes and it comes to every creature, that Jesus has gone down into that darkness, and is there in a redemptive way, no creature has to die alone.
Everything, then, is filled with the presence of God, even in their dying. And therefore, in the resurrection, Jesus rising from the grave, from the tomb, the bodily resurrection of Jesus pledges a future for all flesh. And if you think of the hymns that we sing at Easter, a lot of that comes through. If you think of some of the statements in the New Testament dealing with the risen Christ, that also comes through, for example, Colossians 1:15, he is the firstborn of all creation. And later on, he is the firstborn of the dead, so that in him, everything and that were a top on to all things is repeated five times in that passage, that all things find their redemption.
So we have focused very much in the West, on human redemption and redemption from sin. If you look at the Greek Orthodox tradition, or the Russian Orthodox, or the Eastern pattern of Christianity, they never lost the idea that all creation is redeemed by the cross and resurrection of Christ. That it's a oneness to the whole world, which God created and loves, and is redeeming even through the death of Christ. So that's a theological, Biblical theological theme, that I am convinced and so are others who are working now in this area that we need to dust off, if you will, bring it back and think it through and preach and think about it. Be aware that we are the only creatures that God cares about.
Seth 26:50
So where did that happen, then? Where have you uncovered in your research and you're learning about this, and then you're reconnecting with different traditions from other parts of the world? Where did that happen that the West just created a cliff that we're not allowed to go past when we talk about science or creation? How did that become the status quo?
Elizabeth 27:14
Well, I tell you, my assumption-my research, and again, a number of other theologians would agree with this at the West, really, I’d say lost the view of creation in our understanding of the cross with the work of Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. Anselm of Canterbury, wrote this wonderful treatise called core Cur Deus homo, or “Why God Became Man”, have you ever heard of that not or read it?
Seth 27:45
I have not.
Elizabeth 27:50
It turned out to be hugely influential, hugely influential. In so far as he sets up this question, why does God become a human being die in order to save us? And he could have done it some other way? As his answer was, he had to do it that way. Because sin is an offense against the honor of God. And the Lord of the Manor, if you offend the honor, he's using feudalism there as his model of the universe, it was his all political world he lived in, you have to step back, you have to make up for that sin.
And Jesus was innocent, a good, innocent without sin, He shouldn't have had to die, but in the he did in order to pay back what we owed. And therefore, that was purpose of the crucifixion. Now, what's interesting about that is that the New Testament does say, Jesus died for our sins and so on. But it has multiple other ways of explaining why Jesus died, or what the what the Korean fiction, that it is only that Jesus died to make us children of God, let's say, not just to pay back the sins, or to redeem us, in the sense of setting us free to liberate us, as in the biblical sense of the word redeemed, and so on.
So what happened in the West, and this is medieval Europe, the pattern of penance that was coming in, in the church, that you had to do penance for your sins and go to Confession became that sacrament in the in the western, the church came in at that point in very strong way. It all added together to make a coherent pattern of a theology for that time and place. And what happened was that it was such a powerful argument so strongly presented, and it was taken in by the church and put into practice second, mentally, that other things fell away. You can see this, let me just say, could do some historical research in the way that the theology then began in the West began to leave out creation.
Seth 30:20
Yeah. So you talk about and you've referenced it a couple times, that we're all interdependent of each other; that humans impact other things, and, you know, mosquitoes impact of the population of something else, which impacts everything else. So how do we balance the razor's edge of being in “domination” just because we're smarter than every other species, versus having “dominion”, as Genesis says that we have? How do we balance that razor's edge wisely, or I guess ecologically?
Elizabeth 30:53
So two things again, let me just say, we could look at here one is what we mean by dominion. And by we, I mean, what Genesis means by dominion. An awful lot of work has been done on this, it was taken for granted, starting again, in late medieval Europe, that that meant domination. But in the Genesis text itself, Biblical scholars show us that the word Dominion comes from a practice of the Royal Court. That if a king had a very large territory, and couldn't get to every place, he would send an ambassador, if you will. And that Ambassador would rule in the king's name. And that's ambassador had dominion over that area. So he was a representative and his goal, his purpose, was to enforce the will of the king, or to make sure that what the king wanted was being done.
Now in Genesis, that's, that's the idea behind dominion, and God has just created the world, day by day and seeing that everything is good. And then creates the human couple in the divine image and likeness and says, “have dominion”. In other words, be my representative here, and see that my will is done. And what is the will of God for the rest of the creatures already in Genesis, it says,
Be fruitful, and multiply, fill the earth,
you know, telling each creature when he creates them to grow up and multiply, and so on. So in other words, to flourish; and human beings are supposed to oversee that. And in Genesis, chapter two, the the original creature is put in the garden, and given the instruction to to and keep it. And so that's another way of looking at what dominion is-we are supposed to use it and benefit from it, but also keep it. In other words, protect it, guarded it, allow it to be itself and to flourish and to give God glory.
So it doesn't mean, dominion, despite what the development has been the last 500 years does not mean you can go out and exploit to the point of ruining nature, let alone do things that make other creatures go extinct. It just simply, that is such a wrong understanding of what dominion means. So that's one thing, the Biblical notion of dominion.
But the other thing I want to say, this is an interesting thought experiment, that saying we have dominion in a way that we're above everything else ignores the fact, again, of how interdependent we all are, and let me give the example of trees.
Trees existed on this earth, millions of years before humans did. And as you know, they take in carbon dioxide. And in the light of the sun they create oxygen, and that's their waste product, you might say. They created an atmosphere, green plants did, on this planet where human center before us other mammals could come in, breathe, okay, and have an atmosphere. Now take humans away from this earth, trees would do very fine without us. Take trees away from this earth and we don't have any more atmosphere. I'm exaggerating there. But you know what, this be increasingly difficult to have oxygen.
And so who need who more?
It's just a good thought experiment and it's a realizing how interdependent we are. And so we set ourselves up as “King of the Hill” and prance around and we have dominion, and everything else right now, as you well know, is in great distress. Species going extinct at a great rate, which is a disaster, yeah, to lose all this creation, disappearing and it's happening because of human activities.
The point is, we are possible. We are brothers and sisters of all these creatures, and we are responsible to see that it thrives and that's what the dominion means.
Seth 35:19
Yeah, well, I will say it's humbling. When you put it that way, there's no way to say I'm more important than a tree, which is extremely humbling, because I, you're not wrong. But I also feel like, I have to be more important than a tree. But that's probably my pride speaking.
Elizabeth 35:34
Let me get it straight event saying you're not more important than a tree? There's powers in the human person, the human soul, the mind and will the the tremendous capacity of human beings that certainly makes us different. I'm not saying we're all equal. But I'm not saying but I'm also saying it to dependence. Because for all our great human beings could not exist without the other creatures.
Seth 36:05
Yeah, no, I'm with you. How would you describe a well…here's something I've realized over over the past five or six years that I existed in a way of thinking that was dualistic. And I didn't know that that was a term until I realized that I was either black or white. I was either pro-abortion or not pro-abortion. I was either creationists like Ken Ham and his creed, or I was an evolutionist. And I've come to realize that there is a very happy middle. And I find most often that Jesus is is mixed and intertwined. And that middle, which is which is very heartening. So how would you describe a relationship with faith and science in a non dualistic way?
Elizabeth 36:49
Well, the way that it works to me is to put God at the center. And to have faith in God who creates redeemed, sanctified, and most this world, I will bring it to fulfillment. That's to me is primary. And when science comes along with different discoveries, you know about our DNA, or about some magnificent galaxy that's just been discovered all this wonder in the world. To me, it just endorses the magnificence of God's creative ways in the world. Because what I don't believe in believing in God; I don't believe that. That we have a narrative of the precise history and science of how God did everything. So science fills in that gap. So I see it going to get a pretty hand in hand.
Seth 37:48
Yeah, I have. I have two final questions that I'd like to end with and the first is: you talk about the entangled bank getting back to Darwin. And I want to find it, I want to find where I wrote down, oh my..where's it at? Here it is. So you say in your in your book, and I can’t remember what chapter that
the inner secret of the entangled bank
and that being Darwin's entangled bank …
is the dwelling of God's spirit within it.
So can you talk a bit about what what Darwin means when he says entangled bank, and then what you mean, how we can see God in that?
Elizabeth 38:29
Yeah, Darwin invited his readers at the end of On the Origin of Species one of the last paragraphs, to look at an entangled bank with a beautiful wishes with birds twittering around with worms in the dirt underneath with the little stream going past it. and ponder how all these wonders came to be through this long process of evolution. And just look at the interconnection of it all and sort of be in wonder at it. So an entangled bank, I say at the beginning of my book Ask the Beasts, you know, think of your own entangled bank, whether it's a city park, or even a pot of flowers on the window sill or a beach, wherever you have encountered nature, and different aspects of that particular scene all working together to create something, as he puts it, magnificent.
And the grandeur in this view of life as he puts it. So first of all, we have to wake up our eyes, our senses and our spirits, to sensitize ourselves to the natural world around us, which as we rush around and look at our cell phones all day, more and more people are ignoring. So that's, the entangled bank, it's just a piece of nature somewhere, maybe outside your window, where different things, interacting, whether you're looking at them or not, but become aware.
I love the line along those lines. Lewis Agassiz who was a 19th century scientist, and he said, in one of his writings,
I spent the summer traveling, I got halfway across my backyard.
40:22 laughter
The idea there is there's so much wonder even in your backyard, that you need to stop and look and get a hold of how nature is moving on in this interrelated, giving and taking kind of way, and contemplate it, be amazed at it..be quiet and let it speak to you, you know.
So that's that and I go back then, with that kind of view of nature, on our planet. With the notion none of this would be here, if it were not for the creative power of God dwelling in it. I belong to the Catholic Church, and we say the Nicene Creed every Sunday at Mass. And when we get to the part about the Holy Spirit, we say
we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
And that it Latin, which I also know, content? is life giver, giving of life. And so the vivifire would be another way to translate that. It's the touch of the Spirit of God, that creates all this life, enables its interactions gives it the sense of communion and potential as it goes forward. And its beauty. And it's grandeur, and when it's miserable, is still there, because the misery is part of how it goes forward.
Now, as Darwin wrote, when creatures die, they die that is life. And by that he means every creature that dies, by be eaten by someone else is giving life to another, dying and go back into the earth, you fertilize it and then that with something else grow that gives life to another. So there's an endless cycling of life and death. And God is in the middle of that. Not just the good parts, but also the bad parts, if you want to call it that. And so we see the Spirit of God in the, in the natural world in the entangled bank, makes the natural world a place of encounter with God. It makes it a place where God is present, where one can speak with God hear God's word. And I would say anybody who has had an experience of God in nature
would know this. And I'm just putting language today. Yeah,
Seth 42:37
no, I would agree. I mean, that's that's what people do, you know, when they go and walk the Camino or go up in here in Central Virginia, and there's the Appalachian Parkway, and people will spend time hiking and acting with with God. What you just said reminds me a lot of and I wrote down three quotes from your book, the threes that hit me the most and and you wrote one that says
ecological conversion means falling in love with the Earth as an inherently valuable living community in which we participate.
And then you go on to say,
we participate in and we cherish it, the way that God cherishes us with an unconditional love
What would you then say, to my kids generations, the people that we're teaching to cherish the planet in this way, and to not continue to destroy something that is beautiful, and something that Christ died for; as much so as we did. So what would you say to the next generation of Christians, I guess the people that you teach now, as something or a few things that we can proactively do, something that can change something we can do better?
Elizabeth 43:50
Right. Well, besides the teaching of this, which of course, it has to get into the churches, and into the way that people read the Bible. The Bible is very ecologically sensitive, it has to get into the what we teach them about the meaning of life. Okay, so once you know all of that happens, then there are ways of being proactive. I am just, to give you the example of the children who were very upset when they learned about tuna fish fishing by the great nets that leaves the ocean floor a desert, and bring up all this other life from the sea, and then let it die because all they want is the tuna out of there.
And they started this campaign, a bunch of schoolchildren in our country to stop using these kinds of nets to put in escape hatches, let's say for octopus and dolphins and all to get out of the myths, and only to get the tuna. And now when you buy tuna fish, if you look on the can, there's this little fish in the corner that says, you know, sustainably fished or fished without these nets. In other words, they latched on to one particular creature. And one way that harvesting that creature was ruining the whole ecological system in which it lived and brought so much energy to this, that fishing changed its pattern.
The same thing happened with McDonald's and using styrofoam. Because it's not renewable, it's not recyclable. It uses chemicals to be created, and so on. So now everything is cardboard back to paper. We talk about children, there are there are things that children, there's groups called kids for the earth, there's ways of that they could get involved in a way appropriate to their age of caring for another creature together. That would then of course, inculcate terrific habits as they grow up, be responsible citizens on this earth.
Seth 46:05
Hmm. Yeah, that's good. And that's hard, as I can only see it being more hard as a political culture and the landscape that we live in, gets even more vitriolic…
Elizabeth 46:18
You’re absolutely right but I mean, to say, “Let's ride our bikes, instead of taking the car”, you know, there's just plenty of ways with kids that you can do things that make that tap into the ecological sensitivity, you know, those children love little animals and the rest of nature and so on. And, and to say, we have to take care of this, you know, so inculcate those kinds of habits. I agree that it's hard. But it's certainly worth doing if we're going to have a living healthy planet, to the seventh generation. You know, that phrase, the seventh generation,? It comes from the Native Americans, they make a decision, keep in mind how this will affect your progeny to the seventh generation.
Seth 47:03
I have not heard that but I like it, very much.
Elizabeth 47:05
So it's not just like what's convenient for us today, you know, or even for your children, but their children and their children's children, and try to make this earth you know, stay as beautiful and healthy and filled with life, as it was when we were born. Although frankly, it's not going to be because we're losing species at a very rapid rate. But we can slow that down.
Seth 47:31
That idea of acting in a way that seven generations from now, I think is a perfect way to end this conversation of ecology and Christ reconciling all things and science and faith intermingling in a way that are not threatening. And so I would implore everyone listening, go out and get the book it is a very good book and get involved in the conversation. And so Professor Johnson, for those that want to engage in a conversation that way in their local communities, what are some of the avenues that you would point them to in closing,
Elizabeth 48:04
I would say, see if their local church has anything along these lines, some churches are beginning to have an ecological committee, something like this. Look in their town, you know, is there a river or a park that needs refreshing and form a committee or join one that can do this cleanup and fixing what's local. I would say very much start locally, you know, many libraries now, town libraries, are having reading groups around the subject out of which sometimes action committees can form. I said, the first thing I would suggest is really look locally, what's around and connect up your energies with that going forward.
Seth 48:44
Professor Johnson, thank you again for your time today enjoyed it immensely. I wish you could have seen the amount of smiles that you put on my face as we as we spoke, I like talking about science and I like talking about Jesus and and it's not often that I get to do both at the same time, so I appreciate it.
Elizabeth 48:59
Well, it was a great pleasure speaking with you, Seth, it really was.
Seth - Outro 49:39
Music featured in the music and spoken word that you heard feature today on the episode is from Artist MD from the most recent work, The History Project. You can connect with artists MD on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and you will find all those links in the show notes as well as the tracks from today's episode will be listed in our Spotify playlist. I hope that you enjoy the music as much as I do.
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