A Reflection on Grief and Hope Intertwined – Redeeming the City by Deborah Meinke
Advent approaches once again. The human death toll from the California Camp Fire continues to climb, 10,000 structures have been incinerated, and untold damage has been done to ecosystems and the human economy. Images of destruction and disruption record just the most recent, horrifying reality of climate change threatening the stability of our earthly home. A dire Climate Assessment Report just came out.[1] It is hard not to succumb to bottomless grief at all that is being lost, and not to become numb to the magnitude of human suffering nor to despair for the flourishing of future generations.
Over the last century, use of fossil fuels has transformed human life and raised generations out of abject poverty; but now, these have outlived much of their promise and we are on a dangerous path. I trust the scientific consensus that climate change is being driven by reckless, greedy burning of fossil fuels. Our faith tradition equips us to mourn what we have lost and sometimes willfully destroyed in arrogance and ignorance. We must repent of destructive overuse of precious earth resources, AND transform our habits, technologies and institutions, so God may birth new creations out of the ashes.
Our biblical narrative that sweeps from creation to new creation gives me hope beyond my grief to participate in this herculean task of transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable, flourishing futures. From Genesis to Revelation, our endlessly creative God is on the move, and we, co-creators with God, are also set in motion by the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1: 28) and to till and keep the whole earth (Gen. 2: 15). But Genesis 3 ends with humans barred from the paradise garden. God’s cherubim with flaming swords (Gen. 3: 24) prevent us from returning to the original paradise garden. Human beings are on the move, often wandering away from God and violating the command to care for creation, sometimes following God with the desire to learn our rightful place in the world.
In one of my favorite novels, Ishmael, the narrator has an epiphany about humanity’s rightful place, belonging to the world rather than the world belonging to man. “Man does have a place in the world, but it’s not his place to rule…Man’s place is to be the first without being the last. Man’s place is to figure out how it’s possible to do that – and then to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he’s become,”[2] adding an evolutionary dimension to the biblical call to stewardship.
As an evolutionary biologist as well as a person of faith, I believe that human beings are gifted with the capacity to adapt and to make room for the whole creation as God intends. Rather than returning to a utopian garden, we are called to transform our human-inhabited spaces so that nature and humanity will flourish in interdependence. Thus, I believe that mature stewardship of our earthly home means redeeming the city. In biblical and other narratives, the city often represents danger, greed, and decadent attractions. Yet the final chapters of Revelation speak of the new Jerusalem, a city transformed into a garden that is life-giving for all God’s creatures. After God declares that God chooses to dwell with humanity on earth, God offers a striking vision of Jerusalem, this city of global peace, which culminates with a beautiful description of the river of the water of life flowing through the city center flanked by fruit-bearing trees of life with leaves for the healing of all nations.
Redeeming the city is not a new idea in Christian history; Augustine’s city of God held sway for centuries, and John Calvin viewed responsibility for civic life as an integral part of our human vocation. What new perspective and urgency might this era of climate change bring to our vocation of ‘redeeming the city’? The earth already supports upwards of 7 billion people, with the prospect of several billion more in this century, a daunting prospect with climate change already underway. Recent studies suggest that well-designed, high-density cities might actually be well equipped to provide green, healthy environments for human thriving.[3] The multifaceted Drawdown Project shows many avenues along which to pursue our shared responsibility for a healthy and habitable earth. From education of women and girls to regenerative agricultural practices to clean water technologies and much more, from the margins of society, appropriate technologies will emerge to benefit all peoples and our earthly home.[4] We are learning how to harness the wind and the sun for energy so that we may overcome our addiction to fossil fuels. We are learning the wisdom of interdependence of humans with the diverse creatures in the web of life. We are learning to respect the gifts and traditions of peoples long exploited, and to integrate their wisdom into our scientific lexicon so that lands and waters might be restored around the globe. We have reason to hope, though grief is always interwoven so that hope does not become flattened into naïve optimism.
We are only at the beginning of a complicated transition to sustainability, reaching toward a new balance among God’s creations, developing a multitude of solutions to match creation’s grand and evolving diversity. Sadly, we have awakened too slowly and we are not moving nearly fast enough to prevent more climate catastrophes. Yet even in this time of destruction, my inner evolutionary biologist knows that creatures and peoples who have subsisted on the margins are often the locus of new adaptations that will carry us through this crisis. This is my Advent hope, grounded in God’s love for the marginalized and the biblical vision of ‘redeeming the city,’ that we would use our God-given gifts of energy, intelligence, imagination, and love in the service of all. May this be the season that we choose to adopt God’s evolving vision to redeem the city and to embark together toward the new Jerusalem, city of peace and justice for all creation.
Rev. Dr. Deborah Meinke About Deb: I was originally educated as an evolutionary biologist, so taking the long view of the earth’s history and future is second nature. God has continued calling me into God’s world-transforming project as a Presbyterian pastor, stated clerk for Cimarron Presbytery, and a member of Faithful Action on Climate Change, a Synod of the Sun network.
[1]4th National Climate Assessment Report from the US Global Change Research Program, https://nca2018.globalchange.gov accessed on 11/23/18.
[2] Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992), p. 243.
[3] e.g. Glaeser, Edward. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, 2012.
[4] Hawken, Paul, ed. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, 2017.