The Order of Things

There are parts of the bible that can honestly be called “texts of terror”.  Phyllis Trible coined that term in a book of the same name.  ”Texts of terror” refers to all of those passages or stories within the bible that are either irresponsible, misleading, too often misunderstood, taken out of context to our own detriment, or may be just flat-out wrong.

Here’s one of those texts of terror:

God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’  Genesis 1:28 (NRSV).

A very familiar text that’s not only a part of church culture but is also enmeshed into our wider culture.  This is one of those texts of terror that isn’t irresponsible on its own, but is too often used irresponsibly by we who read it.  I believe that this text is the birthplace of humanity’s unhealthy relationship with the planet, and it all comes down to how we have misunderstood the word “subdue” and the phrase “have dominion over”.

We can understand these phrases as 1) Human beings are in charge because we’re the most intelligent, so whatever we say, goes.  Or 2) We’re the most intelligent, so we’re the ones charged with taking responsibility for the upkeep of this planet of ours and all that is on it.

Without rehashing all the thousands of sermons preached and essays written about this text and its relationship to ecology, let me just put it this way:  I don’t buy into either of these two understandings.  The first has led us to the ecological devastation that we face today, and the second is just a naive, watered-down version of the first that puts us in charge in roughly the same way the first one does.

There is a third option, but it takes a humility and a maturity that I have seldom encountered outside of the scientific and ecological communities.  It is this:

We human beings are but one of billions of creatures who must share this planet and its resources on equal terms and in equal ways with the rest of our fellow creatures.  The tiniest insect all of way up to the largest whale have just as much of a sacred place in creation as we have.

In short: We’re not the only ones that God is rooting for.  God is rooting for every single part of this rich and full creation!

In the order of things, we are not up top.  We are among.

If this idea ever makes its way out of the scientific and ecological communities and into popular culture, my hunch is that it would be met with extreme resistance.  This new perspective about our place in the order of things decentralizes us.  It makes us one of many as opposed to the one on top.  It deflates us.

But perhaps, for the good of all of creation (and in the name of every creature who skitters about and grows upon this planet) we human beings may need a little deflating.

Re-imagining our place in the order of things gives us a sacred opportunity to return to the basics, to reclaim our humanity, to realize our reckless and terrible steps.  Re-envisioning our place on the planet as “among” rather than “above” gives us the perspective we need to move back into a healing and more harmonious relationship with the rest of the world, with our own humanity, and with the One who put us here to live in concert with the entirety of creation.

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