Green - 9/25/22

Hailey Green

9/25/2022


    In reading The Ecology of Eden I was reminded much of my own upbringing in religion and my relationship with the world around me. I was taught that the world and all of us were God's perfect creation, built in harmony to care for one another. It was never imprinted upon our spongey minds that perhaps we were also meant to maintain this gift. We had a responsibility but it was painted as a machine to serve our needs. Sure, we were encouraged to care for the earth, but never in the church's wildest dreams was man, made in God's images, to be an antagonist in this story.


    The garden of Eden had Adam and Eve caring for the creatures there, responsible for naming them and providing what little help man could provide to an organism built solely to survive and procreate. Knowing this now, watching Dawn commercials picturing baby ducks covered in oil, documentaries featuring dying reefs and turtles strangling in the depths of the ocean, perhaps this story is more true now than it was then; but instead of caring for the creatures because God told us to, we must now do it to right the wrongs of our fellow man.


    Eisenberg does not hold back in painting a realistic view of how we have treated our planet: "The waves of human-led change --- our alliances with certain species, and roughshod crushing of others; Our unhousing of the soil community; our stirring up of long-buried hydrocarbons --- are a matter of concern to creatures whom sermons about free will might be lost."

    The last portion specifically: "a matter of concern to creatures whom sermons about free will might be lost." is incredibly interesting when you think about the implications. Sermons from God's own tongue in Genesis about their importance and human's responsibility for their wellbeing, field zoologists observing these animals naturally thriving apart from our anthropocentric world: this romantic lens on life finding a way in the most dire of circumstances. Soon, these animals will only exist in manicured, sterile environments of our creation to ensure that our choking earth does not take them with it. How disappointed must our Genesis God be.

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