Thanks to modern technology, we stand today at a precarious point in human history. Never before have we harnessed natural forces so effectively to meet our own needs, and never before has our activity so threatened the world around us. Today we have the capability to seriously damage and permanently change the natural world in which we live through nuclear contamination, environmental degradation, and global climate change. How can we as Christian residents of the planet respond to this situation? I propose that the biblical idea of Sabbath can be a model to help us define our responsibility to the natural world. In his book The Sabbath, 20th-century Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel describes modern technology as man’s conquest of space. Technology has enabled man to manipulate and control his physical environment in unprecedented ways. But Heschel claims that the Bible is more interested in time than in space. This biblical focus is expressed most distinctly in the idea of sabbath. Sabbath means that humanity must reserve time for rest, reflection, and worship if we are to function in the way God intended. Another 20th-century writer speaks explicitly of a sabbath for the land. In A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, Wendell Berry writes: Now oaks and hickories grow Where the steel coulter passed. Where human striving ceased The Sabbath of the trees Returns and stands and is. Berry also talks about sowing buckwheat on the land and disking it into the ground in order to give the land its sabbath. Berry thus sees two ways
Different Shade of Green
A Sabbath for the Land
of providing a sabbath for the land: allowing ground that was previously tilled for crops to grow wild, or tilling a crop into the soil to enrich it. Various scriptures address our obligations to the earth. Genesis 2:15 describes how God places humanity in the Garden of Eden to work and care for it. The commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy explicitly states that the Israelites must rest their ox and donkey and all animals on the Sabbath along with children and servants (Deuteronomy 5:12-14). This makes it clear that sabbath has significance for animal as well as human life. The explicit link between sabbath and earth care comes in Leviticus 25. Here God prescribes a sabbath rest for the land every seventh year. No crops are to be planted, and the vineyards are not to be pruned (vs. 1-7). Instead of reaping crops from the land that seventh year, the people are promised that God will enable the land to produce enough crops in the sixth year to provide for two years (vs. 20-21). It is clear that the soil and crops also need a rest. Another important scriptural motif here is the frequent picture drawn by the Old Testament prophets of the renewal of creation in the end times. Whether it is the wolf feeding alongside the lamb (Isaiah 11:6), the Israelite sitting under his own vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4), or the desert flowing with water and bursting into bloom (Isaiah 35), the prophets clearly saw a distant future involving a beautiful restoration of the created order. A rejuvenated creation has an essential role to play in the final restoration. Taking these thoughts into consideration, I wish to suggest three general principles concerning how the idea of sabbath is pertinent to creation care. First, it means
we must respect creation as our God-created partner in life. We were not given permission to rule the earth in such a way as to selfishly exploit its resources or to destroy it in the process, but rather to care for it with as much loving concern as God had when creating it. If sabbath includes rest for animals and plants, this teaches us that we are responsible for finding ways to nourish and preserve the plant and animal species inhabiting our world. Second, we must recognize our dependence on creation. The resources we need to sustain us ultimately come from the land and from the plant and animal species that the land sustains. We need to imagine new ways of giving rest to the land. Are our current intensive agricultural practices with their factory farms sustainable? Can ancient agricultural practices such as crop rotation and allowing land to be fallow for a year be reintroduced today? And can we even conceive of a sabbath of fossil fuel use? The third principle for creation care is the principle of ultimate renewal. This is the renewal pictured in the Old Testament prophets. It seems obvious that we should not be destroying what God intends to heal and restore in the end. Rather we should do our part to preserve the beauty and health of the planet as we look forward to that final restoration. Sabbath, then, suggests that we respect creation as a partner, confess our dependence on it, and look forward with it to our final, joint restoration. Taking these three principles together gives us an effective and meaningful way of caring for creation in the light of global warming and other environmental problems. I propose this sabbath model for creation care in the hope that it will guide and stimulate the Christian community in its efforts to address the serious environmental threats our world faces today.
Daniel Boerman is a freelance writer and the author of The Flying Farm Boy, a memoir about growing up on his family’s farm in a Dutch Christian Reformed community in Michigan during the 1950s. Learn more at FlyingFarmBoy.com.
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