On the Road to Gehenna III: Stories as Vessels of Truth
This is the third part of a series exploring the meaning of revival, worship, and salvation in the Old Testament, amid the challenges of climate change and global unrest. Given that Western civilization's prosperity has hinged on appropriating and neglecting land, and Given what we know about Babel, what effect should this have on our spirituality and on how we live?
Read Babel Today
Randy S. Woodley, in Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: Terrapin & The Wolves
It never fails that someone asks right away, “what can we do?” And that’s always a question on European minds. European minds first want to know and then they immediately want to fix it, quickly. They believe they can fix everything; this is part of the worldview. I want to preempt that presumptive question. Usually, the answer I give is (first) just to listen for a long time.
Listen to a story told among the Chickamauga tribe in the Southern United States.
A long time ago, the Terrapin (a box turtle) was a whole lot bigger than it is now. Terrapin was a great warrior, and he would walk down the road and he would expect everybody to move out of the road for him.
One day he encounters a defiant Wolf on the road who says, “You know, I’ve had enough! This time, I’m not getting out of Terrapin’s way at all. He’s going to have to move me if he wants me to move.”
So, Terrapin kills the Wolf, takes his ears, and demands food and shelter from the first village he reaches. Unbeknownst to Terrapin, it's a Wolf Town, and the wolves, recognizing their brother's ears, decide to trick him. They throw Terrapin off a cliff, thinking he'll drown, but he survives with his shell shattered.
As he was lying there dying Terrapin thought, there’s no way I’m ever going to heal from this mess I’m in. But then something came to him. He remembered this song, this old, old song, and he started singing this song he remembered because it’s a healing song.
After a while, something miraculous happened. Some of those shell parts began to come back and form themselves on his back. Sure enough, his back was healed.
Terrapin got up from there much smaller than he was before and he walked a whole lot more humbly after that.
This is how Woodley understands the Western (Christian) worldview: it’s Terrapin.
It has taken up too much space, and it has insisted on its way in every single system that we have. From education and religion to economics and politics. And that big Western worldview said, “We’re doing this our way, cause we are right and everybody else has to come along or get run over. Do what we say or watch out.” -Randy Woodley-
Many of us are part of Western civilization or influenced by its culture. It’s a civilization marked by individualism and materialism and the result has been dehumanization by class, race, ethnicity, and gender.
We are not all quite human in the way the Creator made us all to be human.
So how did the Church come to align itself with Terrapin, just as the early settlers at Babel were attempting to do?
Ultimately it comes down to confusion over the interpretation of the creation account in Genesis where Yahweh gives humanity the task of subduing the earth and to have dominion over other living creatures. Genesis 1:26-8.
Dominion was mis-interpreted as domination.
Domination
Both Woodley and Richard Bauckham in his book Living with Other Creatures, list some factors that contributed to this confusion:
The Influence of Greek Philosophy on the Church Fathers and other Christian thinkers
Ignatius of Antioch was likely the first to create a Christian hierarchy by trying to make it a little easier on the church suffering persecution by modeling their system off the hierarchy of the Roman military. Christendom was the unintended consequence.
Philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon.
Bacon assumed that because nature exists solely for human benefit, it is not only right, but a prime human duty to exploit it for human benefit as far as possible. His idea of human progress became the main ideology of the modern West until the recent development of ecological consciousness.
According to this domination mindset, says Woodley, Christendom promises our salvation, development, security and civilization.
Dominion
However, there is another Christian tradition which portrays attitudes toward the natural world that is much more closely connected to the Old Testament Covenant and New Testament Kingdom that I reflected on in an earlier post.
It involves stories of hermits and saints, such as St Francis, who chose to live apart from society to fully devote themselves to Yahweh. They deliberately sought remote places and lived in the wild.
There are many stories of these saints and their relationships with the natural environment and wild animals, spanning regions from Egypt to Belgium and from Georgia to Ireland.
According to them, dominion in its biblical context is focused on the idea of common creatureliness.
Humanity is not the crown of creation. We were created (figuratively) on the same day as the rest of the land creatures. While unique among the creatures, we are also equals.
Nature and her creatures serve essential needs, and without it, human life wouldn't be possible; thus, we approach with gratitude, appreciation, and respect.
Human dominion over creatures is recognizing our dependence on them, and a shared dependance on our Creator, leading to a call for brotherly or sisterly respect rather than exploitation.
Where domination places humanity at the center of order within cities and civilization; dominion places humanity at the center of Yahweh’s Covenant and among equals in the rest of creation.
Given this colossal confusion, how do we respond?
Do we dismiss the Way of Yahweh for our comforts and traditions?
Or, like Terrapin, will we embrace humility and recognize that making a name for ourselves has led us astray, and acknowledge the danger we are in?
I believe if we can courageously explore new forms of worship while adhering to the principles of the Covenant, we too will avoid the consequences of our civilization’s destructive pursuits towards Gehenna.
As in any recovery from debilitating socio-cultural problems, the journey begins with “Hello, my name is ____. I have a problem.”
2 Chronicles 7:14
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin, and will heal their land”
_______
References
Bauckham, Richard, Living with Other Creatures
Woodley, Randy S., Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, Chapters 1-3
Adrian Jacobs, “Mitigating Missionary Autism: A Proposal for an Aboriginal cure,” Journal of NAIITS 9 (2011):63, 70.