The story we call the environmental crisis is
nothing more than a human crisis. If we pay attention, we will hear in it our
own story, echoing back to us from a deep horizon. Learning to listen is so
important now because, in a way, we have all recently been blinded. Everyone learns to see the world
through the lens of culture. For
tens of thousands of years, those countless cultures all of them cultivated the
natural curiousness of children about creation into knowledgeable adulthood.At their
root, they taught people to see the environment as enchanted, brought to life
by a Creator. Creation was not called ‘nature,’ or the ‘natural world,’ then.
Nor was the immense knowledge of the world people acquired and passed on named ‘the
natural sciences.’ Most importantly, cultures accumulated a continuous treasure
of beneficial knowledge piled generation upon generation as a whole and
recognized the living connection between everything on earth beneath its soils,
above its skies, and in its sweet and salty waters. They further connected this with the spirit of life that ran
through it all from a Living Source beyond in the realm of the Unseen. Never
would they flatten the multi-spherical cycle of creation into a one dimensional
chronological line. Never would
they sever worldly creation from its otherworldly origin, splitting life in
two, calling this part “sensible,” and therefore real, and that part “insensible,”
and therefore irrelevant.
Because of their holistic understanding of the world themselves
in creation and creation in them, come to them from a Life-Source apart they
understood that they were to live in it, work from, with, and on the portion of
it in their immediate grasp, and take care of it so that it would remain there
for them and their children, grandchildren, and furthest descendents.They also
knew that their offenses against creation were violations against the Creator
and would inevitably be met with creational disaster directly affecting their
vicinity, if left uncorrected.They called this Divine Judgment, or the Judgment
of Heaven.
IN 1871,THE English anthropologist and social Darwinist E.B.Tylor formulated the generally accepted and classical definition of the term ‘culture.' "Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capability and habit acquired by man as a member of society."
SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION professor Phillip E. Hammond, himself the son of three generations of Methodist ministers, made the following observation about the apparent revival of Christian tradition in the fabled "morning-in-America" Reagan days:
How the generational dynamics have weakened the Muslim community in America and made it harder to raise our familie