Rethinking God & Creation Care

Tags

climate change, creation, creation care, environment, god, Presbyterian Earth Network, Robert P. Jones, substack, When God Became White

April 22 is Earth Day. Read my substack reposted below:

This year marks the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day and it is a day to celebrate environmental education, awareness, and action. This year’s theme is to eliminate plastic usage which is greatly harming the Earth. Even though we focus on the environment on Earth Day, I believe every day should be Earth Day so that we can center on saving this planet and everything in it.

As people of faith, it is crucial that we work towards sustainability and saving God’s creation. Christians may not realize it, but how we imagine and understand God impacts our behavior, our actions, and our beliefs.

Our images and views about God affect our daily lives, each other, and the planet. That is in part why I wrote my book When God Became White. Our metaphors and languages about God influence how we treat one another, how we make laws, what we do every day, and how we treat God’s creation.

Last Fall, I was a speaker at the Presbyterians for Earth Care Conference. My talk was on Rethinking God & Creation Care. You can now view it on YouTube.

Recognizing our limitations helps us to get the fullness of who God is as it becomes a good step towards a fuller understanding of God which does not limit who God is but brings out the mystery of God. These fuller understandings of God can help us move towards sustainability so that we can lower the effects and impacts of climate change. Our perception of God deeply impacts our actions towards each other, animals, and the planet.

The Christian exclusive use of male nouns and images is a calculated projection of patriarchal and androcentric assertions upon God to maintain power by powerful men. This assertion of a patriarchal white God corroborates and justifies hierarchical power which allows and legitimizes acts of violence and power against others and on creation. This kind of power and domination reinforces social, cultural, and political realms that control women, their women’s bodies, and the earth. Therefore, new images and metaphors of God are needed which can affirm and lift up that women are also imago Dei and help women realize that women are also the embodiment of God[1]. This will also encourage and help us to see that creation is also the body of God and hence we must treat it as holy and beautiful.

[1] Wanda Deifelt, “And G*d Saw That It Was Good-Imago Dei and Its Challenge to Climate Justice” in Planetary Solidarity, Ed. by Grace Ji-Sun Kim & Hilda Koster, p. 121.