The Salmon-Falls, The Mackerel-Crowded Seas

 

the saloFriend Xerxes recently summarized the common contemporary nature ethic: the Gospel of Pachamama. “Let’s be consistent. If God created life, then every form of life is sacred. Holy. Valued for its own sake.”

By that premise, not just salmon runs and butterflies, but mosquitos, fleas, lice, rats and cockroaches must be also celebrated. And God created COVID-19, and cancer. It too must have a right to exist and flourish. It must be valued for its own sake, not murdered with vaccines or radiation.

Xerxes misses an essential, a transcendent thing. We value some elements of nature, only some elements, for their beauty. The value of a salmon run, for example, aside from preserving a food source, is aesthetic. A river running red with salmon is a beautiful thing, as is a sunset, a mature male lion, or a waterfall. Beauty, along with Truth and the Good, is of intrinsic value.

But if and only if there are human beings around to see it.

Xerxes predictably trots out Genesis 1:26, in order to condemn Christianity. 

“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

It is Christianity’s fault, therefore, that so many wonderful animals are getting killed. The Judeo-Christian God gave us permission, “dominion.” Without that sanction, of course, nobody would think of killing an animal. After all, animals don’t kill each other, do they? After all, anyone can see that there is far less pollution in non-Christian countries like China, or the old Soviet Union, or India. Right?

Right?

Bueller? Anybody?

Right?

What does “dominion” mean? Here’s a hint: Canada is a dominion, and this has not often involved the government killing its citizens wholesale. Like everything in the Bible, one must read Genesis 1:26 in context of other nearby verses. In this case, Genesis 2:15 clarifies what “dominion” means. “Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.” We are to cultivate and keep nature: not destroy it, and not leave it alone. Make it beautiful. To turn the wilderness into a garden.

Broadly, this is what we do when we create art.

Without man, nature is barren.