Sermons from Nature

 

Old growth forest, Alaska

My distaff buddy Xerxes has been on vacation, hiking happily through the high coniferous forests of Vancouver Island. They have inspired him with religious insight. He uses the term “cathedral.” 

His insight is that all nature is interconnected:

“A forest is more than the sum of its trees. The forest itself is a living, breathing, organism.

“The forests challenge our obsession with individualism. We have made cult of standing alone, of being ruggedly independent. We are so immersed in the cult of individualism that, as Robert Bellah noted years ago, when we think of breaking free of individualism, the only route we can imagine is to be more individualistic.

“No matter how tall it stands, a Douglas Fir, towering in lofty isolation over a clear-cut hillside, will never say, ‘Every tree for itself.’ Or, ‘I won! I won!’”

This falsely conflates individualism with selfishness. While that is a possible sense of “individualism” in common speech, it is not a fair account of the Western philosophy of individualism. Here is Oxford’s (OED) definition:

“The principle or theory that individuals should be allowed to act freely and independently in economic and social matters without collective or state interference. Opposed to collectivism, socialism. Cf. LAISSEZ-FAIRE n.”

Here is Merriam-Webster’s:

“A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests.”

Nothing about that implies selfishness.

The “cult of individualism” which he refer to as permeating Western thought is, in fact, Christianity. That is where it comes from, and why the West is different from other cultures here. The Catholic Church teaches the principle of “subsidiarity”: that is, decisions should always be made at the individual level, or as close to the individual level as possible. As little as possible should be left to the state. For only the individual is a moral agent. God creates individuals, in his image. Social structures are created by man: they are, as postmodernists will aver, “social constructs.”

But Christianity also and more adamantly holds charity to be the highest virtue. It would condemn such sentiments as “every man for itself” or “I won! I won!”

Christianity holds it to be morally evil to go along with the crowd, rather than take responsibility and act as an individual—the proper sense of “individualism” as a social or political philosophy.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Salvation is individual, and cannot be reached by following the crowd.

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’”

Political and social structures are under the control of the devil.

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

“This world” means the social world, for the physical world is not sentient and cannot have idols. What the social world values is idolatrous and antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

Christianity’s essential opposition to social conformity is probably best illustrated by the fact that its God is condemned to crucifixon by the civil authority and the social elite.

Does the interconnected forest offer us a good model for society? 

No. 

The group is intrinsically more likely to be selfish, not less, than the individual. The group avoids personal responsibility, and so can give the individual cover and sanction for selfishness. After all, everybody else is doing it. In the magnificently interconnected forests of Vancouver Island, the high conifers kill all undergrowth with their acidic needles. Their high canopy denies the light that might be necessary for competing species to emerge; they kill off all diversity. Like most groups, the high conifers cooperate in their own self-interest against outsiders or those judged “different.”

It is the fascist model, that “the forest is greater than the sum of its trees.”