I've just finished watching The Blue Planet II episode tonight. It was exhilarating and heartbreaking; it was wonderful and shameful; I was delighted and outraged. If you watched it you'll know why. If you didn't, then you owe it to yourself to do so. And yes, here comes the spoiler, the last 5 minutes were shocking. Or at least any human being with a sense of oneness with the world around us, with compassion for the creatures who share this planet with us, with even a modest level of ethical sense or moral principle, would and should be shocked.
For several minutes, while David Attenborough narrated and described the scene, we saw a pod of pilot whales, visibly distressed at the death of a whale calf. The mother had been carrying it around for days. It had died of plastic poisoning, possibly through drinking the milk of a contaminated mother. Rarely, in a longish life of watching nature programmes have I sensed the power of the parable enacted by creatures, nor felt more the potent force of reality brought into the living room through these beautiful creatures performing what can only be described as a dance of lament.
I am unashamedly a biblical theologian, that is, one whose theology as a Christian is rooted in and shaped by ancient texts as they bear witness to Jesus Christ. And when it comes to the world around us, nature, the environment, human stewardship and human agency in the way we treat the earth - all these things are held together in my mind by the doctrine of creation. This isn't about the conflict of science and the Bible, evolution versus creation. I am after bigger fish. This is about what happens when human power and human know how and human technology combine to release the forces that answer to human greed, undermine ethical constraints, and see the world as one global commodity market, and the earth's resources as an infinite source of all we want, all we need, all we can grab, all we can sell, all we can use and all we can waste.
No. I don't expect everyone to share my outrage and sadness, or my anger and shame. But I do expect anyone who half way claims to think Christianly and to read the Bible seriously, to think about what we are doing to our planet and home, and ask if this is what God the Creator intended and intends. For a start the Psalms with their delight in the sheer exuberance and diversity and life affirming extravagance of the world God has made. Then the book of Job with its final chapters where God dares anyone to understand the universe more deeply, love the Creation more profoundly, care for our earth and its creatures more compassionately. For good measure Jesus' teaching and handling of food and water, observation of birds and flowers, and in an oblique throwaway comment that should make anyone who takes Jesus seriously stop and gulp; "Are not five sparrows sold for a penny. Yet not one of them falls to the ground but your heavenly Father sees it."
So what about a pilot whale calf? Does God see it? What does God think? And a pod of mammals so deeply affected you can see it in their behaviour and body movements? Is God's compassion for the whales too? Whatever else The Blue Planet II has shown us, it has shown us ourselves. We are mirrored in the environment we pollute. And our judgement before God is all tied up with what we do about the damage we are doing. "All tied up" is a deliberate choice of terminology - its reference to the turtle also seen in tonight's episode, all tied up in frayed plastic rope, and without hope.
What to do? It will take political will pushed by the impetus of political change to move away from plastics, to begin to limit industrial pollution of the rivers, land and seas, to dethrone the idols of consumerist growth, to change the mindset of mechanised exploitation and national self interest, without stewardship or thought for the environmental consequences. Each of us will have our arguments, and counter arguments. But I defy anyone to watch those five minutes when the choreographed grief of pilot whales conveyed the anguish of our planet, without feeling ashamed of our species. And further I defy anyone who claims to takes the Bible with any kind of seriousness as a way of knowing the ways of God, and to watch those whales without feeling this is wrong.And awakening to the knowledge that our own hearts are echoing the broken heart cry of creation articulated by those beautiful creatures.
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