My Dream by Dr. Dorothy Boorse
April 25, 2008
Ever since Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, people of imagination have used that same phrase to describe their own hopes and visions. This week I was asked, “as a person of faith and a scientist, what is your dream for creation care in your faith community?” I was unprepared for the question, answered poorly at the time, but this is what I would have rather said:
I have a dream that Christians would be peacemakers, patient, kind, and good, that we would be known by the love we show each other and the world. Because we were such people, redeemed and growing in Christ, we would have a right relationship with the rest of the creation. We would not use more than we need, we would share with others, we would be wise in our decisions about resources. We would care for the earth and its creatures because God placed them in our care. We would be in community—for even if each of us individually lived careful and intentional lives, wasting little, prudent and content, there would still be significant work for us to do together. As C.S. Lewis envisioned it in Mere Christianity, not only would our individual ships be on the right course, but our whole fleet of ships would steer together in a correct course. We would build more housing in which garages, laundry, and even belongings are shared, and have more cooperative strategies for everyday problems. I dream of a suburb where every yard is wildlife habitat, every window designed to keep birds from hitting it, every road is as passable as possible for wildlife, every garden made for the climate it is in, and laundry hangs drying in the yards of the poshest of neighborhoods.
On a societal level, I would like convenience to be a lesser good and intentionality to be the greater. I would like better planning of developments so they are green, include a range of economic levels, form small neighborhoods and do not require cars. I would like people to move less often and be more invested in the place where they live. I would like them to buy local produce, know the people around them, and be on the cell phone less.
I would like fewer strip malls, fewer extravagant children’s parties, and more games of catch. I would like to see us use our formidable ability to develop technology for the betterment of the world and for the bringing of good news, rather than for conquering either humans or nature.
But more than that, I would like churches to weave creation care throughout their ministry. I would like people to make a connection between caring for the poor and caring for the creation in which we all live. I would like to see Christians vote thoughtfully about a greater range of issues. From their efforts personally, communally and politically, I would like to see the U.S. become more economically equitable internally and with the rest of the world. I would like Christians to lead efforts to give overconsumption as much attention as overpopulation. I dream of a time when churches own fewer buildings, and congregations spend their resources on the world around them, on art, music, food and shelter for the poor, on care of the wild and the domestic, when Christians work toward the common goal of a sustainable society.
What a joyful vision! How far I am myself from bringing much of it about! How small we are and how great the changes needed! But we serve a sovereign God. I believe that the environmental problems we have now highlight the fact that we need God and that we need to repent, particularly of pride and discontent. Thankfully, I think we are seeing many such changes in the church today. Christians are experiencing changes tantamount to a revival, changes which may bring us back to some of the strengths of earlier believers, those for whom creation was not as separate from humans and for whom care of creation and love of neighbor went hand in hand.
Martin Luther King, Jr., gave us a rhetorical framework to express our belief in what is good and right. In creation care, as in racial harmony, seeing the goal is a part of following God’s leading. My prayer is that as more Christians feel called to lives of stewardship, that vision will become ever clearer.
Dr. Dorothy Boorse is an aquatic ecologist and Biology Department faculty member at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. She is one voice in the Christian Environmental Stewardship movement and lives with her husband and two sons in Beverly, MA.
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