Destroy All Humans

Yes, I know it’s the title of a video game; and as a standalone, it’s probably a dangerous title. But I mentioned last week about humans and the almost universal sense of us as defilers of nature. Now, obviously, it depends who you ask: but I think in the main, those who care for the environment see any trace of humanity as making impure that which is pure. This is called worshipping the creation.

“Take nothing but memories; leave nothing but tracks.” Because tracks go away, right? A boot-print a month old is just called the ground.­ The earth, and nature, is sacrosanct; humanity is a blight, and any trace of us having been there suddenly makes the ground defiled.

But aren’t these the same people who say humanity is on equal par with nature? Aren’t we just a product of stuff? Deer kill trees with their rubs; birds leave great big nests in trees; bears surely leave more than just a foot-print or two wherever they go. But they get a free pass as animals, while the rest of us animals deserve to be shot for building a house.

Now, I’m being hyperbolic a little here, because obviously humans can do great damage to the environment, and have done so with careless abandon for centuries. I’m not saying our coal factories and piles of plastic rubbish are excusable. The problem occurs when we use hyperbole to prove a point, and never qualify it. When we keep saying: “Humans destroy nature!” without saying: “We also can tend it, if we’re careful and respectful!” pretty soon that second point is lost forever. Then the other side, in trying to back us down from our hyperbole, responds with their own hyperbole: “I am man, and I am above nature, and I can do what I want! God made the earth first so I could use it as I will!”

And the animals migrate, or try to.

But ask any serious gardener if traces of themselves make their gardens better or worse. Some plants are best served by periods of explosive life – but many plants choke and die if left untended, because other, hardier plants take life away. Ask a florist whether their flowers thrive and bloom without human interference. Ask a farmer if their fields grow on their own, and they just claim the land and rake in the harvest.

Products of human waste do great damage to the environment; I don’t think that’s up for debate. The magnitude of the damage is hotly contested, but the fact that it does is pretty well accepted. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that proper understanding of nature coupled with a healthy concern for it is what makes a human good or bad for the tending of the earth.

In any relationship, love of only self will destroy the relationship – either by destroying the other, or by irreconcilable separation. That is Scriptural: not whether we need to worship the earth, or whether the earth is here for our despotic domination.