How the Bible Thinks

Are We Just Dust?

Lois Tverberg

During Lent, Christians focus on the fact that we are made of dust. We are made out of mere dust, and someday, we will return again to dust. In science, and especially biology, we deal with the fact that we are dust all the time, or rather that we are big bags of biochemicals.

The question that this causes me to ask is, are we just dust? Consider the point of view of the scientific naturalist, who believes that the only things that are real are those we can measure in a chemical reaction. He would say that human beings are the random result of biochemical processes and natural selection. Our reason for being is simply to propagate our genes. 

The idea that human beings are simply and totally the sum of some very complex chemical reactions is common among scientists. Some would sneer at the superstitious idea that human beings have a soul or some spiritual component.

Many naturalists would say that that idea comes from a primitive, unscientific world view, where processes you don’t understand must be due to ghosts or spirits or God. They would say that science will someday finally and completely describe the chemical reactions that make up human beings, and any idea of a soul will be left out.

Let’s consider the full implications of the world view that says all we are is biochemicals. One is that an idea of “meaning” in life must be an illusion. What we call “great ideas” (like the Constitution of the United States) and “great works of art” (like the Mona Lisa) are really just the result of bunch of neuropeptides being released by the synapses in the white matter compartment of one of these bags of biochemicals.

And what meaning does suffering have? What we call “pain” is really simply an adaptation that increases our possibilities for propagating our gene pool by causing us to avoid damaging stimuli. By having neurochemicals released that cause a response in our brains which we label “unpleasant,” we avoid the situation that produces them.

If this is what pain is, why should I spend my time and energy trying to prevent this release of neurochemicals in other human beings? Naturalists would answer that by helping others I increase my own chance for survival, which I really doubt is true. But why do I feel compelled to help others when I know it won’t benefit me? What do I care about the hunger of the people in Africa?

Another conclusion that we are forced to make is that “morality” is an illusion. I could take some of these biochemicals, mix them up and cause a reaction to occur, perhaps photosynthesis. After I got done watching it for a while, I could pour it down the drain and that would be the end of it. And my question is, what is the difference between stopping the biochemical reaction in this beaker and the biochemical reaction sitting over there? Why should I care any more for the person than I do about the beaker? Was the holocaust really a tragedy of monstrous proportions, or just the ending of a lot of biochemical reactions all at one time?

If science has finally shown that all we are is bags of biochemicals, then I think that we are forced to conclude that the human race has been laboring under a delusion that life has meaning and purpose for thousands of years.

I don’t understand why we don’t toss off all the superstitions we have of meaning and higher purpose in life if we have genuinely concluded that there really is none. Just as people stopped fearing that comets and eclipses were omens of evil when they knew what they really were, why don’t we live according to the ideas that naturalism forces us to conclude? That our efforts toward altruism at our own expense are ignorant and misguided.

Scientific naturalism leads to conclusions that I doubt that anyone is comfortable with if they really think about them. I think there are naturalists who realize that these are the conclusions that they must come to, but they still live their lives as if there was meaning and purpose to it all. Why is that?

I think that deep down in our heart of hearts, people all instinctively know that human suffering really is a tragedy, not just a biochemical response. We know that there must be a meaning and purpose for our existence, and that human lives are precious in a way that science cannot define.

I’d like to look at the Christian response to this idea, and bring in my text for the day. I discovered this text after singing in the Messiah, and there is something about it that really amazes me. Listen closely, and see if you can’t figure out who wrote the text, and who it’s about.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.


I think its obvious to anyone who listens to it that the text is talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the source of several songs in the Messiah, including my favorite, “Surely He Hath Borne our Griefs”.

The thing that really astounded me about the text is that it is not in the New Testament! Even though it is obviously talking about Jesus, this is actually Isaiah 53:3-11, which was written by Isaiah about 700 years before his birth.

I don’t know if it will have the same effect on you as it had on me, but to me it answered my question in two ways:

For one, it is remarkable that an ancient Hebrew writer could have such a remarkable and complete grasp on an event that would happen centuries into the future if he was not somehow inspired by a Being that did know the future.

The other insight is more theological. The Bible declares that human beings may be made of dust, but they are far more than that in the eyes of God. Human beings are precious in the eyes of God, so much so that God was willing to take on the form of one of these little beings to try to communicate with them and show them himself. Human suffering is tragic and the evil that humans do is real, so much so that God was willing to suffer with them to show he cares, and to die a humiliating death in order to bring them back to himself.

(Adapted from a talk given at Luther College, my alma mater, when I taught in the biology department there in 1995.)

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The Psychology of Idolatry

Lois Tverberg

The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right. They set up sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. They did wicked things that provoked the LORD to anger. They worshiped idols, though the LORD had said, “You shall not do this.” (2 Kings 17:7-12, edited)

To modern Christian readers, it is hard to imagine being tempted by idolatry. This is because we are strict monotheists–we simply don’t believe any other gods exist besides God. However, if we understand the psychology behind the ancient practice of idolatry, we can draw lessons for our lives today.

The Mindset of Idolatry

In the Ancient Near East, people believed each nation had its own gods, and that gods had limited powers and territories. These “gods” controlled the prosperity and fertility of the people that worshiped them. They did not make moral demands, but only expected to be venerated through sacrifices and rituals to grant their favor. A person who became prosperous through devious means was admired for his or her cleverness in gaining the favor of the gods.

The God of Israel, however, insisted on moral conduct and gave the nation many laws to obey. (Normally the king wrote the laws, not the gods.) Besides the fact that it was more difficult to be honest than dishonest, it was very challenging for the Israelites to believe in this strange kind of deity that chose to be so unlike every other god they knew.

While other nations had gods that inhabited idols, this God insisted they not make idols to worship him. The gods of other nations were human-like, but this God was invisible and incomprehensible. Other gods needed to be fed sacrifices to gain power, but this one did not need their sacrifices for power. The other gods were subject to manipulation to gain their favor, but this God could not be manipulated.

It was hard to grasp the concept that God was utterly greater than the gods of the other nations. The Israelites were probably not sure if their God would win in the contest Elijah set up between the true God and Baal.

When the Israelites worshiped idols, they were committing several sins. Most importantly, they were violating their covenant with God, who insisted that they serve no other gods. Israel’s covenant was often likened to a marriage, and idolatry was committing adultery against God. Additionally, worshiping idols required that they abandon the moral laws that God had given them. They engaged in perverse sexual practices, sacrificed infants, and sank to the depths of depravity.

They also showed the world they didn’t believe that God was greater than the gods of the nations around them. God’s intention was for Israel to be a light to teach the world about the True God, but in idol worship they caused the nations to mock God instead.

Modern Day Idolatry

Ancient Israelites wanted the same things we do: prosperity and happiness. They had a choice of obeying God and letting him bless them, or trying to gain their blessing through idolatry. Likewise, many things we want are good, but the means to achieve them show whether we are serving the Lord or serving “idols,” in a sense.

A church can want its congregation to grow, but if it chooses activities because of their popularity rather than their spiritual content, it shows that filling pews has become an idol. Or, a man may feel like the Lord called him to a certain job, but when he starts acting unethically to maintain his position, the job has become an idol to him.

Once we start using motives God wouldn’t approve of, even if we think we are serving him, we have shifted our service to something else. After all, God demands we act morally, but idols let us act any way we please.

We also act like idolaters when we aren’t convinced of God’s greatness in comparison to other awe-inspiring things. God is not threatened by scientific discoveries, intellectual achievement or medical advances. He is not thwarted when the wrong party wins the presidency. He is in control when the things we fear happen, like our business closes or we get cancer. Like the Israelites who weren’t sure whether God could defeat Baal, we often give voice to our worry that God isn’t truly sovereign over the world. 

Many things in our world command respect, and it is tempting to be overawed by them. When we give up on God’s ability to accomplish his purposes because his opposition seems too great, we are shrinking God down to the size of this world. We can hardly grasp that as powerful as the things around us seem, God is more powerful yet.

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A Judge as a Savior?

Lois Tverberg

In the book of Judges we read the history of the Israelites right after they move into the land of Canaan. When they fell into idolatry because of their Canaanite neighbors, the Lord allowed them to be oppressed until they cried out to him, and then he would raise up a judge to save them from their enemies.

These judges would sometimes act as rulers by making decisions in court, but often they did not. The term “judge” referred to heroes like Gideon or Sampson who won battles that freed the Israelites from foreign oppression.

At first I found it very odd that the term “judge” could be used to describe a savior or a hero. I thought of the word “judge” as the very opposite of “save.” Didn’t Jesus say he came into the world not to judge it but to save it (John 12:47)? But reading more of the Old Testament, we find that often the words “judgment” and “salvation” are used as synonyms:

From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet — when you, O God, rose up to judge, to save all the afflicted of the land. (Psalm 76:8-9)

For the LORD is our judge, The LORD is our lawgiver, The LORD is our king; He will save us. (Is. 33:22)

So how can a judge be a savior? A key can be found in the fact that the word for “judgment,” mishpat in Hebrew, is also the word “justice.” If we look at a judge from the perspective of the guilty, we see him as one who punishes; but if we look at a judge from the perspective of a victim, the judge is one who brings justice.

Imagine a woman is abused by her husband, and the police arrive and arrest him. When her husband is put in prison, this act of judgment is salvation for her from her abuser. So these “judges” who act as saviors in Israel were those who brought justice — who set things right after people have been suffering because of injustice. They saved the people of Israel by freeing them from those oppressing them.

That is why the word judgment and salvation are often linked. When God saves the ones being wronged from those who are wronging them, he is both judging and saving at the same time — bad news for one side, good news for the other.

This has made me revise my picture of God. I used to think of God as evil when he judged sin, and good when he was merciful. I imagined that any kind of anger at sin was wrong, so Jesus would have just smiled and talked about love even when a person had swindled the elderly out of their last dime, or beat their children, or blew up large buildings full of people.

This is perverse! Because God loves the people who have been victimized by sin, he is angry and will bring the guilty to judgement at the end.

It is out of his love for the guilty that he is merciful and desires to forgive. God is good both when he is just, and when he is merciful.

So how does this fit with what Jesus said, “I came not to judge the world, but to save it”? Here we see that God has come up with a shocking, amazing answer to the problem of sin that even exceeds the good he would do by being perfectly just.

The key is atonement and repentance. Through Jesus’ atonement, he made it possible for sinners to be saved by repentance rather than be condemned in God’s future judgement. Jesus says that he himself will stand in judgment at the end of time, but he has come to atone for the sins of any who would repent and follow him.

God would rather have an abusive husband transformed into a loving husband than to sit in jail. He would rather have a terrorist find Christ than to just be caught and punished. In this way, he can both stop the damage of sin and bring redemption to the life of the sinner.

Because we all are sinners, he bids us all to repent and to find new life following him. Only through Jesus’ atoning blood and the work of the Spirit can lives be cleansed from sin and be transformed to reflect his love.

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The Powerful Imagery of Blood

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Throughout the Bible there is a recurring image that is mysterious to modern, Western Christians: blood. We like abstract concepts like atonement and salvation, but if we really want to understand these ideas as the Bible explains them, we need to understand its cultural language, which includes the imagery of blood.

The ancient Hebrews thought in concrete ways, expressing abstract ideas in terms of things they could see, touch and smell. In Hebrew, a person is not stubborn, he is “stiff-necked”; God is not slow to anger, he has “long nostrils”; God is not jealous, he is “red-faced.”

When God was speaking to them about blood, he spoke to them in this image-based language. Rather than being woodenly literal about what God said about blood, our best way to understand it is to imagine how they saw it, and then translate it into our own language.

Life is in the Blood

The ancient Hebrews believed that the blood of a creature contained its life. They could observe that a person or animal bleeding from a wound will grow faint, and with enough blood loss will die. Because no other damage had to be done than to let the blood run out, it was logical to observers that the life of the animal or person was going out with the blood.1 This has been a common understanding throughout the history of the world, and the sacred awe associated with blood is still held by traditional African cultures even now.2 The Bible reinforces that belief by saying:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood… For as for the life of all flesh, its blood is identified with its life. (Lev. 17:11, 14)

Because of this belief, it was understood that imbibing the blood of a powerful animal would allow a person to acquire its “life,” to take on some of its power: this is still practiced in animistic cultures today. The Bible is unique among documents of its time for forbidding the consuming of blood.

Although they could kill and eat animals, God himself owned the “life” of the creature, and the blood had to be given back to him by being poured on an altar, or on the ground.3 We read this as an outmoded regulation from ancient times. We should instead look at it as if God was speaking their language in order to teach them a profound idea — that God alone is the creator and possessor of the life of every creature. He says:

But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. (Gen 9:4-6)

This helps us to understand the odd regulation about not eating the meat of strangled animals in Acts 15:20. The early church had made a decision that the Gentiles entering the church did not need to take on the full requirements of Torah observance, but they needed to observe the basic laws that God had given even the Gentiles.

They noted that the prohibition of eating animals with the blood still in them came from Genesis, not from the laws of Moses that were given specifically to the Israelites. They wanted them to abandon this practice used in idolatrous ceremonies to show that they had abandoned idol worship, and out of respect for God’s ownership of every life.

The Preciousness of Human Life

An important moral law God was teaching through the prohibition of bloodshed in Genesis 9:6 is that human lives are precious to God — he made us in his image, so by taking a human life, we are destroying the one thing in creation that uniquely bears God’s likeness. The sanctity of life may seem second nature to us, but the idea was unprecedented in ancient, pagan cultures.4

We don’t often contemplate how this singular idea has transformed our entire civilization to the point that it is what makes us “civilized.” Hospitals, orphanages and charities of all types have arisen our of the belief that human life must be preserved at any cost.

Jews have a profound way of expressing this idea that comes from the first case of shedding of innocent blood, Cain’s murder of Abel. God says to Cain,

“The voice of your brother’s blood (bloods, literally) is crying to Me from the ground.” (Gen. 4:10)

The Hebrew word for blood is dam, and the plural is damim. When the Bible talks about murder, or “bloodguilt,” it usually uses the plural form, damim. Using the logic that the blood contains the life of a person, to speak of blood in the plural implies that a murder doesn’t just take the life of one person, it takes the lives of many.

Jews therefore have a tradition that the voice of the “bloods” crying out from the ground was actually the voices of all of the future descendants of Abel that would have ever lived. From this they have a saying, “To take the life of one person is like taking the life of a whole world, and to save the life of one person is like saving a whole world!”5

Innocent Blood

Related to this understanding that the blood contained the life of a person was the idea that the blood of an innocent victim of murder would curse the ground. (Of course, blood didn’t literally have to be shed — the phrase “to shed innocent blood” meant the murder of innocent people, in whatever manner.) In many cultures in Africa today, the land must be abandoned, and never farmed again until atonement is made for the bloodshed.6

The ancient person would understand that this was why Cain could never farm again, because the land was cursed by his murder. They would also see it as the reason for the flood — to both destroy the wicked people of the earth, and purify the earth itself from the blood that had been shed.

The “shedding of innocent blood” was such a great crime that the only way to get rid of it was to take the life of the murderer. If the murderer was unknown, an animal had to be sacrificed to atone for the murder. Otherwise, if not atoned for, it eventually would bring terrible judgment.

The sin that finally caused God to let the kingdom of Judah be destroyed was the shedding of innocent blood. This was because of the murder of the prophets and faithful Jews, and the abhorrent practice of infant sacrifice:

The LORD sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders to destroy Judah… Surely these things happened to Judah according to the LORD’s command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done, including the shedding of innocent blood. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD was not willing to forgive. (II Kings 24:2-4, edited)

Jesus also said that this was would bring judgment on His generation as well, when Jerusalem would be besieged and the temple burned. He said that God would punish the corrupt temple leaders because of the righteous blood that they shed:

And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. (Matt 23:35)

Covenants Sealed with Blood

Another place blood is always seen is in the formation of covenants. In Genesis 16, when God makes a covenant with Abraham to give him the land, he tells him to sacrifice five animals and make a blood path, an ancient method of covenant-making. God later asks Abraham to take on the covenant of circumcision, where his own blood is shed, as is that of all his male descendants (Genesis 17:10).

When God makes the covenant with Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, they are sprinkled with blood to seal the covenant (Ex. 24:8). In other ancient cultures, two men making a covenant would cut their arms and mingle the blood, saying by that act that they were now bound to each other by the covenant, as their lives were intertwined by their blood. A covenant was a way to form a new peaceful relationship between two parties, and the blood of the covenant signified that their very lives were devoted to it.7

Blood Used for Atonement

 In the Levitical laws, God explains that he will allow His people to atone for their sins through the blood of animals. It is a substitution of their blood for that of the guilty person, the animal’s life for the person’s life. Leviticus 17 explains that because the blood represents the life of the animal, the blood makes atonement for the life of the person:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making atonement for your lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life, that effects atonement. (Lev. 17:11)

Once again God is using a cultural language that they would understand: by allowing them to use animal blood for atonement, he is beginning to teach them that although sin demands punishment, he will provide a way for them to find forgiveness for their sins by means of a substitution. He is pointing ahead to the ultimate substitutionary death of Christ.

The Blood of Christ

Now we can see some of the logic behind Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, when he brings new significance to the third cup of the Passover meal, the Cup of Redemption:

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matt. 26:27-28)

Here we see Jesus using the image of blood in two ways: he is explaining that the shedding of his blood on the cross is the substitution of his life for ours, granting us eternal redemption from our sins. He is also saying that his blood ratifies a new covenant between God and man, whereby we now have a new relationship with God if we personally partake of Christ’s atonement.

The blood of Christ is both an atonement for sin and the seal of a new covenant, and every time we take communion, we remind ourselves of our forgiveness. We remind ourselves of our new loving fellowship with God, because of the covenant sealed by the blood of Christ.

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1 “Blood,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, available online at studylight.org.

2 Milly Erema, “Teaching the Bible Using Ugandan Cultural Resources with Specific Reference to the Old Testament,” Western Theological Seminary Master’s Thesis, 2001.

3 Deuteronomy 16:23.

4 Nahum Sarna, Exploring Exodus, p 177 Schocken Books, 1996.

5 Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary, Genesis, p. 34, Jewish Publication Society, 1989.

6 See reference 2.

7 Article, “Covenants,” Jewish Encyclopedia, p 318-322, Funk and Wagnalls, c.1906-1910. Available online at jewishencyclopedia.com.

Photos: Official Navy Page from United States of AmericaMass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Sunderman/Mass Communication Specialist 3r [Public domain], William-Adolphe Bouguereau [Public domain], Branislav Belko on Unsplash, Eczebulun [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Thinking Hebraically About God’s Creation

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg & Bruce Okkema

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)

It’s impossible not to praise God for his wonderful handiwork in all the natural beauty around us. Much of the Bible also seems to rejoice in God’s beautiful world. Certainly Jesus peppered his preaching with meditations about such things as mustard seeds, ravens, and lilies of the field. God declared the creation “very good,” and he often used its beauty and remarkable design to point to himself.

When Job came to God with the ultimate questions of life, God’s response was to describe the grandeur of creation — the constellations, the rain and thunder, the ostriches and mountain goats. Who created these, God asked? And could Job do the same (Job 38-41)? An honest look at the gorgeous, intricate design of this world should leave us humbled, realizing that God has reasons for his actions that are often beyond our understanding.

As filled as the Scriptures are with meditations on God’s handiwork, many of us haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about how we should relate to the natural world. If anything, some of us are put off by people who love nature too much. What attitude does God want us to have, that neither idolizes his creation, nor neglects his calling to care for his garden and rule as his representatives on earth? If we look again at the scriptures in their Hebraic context, we find that God actually does give us instruction in these things.

Having an Attitude of Thanksgiving

In Psalm 24:1 it says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” and the rabbis of Jesus’ day believed everything we enjoy in life should cause us to thank God. As a result, they instituted a wonderful system of brief prayers of “blessing” (berachah, pronounced BRA-khah, plural – berachot) that were prayed dozens of times throughout the day.

The idea was not to bless objects to make them holy, but to “bless the Lord” for each good thing, focusing on him as the source of all blessing. When Paul challenged his readers to “pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thes. 5:16 -18), he was probably thinking of this practice that both he and Jesus most likely took part in, and orthodox Jews do even to this day.1

In the most ordinary things they found ways of praising God, and many of these focused on reminding oneself of God’s sustenance of our lives and of creation. A person’s first thoughts upon waking were to thank God for giving them life to live another day: “I thank you, living and eternal King, for returning my soul within me in compassion, great is your faithfulness.”

They probably would have been awaken by a rooster’s crow. So in the first century they would have said, “Blessed is he who has given to the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and night.” And, when they opened their eyes they said, “Blessed is he who opens the eyes of the blind!” No day could start without numerous reminders of God’s love, and these small prayers arose often through their day.2

Encountering the world around them gave them many reasons to bless the Lord. When they saw the first flowers on the trees in the spring, they said, “Blessed is he who did not omit anything from the world, and created within it good creations and good trees for people to enjoy!” When they heard thunder or an earthquake they said, “Blessed is he whose strength and power fill the world!” (Next time there is a windstorm, step outside and meditate on God’s awesome power.) Even when they smelled an orange or lemon, it was an occasion to bless the Lord by saying, ”Blessed is he who gives pleasant fragrance to fruit.”

I find it interesting that they believed that even man-made things were ultimately created by God. One of the main blessings that is said before eating is, “Blessed is he who brings forth bread from the earth.” If you think about it, however, bread does not come directly from the earth! It is an “artificial” product that has been processed and modified by human effort, but yet the ancients saw that God should be thanked for it.

They have other prayers to thank God for things like medicine and human intelligence too. What an idea! Could we thank God for even our technology, seeing it as God’s handiwork, made through the gift of our minds and hands?

What was the point of these prayers? The effect was to instill a continual feeling of gratitude and a sense of God’s presence around them. We do a similar thing in a smaller way when as children we learn to say “thank you” or to pray before meals. Along with the habit of saying “thank you,” we develop an inward attitude of gratefulness whenever we receive some kindness.

Similarly, when most of us sit down in front of a table of food, we immediately have the urge to fold our hands together — an ingrained reminder that we should thank God. Through an outward practice, we learn an inward attitude. When Paul and other Jews learned the habit of these prayers, they cultivated in themselves a much more extensive habit of gratitude to God.

Looking at God’s creation, it seems that our response should be to cultivate in ourselves an attitude like this — feeling humbled by God’s presence, and grateful for his gracious care.

Bal Tashchit – Do Not Destroy

How does our worship of God for his creation impact our actions? Does it mean that we can’t modify the earth or use it for our needs? Western Christians tend to disconnect God with his creation, and see the world as entirely ours for disposal as we see fit. This is because we tend to see God as far away in heaven, uninterested in material things.

This attitude comes from our Greek cultural ancestors, who considered the material world to be worthless and evil, and God as utterly unconcerned with it. The Scriptures, in contrast, say repeatedly that God created the world very good, and that creation itself groans for its redemption which will come in the end (Rom 8:21).

We might think God never commented on how we should treat the earth, but the rabbis pointed out that God shared his feelings in a specific case in Deuteronomy 20:19. It says, “When you lay siege and battle against a city for a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy (lo tashchit) its trees, wielding an ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them?”

In this verse, God forbade the destruction of the fruit trees outside of cities that were under siege by the Israelites during war. It was common practice during wartime to destroy the land — to chop down the trees and poison the fields by sowing them with salt. God expressly forbade this kind of wanton destruction and declared that the trees were “innocent bystanders” who should not be victims of the war.

The rabbis concluded that if God forbade the destruction of the environment in the dire situation of war, he must certainly oppose it during peacetime. They then reasoned that modifying the environment to build useful things to serve human needs is fine, but needless destruction is wrong.

They also concluded that the reason destroying fruit trees was forbidden was because God gave the trees to provide food, and when we destroy any useful thing, we insult God’s gracious care for us. To them, these words against needless destruction should teach us not to waste any useful thing. The ethical command was called bal tashchit (bahl-tahsh-KEET), meaning “do not destroy.”3

Whoever breaks vessels, or tears garments, or destroys a building, or clogs a well, or does away with food in a destructive manner violates the commandment against bal tashchit. (Talmud, Kiddushin 32a, written about 500 AD)

Because of this interpretation of Deuteronomy 20:19, there has been an ethic of conservation and avoidance of waste in Judaism for thousands of years. They see it as an act of reverence for God. One 18th century rabbi, Sampson Hirsch, said that when we preserve the world around us, we show that we believe that God owns all and is above all.

If we needlessly destroy, we show our self-centeredness and lack of regard for the gifts and will of God. They said that one mark of a righteous person was that he appreciates God’s wonderful design of everything so much that seeing the needless destruction of anything brings him pain. A wicked person doesn’t see God’s handiwork and selfishly wants to destroy, just to show his own power. Waste and excess therefore come from self-idolatry, when we say we are sovereign over our world, not God himself.

What if we regarded all our possessions as gifts from God? Would we be wasteful and throw away usable things? Would we instead try to give them to someone who needs them? What we do with our gifts shows how we see the One who gave them to us; and when we conserve resources to share them with others, we are actually fulfilling both the command to love God and the command to love our neighbor. We are showing our gratitude to the God who provides for us, and we are caring for those around us as well.

Revering the God of Creation

Human knowledge has barely begun to understand the beautiful intricacy of every atom, cell, tree, planet and galaxy. If God in his infinite knowledge called his design of the world “very good,” it must show his brilliance and magnificence in ways beyond what we could ever imagine. It shouldn’t surprise us to hear that when God created the universe, “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7)!

Instilling in ourselves a reverence for God’s work will make us feel like the world is saturated with God’s presence, and that we are under his constant care. The Lord told us to love him with all of our hearts, minds and souls, and being mindful of his glory in all that is around us will take us a long way toward that goal.

Majesty In Creation

A great designer fashioned this
with such detail that we will miss
the unity and regal power
that hides within the smallest flower.
It spreads itself across the sky
we cannot know how far or high.

Stop and listen, you will hear
a croaking frog, a running deer,
an eagle flying overhead,
a chipmunk dashing just ahead.
Each life designed for such a thing,
as best it suits Creator King.

It all together fits as one,
there’s not one place that’s left undone.
Yet nothing ever stays the same,
and when you look, all bears his name.
Take a walk, drink in the glory,
then go out and tell his story.

~~~~

For those who wish to cut back on waste by giving away unwanted items, check out www.freecycle.org. This is a network of email groups in which members offer unwanted items to other list readers who live in the same area. Groups are available all over the U.S and around the world.  A similar Facebook group is “Buy Nothing” where you can post items that you are giving away for free.

 

1 In several places the gospels suggest that Jesus and his audience participated in the Jewish practice of “blessing the Lord.” See “The Richness of Jewish Prayer.” See also Jesus the Jewish Theologian, B. Young, Hendrickson © 1995, pp. 119 – 125.

2 In the first century, these prayers simply began with “Blessed is he,” but now each prayer begins with “Blessed art Thou, King of the Universe,” in order to remind the speaker of God’s sovereignty. A nice list of blessings is available from Hebrew for Christians.

3 More on Bal Tashchit in Jewish tradition at the following links:
Bal Taschit: The Torah Prohibits Wasteful Destruction
Judaism and Environmentalism: Bal Taschit

Photos: Luca Micheli on Unsplash, Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash, Michael Weidner on Unsplash