Floods in Kentucky - Photo courtesy Flickr CC License

Care of Creation, my organization, does a lot of work teaching people in Kenya and other East African countries about the dangers of destroying forests.  God gave us trees for good reason:  In terms of hydrology (water cycles), trees are essential.  They are like the columns holding up the roof of a building – lose the trees, the whole system falls apart.  It turns out that something very similar is going on in the Mississippi River watershed of middle America.  We’re a richer country – but it appears that mere wealth can’t stop a flood.  When we human beings carelessly destroy vital parts of the world God gave us to live in, it doesn’t seem to matter whether we’re living in a village in Kenya or on a farm in Missouri.

Lost in the blizzard of headlines over the last week – tornadoes, weddings, the death of a terrorist – is the developing  flood situation in the Mississippi River valley.  The few stories that we’ve seen have focused on what one commentator called a solomonic dilemma:  Whether to save a small, struggling riverside city (Cairo, Illinois) or hundreds of thousands of acres of the country’s best farmland in Missouri.  That case has been all the way to the US Supreme Court in the last 48 hours, with the result that last night the Corps blasted two miles of levees at Bird’s Point, just south of Cairo in order to reduce the pressure on that community’s flood defenses.  As of this writing, the river has receded by a foot – the Corps hopes that they’ll see three more feet of decline in the next couple of days.

Of course, that’s only one city, and the Gulf of Mexico is a long way away.  Look for a lot more excitement on ‘Old Man River’ before it’s over:  This may take a month or more to play out.  But to give you a taste of what’s to come, here are some of the headlines today from Google News (search on ‘Mississippi River Flooding’):

Ohio River Sets New Record, Mississippi Waters Still Rising

Bloomberg - Brian K. Sullivan – ‎4 hours ago‎

The 6- to 10-day outlook from Commodity Weather Group LLC calls for below-normal rain in the southern US, including the Mississippi River valley. “These areas will be drier over the next 10 days, helping to ease the severity of flooding a bit for …

Isle of Capri Casino Hotel in Lula closed due to Miss. River flooding

Today’s THV - Amanda Terrebonne – ‎15 hours ago‎

(KTHV) — The Isle of Capri Casino Hotel announced Monday that as of 3 am central time on Tuesday, May 3, the casino will be closed temporarily until flood waters recede. “As the Mississippi River continues to rise access to our property has been …

Water reaches Tiptonville

State Gazette - ‎4 hours ago‎

Lake County, as well as other counties, is also experiencing rising water levels, both from the Mississippi river and rainwater. Lake County Mayor Macie Roberson stated the northern part of Tiptonville has begun flooding and almost 50 residences have …

As an aside, that last story may be the most important one in the list.  I’ve never heard of Tiptonville (it’s in western Kentucky), nor Lake County, nor Mayor Roberson.  Nor have you (unless this blog has a bigger reach than I expect).    But Tiptonville is a special place for all of the folks who live there, and who are heading into their own slow-motion version of what the tornado victims across the south experienced last week.   We measure disasters with numbers, but the reality is that every disaster is a collection of hundreds, thousands of individual human stories.  It’s people who will suffer in all of these events.

So what’s to be done?  There is not much you can do about tornadoes or earthquakes.  While there are suspicions that a warmer world may lead to more and stronger tornadoes, it appears that the link between climate change and tornadic activity isn’t there yet.   Like earthquakes, tornadoes are part of God’s world – we’ve got to learn to live with them.

Floods are a bit different.  In most places, the natural world doesn’t have drip irrigation.  Our water is delivered in batches.  When it rains, there will almost always be more than we need for the moment – sometimes so much more that we have a flood.  And then it will be dry, sometimes for a very long time.  In this sense, floods are part of the system by which the natural world runs.  And in fact, throughout most of history, floods would have been welcomed as nature’s way of restoring depleted soil with a fresh new layer of silt.

Care of Creation’s project area in Kenya comes to mind as an example of how a normal hydrological system should work.  In this region of East Africa, farmers have long counted on two rainy periods in the year:  The “long rains” come about now and last for six weeks or so.  The “short rains” come in November.  In between, hardly a drop falls from the sky.  In normal years, in normal times, this wasn’t a problem.  God’s creation and human beings had all adapted to this rainfall pattern:  During the brief, intense rainy periods,  the mountain forests acted like sponges, soaking up the rain when it came, and gradually releasing it into streams and rivers over the entire dry season.  Many mountain streams would flow year round, even during the months with no rain.

This system has been severely disrupted – almost destroyed – in East Africa.  Vast stretches of forest have been removed for firewood, charcoal, or to make room for farmland, and the result has been completely predictable:  Erratic rainfall (made worse by global climate change), floods when it does rain, contributing to massive erosion, and then droughts when it doesn’t.  I have personally stood with Kenyans who showed me a dry stream bed that used to flow year round when they were children.  The important lesson:  It is not God who dried up the streams.

We have a tendency to lecture people in countries like Kenya about how dangerous it can be to destroy the natural systems God has provided.  I give some of these talks myself.  Such lectures aren’t misplaced.  People in these countries tend to live closer to the edge than do those in, say, middle America, and when your country’s water supply is fragile anyway, destroying the forests that provide that supply is not ever a good idea.

All of this makes the following Google News entry quite interesting:

Mississippi Floods Can Be Restrained With Natural Defenses

NatGeo News Watch (blog) - Sandra Postel – ‎4 hours ago‎

As riverboat casinos close along the lower Mississippi River as a precaution against disastrous flooding, another form of river gambling is coming under the spotlight — the bet that levees will be able to safeguard cities and farms from the rising …

Take a minute and click through to read the story.  It turns out that here in the US we are doing with our natural wetlands what Kenyans have been doing with their forests:

Over the last three-quarters of a century, while engineers were building hundreds of miles of flood-control structures along the river’s banks, the water-holding wetlands in the Mississippi watershed were being drained and filled to make room for more farms and homes. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio have each lost more than 85 percent of their wetlands.  Minnesota, where the Mississippi originates, has lost a whopping 9.3 million acres of wetlands, 62 percent of its pre-industrial total. All together, eight states of the upper Mississippi basin have lost 35 million acres of wetlands, an area the size of Illinois.

Those wetlands worked like a giant sponge: they absorbed rainwater and then released it slowly to nearby streams or the groundwater below. In this way, they mitigated floods and made the job of levees that much easier. But with these natural protections largely gone, levees have been left to do all the work.

So… we could say, with the Kenyan ladies of the cartoon, ‘God, why have you let these floods destroy our homes (again)?’ while looking out at acres of mall parking lots where wetlands used to be.  I think we’d get the same answer.

It’s not God’s fault.

It would appear that when we “pave paradise to put up a parking lot”, there are consequences.

A new report from the UN a couple of weeks ago shows a glimmer of good news on the deforestation front:

The last decade saw forests being lost or converted at a rate of 13 million hectares per year, compared to 16 million hectares in the 1990s.

However, new forests were being planted to the tune of more than seven million hectares per year; so the net rate of loss since the year 2000 has been 5.2 million hectares per year, compared to 8.3 million in the 1990s.

Keep in mind that this still represents a massive loss of forest every year – just less than it was before.  Given that one has to stop losing before you can start gaining, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Take a look at this interesting chart:

You can see the minor improvement in Africa and South America – but take a look at Asia!  This is largely due to changes in China (more tree planting) and Indonesia (less tree cutting).

Why is this important?

In my observation, almost every country that has serious environmental issues also has a severe deforestation problem.  Healthy forests seem to be the key to environmental health almost anywhere you look:  Forests regulate local climate, including humidity and rainfall patterns.  They hold back water on steep hillsides, helping to prevent floods during rainy seasons and releasing their water gradually during dry seasons to mitigate drought.  Trees are the “loadbearing columns” in the house God has built for us.

Isn’t it interesting that C.S. Lewis used wanton deforestation as a major theme in “The Last Battle”, his final book in the Narnia series…

[Want to help fight deforestation in one small corner of the world?  Click here to help Care of Creation plant trees in Kenya.]

My recent experience of presenting the Our Father’s World seminar material in Manila, Philippines, triggered the following thoughts…

There is a story – a parable, really – that I use at the end of my Our Father’s World seminar presentations.  It goes something like this:

Let’s pretend that we’re on a refugee ship of some kind.  We’re part of a Christian ministry, and we’re taking a ship load of refugees to a new land, where they can start their lives over again.  The ship is crowded, and we have a lot of work to do to care for the passengers and to keep things running smoothly during the three week voyage.

We have organized ourselves in to work-teams:  Food service, sanitation, medical, children, and so on.  And to we are in the habit of holding a meeting every morning in the Captain’s conference room to coordinate activities and to minimize confusion.  These meetings are usually pretty routine (Sanitation: “We have two bathrooms out of order today, so please let people know…”; Medical: “Vaccination of under-5’s this afternoon on Deck B…”) but one day we have a new person in the circle.

The Captain introduces him:  “This is Mr. Smith, our ship’s engineer.  He has something that you will all need to listen to.”  And Mr. Smith makes his announcement: “We started to take on water during the night.  As of now, we do not know what is causing the leak, but we do know that it is bad enough that if we can’t get it fixed, we will not make it to port.”

Remember – I’m telling this story to a live seminar audience.  I usually stop at this point and say something like this:  “Okay, let’s hit the pause button.  How does Mr. Smith’s announcement change the conversation around the table?”

The answer that is expected is this:  It changes nothing, but it changes everything.  All of the normal activities of the work-teams have to go on.  People still need to eat.  Bathrooms still need to be cleaned and repaired.  Sick people need to be cared for.  But there is now a bigger, overriding concern – the ship is in danger of sinking.  If the leak isn’t found and fixed, nothing else will matter.

This is obviously a parable:  The ship represents the church, or a church.  The work teams represent all of the many different kinds of ministries that churches participate in, from soup kitchens to prison ministry to youth programming.  And the leak in the ship represents the environmental crisis.

The point of the parable (in case you haven’t got it yet) is really quite simple:  Creation care is different from every other ministry a church (your church) might be involved in, because when the environment is destroyed, other ministries cease.  If we lose the ship, nothing else will matter.

Hurricane damage in Haiti

Case in point:  Haiti.  Most of Haiti’s problems, and they are many, arise from an environment that has been damaged beyond the point of recovery.  Population growth has led to massive deforestation, agricultural decline, incredible poverty, relocation from rural areas to the city, and political unrest and general violence.  Haiti used to be a common destination for summer ministry teams from the US.  Not so much anymore – it’s too dangerous.  ‘Normal ministry’ has had to be suspended because the environment has been destroyed.  If we lose the ship, nothing else matters.

That is how I usually tell this story, and how the talk usually ends.  However, it occurred to me recently that it is possible to imagine another response to Mr. Smith’s report of a leak in the ship.  And that is the subject of our next post.  Stay tuned.

We occasionally receive comments through the Care of Creation website ‘contact us’ form wondering exactly what it is we’re talking about.  Some of these comments come from, um, cranks – but others are thoughtful and sincerely questioning.  Environmental stewardship as a central part of Christian ministry is new for a lot of people, and a comment that come through today was in that vein.

A couple of the things our inquirer said:

I have to ask just what is “environmental sin”? If Jesus had wanted this to be our “ministry” wouldn’t He have stated it?  …Do you believe that we can do nothing to stop the “groaning” of creation which is under the curse of sin? …I can definitely see the need to couple the gospel with compassion but to couple it with saving a planet that God says will eventually be destroyed by Him seems…er impractical at best.

I responded as below.  Those of you who have read my book or heard me speak will recognize that this is essentially what I’ve been writing and preaching for at least the last 10 years or so…

Thank you for your interesting and thoughtful comments in response to our web material. It is clear that you spent some time on our website, and while I don’t have time for a lengthy reply, I do think you deserve the courtesy of at least a brief response…

It is true that Jesus did not himself address the issue of the ‘groaning creation’, certainly not as directly as Paul did in Romans 8. However, Christians in general take the entire Bible to be inspired and authoritative – certainly we do at Care of Creation – and a command from God is just that, whether from the words of Jesus, Paul or Jeremiah.

We base our case on a couple of easily understood points:

1)God clearly cares about his creation, and expects us to care for it. (This is what the “dominion passage” is Genesis 1 means)

2)God tends to get upset – very upset – when human beings abuse his creation.

Along these lines, a couple of Old Testament passages leap out:

Woe to those who join house to house,who add field to field,until there is no more room,and you are made to dwell alonein the midst of the land. (Isaiah 5:8)

I will lay your cities waste and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas. 32And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. 33And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. 34 “Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it. (Leviticus 26:31-34)

And a positively frightening New Testament one:
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
18The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” (Rev 11:18)

It is clear from these, as well as Romans 8, that God cares about what happens to his creation – even to the point of driving out his own people because they had refused to give the land the Sabbaths (rest) that God had commanded them. One hesitates to think what God might have in store for our generation whose wholesale destruction of creation is unparalleled in history.

3)It is also quite clear in Colossians 1 that God’s redemptive plan includes all of creation:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:15-20)

Simple principle of Biblical interpretation here: The ‘all things’ that Christ created in v. 16 has to be the same as the ‘all things’ that are reconciled in v. 20. Conclusion: Biblical redemption is more than human salvation – it extends to all of creation.

The conclusion is inescapable: If Jesus died to reconcile all of his creation to himself by his own blood, how dare we do less than our best to protect it, to care for it on his behalf?

There was more discussion on climate change but that need not detain us here…

Any additional thoughts?

Alan Paton wrote his novel in 1946, published in 1948.  It is set in South Africa.  What is startling about the book is that the first two pages could have been written about Kenya – and could have been written yesterday.

The lessons from today’s reading are painfully clear:  1)Environmental degradation is not a new problem.  Abuse of God’s creation is, apologies to Paton, as old as the hills.   As ancient as human nature.  If you’ll allow me to quote myself in Our Father’s World, ‘environmental problems are sin problems.’

And, 2)Why don’t we learn?  If it was obvious that people were destroying the very land they needed to live on more than 60 years ago, why do we keep acting surprised?  Why do we think we can solve this with more fertilizer or another loan from the World Bank?

Here’s the reading.  (Pick up the book here)

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.  These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it…

The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh.  The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth.  Down in the valleys women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man.  They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children.  The men are away, the young men and the girls are away.  The soil cannot keep them any more.

The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil.  It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof.  It is well-tended, and not too many cattle fee upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil.  Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator.  Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men.  Destroy it and man is destroyed.

Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil.  But the rich green hills break down.  They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature.  For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs.  Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it.  Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet.  It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men…

Did you read this far?  Then it’s time to close the lap top or turn off the monitor, get yourself outdoors for a bit, and do two things:  If you can see good healthy soil, ground that still has the capacity to ‘keep men’, rejoice and give thanks to God for his mercy.  And at the same time, weep and repent for what we have done to God’s creation, and for those now suffering and dying because ‘the soil cannot keep them any more.’