Essay

Climate

Creed

Sustainability

30 May 2024

9 min read

Why Climate Change is at heart, a spiritual problem

Climate change does not begin with technical solutions but with spiritual ones.

Mark Scarlata

Mark is a lecturer and priest. He’s the author of several books and his latest, Wine, Soil and Salvation, explores the use of wine throughout the Old and New Testament.

Planet Earth viewed in totality from space. Africa and Arabia are visible under some cloud in the south.

Captured by Apollo 17, the Blue Marble image is credited with influencing how humanity viewed our home.

NASA.

In 1972 the United Nations commissioned a report called Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet. Its authors chose a cover image which captured the earth from space. The bright blue marble-like planet sits majestically against the black background of the vast universe. The beauty and simplicity of the image was a reminder of the unique habitat we share on this planet and the need to care for it.

Over fifty years after the authors raised concerns about a future ecological crisis, we do not find ourselves in any less critical circumstances. Average temperatures around the globe continue to rise, deforestation and pollution of water carries on and the land still suffers from over-farming and the use of harmful chemicals. These are only a few of the ways the planet has suffered.

The tone of the book, and the tone of the dialogue since then, often depicts environmental issues as a problem to be fixed. Rather than changing our own habits, many seek to maintain our current quality of life by coming up with green solutions that satisfy our levels of consumption.

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that we can reduce the beautifully complex and dynamic ecology of our world to a problem that requires a technical solution. The environment becomes common matter or stuff that can be used as a commodity to be bought, sold or traded on the market. This promotes the idea that the world around us is nothing more than material to be mastered through technological innovations by the ingenuity and determination of the human will. But is it just a matter of time before advanced technologies will solve all our environmental problems? Or is it possible that reframing the environmental crisis through a theological lens could help us see that the problem might not only be technology or industrialization, but that it might be something deeper in our souls?

Looking at creation through a different lens

In 2014 Pope Francis wrote an encyclical (a letter to the Catholic Church) called Laudato Si (‘Praise to you’). The title comes from a song of St. Francis of Assisi to celebrate creation - ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.’ The saint’s hymn of praise celebrates creation as a living being, a partner, a sister, a mother that sustains us and reveals the glory of God. And this is what Pope Francis sets out to remind his readers—that creation is not merely a commodity to be used or a problem to be solved. Instead, the natural world is sacred because it was created by God, is sustained by God, and is filled with his divine glory.

Francis writes,

‘We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will…This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.’

The ecological demise and poor health of our environment reflects our misunderstanding of humanity’s role within an integrated ecology. Francis warns that if we fail to see the deepest spiritual roots of our problem, we won’t be able to work out how we are to live within creation.

Rather than focusing on rising sea levels or changing weather patterns, Francis asks us to step back and see the larger picture through the lens of how God relates to his creation and to our role as human beings.

‘Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm.’

The globalization and technologization of the world have led us to believe that our relationship to the environment is not a complementary one that is mutually sustaining. Yet Pope Francis reminds us that all of life is bound together in an ‘integral ecology’ and that we live in a vast meshwork of living organisms that sustain and support each other. In an integral ecology these interrelations are fully entwined so as we look to address environmental concerns we also examine our own spiritual health as well as addressing social, economic and political issues in order to build and sustain heathier communities especially for the vulnerable and the poor.

An age of gluttony

To look with new eyes at the environmental crisis, however, humanity must also look within. Over the centuries the Christian tradition has highlighted some of the most destructive habits for human beings. These can have a disastrous impact on us and on those around us. In the church these are sometimes called the ‘seven deadly sins’ which outline the most common ways that human beings end up destroying themselves and the world. One of the sins is gluttony.

Gluttony is often associated with overeating or excess. Though excessive consumption may reflect outward signs of gluttony, the real root of it is connected to our desire for more than we need and a fear that we don’t have enough. Consuming more than we need (out of anxiety or for whatever reason) always comes at the expense of the needs of those around us. When we are driven by gluttony, we forget about our interdependence in the world, in our communities or in our families. Instead, we become consumed with satisfying our own needs and making sure that we have enough.

Rowan Williams sums up the dangers of gluttony by saying that we fail to grasp something fundamental in how we relate to others and to creation. ‘Gluttony, as the spiritual tradition approaches it, is another way of losing touch with our createdness: so much comes back to this. We lose touch with what it is to be a created being, and so lose touch with the basic truth that we are because God is.’ When we forget that we are God’s creation, living within an integrated ecology, we forget how we relate to all living things around us. Losing our idea of being created within God’s creation begins to unveil some of the spiritual roots of the current ecological crisis.

Part of what Pope Francis is saying is that a Christian approach to the environment is one that recognizes the spiritual and ethical implications of our actions in the world. A lack of attention to our spiritual condition can result in the abuse of the poor and the exploitation of the earth. When we fail to recognise God’s presence in each person and in his creation we mask the true problems behind extreme global consumerism that seduce us into wanting more without considering the needs of others.

Francis goes on to write,

‘The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes “a seedbed for collective selfishness”. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume.’

The ecological issues we face today are not problems that can ultimately be solved through technology. They require a change of heart, a change of vision and the ability to see the presence of the divine once again in the world we inhabit.

The re-enchantment of creation

The word ‘re-enchantment’ has seen a recent surge in popular cultural language recently. Indeed, this website uses it to describe its flagship podcast! The word expresses the desire of many to move away from the purely scientific and material approach to the world in order to recapture something that the secular age seems to have lost.

Though the word ‘enchantment’ can often conjure up images of fairies and magical forests, its Christian use is a way to describe how we see God’s divine presence in creation. Both Christians and Jews historically have understood that God inhabits the whole of the cosmos.

This is not some type of pantheism where all things that exist are god. Instead, God’s life and his Spirit sustains all things and brings all life into existence. To see the divine presence in creation is to recognize that the world is not just a material commodity but, rather, as Francis of Assisi understood, it is our companion that sustains us, nurtures us and journeys with us through life.

The re-enchantment of the world has also found its voice through non-Christian environmental approaches that have leaned towards pagan ideas around Gaia. They argue that nature, or Gaia, is something that should be honoured, worshipped and preserved. Philosopher Mary Midgley wrote, ‘The idea of Gaia—of life on earth as a self-sustaining natural system—is not a gratuitous, semi-mystical fantasy. It is a really useful idea, a cure for distortions that spoil our current worldview.’

Though these ideas for creation care move in the right direction, the Christian faith claims that worship should be offered to God alone. To treat the creature as the Creator is a mistake. God is not Gaia. God is the only creator and the creation is filled with his glory.

To see the world through re-enchanted eyes is to see the divine presence radiating through all things—an ocean wave, the sand, soil, trees, streams, birds, insects and animals. All creation breathes with the breath of God. The ancient Israelites understood God’s presence in the wonder of the created world and yet they also saw themselves fully integrated into the life of that world both physically and spiritually. Rather than thinking of God as some eternal entity or ‘thing’ that exists apart from creation, Christian tradition understands that he inhabits his world and sustains all life.

Pope Francis is right—our environmental challenges are not a technological problem to be solved, they’re a spiritual problem that effects all of humanity. Technology can certainly help address some of the issues that we’ve created and move us towards a healthier future, but if we’re serious about an environmental response it needs to include a spiritual change. If we are called to cherish, keep and live in God’s creation, we will first need to change our hearts and our habits. To grow as participants in God’s integral ecology we begin with an understanding of who we are and our inclination towards things like gluttony. Then we can begin to recognise who we are as God’s creatures and how we can live beneficially and generously in our communities, in relation to our neighbour and to the natural world.

Christianity does not offer some ‘heavenly spirituality’ that detaches our lives from the natural world. Instead, it believes in a God who got his hands dirty in the soil of Eden to make human beings. This a God who fashioned his creation and inhabits his creation through his divine presence and his breath of life. This is also a God who inhabited flesh like us in the incarnation. He is a God who brought all things into beings, sustains all things, and invites us to participate and bring hope to a world fully integrated in the peace, justice and mercy of his love.

Article

Culture

Economics

Ethics

Sustainability

3 January 2025

9 min read

Acquisitiveness is the key modern vice

When it comes to consumption, we keep our ethics on a lead.

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

a hand hold a black payment card that reads 'buy'.

Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

“Sell-out!” When I arrived in Seattle around the turn of the century, I was too tardy and too scrupulously Christian to make much of what was left of the fading grunge scene. Still, I had arrived in time to fumble my way through various university dorm room arguments with more musically astute peers about when this or that band had sold out, when they abandoned the authentic homemade purity of their sound for the greater financial rewards of mainstream pop. These bands still traded on their image as rebels and outsiders, but we all knew it was a pose. Even so, we sympathised. Who wouldn’t be tempted by selling-out if the alternative was poverty and virtuous obscurity?

I have been thinking about those conversations recently, not just because Nirvana T-shirts suddenly seem to be everywhere again, but because the other form of ambient idealism circulating in Seattle at that time, techno-utopianism, seems to have reached the end of its own version of selling out. In my decade in Seattle, I learned to scoff at those who didn’t embrace new technologies, dutifully parroting the slogan, “Information wants to be free!” The hackers of my generation had founded companies which were going to remake the corporate world. Many of my friends from university went to work for them. They were excited about building exciting new tools at lower costs, while doing it all with a social conscience. The bosses of these companies were rock stars in T-shirts and jeans, changing the world.

Two decades later, few of us are happy with the world they’ve built. The professions threatened by their innovations started with music and journalism and have now moved on to just about anything that an AI can imitate. Many of those bosses are still in T-shirts and jeans, still pretending to be outsiders, even as their wealth has piled into unimaginable sums. Their continual need for more has led many of them to decide that a social conscience is too expensive a liability to retain. They prioritise profits and share prices above employee well-being and social cohesion. Some demur from taking stands against authoritarian politicians, pretending that such neutrality is a matter of principle and not economic self-interest. Others openly egg on our broken politics, eager to snatch still more spoils from their demise.

What has gone wrong? As an ethicist, my temptation always is to say that if only these bosses were better advised, reminded of the responsibilities of their power, things could change. What is a skilled ethicist if not someone whose rhetoric and erudition can move the hearts of the mighty?

There is one immovable object that all his ethical demolition work could not shift. His king had palaces to build, heretic German princes to bring to heel, and an ancestral homeland to recapture.

At the advent of European colonialism, there was perhaps no more skilled or erudite moral theologian than Francisco de Vitoria. After taking the premiere professorship at the best university in Spain, what was becoming the richest state in Europe, he pioneered legal and ethical theories which reverberate in international and human rights law today. There were few more incisive critics of the self-deceptive rationalisations of his contemporaries and few better placed to have the ear of one of the most powerful rulers of the age, the king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

Today Vitoria is often pointed to as a prophet, someone who drew on his theological expertise and rhetorical acumen to tear apart Spanish justifications for their growing overseas empire. This reputation largely rests on his On the American Indians, a speech he gave in response to the horrific reports of “bloody massacres and of innocent individuals pillaged of their possessions and dominions” which were filtering back to Spain. In it Vitoria does indeed dismantle dozens of quasi-legal entitlements to which the Spanish appealed to justify these actions. By the time he reaches the end of the speech he even seems to be contemplating Spain abandoning the Americas. He says, “The conclusion of this whole dispute appears to be this: that if all these titles were inapplicable…the whole Indian expedition and trade would cease”.

However, when he turns to acknowledging the financial implications of this, he allows that it “would mean a huge loss to the royal exchequer, which would be intolerable.” Here Vitoria concedes that there is one immovable object that all his ethical demolition work could not shift. His king had palaces to build, heretic German princes to bring to heel, and an ancestral homeland to recapture from the French. Money was needed for Charles to play his role as a king among kings, and no ethical quibbles about evil deeds carried out far away could be allowed to impede its flow. After this admission Vitoria sputters to a conclusion with a few unworkable and naive suggestions about how to at least make colonialism marginally less terrible.

If there is a historical parable calculated to drive an ethicist to despair this is it. It shows ethical reflection for what it all too often is, an ineffectual expression of moral anxieties we air and then largely ignore. Our institutions, whether nation-states or companies, make a show of acting ethically, but few of us are fooled. It is a pose. The sorts of ‘ethics’ practised by countries and corporations are strictly those which aren’t a serious threat to the appetites of their leaders for more wealth, power, and security. Like Charles V, they too have peers among whom it is intolerable to contemplate losing status.

These priorities are reflected even among those of us with less stratospheric power or wealth. Many of us worry about the origins of our food, our clothes, and our cheap electronics, having heard stories of labourers spending long hours in fields or cramped sweatshops. We may even buy Fairtrade as a response, but only if the price isn’t too high and if this ‘ethical consumption’ doesn’t mean giving up our middle-class lifestyle.

The ‘ethics’ of our consumption are kept on a convenient lead. They are allowed to nibble around the edges of our consciences, but never to tear into the heart of the way we inhabit the world.

In his work, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that the sorts of goods we pursue can be lumped into two broad categories, goods of effectiveness and goods of excellence. The former are the things like wealth, power, and fame, which can be conferred and even sometimes transferred and which bear little relation to the characters of the people involved. The latter are the sorts of skills and performances, the virtues and virtuosities, which people attain through long and disciplined development.

For MacIntyre, both kinds of goods are necessary, but it matters a great deal which one gets priority. In a society which prioritises goods of effectiveness – such as Vitoria’s, but also, for MacIntyre, most modern societies as well –procedural justice reigns supreme. As long as we didn’t break any rules in getting our money and status or, for that matter, our exciting new clothes or smart speakers, we are in the clear. The problem, as Vitoria’s case demonstrates, is that in such societies even this minimal kind of justice cannot be allowed to block the flow of wealth. So procedural justice winds up being a tamed tiger in the service of the powerful. It is let out of its cage only when convenient – typically to demonise the failings of others. This is not just true of billionaires and politicians. Those of us who are western, middle-class consumers play this game too. The ‘ethics’ of our consumption are kept on a convenient lead. They are allowed to nibble around the edges of our consciences, but never to tear into the heart of the way we inhabit the world.

What would it mean to prioritise goods of excellence? This is one of those questions MacIntyre poses, but does not answer, because he is convinced that in each society it would look different. Each community would need to begin by wrestling with what kinds of people they should be, what excellences they can and should pursue within their communities, and what virtues should be emphasised. Only then should they move on to think about what sorts of wealth or power are necessary to achieve these. Still, it can be frustrating that MacIntyre does not lay out his preferred programme. He offers no ready-made blueprint for a just society.

Of course, neither did Jesus when he counseled his disciples to seek first the kingdom of God, telling them that if they did so the necessities of life, food, drink, and clothes, would be provided. What Jesus meant by the kingdom of God is elusive, now and not yet, hidden and revealed in parable and aphorism. What it was not, however, is clear. It was not a kingdom founded on acquiring earthly power and wealth. In fact, much of the teaching of the gospels can be boiled down to Jesus’ warning about the dangers of prioritising the goods of effectiveness (“Where your treasure is there your heart will be also”, “One thing you lack. Go sell everything you have and give to the poor”, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Not so with you”, “Man does not live on bread alone”, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”) and urging his disciples to embrace the goods of excellence that constitute the kingdom of God.

Understood this way, the reason it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom is that the hunger for riches, wealth, and fame pulls those enamoured with goods of effectiveness away from true fulfillment. There are always more houses to own, new neighbours to impress, and new areas to conquer. Acquisitiveness, MacIntyre reminds his readers, is the characteristic vice of modernity. That many of us, from billionaires down to underpaid academics, habitually think that what is missing from our life is a little more money or fame, is evidence that he’s right.

For Jesus, virtuous obscurity and poverty were preferable to fame. We remember this at every nativity play when we acknowledge that the best God could manage for witnesses to the divine arrival was a hard scrabble group of animal herders and a few foreign astrologers. It is not that Jesus refused to use his abilities or hid away from public notice. However, the public he chose to act among was nestled in a corner of a corner of the empire, far from the rewards offered by the cultured salons of Roman power and privilege. In two of the gospels, Jesus is tempted to sell out. He is offered unimaginable fame and power at the outset of his ministry. He forcefully rejects it. For Jesus, an itinerant life spent ministering to fishermen and farmers was enough.

What would it look like for us to embrace Jesus’s priorities? A place to start would be actually listening to Jesus about practices such as fasting, praying, and the almsgiving. Each of these is an act of resistance against the continual appetite for more and a testimony to an economy of grace that exists beyond all human economies. We also could try preaching in a way that takes seriously the admonitions of Jesus. I have heard numerous sermons about the rich young ruler which include an extended caveat on how maybe it was important for him to sell his possessions, but that doesn’t mean we have to. Maybe not, but shouldn’t those of us who call ourselves Christians, at least be open to God having that radical a call on our life? If our ethics and our faith are not allowed to ask these questions of us, if we have sold out in such a way that the real possibility of them radically disrupting our lives is intolerable to our imagination, what good are they?

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