All I Want for Christmas is Pantheism?!
There are, no doubt, serious concerns about the health of our planet’s ecosystem. From ongoing pollution to global warming (the scientific kind, not the alarmist kind) we struggle with being good steward’s of God’s creation. And all too often – paraphrasing Joni Mitchell – we don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone. But we are always thankful to God for His creation and its many blessings and its pure beauty, even if we don’t always treat it as we should.
Lately, though, with events in Copenhagen, “Climategate” e-mails, and even movies like “Avatar”, we see a disturbing trend towards people worshiping creation rather than the Creator. This is pantheism, the idea that God and nature are one, a spiritual movement that calls us into communion with the universe. This has been a popular idea for years, especially the ‘pantheism lite’ of Hollywood in which spirituality is really nothing more than political correctness and leftist enviro-orthodoxy without any real commitments. Personal obligations regarding holiness, morality, and ethics are set aside in favor of groupthink about our planet.
I would like to argue that all Christians are responsible for the care and stewardship of our planet – with the understanding that reasonable people may differ on how best to carry them out – precisely because God loves us and His Creation. But we must never confuse the object of our worhip – Christ the King and the Trinity – with earth. We should be getting to work now on transforming the world and our culture with and through the power of the Holy Spirit before Christ comes again and ushers in His new creation. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from Heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 21:1-2)
Ross Douthat has an excellent column on “Avatar” and Hollywood’s pantheism in the New York Times, of all places:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html?_r=3
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