Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Ash Wednesday Homily - Fr Kenneth Tanner

This day we mark ashen crosses on our foreheads is a day of remembrance.

We remember three things by this ancient practice, a practice that itself recalls how those in grief would look “ashen” because sorrow kept them from cleansing themselves in a world warmed and lit by fire.

First, we remember that we are made from dust. Our wisdom tells us that when God made the universe, he spoke everything we see into existence from nothing.

When, on the “sixth day,” God made humans, he did not speak us into existence from nothing but handcrafted us in the divine image from the dust of the earth.

The Spirit breathes into lifeless dust and humanity comes alive.

And what a miracle this is. Dust can think. Dust can create. Dust can do justice. Dust can love mercy. Dust can embrace. Dust can love.

Nothing else in the universe bears this image. Not the constellations. Not the oceans. Not the flowers. Not the animals. As remarkable as all things are in their own way, humans alone bear the Imago Dei.

We are dust that builds bridges. We are dust that finds cures for microscopic diseases and spies far-distant planets. We are dust that climbs Everest. We are dust that writes haikus. We are dust that sculpts, paints, and dances, that solves equations that produce microchips and launch satellites into space.

We are dust that brings food from the dust. We are dust that cares for all the woodland, pasture, and desert creatures. We are dust intended to garden and to serve the earth.

There is beauty and strength and courage and ingenuity and stamina in humans.

Yet today we also remember something else about ourselves, something truly tragic about the dust that we are.

This morning I read an account of a female journalist stationed in Beirut who has for several years now covered the nightmare in Syria.

Her story contained a photo of a man holding his twin daughters tight to his chest. The toddlers were strawberry blondes with curly beautiful hair like my grandgirl, Lela.

The father was kneeling with them by an open grave where they were about to bury the girls, inconsolable.

They had died in a  sarin gas attack on their village.

This past week, we learned that a revered human, a human with arguably unique insights into being human, was at times for decades rather inhuman.

There’s credible evidence that Jean Vanier—founder of the L’Arche communities, which have done some of the most beautiful work that we who are dust can do—manipulated and abused several women, and covered up the abuse of many others.

As a spiritual director and leader of healing communities, he used his position and influence to take advantage of and harm women, and this is especially evil because he (and others) taught that these women would experience emotional and sexual healing by having sex with him (them).

So we remember today that we are dust that has walked away from the Love that is God, the Love that made us and the Love in which we were made. We are dust that now must return to dust.

We are dust that is infected with death.

I am infected. You are infected.

Our crimes may not look like the horrific murders carried out by the Syrian government or feel like the sexual and emotional abuse of a beloved spiritual authority, but when we inventory our minds, search our hearts, and examine our deeds, if we are honest and patient, we know (or come to know) ourselves as fractured vessels of dust.

Here now is the final startling thing we remember on Ash Wednesday: despite all our crimes God becomes dust to rescue us dusty ones from death.

God so identifies with the dust that he makes human—dust that in the beginning, he makes very good, dust on which he imprints his image and likeness, dust into which he breathes his life—that he forever becomes human, not for a moment but for always.

This is a radical thing that God does.

Against every charge that dark accusing spirits make opposing humanity, against our truly epic record of wrongs, against collective human rejection of all that is human (even our wish to escape our humanity), against our own whispering accusations of ourselves, God from love becomes dust in order to rescue a humanity inexorably returning to dust from remaining in death.

Ponder this: How could God hate what God is, for God is now forever human in Jesus Christ.

He hates nothing that he has made, as the Ash Wednesday collect reminds us, but he also cannot become that which he hates. God loves what God becomes and God becomes what God loves.

Ponder also this: how could humanity as created be anything but good for God cannot become what is inherently evil.

We have done evil, to be sure, and we continue to do evil, but that is not the end of the human story.

Like the Father in the story Jesus tells, God waits along the path to the kingdom on every morning of the world, ready to run toward every human child who returns to him, for in his kindness he desires and loves us even before we repent, even while we are yet on the lam.

And in the Son the Father’s running toward us looks like a human, slowly and painfully carrying a cross to the place of the skull.

God becomes dust. And in the walking, talking dust that is Jesus Christ, the human God, God shows us what it means to be human and what it means to be God.

Jesus shows us that what it means to be human and that what it means to be God is to die for the world that God loves and for the humanity that God loves—every last human.

It is not enough to be conceived in the womb of the virgin. It is is not enough to live in constant faithful communion with God. It is not enough to suffer. In order to become human God must die. In order to become human we must die.

The good news of Ash Wednesday is that when the human God dies death itself begins to work backwards. By death God defeats the evil of death, the last enemy of the human who is God, and converts it (as only God can) into an unqualified good, a door to eternal life.

So hear now how these words—“Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return”—are suffused with meaning, meaning we have not considered, meaning that makes a real difference.

God made us good in the image of his beauty from dust.

In our failure to love we are bound by death to return to dust.

So God becomes dust to rescue us from death that we like Jesus might become human forever by dying for the world that God loves, that we like the transfigured Jesus might forever shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

A homily for Ash Wednesday, 2020

What is it about waves? Sarah Van Diest

What is it about waves?

As it is when reading the bible, or any piece of literature; as it is when studying mathematics; or as it is when examining the universe, etc., one must look for patterns and, upon finding them, ponder their significance. A pattern I’ve wondered about for many years is the structural formation called a wave. Waves exist in many forms and are a universal language of creation. Search any realm of existence and you will find them.

To say we are surrounded by waves is an understatement. We owe our lives to the ongoing movement of waves as they act in the form of gravity to keep our planet in line with all the other bodies in our solar system. They are significant to the sustainment of life in the form of light waves, sound waves, radio waves, etc. Biology comes to life through waves as hearts rhythmically pump blood, and the cycles of healing and regeneration take place; and of course, our earth experiences the wave-like, forward and back, forward and back again seasons of growth, death, and rebirth. Waves act upon matter in our universe to move and support it, and they are the means by which all life comes.  

But waves are not just observed in the physical aspect of our universe. If we refocus the eyes of our minds and look at how mankind experiences life, we will see a different presentation of waves: History undulates with great rises and falls of civilizations, economies, and nations; ideas and discoveries invade in waves in science, religion, philosophy, and art engulfing and overtaking the old ways and christening the new; and great movements in hearts, in minds, and in peoples surge in waves, crashing in and breaking through the boundaries of established powers, changing the course of humanity.  

The wave is a structure and manner of behavior that permeates creation invading every portion of it.

We may stand and be measured quite small in the totality of the universe, seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme, but we are here. We do exist, and we are watchers, feelers, participators, and askers. We want to know and be known, and for whatever reason, we are captivated by waves. Whether we are mesmerized by the ocean, hypnotized by the flickering waves of a campfire, or entranced by the inevitable patterns that emerge from chaos, we are rapt observers. Drawn to waves and at peace with their cyclical nature, something in us knows them intimately, creating the feeling they play some foundational role in our existence; that they are somehow fundamental to all that is.

Perhaps it is God whom our small eyes see when waves roll through our lives and through the universe. Perhaps we recognize him, our Creator, through the somewhat distorted vision field of our experience. We stare into the waves of our lives and those of the universe as if recognition is almost there; as if another minute looking into them will reveal something we remember from a time before time; as if our brains’ waves are syncing up with the original Wave-Maker and keep time with his motion.

Perhaps in spite of our smallness, he wanted us to see the patterns, ponder them, and see him.

Has there ever been a conscious human on this planet who has not sensed this call? Has there ever been one who has not, in some fashion, related to the idea that he is part of something greater than himself; that he may be small and yet the waves of life call him? The whole of creation is laid out for us all to see. The patterns rise up showing us something beautiful, and we are entranced and enthralled. We may not all find it within our constructs or systems to call him Creator and God, but we can still see what has been made. For me, he has shown himself to be the Wave-Maker who makes all things, who is the giver of life, and who draws all to himself; and I wonder if the great waves of the universe are the ripples from the very heartbeat of God pulsing life into existence.

What if that were true? What if God’s heart is the beating pulse that causes all waves in the universe to exist? Then he IS existence. He IS the very power that holds all that has ever existed together. What if every wave – every sound wave, gravitational wave, light wave through space, wave of history, art, science, and time is a ripple caused by the heartbeat of God reverberating throughout the universe coursing with his power and animating all?

I don’t know about you, but I like that thought.

I like the idea that God’s heart is that life-giving beat. And I like the thought that he wanted us little ones to see his work and its patterns, to recognize how it resonates with us, to feel the call, and to know him. I like the idea that he made it all so grand and awe-inspiring… for us. Call me egocentric or anthropocentric, whatever, but I think it’s pretty cool.

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” Colossians 1:16-17.

 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” Romans 1:20.

Jordan Peterson Phase 3: The Books about Him - Paul VanderKlay & Ron Dart

Plato, Platinga & Paul - Toward Christian Knowing - Brad Jersak

Pursuing LGBTQ+ Justice in the Church - Wendy Gritter

Twenty Years of Church Stalking

I’ve been observing the dynamics of churches in Canada in the LGBTQ+ conversation for more than two decades. It has been a time of significant evolution with interesting thresholds along the way.

Note: What follows are general observations. I acknowledge that there are exceptions to everything I describe below both in terms of churches and their approach and LGBTQ+ folks and their journeys, priorities, and expectations. This blog is meant to offer a broad-stroke overview.

One of the first threshold moments during my time of observation was during the public debate about marriage equality. On one hand, you had Rev. Brent Hawkes, then pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, leading the charge as a high profile activist, and on the other hand, you had pages of petitions and busloads of protestors streaming out of Evangelical churches in resistance to opening the benefits of marriage to those outside the heterosexual majority.

When marriage equality passed in 2005, many Evangelical churches hunkered down to protect themselves from this new civil reality. The trend was to adopt painstakingly clear statements on marriage to avoid any situation of a church rental scandal refusing LGBTQ+ people the right to use their buildings. Denominations put together committees to write laboriously long statements on marriage and sexuality and give crystal clear boundaries to their clergy and leaders. Stakes were planted, lines drawn, and self-protection maintained. The polarity between affirming churches, eagerly officiating marriage ceremonies for LGBTQ+ people, and those opposed, could not have been more stark.

Relationships Pave the Way

In the mid-2000s another threshold emerged. As social visibility of LGBTQ+ people increased, more and more church people developed relationships with co-workers, neighbours, and family members who were out as LGBTQ+ and living lives that didn’t seem all that different than their straight counterparts. In the context of relationship, caricatures of queer people were crumbling and many church leaders struggled with how to engage the LGBTQ+ folks within the relational networks of their congregation. Additionally, parents with LGBTQ+ kids, who in earlier years may have been fairly quiet, became more visible and vocal in the effort to make their churches safer places.

The Church’s Image Problem

In 2012, the book, unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Matters revealed that 91% of 16–29 year-olds outside of the church perceived Christians to be anti-gay. More than 80% of that same age demographic within the church felt the same way. Clearly, Evangelical Christianity had some work to do if they wanted to offer faithful witness to a God who defines themselves as love and Jesus the rabbi who consistently engaged those on the social margins.

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The Collapsing Cosmos, Part 2: Tolkien, the Rabbit, and the Redeemer - Lisa Warden

As bushfires raged in Australia, viewers around the globe watched with trepidation the news story of a shirtless woman in sandals running toward a badly burnt koala clinging to a tree. The koala had just scrambled through the burning brush trying to escape the inferno. The woman, who’d taken off her shirt to wrap around the wounded creature, carried him to safety, doused him with bottled water, wrapped his bloodied body in a blanket, and drove him to a vet hospital. A collective cheer rose in all of us upon witnessing the heroic triumph.

Two years ago, a similar wave of celebration circled the globe during the devastating fires in southern California. Harrowing footage showed a young man at the edge of a highway saving a rabbit from certain death in a massive wall of fire.

The rescue of the rabbit and the koala affect us so deeply because they portray something we all long for – a happy ending. That we find these tales of rescue so gripping implies that we identify, at least on some level, with the creatures caught in the grip of impending catastrophe. We experience vicariously their fear, feeling it in our very bodies as our adrenaline spikes and our hearts pound. When the longed-for rescue at last takes place, we burst with relief, and then joy.

J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, had a term for that moment of triumph. He called it “eucatastrophe” – the point in a story at which certain disaster is overcome and its would-be victims delivered. That momentous instant, when good triumphs over evil, imparts to the reader profound joy: a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears. Happy endings were important for Tolkien, and he endeavoured to provide them to his readers.

The Bible, too, is dotted with dramatic, triumphant rescues – happy endings involving humans, animals, and a prototype redeemer who saves them from overpowering elements, then brings them to a place of safety and new beginnings. Noah saves his family and an ark-load of animals from the global deluge that wipes out the wicked of the earth. They emerge atop Mt. Ararat, from whence human and animal life begins anew.

Moses saves the Israelites from the murderous Pharaoh, guides them through the Red Sea to solid ground on the other side, and leads them on the quest for the Promised Land. And the animals? Yes, they’re there too. One of my favourite lines in the plague sequence comes after the ninth plague, when Pharaoh agrees the Israelites can leave, but tries to guarantee their return by forcing them to leave their animals behind. Not one hoof shall be left behind! answers Moses (Exodus 10.26).

Likewise, Joshua, Moses’ replacement, miraculously leads the Israelites – the men, their wives, their little ones, and the flocks of each tribe – through the Jordan and into the Promised Land.

These rescues are prototype redemptions, and they don’t end with the Bible. The woman saving the koala, the young man saving the rabbit, and the many other stories of heroic rescue that move us so deeply demonstrate that the archetypal redemption narrative repeats itself over and over again in real life. As Karen Armstrong said in the quote with which I opened part one of The Collapsing Cosmos, traditionally, a myth expressed a timeless truth that, in some sense, happened once, but which also happens all the time.

What is the timeless truth to which these recurring prototype redemptions point us?

According to the Scriptures, all of creation, including each of us, yearns for redemption. Why? Because we, like the imperiled koala and rabbit in the face of devouring flames, need it.

The 19^th century Catholic cardinal, John Henry Newman, considered that humanity had been implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity, a vast primordial catastrophe that knocked the creation out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. Barring a profound, cosmos-wide rescue, that “primordial catastrophe” set us on an inexorable path to destruction, just like the koala and the rabbit, had their respective redeemers not intervened.

If we are in the position of the rabbit in the news clip, headed straight for an apocalyptic demise – in our case, both spiritually and physically – then clearly, like characters in a Tolkien novel, we stand in need of rescue.

The good news is that there is rescue, and it, too, sounds like a story from a Tolkien novel. The rescuer is the Creator himself, who, out of devotion to his creation, assumed the form of one of us, and took the entirety of the “primordial catastrophe” of human failure upon himself, that we might be released from its terminal consequences. Tolkien thought of the story of Jesus Christ as a fantasy tale, with one crucial difference: he believed the gospel of Jesus Christ as rescuer-redeemer to be true. It was, he said, a story that has entered History and the primary world. (…) The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history, he explained.

The rescuer, arms outstretched, stands between the rabbit and the abyss, offering to save her. The rabbit surrendered to the rescuer’s mercy and found life in his arms. Will we?

 

“Christian … School … Teachers … Not a Hope in Hell” by Brad Jersak

“Christian … School … Teachers … Not a Hope in Hell”

 

 

While on tour in New Zealand, Helen Pearson (the principal) invited me to facilitate a discussion with her teachers as they prepare for their upcoming term at Horizon School in Snells Beach. When I messaged my wife back home about the day event, she responded with a brief text: “Christian … School … Teachers … Not a Hope in Hell.” 

 

Eden graduated from a Christian school in Canada almost 40 years ago and while she did have a very good experience, we nevertheless chose not to enroll our children in Christian schools, and we have no regrets about that decision. So, you can imagine that we were both a bit dubious about how I’d do in that environment. 

 

Spoiler alert: I loved it. And I want to describe why Horizon’s approach appealed to me because I see them as an example for others to follow. Here’s what I saw:

 

Constructivism with a Centre

 

I’ve long forgotten much of what I learned in my brief forays into philosophy of education. I don’t recall ever hearing “constructivist with a centre.” It may not have existed in Christian schools in those old days. But I’ve done a little research and by way of explanation, we might contrast two philosophies: foundationalism and constructivism. 

 

First, what I’ll call “foundationalist Christian education” typically trains children “principles and guidelines gleaned from the Bible [and] cast into a coherent and all-embracing theory that is deterministically applied to ensure certain pedagogical outcomes” (Van der Walt, “Education from a Post-Post Foundationalist Perspective…”).   

 

By contrast, one Canadian school board site describes “constructivist education” this way: “Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning occurs as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction as opposed to passively receiving information. Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge.”

 

What I observed at Horizon was what Carl Becker, a Christian education consultant in New Zealand, describes as “constructivism with a center.” That is, Horizon avoids stereotypical top-down indoctrination wherein children are told what they must believe and how they must think. If that sounds harsh, I can assure readers I’m only sparing you the current cringe-stories I’m hearing through parents involved in several other Christian schools.  

 

But neither does Horizon hold that truth and meaning are entirely human constructs. They believe in the reality of a centre around which discovery and meaning-making occur. From my observations and perspective, Horizon’s centre is the student and a God who loves them and is embodied in their teachers.  

 

Experiential Education 

 

Based on this conviction, Horizon’s constructivist flow occurs in beautiful open classrooms with teaching partners who collaborate to facilitate experiences that incite wonder, encourage exploration, allow for discovery and inspire creativity. 

 

God’s nature is best revealed by personal discovery and direct encounters with the beauty of our world rather than by rote learning of inherited “biblical truth” and an unhealthy dose of moralism. The students are far more apt, in my opinion, to overcome the old, “How do I get this from my head to my heart?” dilemma when truth is experienced and enters their minds via all five senses and processed in relationship with fellow students, creative instructors and the world around them.     

 

Christian Love

 

I think we’ve learned from the history of private Christian schooling (and Christians in general), that identifying with the label “Christian” means virtually nothing. Signing off on an institution's doctrinal statement does not a “Christian disciple” make. “On that day, many will say, Lord, Lord…,” etc., etc.  

 

So, I asked the teachers, “What is it to BE Christian teachers in the classroom?” Again and again, the teachers spoke about seeing their children through God’s eyes as individuals to be treasured. And they saw the importance of embodying that loving gaze for their students, particularly in moments of classroom tension when the teacher’s response becomes the major lesson. One teacher spoke about her willingness to acknowledge poor responses and ask the children involved for forgiveness. 

 

Further, contrary to much popular Christian curriculum, the children at Horizon are taught that God is Love and that every one of them is a unique and precious gem. That should be a no-brainer, but I think of a friend of mine who had to pull her elementary school child from a school where the Reformed foundationalism taught first-year children, “Your hearts are dark” and that “God punished Jesus for your sins.” Do you see why I might prefer my kids to learn in a secular humanist institution? At least I wouldn’t have to unteach them 16th-century heresies that produce atheists. 

 

Not so at Horizon, Helen told me that her hope is that each child would remember through real experience the constellation of these words: Horizon, God and Love as their primary takeaways. And that’s something I could endorse.   

Book Review: Dart and Packer, "Christianity and Pluralism" - by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Christianity and Pluralism, Ron Dart and J. I. Packer, Lexham Press, 2019; 70 pages. 

Wayne Northey: This brief missive offers much to consider and chew on.

In this reviewer’s experience, there is none so fundamentalist as one who has grown to reject what once was held near and dear. (Not of course, that such rejection automatically predisposes one to fundamentalism.) I have lived for decades with not a few in my extended family. Dart writes again in the new Preface:

It is not very liberal of a liberal not to critique liberalism. But many liberals seem unable to question their blind spots—such is the nature of ideology. They signal openness to the legitimate nature of alternate readings of timely and timeless issues, yet they are actually closed to such. (p. ix)

Though one must feel for those genuinely harmed or worse by religious fundamentalists—or any kind of such. A sordid business. Dart ends the Preface with this sentence:

Pluralism and syncretism can be as exclusivist as any of the positions they rail against as being exclusive.(p. ix)

I reflect in part on my experience of this within our extended family on my website post, Easter Song.

Chapter 1 begins with a review of Ingham’s book by Dart. Ron welcomes the issues raised by Ingham, which of course in the twenty-first century are pressing on any faith tradition new or old the world over. There are ten points Dart adduces, hoping that “these questions will nudge the issues raised in Mansions of the Spirit to a deeper level and enrich the meaning of dialogue.” (p. 2)

Irenic throughout, Ron concludes on a personal note:

As someone who has been taught and nurtured by the radical Anglo-Catholics, I find that Mansions of the Spirit lacks a rigorous mystical theology, a radical politics, and a high Christology-ecclesiology. I think, without such a full vision of what Christianity has been, is, and ever shall be, inter-faith dialogue will lack a certain depth and challenging honesty. (p. 8)

Before Christmas I was at a gathering of mainly Anglicans to celebrate a vicar’s birthday. In conversation with a former rector attending St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Abbotsford, as we began chatting he mentioned that Church. I asked for clarification as to which he meant, since there had been a Church split several years ago over in part the direction Bishop Ingham had taken the diocese. The sharp retort was that there is only one real Anglican Church in Abbotsford by that name; that he didn’t know “whatever else” the other was. In that I joined Sons of the Holy Cross, a men’s Order through induction by that “whatever-else” Church of which Ron Dart is a member, I felt taken aback. I of course know of no back story to his comments. But I know the Anglican Tradition (and that Church) enough to know it has charitably housed not a few disparate expressions of faith over 2,000 plus years, of which the “whatever-else” Church is as authentically Anglican as any other. In my experience, fundamentalists of whatever stripe seem lacking in embrace of charitable dialogue. The former rector in that brief encounter seemed not interested in such dialogue . . . thus adding one more fundamentalist instance to my experience.

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The Collapsing Cosmos: What’s Pharaoh Got to do With it? Lisa Warden

“Traditionally, a myth expressed a timeless truth that, in some sense, happened once, but which also happens all the time.” Karen Armstrong, Recovering the Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts.

Apocalyptic fires, erupting volcanoes, killer storms, devastating floods, voracious locust hordes, powerful earthquakes, mass animal extinctions, and a killer pandemic claiming more victims by the day… It’s as if we’re back in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh as the famous series of catastrophic plagues unfolds, ravages Egyptian society, and leads to its ruin. It seems a good time to ask whether the plague narrative has anything to say about why they occurred.

First, a brief look at those plagues. In the first one, found in chapter seven of the book of Exodus, the water of the Nile is turned to blood. All the marine life dies, and the stench of blood and rotting fish fill the air. You may remember that eight decades prior, at the time of the birth of Moses, then-Pharaoh ordered all the male Hebrew babies to be killed. They were cast into the Nile and drowned. Those sins are now catching up with Egypt. The water they depend on for life turns to blood, as with the blood of the murdered infants. This first plague heralds the start of a series of catastrophes that leads to the collapse of Egyptian society.

As the plagues unfold from blood to frogs to gnats to flies to the death of livestock, hail, locusts, and finally darkness, and the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh’s heart is repeatedly hardened – most of the time by Pharaoh himself, and three times by God. At each instance, Pharaoh persists in his refusal to set the Israelite slaves free. As a result, he brings disaster upon himself and his society. As this repeated hardening against what are essentially opportunities for mercy unfolds, Egyptian society and the creation itself – the land, the water, the air, and the animals – reap the bitter consequences of sin and evil. Could this be what is happening in our natural world today? Are the systems that sustain life are collapsing under the weight of evil and unbridled human self-indulgence? Are the catastrophic weather and geological events, the apocalyptic natural disasters, the mass extinctions and epidemics symptoms of the creation staggering under the weight of humanity’s accumulated sin?

The Scriptures indicate that the creation indeed suffers as a result of human sin. The prophet Jeremiah asks How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither? For the evil of those who dwell in it the beasts and the birds are swept away (Jeremiah 12.4). Another Old Testament prophet, Hosea, says the same thing, that the disappearance of the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and of the fish of the sea occurs a direct consequence of sin and evil (Hosea 4.3). Jeremiah continues: they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it a desolation; desolate, it mourns to me (Jeremiah 12.11). The Creator hears the cries of his creatures and his creation as it suffers under the burden of humanity’s sin. And in the book of Leviticus, we’re told what happens when a society’s sins reach their culmination: the land became unclean so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants (Leviticus 18.25).

Throughout biblical history there are examples of civilizations collapsing, getting “vomited out”, and their empires being made desolate – human society before the Flood, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Medes & Persians, the Romans, the Jews – as all these people groups, in their free will, chose to defy the laws set in place by the Creator for the flourishing of life and instead set their own course. Is this to be our fate as well?

Something that’s fascinating about the plague sequence in the book of Exodus is that it mirrors the creation sequence of the first book of Genesis. Both of them unfold in patterns of threes. This is not simply groovy trivia. It demonstrates that the way we choose to live has a profound impact on the course of the creation – which is precisely what happens in the case of the Egyptians and the plagues.

In the creation account in Genesis 1, God declares a realm into existence – for example, “Let there be light.” He splits it into two realms – day and night. Then he fills each realm. In this case, he fills the day with the sun and night with the moon and the luminaries of the heavens. He proceeds in the same manner – one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three – as if he’s composing a grand cosmic symphony, as he creates the heavens, the earth, the land, the sea, and all that fills them. It’s a cycle of ever abounding and flourishing life.

In the account of the plagues, we see this same structure based on threes, marked by whether the plague in question is initiated by Aaron’s staff or Moses’s staff (three times each), whether a warning is given at all (no warning with three of the plagues), or whether the warning is given at the Palace or at the Nile (three times each). In the case of the plagues, instead of a life-abounding spiral, however, it’s a spiral of self-destruction. Creation collapses in upon itself in a domino effect, in a process theologians call “de-creation”. Rather than a cycle of ever-abounding life, we have this ominous symphony that ends in darkness and death.

The amazing thing is that we mere creatures of dust have a repeated and sustained impact on the grand cosmic processes that affect the entire creation. The choices we make determine whether the creation flourishes or collapses. Ultimately, the creation comes to collect on every debt we incur against it. We can recognize the error of our ways, repent, and change course. Or, like Pharaoh, we can double down in our intransigence, deny our transgressions, and force the entire creation to reap the consequences. The choice is ours.