Silent scream

At the behest of an unrestrained market, we have in just over two centuries depleted goods it took millions of years for nature to accrue. Future generations may look back on us and, mashing up the verb squander and the noun scoundrel, call us something like “squandrels.” In any event, the damage already done by climate change is considerable. Beyond the overwhelming science, we can see with our own eyes the melting ice caps or the ice fishers unable to venture onto Lake Michigan in the winters of 2019 and 2020. Creation is speaking, even shouting now. How much more blessed we will be—cocreatures and coworshippers all, men and women, rocks and trees, dogs and bees—if humans relearn how to hear creation’s voice, not just at a scream, but at a whisper.— Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age,169–70

Back into bondage

Still, many continue to objectify nature and separate humanity from it. And neoliberals in particular, prone to reinterpret everything in terms of the market, are hard put to see nature as anything other or greater than the provider of “natural resources.” Such demeanor inclines one toward the continued exploitation of nature. The “tragic irony” of liberal and neoliberal capitalism is that the very means through which humans sought liberation from the constraints of nature (i.e., fossil-based fuels) is a threat to human and global survival. The effects of air and water pollution, and preeminently the inescapable climate crisis, press upon us all a reconsideration of our heritage.— Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age, 150

A little lower than the…

I would say that the major religious problem today is the systematic liquidation of man's sensitivity to the challenge of God. Let me try to explain that. We cannot understand man in his own terms. Man is not to be understood in the image of nature, in the image of an animal, or in the image of a machine. He has to be understood in terms of a transcendence, and that transcendence is not a passive thing; it is a challenging transcendence. Man is always being challenged; a question is always being asked of him. The moment man disavows the living transcendence, he is contracted; he is reduced to a level on which his distinction as a human being gradually disappears. What makes a man human is his openness to transcendence, which lifts him to a level higher than himself. Overwhelmed by the power he has achieved, man now has the illusion of sovereignty; he has become blind to his own situation, and deaf to the question being asked of him.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 251

<idle musing>
I was reading in Hebrews today, where the author says that humanity was created a little lower than the angels. Today's excerpt from Heschel fits in well here. We have lost site of who we are, what we were created to be. We have become drunk with our own power, little realizing that with power comes responsibility—responsibility for how we use that power, whether for good or ill. Unfortunately, we have largely used that power for ill. And the earth shows it.

But you can't abuse power forever without repercussions. And we are beginning to feel those repercussions in our climate. And in the dissolving of our social networks.

But, like the infamous "cows of Bashan" in the book of Amos, we ignore them. As long as we have full stomachs and entertainment, all is well. Except, just as Amos says, all is not well and at some time the bills will come due.

I pray that God will be merciful!
</idle musing>