Respect for Creation

Jurgen Möltmann is a great theologian who took the lead on many theological issues. He wrote one of the first books on the theology of creation that speaks of the spirituality of care for the earth in contemporary terms. His approach is simple. He believes that what we have to do is consider the old life laws as found in the first book of the Bible. One law he would like to see restored is the Sabbath law, not only to guarantee every human being, every animal, and every plant a seventh day of rest, but also to guarantee such a rest to the land every seventh year.

We desperately need that kind of respect for ourselves, for others, for all that is alive and gives life, to begin to offset the ecological disasters we have allowed. A seventh day of rest, a simpler life, another order of priorities.

Another theologian who stressed this point not so long ago is Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus Annus. He writes that every worker has a right to that rest, not only to obtain the leisure it provides, but also because it gives us the time to reflect on who we are, on how we relate to the world and to God, the source of it all. John Paul wonders whether that human right is sufficiently respected in our industrialized societies.

Maybe it is through our ever-growing respect for animals and plants, the water and the sky, that we might rediscover a greater respect for ourselves, for our own human environment.

Wasn’t it said and written that we should learn from the creation around us?

(From the CD material, Entering the Lectionary.)