As a child, I got a good look at the Milky Way for the first time when our family moved to Oregon. In the dark skies above our ranch, the stars and clusters seemed very close. It felt like the earth was part of infinity. Later, when I was living in the Midwest, I remember walking through a cornfield on a very hot, humid, and still evening. The corn was growing so fast that I could hear it crackling. I stopped and listened, surrounded by the fact
of growth.
I’m not alone in having such experiences. There are poems, essays, paintings, and photographs from around the world and through time, that express mankind’s love of our planet earth.
Recent headlines, however, show earth and its inhabitants having considerable trouble: violent storms, wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme heat. Politicians and scientists have been arguing about what to do about it or even what to call it. But there is a growing realization that our relationship to the earth needs to be healed.
The Bible begins with the spiritual account of creation, in which all God has made is not material but spiritual. The first chapter of Genesis tells of God’s creation of light, the firmament, earth, the seas, plants, lights in the firmament, fish and animals, and man. And then it concludes, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (verse 31).
God’s creation expresses God, Spirit. And the spiritual idea of earth is described in the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy this way: “A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end” (p. 585). As a spiritual, eternal idea, the earth is innocent—without any element that can produce or incur destruction. The Glossary definition continues: “To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea.” These two ways of viewing the earth are very different, and the view that we embrace—the material or the spiritual—makes a difference in how we treat the earth.
The sense of earth as material includes a view of the earth as containing both attractive riches and many dangers. Material sense sees humanity in charge of the earth, and not doing a very good job of it—being overwhelmed by the extremes of climate change, and afraid that not enough can, or will, be done about it. It considers the earth in terms of strategic value, accumulation, profit margins, and acceptable or unacceptable losses. And it includes a growing fear that current trends are irreversibly damaging the earth.
It’s obvious that the way we see the earth—through spiritual or material sense—leads to different results.
The spiritual sense of earth sees what the material senses can’t see—God governing His own perfect creation. It understands what Christ Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Spiritual sense sees that God’s will is a law of good and harmony and eternal Life—a law that is just as omnipotent on earth as it is in heaven.
Obviously, spiritual sense and material sense contradict each other, and in reality, only one can be true. It’s also obvious that the way we see the earth—through spiritual or material sense—leads to different results.
This was apparent in a convincing way when Jesus and his disciples were caught in a storm at sea (see Mark 4:35–41). Jesus was sleeping as the storm gathered strength and filled the boat with water. The disciples were afraid their boat would sink, and woke him. Jesus didn’t start bailing water out of the boat—he didn’t have a fearful reaction to what looked like a deadly force of nature. The Bible says that “he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”
To Jesus, the need was for spiritual sense—seeing the spiritual reality of earth as harmonious—and he asked the disciples, “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?”
This authority of a spiritual sense of God’s government was also the basis of Jesus fearlessly facing and healing diseases that people found disturbing, like leprosy, and addressing the urgent need to feed thousands in the wilderness when just five loaves of bread and two small fish were available.
The world is putting a lot of effort into documenting the complexities, carelessness, greed, and national interests that accompany a material sense of earth. But, while this may show the need for course correction, starting from this accounting tends to make even the most honorable negotiations feel thorny and the resulting treaties difficult to establish, execute, and enforce.
Christ Jesus, speaking from spiritual sense, said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27). All through the Bible, the history of Christianity, and the record of healing in Christian Science, when something looks impossible to material sense, it’s not the end of the story, or the end of our prayers. However impossible it seems at any point to material sense to reverse or repair climate-related discords, Christ Jesus has shown us that it is turning from a material sense of earth to spiritual truth that leads the way.
And spiritual truth is not mysterious or unknown to God’s man. It is the path that Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes, in particular, show us how to live in harmony with Spirit. They speak of such things as hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and being meek, pure in heart, merciful, and peacemakers.
Walking in this path is effective activism. Science and Health explains: “Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a mockery of strength, which erelong betrays its weakness and falls, never to rise” (p. 192).
When things seem heartbreaking or desolate, it’s God’s enabling that brings light and understanding to our actions. This divine power makes us all into poets and prophets—spiritual seers of God’s divine creation. Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Our watchwords are Truth and Love; and if we abide in these, they will abound in us, and we shall be one in heart,—one in motive, purpose, pursuit” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 135).
Working together like this—under the dominion of Truth and Love—we’ll see how to take wise actions, correct mistakes, and tenderly help those in need. We’ll find it possible to live harmoniously with our loved earth.
