Without a doubt, the funniest thing that happened at my anarcho-primitivist conference I went to was when a very earnest young lady urged us with the utmost sincerity to… talk to plants. I stifled a laugh (only half-successfully), and thanked God that none of my friends back home were there with me, ’cause that comment alone would’ve automatically discredited whatever else was said. I mean, let’s be honest here, the only people who really care about the earth that much are loony hippies, crazy science teachers, and politicians with faulty science and a not-so-hidden political agenda nursing their grudges. However, I have (over the past couple of years) been learning to re-examine my relationship with the earth, and what God has to say about it. I’m not quite at the Tom Bombadil-stage, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be. But I am learning.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a research paper on global warming. I went into my assignment, planning on disproving what I deemed to be, “a bunch of fear-mongering”. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the environment. I did. It was just that I always associated climate change with the likes of Y2K- 95% rubbish. This task proved to be harder than I anticipated. There was much more evidence pointing to global warming than not. A year later, I did a research paper on Lake Erie and water-pollution. It was scary. In short, all of my scientific education revealed to me this fact: mankind has essentially raped the earth.
Environmentalism is at the heart of anarcho-primitivism. The vast majority of scientists agree, that unless something changes, we’re all gonna be in a rude awakening sometime in the not-so-distant future (some people say ten years, other people say fifty, and others not quite twice that). Regardless of the controversy surrounding global warming, it is evident that oceans are dying, forests are being chopped down faster than they’re growing, the human population is multiplying faster than civilization can sustain, ice caps are melting, and oil reserves are running low. Unless something changes drastically we’ll be facing problems we won’t know how to deal with, or that simply can’t be dealt with.
I don’t feel any need to talk a whole lot about the specifics regarding how man’s exploitation of the earth has increased over the years. I think it’s pretty obvious. At the conference they showed clips from the movie, Home. I just watched all of it online. If you can get past the typical faults of the evolution background they give in the beginning (it states theory as fact), and get past the cheesy-voice over and melodrama, the movie has some really good points, and some really scary facts, (scary facts like the fact that 40% of arable land has been damaged, 13 million hectars of forests disappear per year, species are dying 1000 times faster than natural, 3 quarters of fishing grounds are depleted or are near depletion, etc.) (Also the film has beautiful cinematography.) To briefly sum up the over all point of the film- all of creation is interconnected, and humans have falsely assumed that we can do whatever we want with the earth without facing any serious consequences. It is now staggeringly evident that we were wrong.
All right, let’s rewind a bit to the start of the present crisis. From what I understand, anarcho-primitivism says that things started to get bad with the agricultural revolution, (note: horticulture and agriculture aren’t the same thing). Agriculture introduced civilization, and with it, the ills of civilization. Problems like social stratification, coercion and alienation, the idea that land is ours to own, thus ours to exploit and ours to fight over, money

and debt, health problems, etc. Now, I am not romantic enough to think that prior to the agricultural-revolution everything was fine and dandy, like the anarcho primtivists do. Nor would I be so pretentious as to declare that civilization as we know it was a complete mistake. Nevertheless, I think all of anarcho-primitivism’s criticisms of civilization are valid.
Today we see scientists reaching the zenith of human advancement- genetically altering plants and animals to manufacture products for human consumption. This is the epitome of a primitivist’s critique of civilization. What is seemingly a great “advancement” has numerous unforeseen or ignored complications that all laugh at “progress”. Biogenetic engineering is a consumerist scientific “accomplishment” that has led to the extinction of much food variety and a dramatic increase in health problems in both animals and humans. This Green Revolution is merely another step in the backward progress that began with the Agricultural Revolution and then continued with the Industrial Revolution. Of course our society has shaped itself around this basic system of supplying food, thus what cracks are in the foundation only proliferate in other aspects of our social structure. We can keep putting band-aids on the bruises, or we could do something about what’s causing the problems, (or both). Either way, we can’t continue as we are. And man’s relationship with the earth is at the heart of all the problems we face today.
About a year ago I was at a youth bible-study where they were preaching dominion theology. I walked away rather… agitated. The pastor-guy was leading the group in cracking jokes about going after Satan and his evil dominion with our spiritual machine-guns. Maybe it was just my pacifist side reacting, but in my mind this pastor was quite possibly the biggest idiot I’d seen yet to hold a Bible, and I was extremely disturbed about the views he was indoctrinating all these kids with. There’s a whole lot about what this guy was talking about that bothered me, not the least of which was the fact that if Satan’s power is as much of a reality as this guy was preaching, it
definitely is not something that should be taken lightly. Furthermore, he was basically brainwashing everyone into the Christian-warrior phenomena depicted in Jesus Camp. (On a side note, the christianity being preached in this bible study was exactly what I was talking about in my last post- believing christians should be trained as spirit-filled American patriots off to conquer whatever.) Anyways, I suspect dominion theology is possibly responsible for the absurd fact that Christians have been among the first to dismiss “environmentalism”. To exploit the the earth. In fact, many dominion-ists believe that the destruction of the earth is actually a good thing. They believe the destruction of the environment is prerequisite for Jesus’ return, so we should, by all means, hurry the process, as it were. Again, going back to my last post, American Christianity twisted the Bible with Manifest Destiny to go and conquer the wild west. Today, groups like “Wise Us” continue to use dominion theology to exploit and seek political power. Apparently these days, a christian steward is to declare all environmentalists as dangerous liberals and new-age unitarians, and to continue to explore way that we might continue to use the earth with selfish recklessness. Christianity has failed with its responsibility toward the earth. We should be the first to care, not the first to dismiss.
The Bible is no stranger to environmentalism. All of the environmental issues we face today could have been and could still be avoided, were it not for our disobedience and blindness towards the truth. There are several biblical reasons to make a conscious effort to be in proper community with God’s creation.
1. God said that the earth and everything He made was good.
2. Not only did He say it was good, He said that all of nature was created for the worship of God, thus our destruction of nature impacts God’s due honor.
“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)
3. We are commanded to care for the earth.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15)
4. There are commandments and warnings about exploiting the earth.
“Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.” (Leviticus 25:5)
4. God cares for the earth, thus our exploitation of the earth undermines His providence.
“He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-bringing forth food from the earth.” (Psalm 104:10-14)
5. God is in solidarity with nature. Abusing the earth is abusing that which is His.
6. All exploitation of the earth is done out of greed and selfishness.
“Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?” (Ezekiel 34:17-18)
“Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land. The LORD almighty has declared in my hearing: ‘Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants. A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath of wine, a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.’” (Isaiah 5:8-10)
7. I believe humanity to be a part of Creation- not separate.
8. God gets pissed when we defile His land.
“You shall not pollute the land in which you live…. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites.” (Numbers 35:33-34)
“If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?” (Deuteronomy 20:19)
“I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.” (Jeremiah 2:7)
“You must keep my decrees and my laws…. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” (Leviticus 18:26, 28)
9. There are consequences for our irresponsibility.
“There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.” (Hosea 4:1-3)
“You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come.” (Jeremiah 3:2-3)
“The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great-and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” (Revelation 11:18)
And finally, 10. God intended man to have perfect communion with the earth. Such a relationship was manifested in Eden and will come about again.
“Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20; cf. Ephesians 1:10)
So in conclusion, it’s time for Christians to start getting green. For those of you who’ve been following this series of posts and who are probably wondering- in the concluding post I will be doing (which will probably not be the next one, but the one after that), I will talk a bit about what we can do differently with our lives in practical terms, in reaction to all the things I’ve been talking about, both on the individual level and the communal level.