Spirit in Action

Professor Calvin DeWitt - Evangelicals and The Environment

Professor Dewitt dwells comfortably, even passionately, in two worlds that many see as inconsistent. Cal is a Professor of Environmental Studies, teaching Environmental Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. I speaks - and acts - on the Evangelicals & the Environmental, and on the spiritual journey of John Muir.

Broadcast on:: 22 Apr 2007
Audio Format:: other

I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am out and out is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give, and they give, the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you all will be done The enders have I none to help and die The tangle knocks and twists to chase the strength of your full mind Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love, and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open peoples eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind My guest today for Spirit in Action is Calvin DeWitt. Cal is a professor of Environmental Studies, teaching Environmental Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison As part of the Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, he is also an Evangelical Christian He comfortably wears both hats of scientists and Evangelical Christian and is able to act as a bridge and interpreter between the two worlds, two worlds often mistrustful of one another He was a lead organizer for the Climate Forum 2002 and was recently part of a collaboration between the National Association of Evangelicals and the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School And he'll talk today about the joint conclusions they reached and the urgent call to action that they produced And for icing on the cake, Cal also speaks on John Muir, well-known saint of the Environmental Movement Cal will share today a bit of John Muir's background, which is often ignored, his deep, biblical, and spiritual roots Cal, thanks for joining me today for Spirit in Action You're welcome, nice to be with you, Mark I caught news of you because of some talks you were giving down there in the Madison area One on John Muir's spiritual journey and the other one about Evangelicals and Scientists and intrigued me and excited me And so I just wonder what's your background, how do you get connected with all this stuff? Yeah, well, I'm an environmental scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison I am part of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies where I'm a professor It's that institute that I do most of my science in and also do some work there in environmental ethics In addition to that, I am a member of Geneva Campus Church and have been involved in work in Christianity and in faith for all my life, which has been really fully integrated with my study of science So my background and interest is to keep science and theology or faith and science together as an integrative whole I have had a lot of theological education through my attending Calvin College but also being brought up in a very rich educational environment But I also have my PhD in Zoology from the University of Michigan So that's something of my background I'm afraid that there's a lot of people who are not particularly religious who think of an evangelical Christian as someone who advocates things like creationism or intelligent design and that that would be at odds with the kind of science you're talking about Zoology and so on No, that's very understandable In fact, I was not exposed to that at all through my growing up That came later once I got into college began to realize that there were other people that came up through their Christian tradition and had great struggles with creation and evolution with science and religion and things like that My bringing up was a wholesome sort of bringing up, I think, because we took the scriptures extremely seriously and we had to memorize a great amount of the scriptures We were Psalm singers and hymn singers both and we, I think, rather unusually upheld science and art and business and politics and all these different aspects of living in the world What we were taught and what we lived was that no matter what our work was, it was our vocation and it should be done to God's glory So my pursuing of science was really considered to be a very important thing for someone to do who was interested in that Another understanding we had as a growing up is that a scientist was somebody who made a special effort at reading God's book of creation It was to be read not independently of the Bible but along with it So our bringing was that God has two great books, the book of the Bible which is principally the book of salvation and then the book of God's creation and providence which was written in the way the world worked So it was a very noble sort of thing to do to study both books and that's the way I was brought up Later on I discovered that I was supposed to have problems with bringing science and theology together but that was not part of my experience The beauty of my youth and into my late teens and perhaps when I was 20, 21 was that it was all part of a piece This was God's creation, God's word was the scripture of how we should rightly live on earth and it was the book through which we learned about salvation The creation was the place where we learned how the world works Does this mean though your seriousness of dealing with the Bible? How importantly that's supposed to be dealt with? Does that mean that you did or didn't get exposed to such ideas as it's the literal or it's the inerrant word of God? Is that part of the evangelical tradition you grew up with? Well and not really we took the Bible as absolute truth I don't think we ever used the word inerrancy We certainly did use the word infallible, we certainly learned that but we read the scriptures with a view to them always being true and of course what happens as you do that is you come across passages like the trees clap their hands The mountains sing for joy and things like this and we just read them We didn't get into arguments about whether trees had hands or not Our sermons that we heard and we heard them twice every Sunday in the morning and in the evening These sermons were deeply theological, they were sermons that dealt with not only this simple teaching on the surface of things but also explored the Greek of the New Testament, the Hebrew of the Old Testament to make sure that we were translating these words and sentences and paragraphs properly So I was exposed to not only very evangelical church but one that was really very scholarly There was nothing in those sermons that was designed to simply attract you in terms of just making them glitzy or splashy, flashy, they were very substantial but it was a Sunday school where everything kind of broke out and joy and praise trumpets played and choruses sung that were modern so there was quite a contrast there but the whole of it was just extremely beautiful One of the comments that you just made made me think that you are also called to live out your religion to witness down the world, it's not just an inner, it's not just an idea You've got salvation and here you're going out and doing something in the world about it Yeah, you're right, I was taught that our religion was a way of life It wasn't something you merely believe but it was a total way of living So that you were going through the day with a soundtrack in your mind It was the soundtrack of Psalms and hymns The idea was your singing would be part and parcel of your life I remember my dad when he was painting and decorating at customers' homes and so on was humming and singing pretty much all the time unless it offended people but he was just always singing and we really did live with a soundtrack I still do that, I have these songs going through my head all the time It's important I think because what it does is it helps you harmonize with the beauty of the world as well Our living within our Christian tradition was totally integrated When I watched my animals in my backyard zoo or when I was in church I was in the background singing in my head if not in words with my mouth Are there specific songs that you can name as part of the influences that make you think of? Well, there are so many, yes, so in terms of which ones I'm pretty well familiar with a song for every one of the 150 Psalms and for some of them more than one version and then of course, I don't know, I suppose it's three or four hundred hymns There are some that are particularly meaningful in view of my integration of science with my faith There's an old one which we rarely hear anymore called "Hallelujah Praise Jehovah" which has all of the beasts and cattle praising God I like the doxology, particularly well, praise God from home All blessings flow, praise them, all creatures, hear me all Praise the Father of God, mercy is all Praise in the creatures, hear me all Praise in the blood we bear, hear me all That was the doxology, praise God from home All blessings flow I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet and this is one of the northern spirit radio programs You're listening to a spirit and action interview with Calvin DeWitt He's a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison part of the Gaylord-Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies and he's an evangelical Christian He's active in involving evangelical Christians and scientists to meet together to find a common path to help heal this world He also speaks on the spiritual journey of John Muir and the relatively unknown biblical and deep religious basis to his reverence for creation Right now he's talking about the songs that have linked the Bible to his study of the book of creation as he describes it But when you look at a rendition of Psalm 8, Psalm 29 which describes a storm coming up off the Mediterranean, Psalm 24 which proclaims that the earth is the Lord's Psalm 19 that proclaims the heavens, declare the glory of God, Psalm 104 which is the great hymn that describes the provision of God for all the creatures Psalm 148 that sings of the praises that all the creatures give to God Those are some of the highlights and then of course there are some of the hymns like How Great Thou Art and Beautiful Savior King of Creation many, many more that also pull together faith and science or really allow you to look at the world as God's creation It sounds to me like your faith has very deep been strong but it's not particularly doctrine here Does that make sense to you that distinction? Yeah, it does although I can kind of unearth the doctrine if I were pressed to do so but I think learning doctrine is helpful in getting a good grounding in why you believe what you believe and so forth but being doctrine there is very devastating because living a life that celebrates the creation celebrates your family, your community is one of joyful living it's one of helping it's one of sharing your enthusiasm for the beauty of the world like today for example was the first I saw the Sand Hill cranes they've just come back from the south and I saw a flock of seven that's the first and I hear them out in the marsh behind our house now it's like they've announced spring and there are some of these creatures that are praising God from whom all blessings flow it's a beautiful thing and you want not to be doctrine here about it what you want to do is to use whatever doctrine you use you have learned to help you understand how this all hangs together I was thinking when I was asking that question about kind of the distinction between as Paul mentions it between the letter and the spirit letter killing so when I was saying doctrine now I was talking about it does that fit for you in terms of how you feel your beliefs? it really does and when Jesus says he's come not to put the law aside but to fulfill it that's another way of saying something very similar you're living out the principles of a law out of love rather than out of some doctrine here or rigid adherence to something that's simply legal one of the things that I'm hoping that our listeners can hear is the difference between being devout and evangelical Christian and being a person who doesn't care about anything except I guess maybe they're kind of narrow interpretation of religion one of the things that's kind of surprising to me I imagine a number of my listeners might say that groups that are sometimes called secular humanists frequently even though they get their word human in there frequently care about the welfare of a number of species whereas people who are supposedly revearing God's creation religious people sometimes get very focused on the wellbeing of people and ignore the wellbeing of other species now I'm not saying that generalization is true but I'm saying that a lot of my listeners might carry that prejudice I see that too I mean I think it actually happens that way in many cases especially if you're careful to pick your subjects I can pick people who are atheists for example who really are very dedicated caring for creation and I can again you know that's an extreme but I can find people who are evangelical maybe fundamentalist evangelicals who don't give a care about creation but what I think is helpful here to realize is that if you take these two books the book of creation and the book of the Bible and if you look at the Bible seriously which we often don't do especially in the secular side we think of that as being awfully old now and maybe not very relevant and maybe it's too in the Old Testament particularly too violent we have a problem on both sides of this great span I've just illustrated and that is that on the far end one far end the Bible's not looked at as being important at all on the other is that the creation is not looked at as being important at all and really both are extremely important because both of us teach us something extremely vital to living our lives to just put the Bible in the shelf but no other book on the shelf but just the Bible in the shelf is an interesting phenomenon I observe my friend Wendell Berry says that people who do that violate the first principle of literary criticism and that is you first have to read the book that's one of the things that we have in our current society is we have quite a few people who think the Bible is archaic and not important and they put it on the shelf but yet will feel themselves free to criticize it that's on the one extreme and the other extreme would be a very fundamentalist evangelical Christians who might say the only thing that's important is the Bible and how God made the world is not important this is where the Bible is very very helpful to us because what it does is it describes the society and the created world in a way that we can develop a comprehensive understanding not only of the way the world works but also of the likelihood of human beings to disrespect the world and then of course it gives us illustrations of how then we should behave on earth so that we can live rightly upon it and so that we can spread right living about how to live properly in the world the Bible, the Olden and New Testament taken together is a very green book if you would take references to seeds and birds and soil and so out of it it would be totally emaciated and probably not understandable it's richly supplied with references and illustrations from the creation so it is a book that actually opens your eyes to what's around you as well as telling you other things about what we're likely to do in our weaker moments and what to do about them if you do end up violating members of your community or your family and how you can come to gain forgiveness through the scriptures and through God's grace forgiveness is extremely important here as one of the teachings of the scriptures and it's the principal place that we learn of the importance of forgiveness it's one of the things that can bring peace to our lives and it's an extremely well taught in the New Testament you know I found it interesting the number of the hymns you talked about all of the creatures erasing of praise to the Lord I found that interesting because one of the questions I've had is are people the only ones with souls? are we the only ones who are created software entities that need to be concerned about because I'm afraid there's a number of people if you I guess maybe conservative very fundamentalist Christians who might say if you say well what should our attitude towards the world be and they say well we're supposed to have dominion over it and that's kind of where they stop so the whole idea that the rest of creation is singing praise too seems at variance with that very limited interpretation yeah well this is why the Bible is so important not only to the person who may not respect that as a book for belief but also it's very important for people who do believe because it's tremendous corrective here for example is how we used to sing Psalm 148 which just will not allow you to look at the creation as something that you can just push aside the way we sang it was hallelujah praise Jehovah from the heavens praise his name praise Jehovah in the highest all his angels praise proclaim all his hosts together praise him sun and moon and stars on high praise him O ye heavens of heavens and he floods above the sky and then here's another verse all ye fruitful trees and cedars all ye hills and mountains high creeping things and beasts and cattle birds that in the heavens fly kings of earth and all ye people princess great earth judges all praise his name young men and maidens aged men and children small and this comes this is a translation and part paraphrase of Psalm 148 these writings many of them are from the shepherd David when he was out tending sheep in the hills of Judea these writings are really magnificent they kind of lift your spirit and they don't allow you to think of dominion as domination the interesting thing about the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is said to have been given all dominion but he is probably the best example of what dominion means because what he does is he as the scriptures say counting equality with God not a thing to be grasped takes the form of a servant so dominion as service is really very strong in fact in Genesis 215 where Adam is asked to tend the garden and keep it the Hebrew word for ten is abad or abad and abad would be it's transliteration and that word literally means to serve so the gardener of the garden is supposed to serve it and what I found interesting when I was in the Rijksmuseum this past summer which is an Amsterdam that Rembrandt had painted a picture of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene at the tomb at the time of his resurrection and Rembrandt this is his 400th anniversary of birth Rembrandt pictured Jesus with a gardener's hat on and a spade in his hand Jesus is the gardener and some of your listeners will know that the scriptures say that Mary Magdalene took him to be the gardener and so did Rembrandt in reading the scriptures what Jesus is pictured as in the New Testament as the second Adam this is in 1st Corinthians 1545 and other places celebrated in the Handles Messiah where as in Christ all dies so an Adam shall all be made alive and what the second Adam Jesus Christ is doing is doing what the first Adam was supposed to do and undoing the bad works of the first Adam that you can unpack if you work with the text theologically so Jesus really is a gardener in this view and tends the garden through service not through destruction that's a really nice alternate view of what dominion is is the word dominion actually do you know what it is in Hebrew? is it a word that's validly translated as dominion? yes, it really does mean dominion it's not the most oppressive word the oppressive word that's you know much greater is the word raddah which we translate subdue subdue of the earth and it's to really press it down so if you stay with Genesis 1 28 where this is and that's the only verse you read you're left with a tremendous dilemma because it's really saying you can crush the earth you can crush these creatures but one of the principles of literary text reading is you always have to look at things in context and one of our tendencies in our time is to dissect texts and do so outside of their contexts and the context here is really interesting Genesis 1.28 of course comes from the first chapter of Genesis Genesis 1 and if you go a little earlier in this text you discover that the moon is called the lesser light and the sun is called the greater light if the Hebrew word would have been used for sun and moon here those words would have been names for gods that were considered to be gods at that time and by calling it a lesser light and a greater light it really is an insult to those who believe that these are gods what Genesis 1 is telling us is that all these things are creatures there is but one god and these creatures do not live on their own but they live because they have been created so they are creatures so the first chapter of Genesis is directed toward impressing you and impressing upon you the fact that all these things have been created the sun, moon, stars beasts, the field, flowers and so forth and as part of that whole strain it says you have dominion over these and you may subdue them so that's chapter 1 and when you get to chapter 2 what you do here is you come out of this chapter that says these are all creatures and then in chapter 2 chapter 2 15 in particular it says and now that you know these are all creatures you must serve them as Jesus serves as the gardener 2000 years later so what you read in Genesis 2 15 is just absolutely astounding you see here that Adam of the earth Adam of Atama is asked to serve the garden and to keep it and it's from this idea of serving the garden that we get our idea of con service or conservation or conservancy the idea that's being presented there is that we serve what serves us in other words everyone knows that the garden serves us it serves us with food with herbs, with fiber with medicinals and so forth and what we have to be doing according to Genesis 2 15 is returning the service of the garden with service of our own it's a reciprocal service so it's a con service con meaning with so that's where we get our idea of conservation of course when you contrast that with the first chapter of dominion it puts a wholly different light on it these are creatures you can subdue them but now let's tell you how you really have to relate to these as creatures you really can destroy them but now will inform you do not destroy balta sheet are the Hebrew words balta sheet do not destroy but serve so service becomes the translation ultimately of what dominion means and biblical terms by the lord of sea and sky I have heard my people cry oh who well can be the sin my hand will sing I will make the stars of night I will make the darkness cry oh who will bear my life to him? who shall I say? hear I am home is it I know? I have heard calling in the night I will go if you feel free I will go to meet the wind my home by the lord of snow and rain I have known my people's name for a love for all of them they turn away for the great they're not so so give a voice for all for the sweet one to them oh shall I say? hear I am home is it I know? I have heard you calling in the night I will go to meet me I will go I will be the wind my home That was "Here I Am Lord" I'm your host Mark helps me for this spirit in action interview with Calvin DeWitt he's professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and he's a leading evangelical seeking to bring evangelicals and scientists together for better care for creation Cal I understand you're part of a larger organization national association of evangelicals perhaps or maybe center and health and global environment I don't know which one you're actually connected with but you're coming out with initiatives and help them move the community yeah I've been you're really not a member of NAS the nominations are but these two organizations the national association of evangelicals and this Harvard Center for health and environment are both organizations I've been working with very extensively and certainly have the respect of both of those organizations what we've been doing there and this began in late November early December of 2006 is to bring leading scientists together with leading evangelicals to have a conversation with each other to see if we can find it possible to get along with each other not just for reasons of sociology but also to get together to care for creation the first meeting was held at Mel Hannah plantation in southern Georgia in early December and late November and then in January and January 17 this group of 28 scientists and evangelical leaders made a statement at a press conference at the national press club entitled an urgent call to action there were two things that happened between these scientists and evangelical leaders one was to develop this call to action which is easily accessible on the internet and the other was to work seriously to reinstate the term the creation into our vocabulary both on the Christian side and also on the scientific side one thing we discussed rather extensively there is how back now certainly going back to 1859 Darwin's origin of the species but reinforced in 1925 by the Scopes monkey trial what we've done is to replace the word the creation with the word the environment and they're not at all synonyms they don't mean the same thing the environment means that which surrounds us and the creation means the whole system together including us and what we discovered at this meeting of scientists and evangelicals is the jettisoning of this term the creation has allowed us to ask questions like what's more important? me or the environment and if we would do that for the term the creation it would be like asking what's more important my heart or my body because it's all part of a piece so we made an interesting discovery there and that was by avoiding the word creation because of its association with creationist and a problem for secular scientists we threw out the baby with a bath you can say so reclaiming this word the creation I think is very important for us there could be another word in fact I've tried to reinstate the word but biosphere which gets at the same idea but I find out that it's very hard to get it put into our vocabulary I've tried with university documents for example to get it in there just really hard to put it in there without people asking now what is that? so we agreed to put the creation back into our vocabulary now if 28 people do that doesn't make a difference well it might the people there who are scientists who agreed to do that included E.O. Wilson who is a principal in the area of biology and biodiversity of professor at Harvard in botanical garden and is probably the leading authority on biodiversity around the world James Hansen who heads up the NASA Center for Climate and then also James McCarthy the Agacy Chair at Harvard University for biological oceanography a whole string of people like this what we recognize here is that we need to get things put back together again that are allowed in our language in our behavior in the structuring of our universities we've allowed ourselves to be separated from the environment and it eventually comes to the point where we can ask absolutely ridiculous questions like aren't people more important than the environment it's not an answerable question it doesn't work you've also spoken in a fair amount about John Muir's spiritual journey was he a vangelical? was he anti-evangelic? No he was very evangelical John Muir was born in 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland into Ebenezer Erskine Presbyterian Church that's Scotch Presbyterian he was there for the first about 11 years of his life the church was very evangelical held to the Westminster Charter Catechism was a sound singing church very vital and his father was very much involved in that church he contributed substantially to it in terms of finances but also in its administration so that's his origin when he migrated with his family to Portage, Wisconsin in 1849 his family remained very religious the remarkable thing about what John Muir brought from Scotland with him was what was in his head he had memorized by that time three-quarters of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament the second one the New Testament he was very proud he could in one session recite the entire New Testament from beginning to end so when he went out eventually into the field which came after he spent four years at the University of Wisconsin he took a one-thousand-mile walk from a factory in Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico he had been working in that factory as an inventor what he carried in his head was a good part of the whole Bible while he was studying the Book of Nature he also carried in his backpack John Milton's Paradise Lost and in there the favorite passage of his clearly was one that has the word almighty exclamation point in it which describes Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall when he entered Yosemite eventually he worked pretty much like a psalmist in this beautiful valley of Yosemite as he studied the glaciers there and as he worked out what the glacial history was in fact he was the first to have described how glaciation works but he was also one who described it not only scientifically but also in such a glowing literary poetic way that his writing about it is just kind of a model for how to hold a spiritual and a scientific view together in one mind so when he describes later his experience in Glacier Bay which is up in Alaska where he is accompanied by Reverend Hall, a Presbyterian minister who has become a good friend of his he just gives this tremendous soliloquy about his experience there and then rehearses time and again according to Reverend Samuel Hall Young, the doxologies Gloria in Excelsius Deo and Praise God from whom all blessings fall so he is misinterpreted by many he's so enthusiastic about the environment that he has to tell about it to everybody he meets and he also is completely free in his expressions to reference this as the manifestation of God as God made manifest and so forth. Yes, he remains a Christian through his life and that has escaped a lot of his biographers but if you look at, for example, some of the eulogy material, for example, Henry Fairfield Osburn who later became the director of the American Museum of Natural History you'll find that they identify him as a very believer in God and in the scriptures. When he describes, for example, the crafting and sculpture of Yosemite which later becomes Yosemite National Park he uses biblical language in describing its sculpturing in which the snowflakes which he calls snowflowers are messengers divine messengers getting together and working together the sculpt out the El Capitan half dome and so forth to release them from their and supplicers he sees it as being done as a divine sculpture where the snowflowers the snowflakes are used as messengers to do that so he's thoroughly biblical he's not the person who leaves Yosemite every weekend to go to church in San Francisco but he is the person who says these are God's temples this is what God crafted here and this is rather was surprising to me as I studied him thoroughly was he calls them predestined landscapes these are temples made by God, for God's praise and he finds it a very worthy thing to be within these temples are there places where you feel like you've had to work to find wiggle room in between your reading of the Bible of creation, the book of creation this really has a very good question the quick answer is no I haven't had to look for wiggle room but the other very interesting thing is the way I was bought up in the way I still believe is you don't have to resolve everything I think it's maybe part of the Western mind and our scientism rather than science is that we have to have explanations for all right away as soon as we have the question and I'm very comfortable at having things yet to research you know for example when Joshua asks the son to stand still and apparently it does and yet we know something about the rotation of the earth and so forth does that bother me? no it doesn't bother me have I resolved it? no and I don't want to work on it it's not that it's totally unimportant but I think the more important things are to do as much integration as much holding the other of the whole testimony of God in the Bible and in the creation as you possibly can one does affect the interpretation of the other obviously because if you look at trees for example and you're looking for hands and you don't see them and the scriptures say the trees clap their hands it doesn't distress me I look at trees and say I think they do clap their hands and of course they do but they don't have any hands you know there are places for example where the voice of certain creatures goes out into all the world but they're from silent creatures so what you know is that it may not be audible but it still is there Psalm 19 is like that how old is the world? well as old as necessary for it to get to where we are I'm asking that obviously it's one of those questions that some people say if you're a scientist you have to say this but if you read the Bible in such a way you have to believe this well you know what to hold both views simultaneously let me tell you why when something is moving at the speed of light which nothing ever does except light then time stops in other words you don't have time let me give you an illustration we now have crystal clocks they're used at the National Bureau of Standards and some of our own wristwatches use them if you put one of these on an airplane and another one you keep on the ground the one on the airplane will actually lose time relative to the other one and it's due to the fact that that clock is moving faster now that's actually measurable it's been measured at the beginning of the creation you know what the scientists call the big bang things are moving out at the speed of light how long does it take? well you know one of the things we've learned only in recent years is that time is a variable the speed of light is a constant but time is a variable and I can't get my mind around that very well but there is one Jewish scholar for example that asked did God create the world or the universe in 15 billion years or in six days and he says both and it's interesting to say that because if you don't have a rotating earth to measure your day by and if things are moving so fast that time practically doesn't exist then what are you asking if you ask how old something is the piece that I have in my heart is God did it and I'm not particularly worried about how that was done in fact I read Job 38 through 40 where God says to Job as Job is probing he says where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth I think it's far more important for us to learn how to take care of creation and to go about caring for creation that it is to discover how God did it and I think too that if you look at this in terms of priority my feeling, and this is my own particular view, is that we should not spend our time trying to figure out how God did it if we're not taking care of it. I've already had a person make a special trip to Usable Institute to confront me in Earth Hall that's up in Northern Michigan on how many days that I think it took God to create the world and you know I say take care of creation he says answer my question and I said well let me ask you a question if you have a painting of a famous artist if it's being torn apart right in front of your face are you going to let this happen and just keep saying to me you know how it rambant painted I mean come on now anyway I mean you you're extremely kind in the way you ask the question but I've had people say you know until you tell me that the earth was made in so many days I can't believe anything you say. I'm not sure but I think a lot of people don't understand the people that Jesus went after, excoriated you know the white encephalicers and all that kind of things were the people who were religiously devout and clung to the letter of the law and ignore the spirit and I'm afraid that people who are insisting on the number of days they're part of the white encephalicers that Jesus so bitterly railed against. The way I've said this to some of my colleagues who are concerned about that is if in the last judgment you're asked a question about the creation what might that question be? I remember one of my theological colleagues responded to that question and immediately were holding a different issue he said what did you think about it and then the rest of the theologian said no no no he'd say what did you do with it? And then I said do you think it would be possible that we would ask the question how did I do it and the leading most elderly theologian said that would be the height of arrogance on our part to ask that we would be asked that question where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth and by that he meant that's not how we will be judged but what will be judged by is what we did with it. I had the feeling that the judgment would be based on what we did to the least of our brothers which might include all those creatures. Well what's interesting here is if you take the creation view as whole those brothers are there but if you say the brothers are separated from the creation because we don't have the creation anymore we have the brothers and the environment and what did you do with the creation does not mean what did you do with the environment what did you do with the creation means what did you do with all of it? Your son, your daughter, your neighbor, the poor, the creatures, the whales, the Leviathan that sports in the sea and all of that and that's the beauty of having this word but creation back into our vocabulary and get rid of this word the environment. The problem that we've had in thinking about the environment in terms of the world is we'll say the poor are more important than the environment and of course the poor are our environment they're part of this creation and we're not allowed to separate those because it is all of a fabric it's all of the same fabric so the priorities here are really summed up in caring for creation caring for God's creation which means all the creatures. So Cal this collaboration that you've put together between the National Association of Evangelicals and the scientists who are at the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School this coalition doesn't have a name yet evidently are you doing other things besides working on changing the word creation for environment are there other concrete steps or how are you working and how do we find out about what you're doing because we want to stay tuned you know well the most significant thing that could be done is just to put in quotes on the Google search and urgent call to action unquote and then you'll come right to the website where that urgent call to action is there because really that's the heart of the message and the heart of the message can be summarized this way let's stop arguing about how God made the earth and let's start to take care of it and no matter what our position is on the origin of the earth or whatever let's agree that we're going to take care of the earth we're going to take care of its creatures we're going to care for the climate system of the earth that is so vital to the whole life of the planet we'll care for our neighbors but care rather than a kind of debating divide that prevents us from doing this we have to stop rearranging the chairs on the Titanic deck and paying attention to the ship when we think of priorities here for future generations for ourselves for the praise that we give to God our creator it's vital that we think in terms of what we're doing and whether we're caring it's not first of all necessary that we all adopt a particular view of the age of the earth or some theological point of what kind of baptism we should have what has to happen is we have to join together because this is the Lord's earth this is our earth it's something not to be taken for granted and since we have come to be such a strong force on earth we have brought to it a lot of destruction and we can counter the destruction that we've been putting upon it I'm all with that program I'm totally with you there Cal I really admire the work that you're doing I'm really thankful that you took the time to speak to me I mean I know NPR and Minnesota Public Radio and all those people you shared some time with them and I'm really thankful that you took the time to speak to my listeners as well well you're so welcome I have enjoyed it very much keep in touch God bless the grass that grows through the cracks they roll the concrete over it and try to keep it back the concrete gets tired what it has to do it breaks and it buckles and the grass grows through and God bless the grass God bless the truth that fights toward the sun they roll the lies over it and think that it has done moves through the ground reaches for the air and after a while it's growing everywhere and God bless the grass God bless the grass that grows through cement it's green it's tender and it's easily bent after a while this up its head for the grass is living and the cement is dead and God bless the grass God bless the grass that's gentle and low it's roots they are deep and it's will is to grow and God bless the truth a friend of the poor and the wild grass growing at the poor one's door and God bless the grass that beautiful singer was Sarah Thompson with a Milvina Reynolds song called God bless the grass you've been listening to a spirit in action interview with Calvin DeWitt Evangelical Christian and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies you can hear this program again via my website northernspiritradio.org where I provide a range of helpful information including the songs featured on this program and a sites Cal mentioned the climate forum 2002.org the National Association of Evangelicals and that of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School of course you could Google them but you can find them all at northernspiritradio.org and you can listen to this program again there as well as many other programs the theme music for spirit in action is I have no hands but yours by Carol Johnson thank you for listening I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit you can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action I have no higher cause for you than this to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness