Ecology

Ecology in its narrowest definition is the study of the relationship between living things and their environment. More broadly, ecology has come to refer to the way natural systems operate. Sometimes the word ecology (or the phrase “the environment”) is used in the same way nature was a century ago.

Why Ecology Is Important

For all who believe that “the earth is the Lord’s,” the study of ecology is an important discipline, for it seeks to explain in detail the way the earth’s systems function. Since human civilization (both deliberately and accidentally) is altering, in profound ways, the makeup and functioning of those systems (see Pollution), it is crucial for all people—and Christians in particular—to develop an ecological understanding. As Aldo Leopold (whose book A Sand County Almanac was influential in increasing popular understanding of ecology) puts it, “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering” (p. 190). Increasingly, we are “tinkering” with the earth. Ecology is the study of the healthy functioning of living systems when all the parts are present and in good working order.

The word ecology, coined in the nineteenth century by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, is made up of two Greek words: logos, meaning the “study of,” and oikos, the “household” of living things. It is very closely related, at least in its origin, to the word economy, which referred originally to the stewardship or human management of individual households. In fact, in the New Testament the Greek word economy is usually translated “stewardship.”

Ecology therefore deals with the way the household of life on earth works, whereas economy describes the workings of the human household—industry, markets and technology—that both depends on and affects that larger household of God’s creation which it is the purpose of ecology to describe.

Sometimes Christians have acted as though their only concern were the forceful domination and subjugation of that earthly nonhuman household, turning it all to exclusively human purpose. One could perhaps conclude that from a narrow reading of Genesis 1:28: “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule . . . over every living creature.” But a more careful reading of Scripture shows that this world of human economy must be understood within the larger earth of God’s good creation, and that stewardship rather than domination best describes the human relationship to creation. This is the clear implication of the words describing Adam’s task in Eden (Genesis 2:15): “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” The Hebrew word for “work” usually means “to serve,” and the word for “take care of” is often translated “keep,” as in Aaron’s priestly blessing on the Israelites: “The Lord bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24).

Caring for Creation

This understanding that a main human task is to “keep” the good creation is consistent with the biblical witness of God’s own intimate “keeping” of creation. Psalm 104, which has been called the ecologist’s psalm, goes into considerable detail about the way the earth’s systems work: “He makes springs pour water into the ravines. . . .They give water to all the beasts of the field. . . . He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate. . . . The trees of the Lord are well watered. . . . There the birds make their nests” (Psalm 104:10-11, 14-17).

The same kind of divine delight in ecological complexity appears in God’s answer to Job (Job 38-41). If God cares in this way for the created complexity of ecosystems and the whole great ecosphere or household of the earth, it is imperative that Christians develop an ecological understanding.

Ecological Principles

The serious study of ecology is endlessly complex. Yet a few principles of particular importance for human living in this created household can be highlighted.

1. Everything is connected to everything else. This sounds overstated, but it is not. The rapid cycling of winds and waters (and even the vastly slower crustal movements of the earth’s surface) means that we cannot act as though our actions—making a species extinct, dumping waste in a river or even driving a car and releasing exhaust gases into the atmosphere—will not ultimately have at least a tiny effect through the earth. The truth of this apparently extreme principle has been brought home to us as we have been able to measure in the fatty tissues of arctic animals the appreciable accumulations of chemical residues from local industrial civilization’s activities thousands of miles away from the Arctic. We see the principle even more ominously in the ozone-destroying effect of chemicals we all use.

2. Everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere. An ecological understanding shows us that because the earth is an interconnected system, we cannot simply regard it as an inexhaustible storehouse of raw materials for our economy. We need to be aware of the consequences of our consumption of food, trees, oil and metals for the ecological systems disturbed by their extraction. At the same time, we need to be aware that there is, in God’s creation, no “away” for things to be thrown to. There are no dumps or sanitary landfills in God’s good creation.

3. There is no free lunch. This is a crude way of putting a profound truth which on one level is expressed as “the second law of thermodynamics”—that is, in the physical world, things move from order to disorder. Living things seem to contradict that physical principle, since life continually orders, and even reproduces. Unfortunately, even in living creatures that order is bought at the expense of other things—usually other living creatures. At the biological level, the principle is expressed in the aphorism that “ecology is the study of who is eating whom.”

4. Generally, in earth’s ecosystems, complexity equals stability; and human activity reduces, and hence destabilizes, ecological complexity. Even a casual study of creation reveals its astonishing complexity. This complexity is creation’s insurance against changes of environmental conditions. In a cold, wet spring certain species of plants will prosper and others won’t; in a hot, dry spring the situation may be reversed. But the total is a healthy system. Likewise, among the great variety of species and subspecies, some will be resistant to certain predators and diseases, and others will not. The overall effect is one of a flourishing balance. Most human activity—such as when we replace the vast diversity of prairie wild plants with a wheat field sprayed with herbicides to ensure a weed-free return—reduces this life-giving complexity.

An ecological understanding helps to undo some of the damage done by several centuries of thinking of the earth as nothing more than a kind of biological machine which we could learn to manipulate for our benefit. Study of ecology ought to bring home to us principles that we learn from the Christian gospel: that life, in every sense of the word, depends on community and relationship; that living is necessarily costly; that agape, self-giving love, is the way by which the tragedy of life is redeemed into the joyful purpose of God’s great story. These things we ought to know, who are called to be stewards of creation, the ecosphere, which holds together in the self-giving life of the One “through whom all things were made.”

» See also: Creation

» See also: Pollution

» See also: Stewardship

» See also: System

» See also: Technology

» See also: Work

References and Resources

A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949); G. T. Miller, Living in the Environment (Toronto: W. B. Saunders, 1980); L. Wilkinson, ed., Earthkeeping: Christian Stewardship of Natural Resources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

—Loren Wilkinson