Malignant Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a cancer. It's permeated culture and society since Paul dealt with its incubation in some of the early churches. Like cancers, Gnosticism metastasizes, replicates, and spreads.
Gaia, the eternal fem-deity of Greek mythology, the embodiment of earth, and the source of all things has found for herself a new people. Ancient and modern Gnostics and neopagans have chosen to worship her. Even post-moderns pay homage to her with The Gaia Theory. One that insists earth, all "her" inhabitants, ever creature, molecule, tree, and modicum of energy is all a part of a singular, living, and intelligent, female system. A true "mother-earth", source of all life, the unity of pantheisms—Gaia.
If Gnosticism is cancer, Gaia is a wicked, malignant tumor.
Eco-Idolaters and Eco-Pillagers
Consider a mountain. Maybe you’ve envisioned a towering snow-capped mountain from the Rockies, or long meandering Appalachian ridges ladened with ancient oaks and maples, or a humble 200 foot tall “knob” if you’re from the Ozarks like me.
Now imagine we must build a road to reach the other side of the mountain. Typically, we will find one of two responses. One from the eco-idolater and one from the eco-pillager. The eco-idolater will protest the road building efforts by bowing down to worship the mountain, lamenting the existence of man and his efforts to overcome the behemoth, and offering up burnt sacrifices of weed and American flags. The eco-pillager on the other hand will obliterate the mountain to maintain nice straight lines and 90-degree angles so the masses might commute to their meaningless jobs in the most uninteresting way.
Eco-idolaters and eco-pillagers, dirt worshipers and dirt-rapists, are equally wicked. all the while, they’re the same thing—worshipers of creation instead of the creator. Lovers of Gaia; haters of God.
False Dichotomies
False dichotomies create the illusion of choice that capitalize on our proclivities to emotional reactions and intellectual weakness. When it comes to matters of ecology, agriculture, caring for creation, stewardship, and dominion we are presented with two wicked options: eco-idolatry and eco-pillaging.
What the eco-pillager doesn’t realize is that the earth is finite. He does not see the looming (and many times present) ecological disasters that they create when they obliterate the mountain. Whether they are poisoning the water in Flint, MI, eroding topsoil in California, or sentencing entire communities to death by means of carcinogen-induced cancers from the toxic rare-earth metal mining.
The eco-idolater fails to understand that with no Adam to consider what to do about the mountain, the earth fails to truly flourish. Pastures may turn to briars. Forests might turn to thicket. Parasitic and invasive species rule; rendering the environment useless and often deadly to local life.
You’re told to choose one, but this is a lie. These are two sides of the same pagan, God-hating coin. Ultimately, they are wicked perversions of the Christian mandate to have dominion of the earth and properly husband it.
A Christian Agrarian Solution
Only a Christian operating under a worldview of truth, one in which Christ reigns over His church and all of creation, can properly take dominion over the earth. They can make it productive and maximize the economy and freedom—not just profit. They can create an abundance while stewarding in a way that leaves more than it takes, cleans water, and purifies the air, and builds topsoil. And all this can be done while preserving the wilderness around us and preparing it for generations of Christians to come so that they might further take dominion in a hopeful, Christ-conquered future.
We too come to face the mountain. We face the whole of creation. Christians must choose what we will do with this world entrusted to us. Should the road pummel through the peak disregarding what's lies ahead? Should we turn it around to preserve the mountain in our idolatry? Or, should we meander around the mountain in a way that's beautiful and suitable thanking God for entrusting it to us and for the beauty of His world. All of creation lies before us in need of stewardship, husbandry, and dominion.
