Pope Makes Biblical Case For Addressing Climate Change: "Destruction of the planet is a sinful act"

[Nonhlanhla]

68. Three things

First of all, good for the pope for expanding the Catholic ethical focus some more. Actually, having studied Catholic Social Teaching, what he is saying is not surprising to me. But it is high time that the leader of the Catholic Church makes this kind of noise, so I say good for him.

Secondly, to the posters who referred to James Baldwin - yoohoo. Love him! Love the title of that book too.

Thirdly, regarding the story of Noah. When I was a kid I always thought that the divine promise not to flood the earth again at the end of that story, is rather meaningless, given that God has so many other divine WMD's like fire or disease available! But having taught this text frequently, I have grown to love it for its symbolism. To interpret the Noah story, one has to go back to the first creation account, the one found in Genesis 1 (Genesis 2's story is an entirely separate creation account), where creation consists of a dome between the waters below and the waters above. Water = chaos, lack of creation order, and thereby a state of no life being possible. Dome in the middle of the waters = a place of rhythm and order in which life gradually develops, culminating in human life (in the story). In the imagination of the ancient Middle East, the world is therefore a place of order amidst the surrounding chaos/water. (The story is roughly based on the Babylonian story of the warrior god Marduk slaying the goddess Tiamat - goddess of chaos/water - and creating a dome in the middle of the two parts of her body.) Anyway, if one understands this about the ancient ME worldview, the story of Noah is not the story of a flood per se, but the story of the order of creation being overwhelmed by chaos. Hence the importance of the divine promise at the end of the story, in which the rhythms of nature are promised (day and night, summer and winter, etc.). What God promises at the end of the story is not that the world won't be destroyed by a particular method (leaving the door open for alternative divine WMD's like "the fire next time&quot , but that the rhythms of nature will continue, that the chaos won't be allowed to reign. The story is highly mythical of course (and also largely derivative of other ancient myths, such as the Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis, the Gilgamesh flood story, and others), but it has significance for the current climate crisis. At the root of the dominant Western religions is this story of divine care for creation. The irony is that we ourselves might be destroying the very rhythms of creation to which the story alludes.

That in short. One of my favorite stories, I should add. We read the Gilgamesh epic as well as the first chapters in Genesis in my freshmen college class every year, and I just enjoy teaching this material. A pity that these chapters are so widely misunderstood! They are classical expressions of the human spirit, and they often contain a lot of wisdom.