‘The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity — then we will treat each other with greater respect.
Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective’.
David Suzuki.
At the heart of sin is a propensity to see and use the other, whoever or whatever the other is, as a means to our own ends. This way of thinking and acting is at the heart of what breaks our relationship with the other. (The word ‘sin’ has the same origin as the words ‘sunder’ – to pull apart or separate, and ‘sound’ the stretch of water that separates two pieces of land as in Plymouth sound). Even God can become the object of this way of thinking. We may often seek God as an answer to our needs and wants.
The opposite of sin is love. Love is the capacity to see all others as ends in and of themselves. Their value comes from fact that they exist at all, all created things have value because they are the ‘children’ of the creator, and their value does not come from their usefulness for us.
According to Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas defined love as ‘the willing of the good of the other as other’. What we do in love we do for the benefit of the one we love not for our benefit, in fact it might be a dis-benefit, ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). When giving a new commandment Jesus did not say ‘be good’, he said ‘Love one another’. (John 13:34) when asked to summarise the law and prophets he said “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ And ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:37 f)
If we truly love the other then we can no longer see them as means to our own ends, their value can no longer be thought in terms of their usefulness either to us or anyone else.
When we begin to see the rest of creation as the object of our loving we begin to see its innate sacredness. Others are no longer exploited, desecrated, because of their usefulness; rather they are set apart, i.e. sacred, because they are the location and occasion of our loving, moreover they are the continued location and occasion of God’s, love, presence and action.
Thomas Traherne wrote that ‘You never enjoy the world aright, till you see how a sand [grain] exhibiteth the wisdom and power of God’. (Centuries of Meditations).
The Eastern Orthodox writer Philip Sherrard wrote something similar ‘‘If God is not present in a grain of sand then He is not present in heaven either’. (The desanctification of nature)
Things become objects for our using without a care for them when we see them as separated from us. That word again ‘separated’ the underlying meaning of the word ‘sin’. This sense of being separated is based upon an illusion. I have quoted this from Einstein before:
“human beings are a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. We experience our self, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest.., a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.’ He goes onto say that “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” In other words: ‘To love your neighbour as yourself’.
To end then where we began:Thus is the challenge: to look at the world from this different perspective’.
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