The Gospel According to Jane Fonda

If we're looking for the real reason Western culture is polluting the air and water, it's "primarily the Judeo-Christian myth." That's the word from actress Jane Fonda, speaking to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Christianity has fostered a disregard for nature because it is "man-centered," Fonda said: Man is portrayed as the "boss" over creation. By Fonda's account, this doctrine has made us arrogant; we feel we have a right to "use and subdue nature for our own purposes." How can we repent and reform? Through a revival of "nature-based religions," said Fonda. We need to realize that "the earth, like us, is a living, breathing organism . . . and that we are all part of it." Thus the ecological gospel according to Jane Fonda. Of course, this is nothing new. For decades, New Agers have blamed the ecological crisis on Christianity and have proposed pantheism as the solution. But contrary to its bad press, the Bible actually teaches a very high view of creation. When God put Adam in the garden to till and keep it, the Hebrew words mean "serve" and "take care of." There's no warrant in Christianity for the abuse of God's handiwork. Genesis teaches that humans have "dominion" over nature but that doesn't mean arbitrary rule, it means stewardship. This is God's world, and we're accountable to Him for the way we treat it. Granted, Western culture has grown arrogant, just as Jane Fonda said. But that didn't stem from Christianity, it came from humanism. As Western culture rejected the Bible's view of creation, a new image of humanity emerged: Man was no longer regarded as God's servant but as the pinnacle of evolution, the victor in the Darwinian struggle for existence. Think back to the nineteenth century: The robber barons of industry didn't appeal to Christianity to justify their cutthroat tactics. No, they appealed to evolution. Listen to the words of William Graham Sumner, America's most influential Social Darwinist: "There can be no rights against Nature," he wrote, "except to get out of her whatever we can." Today we are appalled at such a crass attitude, and rightly so. But the antidote to Western arrogance is not Eastern pantheism. Pantheism denies that humans are unique; it puts us on the same level as the trees and the grass. But it's an obvious fact that humans do have unique powers that no other organism has. That's where our environmental problems came from in the first place. The only religion that can solve our ecological problems is one that acknowledges our uniqueness—and then gives ethical guidelines to direct our unique capabilities. Christianity does just that: It teaches that humans were made in the image of God to be stewards over His creation. Once again, Christianity solves one of the pressing issues of modern society. We cannot afford to let people misrepresent the Bible's answers to these issues. Contrary to what Jane Fonda says, the Bible teaches a profound respect for creation—starting with God's own opinion of creation, which Genesis gives us in one simple sentence: "And God saw that it was good."

05/11/93