Choosing Life
Ecological Civilization as the
World’s Best Hope
Jay McDaniel and John B. Cobb, Jr.
Topical Line Drives
Volume 41
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, Florida
2020
Copyright © 2020, Jay McDaniel and John B. Cobb, Jr.
ISBN: 978-1-63199-565-1
eISBN: 978-1-63199-573-6
Energion Publications
P. O. Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
energion.com
Table of Contents
What’s Christian about this book? 2
Five Foundations for an Ecological Civilization 9
From individualism to community 9
From sense-bound empiricism to radical empiricism 10
From we/they thinking to world loyalty 11
From anthropocentrism to biophilia 12
From conventional morality to counter-cultural morality 13
Redefining our calling 14
Practical Steps Toward an Ecological Civilization 15
Education should be for wisdom 15
The economy should be directed to the flourishing of the biosphere 19
Agriculture should regenerate the soil 22
Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands for resources 26
Most manufacturing should be local 27
Every community should be a part of a community of communities. 30
Winds of the Spirit: The Spiritual Foundations of an Ecological Civilization 34
God 36
Introduction
What’s Christian about this book?
Though we write this book for people of all faiths and none, we write this book as Christians and yet, as you read, you may sometimes wonder where the Christianity is. Where is Jesus? Where is God?
For us there is a healing spirit at work in the universe and in the world that was revealed uniquely, but not exclusively, in the healing ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This healing spirit is God. We want to live our lives in service to the healing spirit as revealed in Jesus. We want to share in his journey, his experience, and his faith, and thus to be channels of love. We align ourselves with, and are grateful for, communities of people who seek the same, otherwise called the church. Yes, we write as Christians.
Jesus
Like all Christians we are moved by three aspects of Jesus’ life: his healing ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. From his healing ministry we see the healing spirit at work in the lives of individuals who were transformed in mind, body, and spirit and also in communities that were transformed. His aim was to encourage and empower communities of people who would care for one another and live their lives guided by love. These communities embody what he called the basilea tou theou: a state of affairs when the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. From his death and the fact that he responded to being killed, not by hatred but by forgiveness and understanding, we realize that there is a side of God that is empathic and vulnerable; a side which receives and absorbs the sins and sufferings of the world in a non-retaliatory and loving way, refusing to hate even enemies. In his death as well as in his life, he shows us a God who is, in the words of the philosopher Whitehead, a “fellow sufferer who understands.” And from his resurrection we see that the healing spirit is at work in the world through the provision of new and hopeful possibilities for life, even amid the most devastating of circumstances. We see that God is a source of comfort and new life - in this life and in whatever continuing journey there may be after death. Inspired by these and so many other dimensions of Jesus’ life and teachings, we want to walk in his footsteps and share in his faith. This book, then, has these kinds of commitments at its core.
God
You may also sense some “process theology” in what we say; we are indeed process theologians who understand God in terms of ten key ideas. We can state them plainly here:
God’s unchanging aim is for beauty, understood as richness of experience.
God seeks salvation for each and all: universal richness of experience.
God is in the world through fresh possibilities or ‘initial aims.’
We feel God’s feeling and share in God’s desires. God is within us and within all living beings, even as more than them all.
God is both eternal and everlasting: non-temporal and infinitely temporal.
God is nowhere and everywhere: non-spatial and omni-spatial.
God is lovingly affected by the world: a “fellow sufferer who understands.”
God saves the world through tenderness.
God is many as well as one, in the sense that the universe is part of God’s own life.
God recycles love.
To these ten we can add two more.
God is not in complete control of the world; God acts through love, not domination.
The future is open, even for God. God knows what is possible in the future, but not what is not yet actual.
These ideas concerning God are important to us, including the last one. We think that the future is open, that it can unfold in ways profoundly disastrous for the world God so loves, and that it can unfold in ways that are life-enhancing. We believe that God’s hope is that we choose life. And we believe that choice requires fresh thinking: imaginative, analytical, political, economic, poetic. You’ll find elements of all in this book.
Chapter Two
Choosing Life
In the Bible there is a famous saying from Deuteronomy where God says to the people of Israel, and by implication to us all, “Now choose Life.” We are reminded of a note found on a napkin in a local diner, written by a student from the liberal arts college down the road. In her way she was trying to choose life, too.
Dear Life,
You are so beautiful and yet I know you’re in sad shape. In my own life there are some problems. I won’t go into the details but I know you understand.