{"id":52,"date":"2012-04-26T07:46:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T07:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=52"},"modified":"2012-04-26T07:46:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T07:46:00","slug":"nature-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/26\/nature-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Nature and Beyond
\nCopyright 2012 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n

C.S. Lewis once wrote the following about God\u2019s earthly creation and its role in the Christian journey:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are summoned to pass in through nature, beyond her\u201d he said, \u201cinto that splendor which she fitfully reflects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis was an inveterate nature lover. He spoke often of his walking tours through the English countryside and the blessing they invariably were to him. I suspect that many of the great sages and mystics of the Christian faith have had similar points of contact with the natural world in whatever part of the earth they were destined to inhabit during their own pilgrimage through this life. In recent years I, too, have fallen in love with the \u201cdirect creation\u201d of God, the term I use to describe nature as opposed to the material utilization of nature that results in manmade things. Actually what has occurred in my life of late might better be called a \u201cre-falling\u201d in love as I sense that awe and wonder in the presence of the direct handiwork of God was something I intensely knew once before, in childhood, without knowing it was of God.<\/p>\n

At the risk of an unintended pun it is \u201cnatural\u201d for human beings, and especially for those who know God in a personal way, to be caught up in the glories of the animate and inanimate things that our Lord has chosen to populate the world we presently co-inhabit with them. Whether it is through common or saving grace men generally have some sense, be it conscious or unconscious, that nature is redolent of its Creator. It is His presence in the natural realm that gives it the compelling sublimity and mystery that we sense when we take in a spectacular sunset, or the rush of falling water, or the sight of the wind gently swaying a tree branch. In some paradoxical fashion God inhabits His creation even as He stands definitively apart from it. The handiwork of the Holy One somehow seems to be a dwelling place for Him as well and this, I suspect, is why those of us who worship the God of the Bible often feel closest to him when we are in the midst of the beauty of the world He directly created.<\/p>\n

Of course, as with all things in this fallen world, nature has its dangers.<\/p>\n

One of the most difficult things for the Christian who loves those sunsets, waters and swaying trees is the recognition that evil still exerts its malign presence on the natural world. The handiwork of the holy is also the temporal home of disorder, chaos and even cruelty. We see this in blights and parasites, in the devastation of extreme weather, even in the fact that some of the \u201chigher\u201d non-human predators have been observed to kill their prey for sport rather than consumption. The fall of man has spoiled the pristine perfections of nature and this will remain a sad and enduring fact until the return of Christ sets all things right.<\/p>\n

In the meantime this unfortunate truth is used by God to inoculate His children against the pantheism that seems more and more ascendant in the West today. Through the ugliness of nature at its fallen worst we are reminded that it is not good in and of itself. The goodness and beauty it retains it only through the preserving presence of God in this short period during which He has temporarily let evil have a continuing presence on the earth. We who apprehend the truth of the Biblical narrative regarding the age we live in are not easily caught up in the reverence of nature as a god. We see and deeply appreciate its loveliness, we even see a divine presence in it as the Holy Spirit allows, but we do not hold the illusion that nature\u2019s remaining goodness is either complete or somehow self-generated. We may love the creation but we do not worship it. This caution is always tonic, especially when it comes to how Christians interact with non-believers who may also love nature but, in addition, have unhealthy illusions about it that lead to an inordinate love of the creation for itself alone.<\/p>\n

That said, believers have reason to put nature before their physical and spiritual eyes often. One reason, among others, is that direct creation is so much bigger in physical scope than we that it can provide a particularly profound comfort. In pondering the natural realm we may find a release from ourselves, a blessed re-focusing on something larger than self and, in the midst, Someone Who is infinitely larger. Focusing on the physical world reminds us of a spiritual world that is far greater. I believe that this is what C.S. Lewis meant when he referred to passing \u201cthrough nature\u201d on the way to a deeper communion with the God Who is not only its Creator but it\u2019s Master and ours as well.<\/p>\n

In the same essay of his with which we began Lewis says that someday we will find the final redemption of nature to be a part of our own. He writes that we \u201cwill put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.\u201d Lewis seems to point us towards a future when we will somehow become perfectly intimate with fully redeemed nature as a byproduct of becoming perfectly one with our Lord. For those of us who are coming to love nature in proper proportion to our greater love for God this is a future to be very deeply desired.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n

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\".\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nature and Beyond Copyright 2012 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved C.S. Lewis once wrote the following about God\u2019s earthly creation and its role in the Christian journey: \u201cWe are summoned to pass in through nature, beyond her\u201d he said, \u201cinto that splendor which she fitfully reflects.\u201d Lewis was an inveterate nature lover. He spoke… <\/p>\n

Read more Nature and Beyond<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-Q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":297,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/10\/09\/through-nature-beyond-nature\/","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":0},"title":"Through Nature, Beyond Nature","date":"October 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"There is something about the natural world that seems to convey the contemplative Christian towards Him who is beyond it. As we gaze on that which might be called \u201cdirect creation\u201d, that is objects that can be said to come directly from the hands of our Lord we may find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":108,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/23\/nature-and-the-image-of-god-in-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":1},"title":"Nature and the Image of God in Man","date":"May 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Nature and the Image of God in Man Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved What an immense gift it is to be able to see God\u2019s world with the faculties of a being made in His image. 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Even in its fallenness the creation acts as a conduit through which He calls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":146,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/11\/finding-christ-in-nature\/","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":3},"title":"Finding Christ in Nature","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Finding Christ in Nature Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There is something that comes to me after spending some quiet time just contemplating the woods and sky outside my living room window. I can be in a state of anxiety or negativity and just staring out the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":216,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/07\/11\/mysterious-christianity\/","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":4},"title":"Mysterious Christianity","date":"July 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Mysterious Christianity Copyright 2010 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved We perhaps cannot approach God rightly without a consciousness of mystery. All the systematic theology in the world cannot completely remove the veil from a Being Who is infinitely beyond us by His very nature. 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It is then that we can safely lose our self-consciousness\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}