Mistaken for our mother, she is terrifying and even abominable. But if she is only our sister – if she and we have a common Creator – if she is our sparring partner – then the situation is quite tolerable. Perhaps we are not here as prisoners but as colonists: only consider what we have done already to the dog, the horse, or the daffodil. She is indeed a rough playfellow. There are elements of evil in her. To explain that would carry us far back: I should have to speak of Powers and Principalities and all that would seem to a modern reader most mythological. This is not the place, nor do these questions come first. It is enough to say here that Nature, like us but in her different way, is much alienated from her Creator, though in her, as in us, gleams of the old beauty remain…She has nothing to teach us. It is our business to live by our own law not by hers: to follow, in private or in public life, the law of love and temperance even when they seem to be suicidal, and not the law of competition and grab, even when they seem to be necessary to our survival. For it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first: not even the survival of our species. We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honourable and merciful means.
C.S. Lewis, On Living in an Atomic Age, from Present Concerns, p. 79
I get the whole ‘Mother Nature’ thing. Even from a Christian perspective, we believe that we were formed from the ‘dust of the earth.’ But there are obviously major problems with the whole ‘Mother Nature’ idea.
Lewis nails the main issue – if Nature is our mother, then she is our teacher of morality. We sit on Nature’s lap and learn her wisdom. Yet such learning leads down the road of ‘natural selection’ and such. It leads to hunger games in which we are fighting to survive at the expense of others, and others are doing the same to us (that pretty much summarizes the various ‘enmities’ of Genesis 3).
The gospel of Jesus Christ does not call upon us to survive but to loving sacrifice. And while there are glimmers of such in Nature, we must remember that all of creation has fallen with us. We take our cues from elsewhere.
Nature and science are not teachers of morality.
