By David Clayton
The garden is the symbol of the culture of life
Gardens and farmland are more natural and more beautiful than pristine, untouched wilderness. Or at least they should be.
Of course the wilderness is beautiful. I am not trying to change anyone’s view on that. But I am seeking to raise the status of cultivated land relative to it. The assumption of most conservationists today seems to be the opposite. In fact, my experience is that for many if there is an objective standard of beauty, it is nature unaffected by man.
This is consistent with a neo-pagan worldview. Many people even take this idea – that man is inferior to untouched nature – a step further and consider man not to be part of nature at all. The work of mankind is assumed to be unnatural …by nature (if you’ll forgive the phrase, but it does seem to highlight the absurdity of the position). Man’s activity is seen as something that necessarily defaces creation. This places wilderness above gardens and farmland in the hierarchy of beauty; and above man in the hierarchy of being.
In the Christian worldview, man is the greatest creature in God’s creation. Man is not only part of creation, but his work can act to perfect it, that is to restore a fallen world to what it ought to be. To the degree that he works in harmony with the divine order (which is a standard higher than anything in the created world) his work is beautiful, productive and in harmony with the common good; and nature flourishes. This is the true ecology.
As soon as one acknowledges the possibility of man perfecting nature, then the route to a ‘green’ world is not the restriction of human activity, but an increase in the right sort of activity. If one seeks to change the form of human activity so that it is working beautifully, in harmony with the divine order, then the more people there are, the better.
The neo-pagan worldview, on the other hand, cannot conceive of this restorative human interaction with creation. His activity is just more or less destructive. The only solution therefore that it has to propose is the reduction of all human activity. There is only one really effective way to do this – population control.
In some ways, it is not surprising that this secular, neo-pagan world view predominates. Many (Read More)
Source: http://thewayofbeauty.org/2014/04/get-out-of-the-wilderness-and-into-the-garden/
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