Discussion Thread
BIBLICAL EVIDENCE FOR THINKING ECOLOGICALLY ABOUT SPIRITUAL
FORMATION
Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age does an excellent job of revealing one of the best hidden
secrets in today’s interpretation of the Bible – its ecosystems. I really appreciated this unique
view of God’s Word as one abounding with the idea of ecology.
“We use to mean that which pertains to the interrelationship and interconnection of allecological
things in nature,” say Lowe and Lowe —and I have to agree. The more I look into it, the more I
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see how much the Bible emphasizes the ecological motif in its description of every little detail of
our life.
Every concept in the Bible can be viewed from the ecological point of view. Creation, salvation,
family life, Jesus’ teaching, the symbols the Bible uses, even the human body itself—all of these
incorporate the interconnected and interactive nature of the physical and spiritual ecologies God
has created.
Let’s look, for example, at some patterns of God’s creation.
One pattern is that He does not create things to live alone, detached from other things, as if in a
vacuum on earth. Instead, everything was created in conjunction with other created things and
living beings. And this total interconnectedness continues in-between all classes of beings on
earth. Lowe and Lowe point to the wonderful interaction of all creation in Psalm 104, where
birds build their nests in trees, wild goats live in the mountains, beasts live in the forests, etc.,
while plants and other vegetation provide food for animals and sustains human life, and the trees
absorb the rain and provide a place for the birds to nest. Many other Psalms can be read in that
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way.
This description brings us to another pattern: His one creation envisages a blessing to the other
living species. For instance, fruit trees in the Garden of Eden were created for man to eat (Gen
2:16). On the other hand, God put the man in His garden to work it, take care of it, and to look
after it (Gen 2:15). It is a matter of mutual blessing between different parts of God’s creation.
Interactive blessings produce perfect ecology.
Another pattern that spoke to me a lot is the ecology of growth. Nothing on this earth can grow
on its own, in alienation and detachment from other living and growing things. “In God’s
ecology, individual things and people do not grow alone. They grow when they connect to and
interact with the ultimate Source of Life and other growing people,” Lowe and Lowe say.
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Interactivity within our species as humans is as vital as within all of the little ecologies we are
part of: student body, church, family. And it is no less vital between us and God as the Giver of
life. “Growth is a byproduct of an intricate series of interlocking events, conditions, and
1 Lowe, Stephen D., and Mary E. Lowe, Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth Through Online
Education, InterVarsity Press, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=5405575, page 27
2 Lowe and Lowe, , 28Ecologies of Faith
3 Lowe and Lowe, , 5Ecologies of Faith
exchanges between and among living and nonliving entities,” the authors say. And 1 Corinthians
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3:6 can be a very good illustration of this ecology not in the physical, farming world, but in the
world of spiritual sowing and harvest.
Or look at the human body as another ecosystem used by Paul to describe the interconnectedness
of its every part. “All of the various subsystems of the human body (immune, respiratory,
nervous, skeletal, muscular, and endocrine) constantly engage in homeostatic biofeedback
interaction and communication in order to maintain a quasi-equilibrium that sustains health and
life,” say Lowe and Lowe. It is for this reason, using the analogy of a human body, that Apostle
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Paul insists, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the
body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Cor 12:12, English Standard Version)
and spends the rest of chapter 12 describing the function of different body parts. Then he makes
a parallel between that and the body of Christ, thus starting description of a new ecology.
It is, of course, impossible to list every instance of biblical evidence for ecological thinking in
this thread, but I hope I was able to present the main idea—God created our world as a “series of
nested ecologies” and therefore we can thrive only when following the rules of ecological
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theology and thinking.
4 Lowe and Lowe, , 28Ecologies of Faith
5 Lowe and Lowe, , 53Ecologies of Faith
6 Lowe and Lowe, , 22Ecologies of Faith
