Nature Doesn't Care



A few months ago, I wrote about sunflowers and how beautiful they are. The nature of the sunflower is that it rises when the sun is up and slumbers when the sun sets. That is the nature of the sunflower, and they really don’t care whether you and I appreciate their beauty or their nature. 

Last week, there was a flash flood in Nepal that killed so many people from different parts of the world. Some were in the area as pilgrims, some were vacationing, some were helping others, some were working, and some were visiting family. Many of the people were also minding their own business. And then, out of nowhere, came this surge of water that they had never seen before.

The water's intensity was astounding - it destroyed any object in its path. It took down buildings, bridges, roads, cars, trees, and what have you. The water didn’t care what was in its path. The avalanche that triggered this chain reaction of disaster didn’t care about the effect or the impact it would make on people’s lives and properties.

This is our story, just like the kid who was eating breakfast when the disaster occurred and was discovered 5 days later; our story is one where we wake up one morning, and in spite of all that we have reasonably done to make sure that we don’t get the diagnosis that would upend our lives, our worst fears become our reality. We wonder why. But our questions go unanswered.

Nature simply doesn’t care whether we have answers to some of our deepest fears that become our reality. Nature is silent and appears indifferent.

Over the past several weeks, I have been involved in many funerals, and I am sure many of you have been, as well. Death doesn’t care whom it lays its icy hands on; it lays them on kids and adults, young and old, the sick and even the healthy. It simply doesn’t care. It occurred to me during a particular burial that nature takes our loved ones from us, inflicts the worst disease on us, and destroys life with absolute callousness.

And our sad reality is that we are left to pick up the pieces of nature’s destruction and try to make sense of it. And we try to make sense because that is the only way we can console ourselves with some rationale. We try to make sense of it because we tend to believe that without that understanding, we have nothing to prepare for, nothing to hope for, and nothing to console ourselves with.

I started writing this piece while standing in a cemetery watching a grave being covered with concrete and sand. While I watched, I was hit with the realization that if nature doesn’t care, then who cares? Who is supposed to care?

It is such an irony that the very people whom nature doesn’t know and doesn’t care about are the very people who are supposed to care about nature - the living and the non-living things that exist independent of you and me.

I believe that humans exist both in and out of nature. We allow nature to communicate through us, and we take care of nature. We exist outside of nature; that is why we can care for both the living and the non-living.

To be completely inside nature would mean not caring about both the living and non-living things, just like the flash floods and other natural disasters do not care about the lives and properties they destroy. We exist inside and outside of nature; that is why we can be both destructive and caring.

Witnessing the burial reminded me that nature may not and does not care, but we should and we must. To abdicate that responsibility for caring places us squarely within nature and its destructive tendencies.

There’s a story of a woman who had been in a coma at a facility for years. One day, it was discovered that the woman was pregnant. How is this possible? Considering the acuity of her illness, how in the world could she get pregnant? After conducting a thorough investigation, it became clear that one of the staff members whose responsibility was to care for the comatose patient was doing what nature does - didn’t care about what he was doing to her.

Christianity makes a bold claim about a God who cared enough to become incarnate and live among men and women like you and me. This incarnate God invites us to live outside of nature because to live inside of nature is to be compromised by nature’s indifference to life.

To live outside of nature is to make a claim for a kind of Christianity that embodies justice. To me, the constant invitation to embrace justice is the most viable way that we can articulate that we care about both the living and the non-living. To care about yourself and others is to live outside of nature. To care about animals is to live outside of nature. To care about the planet is to live outside of nature. To live outside of nature is to simply display a characteristic that isn’t bound to nature because nature simply doesn't care.

This is what I often find fascinating about justice: if there is no justice, then we might as well forget about any difference between the flash floods that destroyed villages, towns, people, and Christians like you and me. But if there is justice, then there is a difference, and the only difference I can think of is one where we care about how our actions and inactions affect other people and our environment.

If the God of our incarnate God isn’t a just God, then our atheist friends may be right that there is no God, much less a God who invites us into a relationship grounded in justice. But if, as Christianity claims, there is a God and the God is a just God, then the ultimate benefit of being a Christian may be your differentiation from the nature which doesn’t care, because you have the capacity to care and you do care.

I heard a quote which was attributed to St. Augustine at the memorial service preceding the burial on Friday: “I myself I know that I am not the goal of my existence.” What, then, is the goal of our existence? Our goal is union with the God in whom we delight, and caring is at the heart of this God.

If nature: rocks, hills, mountains, trees, tornadoes, hurricanes, rivers, plants, streams, rain, storms, flash floods, flowers, foxes, deer, eagles, lions, tigers, cancer, death-just name them. If all these do not care what happens to you or me, do you care about what happens to you, me and all that is around us?

If you care, you have touched the heart of God.

Blessed Labor Day Weekend,

Manny+