Is it Orthodox to be environmentally-conscious?

I was recently asked if it was Orthodox to care so much for the environment.

I would boldly and unequivocally state that it is very Orthodox to care for the environment, although unOrthodox to be passionate about environmentalism. The "ism" marks the point when an idea, descriptor, or reality is "deified" to the status of false god. Idolatry ensues.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that we have a better reason to care for the environment (what Orthodox have traditionally called Creation or the cosmos) than anyone else.

In the beginning, when God created, He called what He had created "good." A solid, unambiguous good, just as the first man and the first woman were also created good. Recently I heard it said that one of the hallmarks of the demonic is a hatred of Creation. Our Enemy hates what God has made, what He has called good, and seeks to despoil it, to despoil us.

The Old Order

When Man sinned (first Eve and then Adam), sin entered the world, the cosmos, through Adam, God-appointed steward of Creation. Through no fault of its own, Creation became fallen and corrupt, and it is for this reason that animal is at enmity with animal and man, and even the inanimate movements of nature (earthquake, tornado, lightning, etc.) are at war with both animal and man. And yet, though fallen, Creation is still good - God does not begrudge it its existence, but wills that it be, and continue to be. [Credit Fr. Stephen]

And as countless generations of men and women lived and died, their sins repeated the first sins of our first parents, and Creation groaned under the weight. Until the Advent of Christ, when all Creation rejoiced, and until Pentecost.

The New Order

In the icon of Pentecost, we see the flames of the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles, and below them a crowned man who represents the cosmos ... not just "the world", but all of Creation. Through this descent, the Holy Spirit began to restore, through and by the prayers of the God's holy faithful, all Creation to its Edenic, prelapsarian state. This is a process that continues to this day and enjoys its greatest flowering in monasteries and in remote hermitages where holy prayer is constantly lifted to God. Here we see a tsunami rebuked (St. Herman), a bear living in harmony (St. Seraphim), and other supranatural phenomena.

And sometimes there is no monastery or hermitage, just a holy man - whose heart has been made a temple of unceasing prayer - who reveals a fundamental, God-given peace and reconciliation between himself and Creation. Here the Holy Spirit is at work.

However, it is not just in the wonders of the thaumaturges or the monastic gardens that we see the Holy Spirit restoring and healing Creation. The Holy Spirit makes use of the matter that surrounds us to bless, heal, and sanctify the people of God . Where God mediates His grace through physical Creation, we identify this as "sacrament" or "sacramental." Water becomes the laver of regeneration. Bread and wine become the medicine of immortality. Oil becomes sacred chrism or instrument of healing. Pigment and binder become windows into heaven.

And still more things are brought into the Church to celebrate the feasts and to be yet another source of blessing to us. Greens are brought in at Pentecost, eggs at Pascha, flowers on Holy Friday, willows on Palm Sunday, etc.

As the Church year progresses, over and over again the sacramental (and therefore salvific) role of Creation is liturgically taught. We learn from the Church that all of Creation has the potential to become sacrament, by the power of the Holy Spirit through the prayers of the saints. And so the Church reveals to us the true beauty and potency of Eden, where all the cosmos becomes vessel for the Holy Spirit and bestower of God's grace.

The Contest

And so we come to the present, where the age-long demonic hatred of man, of family, of Church, and of Creation is naked and brutally active. In a nation where the blood of the innocents is shed, where God and His bride are mocked and derided, where family are endlessly torn and riven, we should expect to see poison poured into the rivers and perversions of nature sown in our fields. We should expect to see the earth paved over, the heavens obscured by bright lights and concrete monoliths, and the masses enticed away from the God-given and Spirit-blessed countryside and drawn into the desert of the city.

This is a contest where the Evil One will make use of any greed or lust to harm everything that God has proclaimed good.

And here we stand, the people of God, powerful Davids before the empty might of the Goliaths of our age (big industry, materialism, Mammonites, etc.), who rage and roar with demoniac loathing the barren mantras of their masters. And as we are fully present in our lives, it is our calling and our duty to rebuke the evil, to reclaim the good, to sanctify, bless, heal, restore, redeem ... to fix the brokenness around us in all its forms. And I would assert that that would include rejecting plastic, combating the acquisitive spirit of materialism, planting a garden, shunning GE perversions, and returning ourselves to a simpler sustainable future-friendly unselfish manner of living.

- V.