Finding God in nature

SpareOom (New Messages)
1

Today I biked with my son along a wooded path next to a stream, surrounded by trees with budding green leaves, bathed in a warm spring sun. I couldn’t help but think of nature as God’s gift to us, to enjoy among the surrounding coronavirus darkness. After getting home, I decided to see what Lewis had to say about nature. In Goffar’s “C.S. Lewis Index”, there are about 115 references to nature. One of them is from the chapter titled Nature in “Reflections on the Psalms”:

“…the doctrine of Creation leaves Nature full of manifestations which show the presence of God, and created energies which serve Him. The light is HIs garment, the thing we partially see Him through (104, 32), the thunder can be His voice (29, 3-5). He dwells in the dark thundercloud (18, 11), the eruption of a volcano comes in answer to His touch (104, 32). The world is full of his emissaries and executors. He makes winds His messengers and flames His servants (194, 4)”

Dimitry

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)

2

Psalm 8 says it all (here RSVCE):

1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants,
2 thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established;
4 what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him? 5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honor.
6 Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the sea.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

In the world (at least in the “developed” countries) today we are struggling with the question of how much “dominion” mankind should take over nature, and are madly pulling in 2 opposite directions:

On a pan-terrestrial, macroscopic level many are humble and penitent about the damage we have done to the environment in the past, through greed and ignorance, and hold up primitive “natural” tribes as a new ideal.

On a microscopic level, by contrast, we muck about with genes like there’s no tomorrow, thinking it a legitimate scientific goal to attempt artificial life, or manipulate the biology of existing creatures, even of human beings(1), to our own selfish ends; and all despite admitted ignorance about many aspects of how cells actually work.
This is to my mind the same mixture of hubris, carelessness, greed, ruthlessness and cluelessness that caused the global environmental disasters of the past 250 years.

I’ve never heard this schizophrenic discrepancy of attitudes ( macro- vs microscopic) discussed in the media. Can our beloved Lewis shed more light on it, or was the discrepancy just less in his day?

(1) Lewis has a lot to say about this in The Abolition of Man and elsewhere, search for “conditioners”. See also the activities of the NICE in That Hideous Strength)

Easter blessings,
Hyoi/Peter