The sacred, it would seem, is deeply and inextricably connected with that miraculous quality we call Life.
Life is inseparable from the whole domain of value. If the universe were lifeless, how could anything really matter? It is life –and the needs of living creatures-that makes one course of events better or worse than another.
Life also is the epitome of the Wholeness that is the essence of the Good and the Beautiful-Wholeness being defined as the ordering of things in an ideal way. Whether one believes that life on earth is the result of an undirected evolutionary process, or that it shows the handiwork of some kind of intelligent Designer, one can hardly behold the fabric of life without a feeling of awe for the incredible intricacy of how life has ordered the matter and energy of which it is composed.
One can surely judge the godliness –or lack of it-of any political leadership by the attitude it brings to the needs of life.
But our present leadership, and many of its followers –though they declare themselves "pro-life"-- have but the narrowest concept of what being "pro-life" truly requires. Indeed, it seems that they have not really understood the true nature of life. And, in their ignorance, or indifference, they have made themselves into an anti-life force.
Nowhere has this failure of understanding been more in evidence than on the issue of climate change.
CREATURES AND THE SYSTEMS THAT SUSTAIN THEM
Not only is it insufficient to care about human life, as the old joke has it, only "between conception and birth," but a true concern for human life cannot confine itself only to the purely human realm. The point here is not that other forms of life have inherent value in themselves, too-though that is certainly true, and the failure of many to extend their sense of the sacredness of life beyond the human is surely a spiritual failure of no small proportion. The issue here goes far beyond that: even those who care only to protect human life must protect also the larger Whole of the biosphere out of which humankind emerged and upon which humankind continues inescapably to depend for its survival.
Such is the Wholeness of life on earth.
Not only is no man an island, but neither can humanity itself safely see itself as an island cut off from the vast interconnected Whole that is life on earth. For four billion years, life has been creating Wholeness on this planet. At present, none of us knows whether this mind-bogglingly complex living system is unique in the universe, or rare, or one of many places where the creation of such intricately ordered, self-perpetuating living systems has been achieved in this cosmos. But however unique or common is the emergence of life's mind-bogglingly complex order, such as has occurred on our earth, the levels of this order go well beyond the individual creature, or species, to constitute an interlocking set of flows at the planetary level.
And the earth's climate is part of that Wholeness. Over these billions of years, the web of living things has developed to create and sustain the conditions for life's continuation, including the flows of gases that constitute the earth's atmosphere and regulate its climate.
This control is not complete, of course. Life had no way, for example, to prevent the intrusion onto the planet, some 65 million years ago, of an asteroid, from outside the domain of life's control, whose impact kicked up enough debris to alter the climate and force many life forms into extinction. But, partial though life's control over the planet may be, it is part of the miraculous order of life on earth that earth's many creatures work to sustain a stable and life-supporting climatic system.
Whether one gives any credence to the "Gaia hypothesis," according to which the Biosphere is to be seen as a single planet-encompassing living organism, or whether one sees this biospheric wholeness in other terms, any "pro-life" vision of what is holy ought surely to recognize that in this life-serving stabilizing of the climate that life has striven for and, to a great extent, achieved, there is something sacred with which we are called upon to align ourselves.
For not only is it one of life's great achievements, but it is also part of the foundation of the well-being of our own species. Uncertainties there may be about the dynamics of earth's climatic system, but no prudent person would roll the dice on the only planet we've got.
Foolish is the species that would bring down such a Temple upon its own head. Foolish or irresponsible-which is, perhaps, a species of wickedness.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
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