“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20
The word “pantheism” refers to a belief system that places God in all of nature, thereby compelling believers to identify different forms of life as God’s actual physical presence. In other words, the essence of God is present in the trees, the birds, the grass, the sea, wild animals and so forth.
Based on several passages found in the Bible, this thinking is inaccurate. The standard Christian belief is that God is greater than his entire creation, and it is mainly a reflection of his character. Thus, it is a mistake to place God’s spirit in all that we see in nature, because he is much greater than the sum and total of his entire creation.
In the book of Genesis, after God had created the earth and everything on it and above it, Satan, furious with God for having thrown him out of heaven, decided to try to tempt the first two humans away from their Maker. To carry out his evil plan, Satan took the form of a snake and was able to convince the humans that his plan was much more preferable to God’s. So with that said, it is entirely possible that God, if he so chooses, can take the form of any species of animal he chooses. As Lord and Master of all he created, he certainly has that right as well as the ability if the need should ever arise.
But Scripture has made it very clear that God has chosen to remain apart from his creation, even going so far as to put everything on earth under the dominion of humans. Ideally, humans were to “increase and multiply” and fill the whole earth, using its fruit for their sustenance and being ever grateful to God for all his blessings. After the temptation and fall, all that changed. God cast them out of the garden he had created for them and opened the door to all the forces of “good and evil” that had been unleashed through their agreeing with Satan’s deception.
To this day, however, all of nature, apart from humans, has remained miraculously off-limits to Satan and his evil. Aside from the damage that our intervention has perpetrated on the planet, nature continues to be the one realm where things still pretty much go on as God intended them to. It’s one of the blessings that I thank God for every single time I bow to him in prayer.
During a recent time of prayer, I remembered, as always, to thank God for his creation and for the gifts he has given us to enjoy with all our senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Nature has something to offer to any, most, or all of these five senses, from the sight of misty mountains or choppy seas, the sound of birds or thunder, the soft feel of an animal’s fur, the sweetness of wild raspberries or maple syrup, and the smell of pine trees in a forest or a blossoming hyacinth. Every single living thing in nature reaches us through at least one, if not all the senses, reflecting the fact that God himself also possesses these senses; and we, in turn, were blessed with them because God created us in “his image,” so we wouldn’t be complete without them.
While meditating, I always look out the window at the woodlot behind this building. Right now, with all the deciduous trees bare and the ground covered in snow, there isn’t much color. But on sunny days, there is a special beauty to the spot in the shadows cast by the individual trees across the forest’s white floor, and how those shadows shift as the day moves toward evening.
Once again, I praised God for all his amazing gifts and blessings, and added the words “for the great art gallery that is your creation.” Because that is exactly what it is: a vast global collection of all God’s works, not a one of which has not been depicted in some form or other by various artists during human history. Even in urban settings, where buildings, highways, subway trestles and shopping malls mar the view, there is something natural to see for those who are observant and who look for the little things. Again, somewhere and at some point in time, even the tiniest detail has been captured in the mind and eye of someone who was able to replicate it in order to, if nothing else, preserve its memory. So in essence, God created the myriad of originals that have come down to us, not only in their true and natural forms but also through the interpretation and vision of the world’s painters, sculptors, and photographers.
For nature is the last bastion between us and a world that is growing ever darker and more troubling each day. While news outlets bombard us every second with new worries and concerns, life goes on in woodlands and oceans, on hills and in valleys, their gentle reality far removed from the chaos that is life as we now know it...where the thousands of species of plant and animal life go about their business, free of the evil that robs us of our own peace and serenity.
When it threatens to derail me and drag me from my spiritual journey, all I need do is look out my window for a soul-saving glimpse of one of God’s many gifts, that never fails to renew my spirit and reinstate my hope and the assurance that, no matter how bleak things seem to be, he is always with me, his rod and staff sustaining me.
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