Letter #270: Nature and Its Discontents

You can't have one without the other.

Dad,

Happy 4th! Glad you got some time off. I spent the holiday on a 22-mile round-trip hike to the highest point of elevation in the contiguous U.S. Nothing says AMERICA like gasping for air at 14,500 feet as you look down on the rest of the world and laugh. Or wheeze.

In truth, though, few things do re-awaken you to the riches of this country like spending time in its ravishing natural landscapes. We set out at 2:20 A.M. under a Milky Way that looked like the inside of a geode, streaked with shooting stars. We hit the summit shortly before noon as the sun cut through the thin air. We trekked back among cliffside waterfalls and pines in the mellow evening light. And not to get pious about it, but the whole thing well and truly did declare the glory of God.

Nature is where you go to meet God in his abundance, giving with both hands. There’s more pleasure, variety, and artistry out there than you could ever possibly need for biological purposes. The intricacy of design in a mushroom spore outmatches what our finest human craftsmen can do, but it’s not there for any other purpose than the sheer beautiful sake of itself.

It can also kill you. Before you can get too carried away romanticizing nature, it treats you to displays of absolutely unsparing cruelty. The air alone can nauseate you pretty severely. Men and beasts tear at each other for survival. Also, mosquitoes! Ghastly.

If there’s no word for “nature” in the Old Testament, that’s because it’s a Greek word—phusis, which gives us “nature” via natura in Latin. All of these words describe the spontaneous flow of things along their built-in contours. There are physical contours and spiritual contours—well-being grows from virtue much as flowers grow from seeds. It’s natural.

All this, as you say, is in the Old Testament even if it’s not named as such. What’s also keenly felt in the Old Testament is the mismatch between physical nature and spiritual nature. There are deformities, violations, and tragedies that we can only name because the material facts seem to fall afoul of some immaterial ideal. This is why the New Testament, written in Greek, is full of the word “nature.” In some sense it’s all about the hope that the two natures—one throbbing with divine grace, one bleeding from tooth and claw—are on their way to being reconciled.

I suppose this is my way of saying that nature and its discontents are both deeply Christian concepts. The same heart of love that delights in the variety of male and female will also chafe at the inability of either category to encapsulate anyone’s humanity fully. The same St. Paul who marveled at creation also heard it groaning to be released from bondage. Many of our ethical schoolmarms seem pretty keen to legislate their way out of this central discomfort, when maybe all we can do (for now) is drink the wine and love the living God.

Love,
Spencer