2:15 וַיִּקַּ֛ח ה’ אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ” – בראשית“
“and God took the human and placed it in the Garden of Eden to tend and take care of it“ – Genesis 2:15
Before the ten commandments, before Moses and all the prophets. Before all the Abrahamic Religions formed. Before every tenet, law, tradition, and prayer. God gave men its most important mission, its reason and role on Earth – to tend and take care of it. That was, is, and always will be our central mission in this world. A mission we are grossly failing at.
We were gifted the privilege to be partners in this world, in this Garden of Eden that we have turned upside down. Given the intelligence and capacity to modify, manage, and tend. And for a while, we did well; we were part of ecosystems across the world, from the tribes in the deep Amazon to the Fjords of Norway, the basins of the Niles and Euphrates, the coastal regions of Asia, and into the Mongolian Stepe. Integrated and essential to each space. Following the Buffalo Herds in the Midwest Plains, creating dams and artificial rivers to create greenery and produce. We allied ourselves with all types of mammals, from horses to man’s best friend, the dog. We even entered into unwritten contracts with hens, sheep, and cows. We blended in, perhaps not perfectly, but our sages and ancestors in all corners of the earth were in tune with nature, with this beautiful creation, with this Garden of Eden called Earth.
And then somewhere along the lines of history, we began to stray. What started as progress and development soon turned into detachment, and with it, pain ensued. During that long and slow detachment, we turned our backs on Mother Earth. From partners, we turned into its enemies, earth, which gave us all that is good. The industrial age was the final tipping point. We left our ecosystems and our partnership with nature to create towns, then cities. Cities that slowly became cancers to their surroundings. Wars, sickness, and destruction became by-products if this new path many embarked on. Yet progress and development can not be viewed as just destruction and horror, life is not black and white, it is ful of colors and shades of grey, and that is not the point of the article. It is thoughtless, aimless, reckless progress that has always been the problem.
The problem is of course, complex; greed, ego and lust for power where so many man are lost, wondering why their lives are a wreck, why they’re unhappy, why the misery, why the depression, why the anxiety … why there is no peace in their lives, why it all feels empty. Yet the solution is quite simple; it just seems complex in this age of individualism, delusion and detachment. A solution that was part of our existence when we acted in the best interest of the tribe, group, of the collective. Then everyone understood that the actions of the individual shape the collective, and there lies the key to transformation.
Despite its many critics, religion can be a powerful force for good. It can be a driver for good; unfortunately, often, those men and women lost in a lust for power have spoken on its behalf. The wrong people in the wrong place is a feature of our current times. Many of these, so-called messengers of faith, instead of drilling this first commandment to their followers, talk about everything else – petty nuances of daily life, senseless dogma, or worse – politics. The priorities upside down, in the narrow straits of their view, the importance of saying a prayer ‘right’ or a dietary restriction trumps reducing plastic waste or wasting water.
But those congregations, at least most Abrahamic Religions, which encompass the majority of the population, have only to read that single first commandment “to tend and care for it” to know that it is placed there, right at the beginning, before everything else, for that specific reason – that this action comes before everything else you do. This is who you need to be, before you are anything else. The sins you commit against the world and against nature, when you have the choice, when you are able not to, are the real sins you should be concerned about the most.
A real sin is to throw a cigarrette butt in water, a real sin is to use a single use plastic bag instead of a compostable bag or a reusable bag, a real sin is to throw garbage where it doesn’t belong, a rel sin is to pollute when you can choose not to, a real sin is to leave that focet open just because you are shaving or cleaning dishes without using it, a real sin throwing cooking oil in water, not composting, not recylcing, not pushing the necessary changes for a sustainable future. You should live your life in constant introspection of how you can do better, be better for this world.
But this doesn’t mean going to extremes, it means having common sense. This is not a call for people not to have children, or not travelling for example. But instead have children in a sustainable way, teach children to be sustainable, to lead sustainable lives. It means instead of taking that car across the country, maybe taking the train, taking that bike or that walk instead. It means choosing an electric vehicle if your grid is mostly renewable energies, it means pushing for conservation, for more walkable spaces, for more nature and less concrete.
It means not mixing any other issue with the environment; it means leaving the environment out of politics. It means that being an advocate for the environment, not for radical ideologies that only alienate people like many so-called ‘green’ parties and their radical-extremist members have been mixing Islamist, Marxist, and extreme views in, has made a lot of people sour on the environment. In fact, some of the people who have done the most damage to the environment have been and are their so-called advocates. Just like some of the people who have done the most damage to faith and belief in God have often been their so-called advocates.
“Atraes más moscas con miel que con vinagre” is an old hispanic say that means “you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. It’s about bringing everyone inside one tent, one planet. Not excluding, segmenting, fragmenting, polarizing the terrible situation we have led this planet into. The climate catastrophe we’re in is only getting worse. We must chart a different path, we must see and acknowledge what hasn’t worked and rethink what can work, but most importantly, we can not allow anything else to supersede that first commandment – “to tend and take care of it.“
