One of the greatest influences in the “formative years” of my Christian life was apologist Francis Schaeffer, founder of the L’Abris community in Switzerland. Though I have read almost all of his works, I had skipped over Pollution and the Death of Man for some reason. Perhaps it was because of the implicit gnosticism of the evangelicalism in which I had been reared, a view of the world that tended to deny the place of the physical in God’s economy.

In recent years I’ve been trying to repent of that gnosticism. So it was that I was delighted to receive help from my old friend Schaeffer once again, this time in a couple of quotes from the above-mentioned book in the excellent magazine of Christians and culture, Critique, published by Ransom Fellowship.

Following are the excerpts from Schaeffer’s book (bibliographical and purchasing information at the end):

Pagan Beauty, Christian Ugliness

Some years ago I was lecturing in a certain Christian school. Just across a ravine from the school there was what they called a “hippie community.” On the far side of the ravine one saw trees and some farms. Here, I was told, they had pagan grape stomps. Being interested, I made my way across the ravine, and met on of the leading men in this ‘Bohemian’ community.

We got on very well as we talked of ecology, and I was able to speak of the Christian answer to life and ecology. He paid me the compliment (and I accepted it as such) of telling me that I was the first person from “across the ravine” who had ever been shown the place where they did, indeed, have grape stomps and to see the pagan image they had there. This image was the center of these rites. The whole thing was set against the classical background of Greece and Rome.

Having shown me all this, he looked across to the Christian school and said to me, “Look at that; isn’t that ugly?” And it was! I could not deny it. It was an ugly building, without even trees around it.

It was then that I realized what a poor situation this was. When I stood on Christian ground and looked at the Bohemian people’s place, it was beautiful. They had even gone to the trouble of running their electric cables under the level of the trees so that they couldn’t be seen. Then I stood on pagan ground and looked at the Christian community and saw ugliness. Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take inot account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.

Trees, Rocks and People

Christians, of all people, should not be the destroyers. We should treat nature with an overwhelming respect. We may cut down a tree to build a house, or to make a fire to keep the family warm. But we should not cut down the tree just to cut down the tree. We may, if necessary, bark the tree in order to have the use of the bark. But what we should not do is bark the tree simply for the sake of doing so, and let it dry and stand there a dead skeleton in the wind. To do so is not to treat the tree with integrity. We hav the right to rid our houses of ants; but what we have not the right to do is to forget to honor the ant as God made it, in its rightful place in nature. When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him. He is a creature, like ourselves; not made in the image of God, but equal with us as far as creation is concerned.

One does not deface things simply to deface them. After all, the rock has a God-given right to be a rock as He made it. If you must move the rock in order to build the foundation of a house, then by all means move it. But on a walk in the woods do not strip the moss from it for no reason, and leave the moss to die. Even the moss has a right to live. It is equal with man as a creature of God.

(Excerpted from Pollution and the Death of Man [Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1970] pp. 42-43, pp. 74-76. Purchase the book here.)

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