God is Green

These days, we debate how best to refer to God: he, she, it, or they? But we should all be able to agree on at least one thing: God is Green! (Fooled ya – bet you thought I was going to say ‘God is Good’; well, that too.)

Citation? How about God’s own words as recorded in the oldest book in the Bible? No, not Genesis; that’s the first book. The oldest may be the Book of Job. So how old is it?

It’s so old that it is not even Jewish. It includes material from multiple traditions, and it includes vocabulary from at least 6 different Middle Eastern languages. (Perhaps the editors had Joyce, Pound and Eliot in mind.)

The text consists mainly of an epic poem, recorded in its current form at the time of Parmenides (On Nature, c. 500 BCE) but consisting of material much older than Homer (Iliad, Odyssey, et al.), 

Oh, and one other thing, with the exception of the Gospel of John, it’s arguably the most beautiful text in the entire Bible. As a poem alone, it deserves to be ranked with the works of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante and Milton. 

Don’t let me mislead you. It’s long (42 chapters), repetitive in some spots, impenetrable in others. Plus it’s almost universally misunderstood. For the most part, commentators interpret it in the context of post-exilic (5th century BCE) Judeo-Christian theology. 

It is compatible with this theology but that is not what the book is about. Heck, when much of the text was written there was no such thing as Judeo-Christian theology!

Take God, for example. You know him as YHWH from Genesis, Exodus, Revelation, et al. But Job’s God is El Shaddai, an older version. That’s right; you’re not in Kansas anymore! And yet, parts of this text could easily have been written in the 1970’s, e.g. by Rudy Bahro (From Red to Green).

But enough with the fluff; let’s cut to the chase!

Job has issues! Of that there is no doubt. Using an ancient legal strategy worthy of Johnnie Cochrane, Job manages to engineer a situation in which God is ‘forced’ to defend himself in a court of law. Incredible, right?

Like a modern day corporate litigant, part of Job’s strategy is to force God to disclose his ‘trade secrets’: specifically, how does the universe work? Very, very reluctantly, God complies…and we discover things your Sunday School (or Hebrew School) teacher never told you:

“The Lord spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, and he said (excerpts from Chapters 39 – 41 follow): Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you know Wisdom. Who marked off its dimensions? Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, who laid its cornerstone?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

“Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?

^“Who gives the ibis Wisdom or the rooster Understanding? Who has the Wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? 

“Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to El (God) and wander about for lack of food?

“Who let the wild donkey go free? Who untied its ropes? I gave it the wasteland as its home, the salt flats as its habitat. It laughs at the commotion in the town; it does not hear a driver’s shout. It ranges the hills for its pasture and searches for any green thing.

“If you’ve an arm as strong as El’s…look for the proud and bring him down. Crush the wicked where they stand!

“Behold Behemoth, who I made along with you. It feeds on grass like an ox. What strength it has in its loins, what power in the muscles of its belly! Its tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are close-knit. Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like rods of iron. It ranks first among the works of God. 

“The hills bring it their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. Under the lotus plants it lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal it in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround it. A raging river does not alarm it; it is secure, even if the Jordan should surge into its mouth. 

“Can you pull Leviathan out with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life?

“Of all that's under heaven, he is mine. I cannot keep silent about him, the fact of his incomparable valor…Even gods (sic) live in fear of his majesty; they're in terror of the ruin he wreaks…He has no match on earth; who is made as fearless as he? …Over beasts of all kinds he is king.”

Clearly, the Book of Job does not present us with an anthropocentric model of the Universe. You get the distinct impression that homo sapiens may be an afterthought…and a dubious one at that. Far from the apex of the pyramid of life, human beings are one among many, at best.

The full text of the Lord’s defense (chapters 39 – 41) is worth a read. God goes through a litany of species and the special charisms of each. We are left out, but what would our charism have been? Being a pest?

God lets us know from the get-go that the world was not created for our comfort and convenience. In his opening paragraph, God tells us that he is focused on the Whole, creating and sustaining a world order that enables all its parts to work in harmony. 

God makes it clear to Job et al. that he has his favorites…and homo sapiens is not among them. We dare to challenge God but where were we when he laid the earth’s foundation? We don’t even measure up to the hippopotamus  (Behemoth), “which I (God) made along with you.”

And then the killer: “It ranks first among the works of God.” 

Far from being God’s equal, we do not even measure up to our fraternal twin, Behemoth. Are we Cain to Behemoth’s Abel? Is that ‘green’ enough for you? Considering the endangered status of the hippo today, the analogy may be chillingly apt.

And not done yet, God adds insult to injury, bringing up a sea creature called Leviathan. ^“He has no match on earth…over beasts of all kinds he is king .”

Clearly, God could benefit from a court ordered parenting class. He is angry at his servant Job, so he belittles him. “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” What kid wants to hear that she’s not #1?

But in defense of God, like many beleaguered parents, he has a very full plate. The groaning of one man (Job), however justified, cannot take precedence over the hungry cries of raven chicks. And there are always lions to be fed. God’s mandate extends even to ‘land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, a desolate wasteland’ where God is concerned to grow grass.

Sidebar: I’m placing this in a sidebar because it may be too speculative for  some readers. Obviously, the authors of the Book of Job knew very little about biology, physical anthropology, or paleontology. But is it possible that they understood that Behemoth is closely matched to us genetically while Leviathan is a much more ‘primitive’ species? If so, this gives God’s rhetoric a fresh bite: “Not only do you not measure up to your brother, Behemoth - you don’t even measure up to a reptile.” Just speculating.

God extols the merits of his creatures, even his ethically challenged ones, yet he appears to ignore the just pleas of his servant Job. What kind of God is this? Much of the poem’s text is concerned with questions of justice: Why do good things happen to bad people? Why doesn’t God do more to reward the just and punish the wicked? It’s the classic Problem of Evil (POE).

Job asks why God does not do more to enforce the demands of justice, but God ingeniously turns the table: “If you’ve an arm as strong as El’s…look for the proud and bring him down. Crush the wicked where they stand…Then I myself will praise you.” 

The authors of Job anticipate the work of Gottfried Leibniz and Rabbi Harold Kushner. It is not a question of will; it’s a matter of can. 

Sidebar: Most interpretations of Job treat POE as the central theme of the poem. It does receive a lot of ink, but the poem never delivers a solution. POE’s role in the argument is just that of a catalyst. In fact, the poem is about God’s essential nature (good, just) and his eco-friendly relationship with the created, autonomous, harmonious world.

In the Jewish mystical practice known as Kabbalah, the chief virtues, second only to divine sovereignty (Keter) itself, are Wisdom and Understanding. And where do we find these virtues exemplified? In Lucy and Desi? Cheech and Chong? No. In the Ibis and the Rooster. (No, that is not the name of a London pub. If it were, I’d be there now.) 

3,000 years later we are just now ‘discovering’ (again) that other species are conscious! We have systematically unlearned things we knew millennia ago. We are complicit in a massive, worldwide brainwashing conspiracy (Ellul, Propaganda), designed to objectify the biosphere and self-aggrandize humanity. 

At the end of all this banter and bluster, Job comes out the clear winner. He uncovers God’s trade secrets, which was his primary objective in the first place. Plus, he prevails on matters of law. He receives full restitution and he is awarded substantial damages to boot.

Consequently, we now know a lot more about God, and a lot more about our Universe, than we did before. For example, Good is God’s essential nature; it’s not an accident or a whim. The World enjoys autonomy. God’s concern is first and foremost for Creation as a whole and secondarily for any of its parts. 

And speaking of parts, ab initio all parts are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights (among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness). If they come to be graded over time (e.g. Behemoth > Homo), it is based solely on merit, not favoritism. And on that basis, we’ve got some catching up to do.

So, can we all agree? God is Green! QED

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Giotto’s Saint Francis Preaching to the Birds shows Saint Francis addressing a group of attentive birds as fellow recipients of God’s love, emphasizing humility and compassion toward all living creatures. The calm, orderly gathering suggests a divinely sanctioned harmony between humans and animals, rooted in care rather than dominance. Through simple gestures and serene composition, the painting affirms the idea that animals are included within God’s moral and spiritual concern.