EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on April 26, 2024.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
I guess maybe in this case a movie might be worth an infinite number of words when it comes to creating awareness about the earth-altering effects of climate change.
“One with the Whale,” a fast-moving, two-hour documentary that premiered on PBS on Earth Day, celebrated annually on April 22, is a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking look at how dire the circumstances of one family who maintains a subsistence life mainly through hunting on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.
At its heart, the movie tells the story of Native teen, Chris Apassingok, who in 2017 became the youngest person in his village ever to harpoon a whale, an extremely important food source to the people on the island. But once word got out to the greater world, Apassingok, his family, and their fellow Native people were brutalized on digital media for their whale hunting traditions.
The effects of the attacks from a wider world that does not understand the importance of the whale hunt to the community’s survival were devastating to Apassingok, his family and the villagers.
But also tucked into this gripping story is a critical message about climate change, the ecological havoc we are wreaking on planet earth.
No matter your political beliefs regarding climate change, there is irrefutable evidence to the damage we are inflicting on God’s beautiful and “very good” creation. To say otherwise is disingenuous and a lie.
“One with the Whale” is more sobering testimony that we have not held up our end of the creation contract with God. We have not kept up the Garden of Eden as instructed, and the consequences are coming home to roost.
Unfortunately though, it’s not the world’s well off who pay those environmental invoices. Most often, it is the world’s voiceless and marginalized peoples who most acutely pay the price for our human arrogance, exemplified in Apassingok and his fellow villagers who are struggling to sustain a living on a small island they’ve inhabited since 1,200 B.C.
We just celebrated the 54th anniversary of Earth Day, a day set aside to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Thankfully, there are many faith-based efforts that are raising awareness about the necessity of creation care, including one such effort in my own home Lutheran synod.
But as faithful people, each of us individually also is called to keep the Garden of Eden as we are instructed in Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it.”
But it’s important to note that nowhere does scripture tell us to monetize creation, devastate it, monopolize it or own it in our Westernized sense of the word.
Faith Family, we are failing in our duties to steward God’s “good” creation, and we can’t call it anything else. Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.