.Discovering God's Relationship to the Negative Elements of Nature.

This is the second part of the previous assignment. Again, we had to spend an hour outside, but this time we had to reflect on God's relationship to the negative aspects of nature. Here is what I thought about. I feel like after doing this assignment, my perspective on God is a little bit clearer.
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For this assignment I spent some time sitting on a rock in a local ravine, and thought about God’s relation to those elements that are deemed negative in nature. I first had to think through what I thought those negative values in nature are. I thought about the dirt, the slime, the mould in the creek bed and how unpleasant it looked right now. Trees were falling over and decaying, there was mould up and down both sides of the creek bed, the snow was not pure white anymore, and it frankly did not even smell very good. The rock that I was sitting on was cold and uncomfortable. It was this feeling of being uncomfortable that led me to think more about God and His relation to these elements of nature. It was here that I realized that God did not create so that I would be comfortable; He created to display what He thinks is good.

I chose to use “uncomfortable” to explain the negative values of nature. The rock was bumpy and cold, the mould could cause allergies, and the snow was not sparkly anymore. These elements of nature are ones that I, as a human feel I could do without. The important part here is: “I, as a human.” The grass and the soil under the mould are not too worried about my allergies, but may be thankful for the nutrients it receives from the mould each spring. I would rather not get allergies from the mould; but even though I describe an element of nature as negative, it is still something that has been created by God, or allowed to exist by God. Mould does not necessarily make things more attractive for me and may even have negative ramifications for me, but this does not mean that mould does not hold value.

Mould has a purpose, even if it causes me to be uncomfortable. So what is God’s relation to the mould? God created it and allows it to interact with other elements in nature in a positive way. So maybe it is not about me; maybe it is about God creating nature to interact in a particular way, in a way that He defines as good, in a way that is bigger than me. In this way of understanding nature, it allows us as humans to see the value in all of creation, outside of its effects on us as humans.

On the way back home, I was thinking more about this idea of feeling uncomfortable with certain aspects of nature. It seems to me that it is this concept of feeling uncomfortable that human’s battle. We have made paved paths through forests because it is easier to walk on, we have made benches to sit on rather than rocks, we have made bridges to get over bodies of water. Are we creating ways to avoid those parts of nature that we define as negative? By doing this are we avoiding a certain way of interacting with God?

The negative values in nature, those that cause us as humans to feel uncomfortable cause us to remember that it is not all about us. God has allowed these aspects of nature to continue to exist not for the purpose of causing humans discomfort, but because there is value in those things that do not directly benefit us. They have been created and hold a place of purpose in a world where not only I exist, but nature exists as well.