Where the river flows everything will live (Ezek 47:9)
Our bible starts with a tree-y garden built around four rivers which are described with what seems almost an unnecessary amount of detail.
It ends with a city built around a river with flourishing trees on each side.
If something about a healthy river is what it is like to live close to God’s design then we are in trouble.
Serious concerns about what we are doing to the Murray-Darling River system extend way back.
However there were also many loud voices saying it was ok really.
In a world of PR and spin and lies and it is hard to know what is and isn’t real.
The recent death of hundreds of thousands of fish make it obvious beyond all argument that something is deeply wrong with the River and with the behaviour of the humans who God put here and given power over it.
The way Genesis tells it, the relationship of human to God, human to human, and human to the created world are all linked; when one is broken, the other two invariably suffer as well.
This is picked up vividly by the Yolngu theologian and pastor, Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra (who lives in Arnhem Land):
I am sorry to say it, but I picture oppressors, both yolngu [Aboriginal] and balanda [White] coming into our garden of Eden like a snake. Satan used the snake as his instrument to tempt God’s people and to try to destroy God’s plan for his people. The bad influence came in breaking our relationship with God, with man, and with the Land. We never dreamed that one day the bulldozers would come in.[1]
Perhaps the state of the created world is one of the most truthful voices about the righteousness of its’ people:
How long will the land mourn,
and the grass of every field wither?
For the wickedness of those who live in it
the animals and the birds are swept away,
and because people said, ‘He is blind to our ways.’
Jeremiah 12:4
In which case our world is telling us, loudly, that there is something deeply wrong.
[1] Cited by Tony Swain, The Mother Earth Conspiracy: An Australian Episode
