Check out the whole article
here.
First off, I would like to say that by faith, I am a Christian. However, I am not one of *those* Christians. I am non-denominational, and very open-minded. I believe the mind should be kept healthy as part of the "temple" as the body. Frankly, I suck at the "body" part, but the mind part I work on every day.
Having said that, other than the Bible, I take inspiration and instruction from other sources as well. Native American wisdom (obviously), Buddhist wisdom, and tonight, Jewish wisdom. I believe if you ignore sources like these then you are doing your mind and soul a total disservice.
Tonight, thanks to Huffington Post I was enlightened by the Jewish view on the environment as told by Rabbi Lawrence Troster in his article "10 Teachings on Judaism and the Environment". His 10 lessons were:
1) God created the universe.
2) God's creation is good.
3) Human beings are created in the image of God.
4) Humans should view their role in creation with love and awe.
5) The Sabbath and prayer help us achieve this state of mind.
6) The Torah prohibits wasteful consumption of anything.
7) The Torah gives an obligation to save human life.
8) The Torah prohibits the extinction of species and causing undo pain to non-human creatures.
9) Environmental justice is a Jewish value.
10) The perfection/fixing of the world is in our hands.
A few of the excerpts from the article just rang like a bell in my mind.
From #3:
"Human beings have a special place and role in the Order of Creation. Of all God's creations, only human beings have the power to disrupt Creation. This power, which gives them a kind of control over Creation, comes from special characteristics that no other creature posseses (Psalm 8). This idea is expressed in the concept that humans were created in the image of God (
tzelem Elohim). In its original sense, tzelem Elohim means that humans were put on the earth to act as God's agents and to actualize God's presence in Creation"
From #4:
"Thus, when we study Creation with all the tools of modern science, we are filled with love and a sense of connection to a greater order of things. We feel a sense of wonder but also a sense of awe and humility as we perceive how small we are in the universe as well as within the history of evolution. Love and humility should then invoke in us a sense of reverence for Creation and modesty in our desire to use it. We should, according to Abraham Joshua Heschel, see the world as God-centered, not human-centered. By putting God at the center of life, we see the sacred in everything and the natural world becomes a source of wonder and not only a resource for our use and abuse."
From #5:
Prayer also helps us to recognize that everything we are, everything we have and everything we use ultimately comes from God (
Babylonian Talmud, Brakhot 35a). When we say a blessing, we create a moment or holiness, a sacred pause. Prayer also creates an awareness of the sacred by taking us out of ourselves and our artificial environments and allowing us to truly encounter natural phenomenon. Prayer creates a loss of control which allows us to "see the world in the mirror of the holy." (Heschel) We are then able to see the world as an object of divine concern and we can then place ourselves beyond self and more deeply within Creation.
From #6:
"The underlying idea of this law is the recognition that everything we own belongs to God. When we consume in a wasteful manner, we damage Creation and violate our mandate to use Creation only for our legitimate benefit."
From #7:
"While there are many useful and even lifesaving technologies that come from modern chemicals and materials, we have an obligation to be cautious in their use. Pikuach nefesh demands that we consider the impact of our use of chemicals and other materials, not only in the short term but also in the long term. For the Jewish tradition, the Precautionary Principle can be seen as a modern form of the warning not to tamper too much with the boundaries of Creation."
From #8:
"In environmental terms, every species has an inherent value beyond its instrumental or useful value to human beings."
Anyhoo, just loved this article, and I hope it does something for anyone reading this.