Christianity vs. The Religion of Nature

To me, nature has always represented a place where I could experience God’s presence in its pure form. A deep, still, midnight blue lake, a crimson sunrise, and the morning hush of a winter’s snow are all aspects of nature that have motivated me to pray and thank God for the beauty of his creation. According to Donald Worster, however, the extension of this reverence for God through an appreciation of his creation is what he refers to as “The religion of nature,” which was famously practiced by John Muir in the 19th century. As far as I can tell, the essential difference between my beliefs concerning nature and John Muir’s, is Muir’s belief that nature is, in fact, God. This led contemporaries of Muir’s time and Worster to invoke the word pantheism when speaking of his religious beliefs.

However, I am not entirely convinced that John Muir’s beliefs were as far from mainstream Christianity as we are inclined to think. In C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory and The Last Battle, the exploration of heavenly nature is tightly bound to a discovery of God. One passage from The Weight of Glory, Christ is depicted as a waterfall, “The waterfall itself was speaking: and I saw now...that it was also a bright angel who stood, like one crucified, against the rocks and poured himself perpetually down towards the forest with loud joy” (49). Perhaps the key to understanding this tight link between the God of the Bible and nature is found in a concept cited by Worster that God and beauty are synonymous concepts. This thought is not as controversial as some may think it; Plato strongly perpetuated this belief that the highest beauty and good that we observe glimpses of in this world are a reflection of the ultimate reality of beauty and good. Christian thinkers such as Boethius call these highest realities of beauty and good - God.

Worster’s lecture at the January Series, although insightful about issues of the environment, spoke more about issues of philosophy and religion. Whether one rejects Muir’s beliefs or not, it is apparent that careful discernment is required before we attempt to label God according to our own traditional categories.