Why we are here:

Our signature Bible passage, the prologue to John's Gospel, tells us that Jesus (the Logos) is God and Creator and that He came in the flesh (sarx) to redeem His fallen, sin-cursed creation—and especially those He chose to believe in Him.

Here in Bios & Logos we have some fun examining small corners of the creation to show how great a Creator Jesus is—and our need for Him as Redeemer. Soli Deo Gloria.

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Monday, March 16, 2009

Feeling musty




I opened the carton, peeled away several layers of bubble-wrap and shrink-wrap—and there it was—my copy of Edwin Way Teale’s Circle of the Seasons! What a blast from the past; what a flood of memories; what other clichés will I use to describe the experience? And what is that smell? It’s the smell of a fifty-six year-old book just released from airtight shrink-wrap after a two-week entrapment. Musty!

Musty or not, I was excited to receive this nearly pristine first edition copy of a long lost friend from the past—for six dollars plus shipping! That’s only two bucks more than its original retail price!

All the packaging, aromas and pricing aside, what was so special about receiving this old book? As mentioned in an earlier post,
Edwin Way Teale was the author who, more than almost any other, sparked my interest in nature and nature photography. The brief daily entries and full page, extremely sharp black and white photographs had me going back to the book time after time in appreciation of Teale’s descriptive and photographic skills.

Let’s see if it still sparks. A couple of samples should tell us.

How about the January 9th entry:

THE NOBLE RED MAN. The “Noble Red Man” never was and never is—it is not races but individuals that are noble or courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable. The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high.

Oh, my! I can almost hear the PC police knocking at the door. I don’t think we could get away with that one these days.

Let’s try January 13:

OPTIMISM. Optimism is more likely if we keep our eyes on the average, the general, rather than the exceptions, the individual. The bat caught on burdock burs—this is the exception, the tragic, the unusual event. It is best not to dwell too long on the exceptions. But what if we are exceptions?

Huh? Other than seeming to encourage mediocrity and fear of risk taking, I fail to see much “spark” in this one.

OK, we’ll give him one more chance. Maybe it gets better later in the year. Let’s go for July 22:

BATTLE BY BOUNCE. Two bluejays in the backyard are quarreling over food. As each rushes toward the other, it bounces high in the air. This is a battle by bounce. The birds seem buoyant, as though partly filled with helium.

This one is at least based on a personal observation of nature in action. So I’ll give it a C, or maybe an Incomplete for its lack of detail.

Oh, Eddie, the spark is gone!

To be fair, I chose these examples mainly for their brevity and for their lack of luster. Many of the longer pieces are more descriptive and are fine examples of old fashioned natural history writing. And many of Teale’s other books, such as North with the Spring and Grassroot Jungles, having a more narrative style and without the constraints of the daily snippet format, were better written, as I recall.

Why the disappointment with my renewed acquaintance with my old friend after a half century? In a word (a very long word), it’s Weltanschauung, that is, Worldview. In high school and even in college, when I first read Teale, I frankly didn’t have much of one. All was naturalism and pragmatism—whatever the teachers and professors threw at me and whatever it took to get through. It seemed exciting and useful enough at the time—but no more.

Looking at the world through the Creator’s eyes makes all the difference. Seeing nature for what it is—His creation, wonderfully engineered and intricately crafted—is what makes it sparkle. A naturalistic, evolutionary worldview, because it is dead wrong, kills the spark. And because it doesn’t give credit where all the credit is due, it is inherently idolatrous—worshiping the created, rather than the Creator
(Romans 1:25).

And nature writing without the spark of the biblical Weltanschauung turns out to be pretty musty—no matter how long it’s been out of the shrink-wrap.

Soli Deo Gloria

3 comments:

philly44 said...

Love the blog, Mr. Burr. While theologically we have some differences (okay, more than some), I love the writing, and the pics/layout is superb. I'll tag it as a favorite!

Anonymous said...

Thanks philly44,
I like the layout of your blog too. Obviously we have differences; but don't think that Christianity has anything to do with Romanism--they are antithetical. I concentrate in this blog on natural theology and creation and encourage readers to open the Bible, rather than getting into heavy apologetics--which is important, but perhaps for another blog.

Thanks again for your interest--and keep an open mind.

TB

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm surprised and gratified to find my "old" bio teacher is a fine writer as well as keen observer! And I completely agree with your observation about the consideration of nature as the portal through which we begin to glimpse the ungraspable depth of God's creative power. But I'm a little concerned by your remark about an evolutionary worldview being "dead wrong." I think I understand what you meant, i.e. that a worldview based solely on naturalism and evolutionism is insufficient, but I have come to understand evolution as perhaps the single most miraculous engine of his creation. That is, His creation consists not only of things, but of processes that both drive creation forward, impelling change and renewal, and maintain stasis across eons! And of all these, evolution is perhaps His greatest miracle, because it alone draws upon all layers of existence, from the deepest levels of quantum mechanics to, say, whether the sun shone today or how the tides behave or changes in long-term climatic trends, to (seemingly) bring order and unfathomable complexity out of the stochastic hash, the primordial soup (where are these food metaphors coming from?) toward which the laws of thermodynamics inexorably drive all other extant things.

Well, I've pretty must exhausted myself with that last sentence (which may be the longest I've ever written). But I'm tired of my fellow Christians giving evolution the bum's rush (and, to be clear, I am not including you among them), and thereby denying, or being blind to, one of the greatest aspects of all His creation. There is no inconsistency here -- No need to put stumbling blocks between what we can observe to be real, and what we know by faith! It can all be true!

-Russ Howell (couldn't get my Google login to work tonight)