A Biblical Healing of the Land vs. Environmental Religion

In Pond Inlet, Nunavut, the Inuktitut word for December means “the time of darkness.” It is normally the darkest time of the year in this High Arctic community of 1300 people.

At 73 degrees north, the people of Pond Inlet do not see the sun from mid-November until February 2. Also, these months of darkness have often been times when crimes and moral darknesss are more frequent.

However, the leaders and elders of Pond Inlet called those darkest days of the year--December 13-17, 2008--to be a time of coming into the light of God’s Presence, and to praise Him for the bountiful harvest on the land and sea since the Healing the Land process took place there during the previous July.

In addition to having fish larger in size and quantity this Fall, and Ptarmigan in unprecedented numbers, in mid-November the Canadian government gave the Inuit permission to harvest some 629 narwhals who had become trapped by the ice near Pond Inlet, producing "maktaaq for everyone!"

On Saturday, December 13, 2008, the community of Pond Inlet gathered together to celebrate the narwhal harvest at a special community feast. The entire community was rejoicing as they gave thanks to God, the Creator and Sustainer of every people group and nation .

Notice how even the small children in Pond Inlet give thanks just before the feast.

At the community feast on Sat., Dec.13, Brian Koonoo, vice-chair of the Mittimatalik Hunters’ and Trappers’ Organization, shared a speech on behalf of the chair, Jayko Alooloo.

In his speech, Koonoo shared, “Since the beginning of the narwhal harvest from Nov. 19th to Dec. 2nd, the health centre did not receive any calls at night or after mid-night. Furthermore, the RCMP did not receive any complaints, and no one spent a night at the cell.

“This shows that the people of Pond Inlet were in high spirits during this situation. I am very thankful for this, particularly to the people who conducted prayer. This was very much felt by the residents of Pond Inlet.”

Koonoo added, “Residents of Pond Inlet are more joyful...They are now socializing and supporting each other more without any obstruction and breaching any laws. From the narwhals, we have seen that we can have a better life. Thank you God!”

He added, “When I was chatting with the Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Area Director in Iqaluit, he personally mentioned that Pond Inlet had received their Christmas present. This is true, and I can say all of Nunavut and others elsewhere have received a Christmas present. Thank you God, and those who attended.”

These special cakes were prepared for the community feast in Pond Inlet as a commemoration of the narwhal harvest in the late November of 2008.

While the people of the North were very thankful, and were blessing God for this provision, some of the environmentalists in the South were in a cursing mode, blaming the people of Pond Inlet for this humane harvest which was saving the narwhales from a slow, painful death as though it was inhumane.

The fact is that the floe edge was so far away that the whales were very unlikely to be able to escape. What were the environmentalists advocating that the Government of Canada should be doing instead of giving the Inuit permission to harvest these whales legally? They put extreme pressure on the government to deploy a coast guard icebreaker to come up to Pond Inlt to break up the ice, and to provide an escape for the trapped whales.

This was not a reasonable course of action on several fronts. The facts were that all of the coast guard ships were in the South, and by the time one of them would have arrived at a huge expense, it would have already been too late.

Furthermore, even if a coast guard ship had arrived on time, since narwhals are notoriously skittish around noisy boat motors, the sound of an icebreaker vessel’s approach would have likely driven the narwhals away from their breathing holes and to their death.

The facts are also that the narwhal harvest will not have a significant impact on the population’s numbers, as the 629 that were harvested constitute only some 1% of the narwhal population in the area.

As the narwhals were doomed to either starve or drown as their last breathing holes disappeared under growing ice, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, and the local elders, agreed that the most humane thing to do was to harvest the whales, granting a special exception to the normal harvesting quota of 130 narwhals per year.

Paul Watson, the father of environmental terrorism who believes that “earthworms are far more valuable than people,” (check this link) equated the narwhal harvest with the massacre of My Lai, one of the most public atrocities of the Viet Nam War. He stated that “this is a crime against nature, and I have absolutely no apologies for condemning the butchers of these whales.”

The response of Tommy Kilabuk, the chairman of the Ikajutit Hunters’ and Trappers’ Organization in Arctic Bay to Paul Watson was, “He was saying Inuit are barbaric killers. There was so much hatred in what he said about the Inuit. It wasn’t our fault. It was nature that killed the whales. It has happened before, and it will happen again.”

So the issue between the two conflicting worldviews is: “Was the culling of the narwhals in Pond Inlet ‘a crime against nature,’ or ‘an act of nature?’”

One of the contradictions within the religion of environmentalism that sees nature as sacred and divine, and as having more value than human life, is that Mother Nature is venerated as sacred and supreme on the one hand. Yet when Mother Nature is harsh and capricious, human beings are accused of “crimes against Nature” for the very acts of Nature. Hence, it leads to a judgmentalism of one human culture by another for doing what is necessary for its survival in the part of the earth where they live.

Which raises the question, “Is Nature the same as the Creator, who provides for people in every part of the earth, or is it part of the Creation?”

As an Inuk hunter from Pond Inlet wrote in one of the comments after a CBC report on the Internet about the narwhal harvest, “The people of Pond Inlet are doing everything they can to help out with the harvesting of the whales so that nothing goes to waste. Inuit have great respect for the animals that they hunt...

“We thank the Creator for giving us the animals as we thank Him every time we harvest something...We hope you learn that Inuit respect the animals, and nothing will go to waste. We are so thankful to our Creator for giving us all the meat we can use, and thank you for the people who supported us!!!”

Check here for the November 24, 2008, CBC report under the headline: Killing Pond Inlet narwhals 'humane harvest': Department of Fishers and Oceans (DFO) and here for the full comment by the Inuk hunter from Pond Inlet to this CBC report.

As the Nunavut News/North stated in its editorial of Dec. 15, 2008, under the title, A Necessary Cull, Pond Inlet deserves applause, not harassment:

“There was no way to rescue the whales before they would run out of air holes and drown. Hunters in the community could have chosen to do nothing, allowing the animals to suffer a lengthy, meaningless death. But that is not the Inuit way. Instead, the community of Pond Inlet committed itself to weeks of arduous labor—12-hour days spent processing 629 narwhals—so some good would come from this accident of nature...The efforts of the community during this difficult time deserve a round of applause."

On Mon. eve., Dec. 15, the entire committee of the Mittimatalik Hunters’ and Trappers’ Organization came to the Anglican church to share in a special praise service something of their story and excitement. A number of these men had not been regular church attenders, and yet they punctuated their testimonies with many exclamations of “Hallelujah!” and “Praise be to God!”

That night, the entire Hunters’ and Trappers’ Organization Committee knelt down to give thanks to God. Some of these people had not been that interested in spiritual things before this, but they were overwhelmed by the bountiful provision of the Creator.

Jayko Alooloo, the chairman of the HTO, said on the radio afterwards that as he was kneeling there, he felt the presence of God for the first time in his life. He could even smell the sweet fragrance of His presence, and it was awesome.

What bodes well for the future is that the youth are getting stronger spiritually, and are praying passionate prayers for the nations, for the government, and even for their enemies! They have a future in God because they are willing to let go of resentments of the past. In this picture, they are praying for Paul Watson, an extreme environmentalist and animal rights activist who said such terrible things about the Inuit for their harvesting of so many narwhals.

The youth of Pond Inlet are now rising up with the blessing of the elders in connection with the indigenous youth of Fiji to see their ancestral lands healed, and to see a better future based on everything that is good in their ancestral traditions, and breaking only the generational curses.

The elders of Pond Inlet who helped initiate a healing the land process in July of 2008 were there at the Praise Event after the Narwhal harvest in December to give thanks to God, and to bless the next generation to go further in this healing process. There was much rejoicing!

A Canada Awakening Ministries Healing Team that was in Pond Inlet for a healing the land process in July of 2008 was invited back in December to celebrate with the community for the many ways in which the community had been blessed since July, and had come together in greater unity and peace.

The cross-cultural unity between Inuit and Fijian was also very evident throughout the celebration as well as the cross-generational unity between the elders and the youth. The joy that is on their faces reveals the love that is in their hearts.

Contrast this with the coercive methods and angry rhetoric of the most extreme elements of the environmentalist movement such as are demonstrated in Paul Watson who values earthworms over people, and the way that the Creator has provided for the Inuit from time immemorial.

A little history might be helpful here. From the earliest times, the Inuit have never overhunted, and have had a high regard for the animals that have sustained them. It was outside groups like the whalers during the 1800s and early 1900s who drastically overhunted the whales, depleting their population to where whaling was no longer profitable. Hunting quotas were then placed on the Inuit, something which was not previously necessary.

The Inuit have never stewarded the animal population wantonly or wastefully. Yet it is a simple fact of life that if there were no narwhals, no seals, and no caribou, there would be no Inuit! They could not have survived from the earliest times without animals as their most staple source of food. It is as straightforward as that.

The fruit of the land in Fiji

The Creator has provided different types of plants and animals for the people groups who live in different parts of the earth so that they can steward and manage these resources wisely, and be able to live in close connection with the environment, including the animals, the plants and the land. These are to be received with thanksgiving and blessing to the Creator for providing for every people group on the face of the earth.

A community feast in Nunavut
A community feast in Fiji

A feast in Nunavut and a feast is Fiji is similar, yet very different.

"The living God, who made heaven, the earth, the sea and all things in them...did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:15, 17).

Captain Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepard Society once stated that “We, the human species have become a viral epidemic to the Earth.” When three maritime sealers died while out sealing, Watson said that their deaths didn't matter as much as the seals that were being slaughtered.

Gaia (the Goddess Mother Earth) is the central character in David Suzuki's book, The Sacred Balance. Like the worker honeybee that cannot survive without her queen and hive mates, so humans are subjected to Mother Nature who is capricious and unpredictable. Gaia includes everything from the teenager going to the disco to the slime-mould beside the sink.

It has also long been abundantly clear from his speeches and books that his position is driven by both a quasi-religious zeal and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of humanity's relationship with the natural world. His religion informs his science, not vice versa.

Suzuki once told a McGill University crowd there is actually no difference between human beings and the environment in which they live. "We are the environment. There is no distinction," he declared, thereby equating, for example, a newborn baby with a mud puddle.

With the same crowd he equated governments' alleged inaction on the environment with a criminal act. He is reported to have said students ought to find a legal way to throw politicians in jail for ignoring climate-change science. “It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years." The statement elicited rounds of applause.

Even though Suzuki would later back-track on some of his more extreme statements in urging students to find ways to send politicians who do not act on his agenda to jail, these statements do illustrate that the environmentalist movement tends to not rely on reason, persuasion and freewill to promote its cause, but on coercion, intimidation and rhetoric based on fear as its instrument of change.

This is understandable if one remembers that if humans are reduced to the environment and to nature which is deterministic, and which has no freewill, then the freewill of humans has no basis, and the only thing that then determines what is right is power—the power of the State.

Hence their need to pressure and control governments to force heavy-handed measures under the guise of science based on limited observation which often conflicts with the traditional knowledge of the original peoples who have lived on the land from time immemorial, and who have the longest memory of the cycles of nature.

Timothy Bloedow has recently written a book entitled, Environmentalism and the Death of Science: Exposing the Lie of Eco-Religion.

The choice that the human race faces today is essentially a choice between worshipping the Creator who is a Person and personally knowable, or the worship of the Creation and of Nature which is impersonal and limited to naturalism.

We now have it, in The Globe and Mail of Saturday, January 3, 2009, on page A15, that Global Warming's On Hold, For Now. The article states that "if you've been puzzled about all this snow we're getting, here's an explanation. 'Global warming has stopped for the last few years,' declares Roger Pielke Sr. professor emeritus of Colorado State University's department of atmospheric science.

"Despite numerous forecasts that we were heading toward the hottest year on record since the Medieval Warm Period, the hottest year on record remains 1998...Australia's coral reefs, once thought to have been devastated by the impact of global warming, have bounced back remarkably.

"In the Arctic, where people have been warning of a caastrophic melt, the ice cover this fall increased by 10 per cent from last year. The incidence of hurricanes, meantime, has not increased at all, and the link with global warming remains unproven.

"Will the world start warming up again? Beats me. But even if it does, Nature and human beings may be more adaptable than we think."

Make no mistake, there is decidedly an environmental component to the gospel message that integrates all of reality—the Creator with His creation—as the Bible has a lot to say about “land.” While “people” and “land” are not identical because only humans have “freewill,” they are physically connected, and the actions of humans spill over on to the land.

Biblical environmentalism is well expressed in II Chronicles 7:14 where the conditions are given for “the healing of the land.”

"If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land."

The root spiritual issues need to be addressed that have brought a defilement to the land and to the environment so that the creation can be redeemed and restored.

Between July 25 and August 1, 2008, Pond Inlet underwent such a process of healing under the authority of the local leaders and gatekeepers through identificational repentance of the generational sins that were still affecting this generation. A healing ceremony took place right on top of one of the most ancient mounds where an original sod house once stood in the original settlement.

Some of the most respected elders in Pond Inlet made a direct connection between the healing the land process that took place in their community in July of 2008, and the abundant harvest of the land and sea that they have witnessed since. These elders have not witnessed anything like this before. Among them are Elisapi Ootova (above) who has been awarded the Order of Canada Award from the Governor General for her work in preserving Inuit culture.

The New Age Pantheists and Environmentalists do not see the animals as a provision from God at all, but rather see the animals as either equal or greater in value than humans. Humans then tend to be controlled by nature rather than to steward and manage nature wisely.

How the Inuit could possibly have survived from antiquity with a belief system that it is always wrong to kill animals is a question that these environmentalists have never explained clearly, reasonably or satisfactorily, and it is hard to imagine how Inuit might have survived with such a belief system in an environment where there are no gardens or orchards, and animals have had to be the primary source of food for survival. The same is true of all indigenous cultures where survival depended on hunting and fishing.

The true “healing the land” message is of the opposite spirit from environmental groups which generate strife, debates, and perennial conflicts. The above picture was taken in Pond Inlet during the healing process in July, 2008. True healing begins in the soul of humans, reconciling them to God and to one another, and then as the various spheres of the community come together in unity and peace, the soil and the sea are blessed with abundance.

The land and sea then co-operate with humans, and the earth yields her increase to support the inhabitants who live there. When the land is healed, it is God, not the government, who becomes the primary source of provision and sustenance for the people who are earthkeepers.

Scriptures to Ponder

“Every living thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herb” (Genesis 9:3).

“In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, 'Rise Peter; kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And a voice spoke to him again the second time, ‘What God has cleansed, you must not call common’” (Acts 10:12-15).

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons... commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it is received with thanks-giving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer” (I Timothy 4:1, 3-5).

Biblical Healing of the Land vs. Environmentalism as a Religion

HTL = Healing the Land vs. EAR = Environmentalism as Religion

HTL is based on personal and corporate repentance. II Chronicles 7:14. EAR tends to accuse and to blame others

HTL produces reconciliation and unity within the spheres of communities that do the process
EAR tends to create alienation and conflict between different interest groups

HTL looks to God to heal the land where there is humility and acceptance of responsibility. EAR looks to government to pass laws and to force change that by-passes human freewill.

In HTL, the human mechanism is freewill and personal responsibility at the community level. In EAR, the human mechanism is coercion and force, with responsibility at the state level

With HTL, the environment is to be stewarded by human beings wisely. Humans and the environment are connected but distinct. With EAR, human beings are the environment, with no distinction between humans, animals. and non-personal substance.

With HTL, animals and plants are the Creator’s provision for needed food and sustenance
With EAR, animals, plants and Mother Earth are sometimes seen as more sacred and valuable than humans.

With HTL, Nature is to be managed, stewarded and shared without polluting, exploiting or wasting. With EAR, Nature is to be revered as sacred, not managed. Mother Earth gives and takes all life. Gaia controls all things.

With HTL, Nature is to be redeemed from its present state of bondage to death, futility and decay. With EAR, Nature in its fallen state will always be in charge, and will always subject every living thing to death and to decay.

With HTL, the basic building blocks of the universe are persons, beginning with a personal Creator. With EAR, all persons came out of impersonal substance which predates human persons, and is therefore more sacred and valuable than human persons.
HTL is the worship of the Creator who is a Person and personally knowable. EAR is the worship of the Creation and of Nature which is impersonal and limited to naturalism.