by Christopher Fung*
What can a simple bottle of manufactured drinking water tell us? To some, it may mean progress and convenience and to others garbage and artificiality. Let us look closer.
Water comes in abundance in most places and is not worth much. Yet by bottling drinkable water, the cost to the consumer is at least a few hundred times what it would otherwise cost. Some manufacturers start with natural water mined from pristine aquifers. Others start by distilling water, then minerals are sometimes added to restore some semblance of naturalness. Both are then bottled, packaged, transported long distances, distributed, sold, consumed, and the empty bottles disposed and treated as rubbish. At every step of this process, energy is expended, cost is increased and pollution to our air, water and land are generated.
The impact of this lowly bottle does not stop at pollution and ridiculously inflated costs. When large numbers of people consume bottled water, creating billion-dollar industries, the economy expands creating work for people and increasing the gross domestic products (GDP). But is this good and what we want? The frivolous consumption means that most people will have to toil longer hours just to support this illusion of progress which must come at the expense of our time with our loved ones and for recreation …etc. and ultimately our lives as well. And the product is usually inferior: try watering your plants with distilled water to find out the truth.
Yet the unnecessary suffering brought on by the advent of bottled water impacts the already vulnerable disproportionately. Usually, the wealthy owners of these industries live far away from their polluting factories, highways, garbage dumps and incinerators, leaving those who cannot afford better accommodation to face the daily impact of pollution. To get good natural water, people who have been custodians of their water resources for generations can be chased off their land by governments colluding with outside forces like multi-national corporations coveting foreign water sources after polluting their own.
The bottle is only symptomatic of a much large phenomenon in which the more we strive, the more woes and miseries we have brought on the society at large and disproportionately to the poor. Around Hong Kong, the scarring of our landscape with phony slope and river management has destroyed valuable ecologies and created unsustainable areas requiring ever-increasing maintenance costs while depriving citizens of much enjoyment of nature. The indiscriminate use of air conditioning to keep out urban heat and pollution not only makes the air fouler, the city more uncomfortable, indoor air quality poorer and costs us more in taxes and electricity bills, but most significantly also contributes to global warming through fossil fuel use. From this last disastrous effect, no creature on earth is immune. Many hangman nooses are tightening around our stiff necks.
Humankind is carving out colonies of impoverished acceptability within abundant nature for our own comfort and survival while abandoning the outside world to hostile forces of our own making, like the filthy rich retreating into gated ghettos even on vacation. With global climate change, storm intensity may increase bringing more devastation each time. Rainfall pattern will change disrupting farming and destroying ecologies, forcing us to work harder for food grown with more artificial pesticide and fertilizer input. The impoverishment of nature (loss of biodiversity) and pollution will make plant and animal lives more susceptible to sicknesses. Our “human” world is rapidly closing in and the GDP we have been craving has morphed into Grief, Devastation and Poverty for all.
But this is certainly not the world intended by God. Facing the first test foisted on him to turn stones into bread, Jesus response was expansive: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus pointed out the only physical foundation on which man must rest: Let there be light … a firmament … green plants … water teaming with creatures … land bringing forth animals …etc, God saw that this is very good (Gen 1). An earth supporting abundant and dazzling life forms, an earth of exquisite beauty with intricate dependence was created and this earth speaks profusely and unceasingly of the creator’s intelligence and loving kindness (Ps 19:1-6, Rom 1:20). Sweet water was then free and abundant.
It is over such a wonderfully satisfying creation, about which even God rested to appreciate (Gen 1:31;2:3), that man was made steward. God did not abolish such charge when mankind fell in Adam though it became harder for mankind to achieve this one and only mandate due to the many broken relationships he sustained to God and the rest of Creation. Yet, in the redemption that God has accomplished in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, these broken relationships are restored. On this restored foundation must our original mandate continue. A person who refuses to return to work after his sickness has been cured at the expense of the doctor is abusing the doctor’s good will.
The Church, being the community of those healed by Jesus Christ, must stand before God to proclaim God’s intention to the world. The rainbow is the sign of the eternal covenant of God with his creation to continue in his love and protection (Gen 9:4-6). God remembers this all the time (Rev. 4:3) and issues a very severe warning: He will destroy those who destroy his creation (Rev 11:18). When the Church preaches the gospel in Jesus Christ, she must make clear that fully resuming our stewardship over creation is the glorious task the good news points to. Forgiveness of sins removes the impediment to our stewardship and we must do what is expected of us in every functional dimension of stewardship known to us – social, economical, cultural, techno-scientific, spiritual … etc.
Fulfilling our mandate must start with knowing God’s mind-expanding design. God facilitated Adam in his stewardship by bringing animals before him for his naming. This naming is not a projecting of one’s wish onto the animal as one would name a yet-to-be-born child, but an encapsulation of the essence of the animal that he sees before him. Indeed, one can only work according to what God has ordained, which is now brought in front of Adam for his investigation and acquaintance (Gen 2:18-20). The resulting obedient knowledge enabled Adam to appreciate creation as a whole and find his role in God’s order. Only then could he know his need of a helper, the woman, as his co-steward.
With the overwhelming problems the world is facing, hope seems to be in short supply even with our renewed sense of stewardship. Mankind seems to have unleashed a monster that threatens to kill its master and destroy the earth with it. Yet when we see the world’s problems all linked and encapsulated in a bottle of water, we know that our actions, no matter how seemingly insignificant, will percolate through the system to impact the world for the better or worse. Individual actions can and do make a difference. Here is our hope in God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead and will continue to work his purpose in each of us for his creation.
Greed, Desolation and Pollution – another GDP – feed on each other. When water is polluted, opportunistic entrepreneur push their bottled water by exaggerating the problem. When air and land are polluted, savvy developers look for more pristine land to desolate for their “exclusive” clients, e.g. building golf courses. But appreciating how God adorns the lilies of the valley and cares for the birds of the sky would banish much anxiety that feeds our greed. We can live more freely like our Lord. And what does our Lord envision? A river of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb … on either side of the river was the tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruits, yielding its fruit every month and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:1-2).
The vicious cycle of Greed, Desolation and Pollution can be broken. While we must not forget the rudiments of minimizing plastic bags and paper consumption … etc., we must understand our only mandate and make stewards of all nations. We are made in the image of the creative God. In creatively stewarding our mammon, we can help the world’s needy to preserve their environment, e.g. building latrines to reduce water pollution, making solar oven to stop damaging forests, restoring ecologies and local food supply, providing basic education … etc., curb the destructive frivolous consumption from excess wealth, e.g. newspapers, binging, cell phones, big cars … etc., and restore positive value to work and be master of our economy. Through faithful stewardship, the glory of God in his creation will shine through for all to behold.
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*Dr. Christopher Fung is a member of Christians for Eco-Concern, a local group promoting creation awareness among Christians.
