As Christians we know there is always grief, suffering, and death in a fallen world. But these realities are not to be considered normal - they remain abnormal and something we should work against, by trying to make the world a better place. This includes the caring for the animal and plant world, over which humans were given dominion - not to destroy, but to exercise mercy and good stewardship. The BP oil spill should cause us to really rethink how we, as human beings and as Christians, are using or abusing the world's resources and natural goodness. For God created the world and saw that it was "very good" (Genesis 1:31). In the Orthodox Christian understanding, even after the fall, the natural world remained "very good," despite the entrance of death, disease, and disasters; for these elements are not regarded as intrinsic to the world's nature, but incidental to it.
The disaster raises the question: can we destroy entire oceans and bring an end to human life as we know it? Certainly it is a theoretical possibility (we depend on the oceans for oxygen and food; half of the photosynthesis that takes place in the world is the work of oceanic phytoplankton). God has promised to preserve his people, but that does not mean that large-scale destruction of the earth's health, beauty, and resources will not or cannot take place.
In fact this has already begun to happen. Carbon dioxide and mercury poisoning, and poisoning from other dangerous toxins, are a threat to the oceans. Mercury has poisoned many freshwater lakes: it is concentrated in the tissues of fish, and there are already restrictive advisories published as to how much or how often children or pregnant women should consume certain kinds of fish.
In seeking where to place the blame, can we speak of corporate sin, the sin of a body of people? Yes - any group, such as a nation or a legal corporation, can break the laws of God, which is sin. But God will not judge corporations or even nations on Judgment Day, but individuals. All corporate sin begins with individual sin and consists of collective individual sin, and will be assessed that way at the final judgment. That is, God will not assess the guilt of corporate bodies, groups, or nations at that judgment, but the guilt of individuals. But in the present life he does judge nations, as for example when he judged ancient Israel by allowing it to be conquered by other peoples and lands. Such judgments were chastisements whose purpose was to correct Israel's misdeeds; thus they were a manifestation of God's mercy in a particular way. The present disaster may indeed be both a judgment and a warning to those countries that are misusing the earth's resources, most prominently by the burning of fossil fuels but also by other forms of pollution. In this sense, the disaster may be a mercy.
While individuals, and not corporations, will be judged by God at Judgment Day, we human beings can and must, at the level of laws and legislation, judge (i.e., regulate, and where necessary, penalize) corporations for pollution and similar crimes and do what we can to prevent them.
There seems to be a lack of will to do this. We are fouling our own nest and don't want to take the trouble to avoid doing so. We are like the smoker dying of cancer who says, "Don't take my cigarettes away!" Many deny the problem and want to continue to allow pollution. Some politicians have fought hard to allow power plants to continue to pollute with mercury, CO2, and associated poisons and have opposed restricting these. Coal mining companies have removed hundreds or even thousands of mountaintops and are polluting many miles of streams and valleys in order that power plants can continue to burn coal and produce those emissions. The desire for money and riches lies at the root of much of this.
We have until now lacked the will, as a nation, to stop doing these things, to stop destroying our own house. As long as we lack the will to correct this, it will continue. In that these things are destructive to our very own selves, to our own lives, they are no different from any other type of sin: all sins are self-destructive.
Many continue to deny the problems even though they are staring us in the face. Besides the reality of oil spills and related pollution, there is global warming, melting of glaciers and so on. Corporations (especially the oil industry) have paid millions of dollars to pay for the dissemination of false information about global warming.
All of this begins with individual responsibility or irresponsibility and individual right and wrong, which, of course, in relation to God is called sin. Environmental problems caused by man seem to begin with greed, with selfishness, with laziness, and with not wanting to do the right thing. Like all sins, these are the antithesis of right ethics and specifically of their opposite corresponding virtues. The latter are enabled and cultivated by a combination of right faith, prayer, and repentance and by everything good at the individual level, all of which diminish and extinguish sins and wrongs. May God help us and have mercy on us.
