Recently, my father wrote a book. It is a great dive into questioning how we think about the Gospel. “The Gospel is the story we tell about Jesus and the Good News” is one of the main arguments in his book. Stories change overtime, depending on the teller and listeners. I do not have the authority to speak on the Gospel, but I have studied another topic that is just a story we tell; nature.

When I say nature is a story, I don’t mean that the trees don’t exist. I don’t mean that the mountains formed over millions of years because we needed a good backdrop for a picture. What I mean is the way we describe our relationship to the rest of the living organisms on this planet reflects our values and mindsets as a society.

This isn’t a new idea, and I first heard some of these ideas when I was in school. But this isn’t going to be an academic deep dive. I want to tell you exactly what I said to my co worker when we entered this room earlier this month.