Spiritual Importance of Wilderness
By Jim Doenges
Director of Summit Stewards
There are many tribes and clans of people mentioned in the Bible: Levites, Hezronites, Carmites, Jebusites, Moabites – among others. I live among and have become part of another tribe: the Suburbanites, who are often perceived of as an offshoot of the Urbanites. You may know Suburbanites from some of their practices and rituals. Unlike Israelites, they do not display attached phylacteries, but instead are proudly attached to cell phones. Like other tribes, Suburbanites have a tendency to gather together regularly. They do so at soccer fields and their places of worship, which are generally shopping malls.
“Wilderness” to Suburbanites may be the back nine of their favorite golf course. Many people can recognize that Suburbanites are prone to some false beliefs, among them: water comes from the tap, food from the grocery store, clean air from the home HVAC system, and oil and gas from the filling station. You may know a Suburbanite. You may even be a member of this tribe.
Can the Bible speak to us today about such a modern phenomenon as sprawl? Consider this warning from the Prophet Isaiah: “Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.” – Isaiah 5:8.
Ouch. That one strikes close to home.
What engine is it that seems to drive this seemingly relentless push for more, more, more? Is it just more tribe members or is sprawl a symptom or outward sign of something else?
The religion of economics
For much of the 20th century, the secular religion of America was considered economic progress. Herbert Stein, an economic advisor to President Richard Nixon, stated, “growth is now the great god before whom all participants in the discussion of economic policy bow their knee.” The faithful believed that economic progress would bring the end of scarcity, and – it was supposed – eliminate most human conflict. However, claims for the redeeming benefits of economic progress were not borne out by the history of the 20th century. Despite the unparalleled bloodshed and suffering of the past 100 years, today most people in the U.S. still believe that economic expansion can, should, and will continue indefinitely. That view is actually fairly new in the history of economics, but is now embedded in our culture as a given.
President Lyndon Johnson once said, “If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them with a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through using it.”
Because the poor suffer disproportionately from the negative impacts of today’s over-consuming society, this economic worldview should get the attention of followers of Jesus, the One who taught and spoke so much about the poor and money. The negative impacts to the wild areas of public lands degrade the creation God gave us to keep. Genesis 2:15 states that God put man in the garden to keep it. That “keeping” in Genesis 2:15 is a translation from the word, shamar; which is the same word used in the Aaronic blessing from the Book of Numbers often used as a Benediction (may the Lord bless you and keep you). Aren’t we to keep God’s creation just as the Lord keeps us?
God’s charge to the Israelites to care for the land He brought them to can challenge us to think about a Christian land ethic today. Leviticus 25:23-24 states: “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.”
Do the following words of the prophet Ezekiel seem applicable today? “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?” (Ezekiel 34:18-19).
While people may take of the fruit, we should not relentlessly press the land and destroy the fruitfulness of God’s creation. The Sabbath was not made just for man, but for God’s creation also. Read Exodus 23, and Leviticus 25 and 26.
God’s use of wilderness
Wilderness in the Bible was sometimes a place of chaos, destruction, and rebellion. Alternatively, the Book of Job testifies to the awesome workings of the Creator in the wilderness, far beyond human habitations. The desert wilderness has also been seen as any part of Creation and human life which claims an existence outside of communion with God; in this way, the flight into the wilderness has been seen as a paradigm for the mission (evangelism) of the church.
However, wilderness was – and still is – also the setting for divine acts of grace: revelation, nurture, and preparation. Wilderness has always been the setting for intense encounters with God; it is a place where God has always done some of His best work. Many great people of the Bible spent a lot of time in a wilderness, including the Hagar story of Genesis 16 and 21. Indeed, biblical traditions about the encounter with God in the wilderness provide the springboard for a contemporary theology of creation as a place of wonder, silence, limitlessness, self-knowledge, grace, transformation through spiritual discipline, refuge, and spiritual haven.
Some examples
- Noah: Forty days in a boat out in landless seas is a wilderness experience, and God used Noah to preserve animal lineage.
- Moses: In wilderness for 40 years after he killed an Egyptian, then another 40 years after he began his ministry to the Israelites. Many amazing events occurred during that time.
- Elijah: Spent 40 days in a wilderness. Although he wanted to die, God kept him alive. Elijah passes from his wish to die to his willingness to live, and he gets his next ministry assignment from God in the wilderness.
- David: Stayed in the wilderness all the years he was hiding from Saul. Living among the rocky buttes around the area of Masada, he came to understand God as unshakable, strong, and mighty – a Rock, as many of his Psalms refer to God.
- Jesus Christ: Spent 40 days in the wilderness. Luke 4 tells how immediately after being baptized by John the Baptist – himself a product of wilderness – Jesus went into the desert wilderness filled with the Holy Spirit. After answering Satan’s temptation by quoting Scripture, Jesus left the wilderness in the power of the Spirit, and immediately began his earthly ministry. According to Mark’s account, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. Some feel that this period in the wilderness was essential to everything that came after it for Jesus.
A personal testimony
Today, God still does amazing things in the wilderness of some of our public lands. In the summer of 2005, I was blessed to serve as one of the instructors for a 40-day wilderness experience course in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, most of it within the Bridger-Teton Wilderness. The course was offered by Solid Rock Outdoor Ministries.
Twelve disciples from around the country entered the wilderness, seeking encounters with the Divine, transformation, and preparation for ministry. In the wilderness these strangers became a loving community. God’s Word came alive for us, and our prayer and devotional lives were vibrant. Every encounter and transformative experience with God in the wilderness seems so much more vibrant, and they seem to come so much quicker and steadily than in traditional learning environments like classrooms, the “inner room” within your home, or even a chapel made by human hands. Wilderness is God’s spiritual boot camp – a place of accelerated sanctification and divinely punctuated equilibrium.
The wild places of our public lands provide places where we can unplug from our busy and noisy lives, experience solitude, and practice Christian meditation: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
In traveling through green pastures and along quiet waters in a wilderness, God can indeed restore your soul (Psalm 23:2-3). One can drink of the living water Jesus offers, free of charge. Wild lands provide the time and space to get right with God, to break bad habits and form new more Godly ones: “...acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:6).
On our public lands you can behold the lilies and marvel at the creativity and majesty of the Creator: “Walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers” (Matthew 6:28; The Message).
In the wilderness, you can challenge yourself, climb higher in your faith, and more fully understand your dependence on God: "Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I " (Psalm 61:2).
The natural response from seeing the majesty of the Creator and experiencing an awakened spiritual life is the desire to worship and praise our Lord! God uses wilderness as a place to fill people with the power of the Holy Spirit (Psalm 144:1).
In Psalm 19:1, it says: “The skies proclaim the work of His hands.” But will future skies over public lands proclaim fouling at our hands?
Jim Doenges, a resident of Littleton, Colo., is the Director of Summit Stewards for Climbing For Christ. He is a licensed minister in the Christian church and worked for 18 years as a senior environmental scientist at sites throughout the United States. He is also the coordinator of Climbing For Christ's Colorado Front Range Chapter. This story originally appeared in the Climbing For Christ quarterly, The Climbing Way (Volume 3, Spring 2006).
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