The seminary asked, “Just because plants aren’t capable of verbal response, does that mean we should not engage with them?”
After various news outlets reported that Union University brought in plants to worship and confess their sins to during chapel service, they have responded in a bizarre string of tweets that don’t exactly make things better.
As we reported…
We pointed out, “What do we confess to the plants in our life? We eat them. Some of them with turn into medicine. Some of them we turn into clothing.”
“They are plants,” we continued. “God made them on the third day of creation and not the sixth because they are lower than man, not greater. Plants exist for us to exploit for our selfish purposes. They are not be prayed to like Northern European pagans or Canaanites worshipped trees.”
Union Seminary responded with a bizarre line of tweets that indicate they really are venerating flora, and calling it a “beautiful ritual.”
So, the seminary is “repenting” to plants. Good to know.
Assume that the environment is in “crisis” regardless of lacking empirical scientific data? Check.
Assume climate change is caused by humans? Check.
Capitalize Creation to deify the word, the same way orthodox Christians capitalize Creator? Check.
Support your new, freaky theology by calling it a “new spiritual and intellectual framework”? Check.
By the way, Union Seminary is the home of Black Liberation Theology, the wellspring of Critical Race Theory (CRT). The Southern Baptist Convention just voted affirm CRT as a “framework” and “analytical tool” to understand race.
Hopefully, the code-words are not lost on you.
Uh…God himself encouraged humans to dominate and master the Earth. It has a name. Theologically it’s called the Dominion Mandate and it’s from the Bible.
All things, including and especially plants and animals, are given to men that we might use and exploit them, or “dominate and master” them.
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Genesis 1:29).
We wouldn’t have “blinked” if Union had students apologize to each other (assuming there was something to apologize for) because students can talk back to each other.
Plants don’t talk back. Heck, plants don’t think. Ergo, it’s weird to talk to plants.
We are thinking it’s crazy to “engage” with plants instead of eating or wearing them. What do you think?
