The Calling of the Wild: Christian Tradition and Wilderness

Abstract

Pervasive users of modern technologies express some unease about their technologically mediated being in the world. This anxiety has encouraged greater relation to the natural world, but given a Western obsession with mastery and domination, alternative ways of being in the world remain scarce. In the face of Western cultures which both fear nature and seek mastery over nature, Christian traditions can provide alternative voices which can recast the role of nature, indirectly celebrating a ‘rural’ way of life which works alongside nature without nostalgia. While Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology provides several points of departure for a consideration of Christian dependence on the natural world, the biblical text itself highlights the potential of the wilderness for divine encounter. The desert mothers and fathers offer a third voice celebrating the rural life for its escape from distractions in the urban and secular ‘world’. These voices understand nature's existence as co-creation alongside human beings while remaining painfully aware of its persistent threat. Human beings should neither idealise wilderness nor seek to master it; human life in proximity to wilderness should be appreciated as a unique space for encounter with God.