Imagine if your body parts and organs could be replaced with bionic counterparts – imagine being unhindered by the constraints that embodiment places upon us. Would we as humans no longer be vulnerable to disease and damage? Would we continue to be compelled to age and die? At this time in history when scientific and medical advances make what was once unimaginable, might we enjoy a limitless lifespan unconstrained by the impediments of our current, biologically based bodies?
In his book This Sacred Life, Norman Wirzba argues forcefully that we should reject this idea of a limitless life. Rather, we as humans should embrace the idea that our creaturely lives are “grounded in the soil of this earth and stitched into a vast fabric of interlaced, multispecies life” (43). As such, our lives are rooted in places and communities. He resists a modern conception of freedom that assumes that humans are fundamentally “disembodied and disearthed” and that human actions are not tangled with ecological and social webs (22). This modern concept of freedom has propelled humans to want to live without limits and to unrelentingly pursue more and more. These desires and pursuits have produced what he calls the “paradox of the Anthropocene” – the economies that have facilitated this conception of freedom and human development are also responsible for the degradation of the earth. On the other hand, if we want to discover the sanctity of the world and the mystery of life, we must “attend to and wrestle with the complexity of this world” (59). Such a life includes friction and difficulty – but a friction-free life, in his view, is superficial.
As humans with rooted lives, we are inescapably “embodied and symbiotic” (63), and we never cease to be soil bound. What’s more, we are one species among many and one sort of life among many – to think otherwise is to embrace species arrogance. As one species among many and one sort of life among many, our lives are essentially relational – our individual lives are “related to and nurtured in an ecological network” (86). He calls this world we live in a “meshwork world,” and our task as humans is to enter into life with God and then extend this harmonizing power to interaction with each other and the world.
If we believe that life is divinely created and thus communicates divine intention affirming the goodness of this world, then our lives and actions should affirm the sanctity/sacredness of the earth and all its creatures and should seek earth’s redemption and renewal. In addition, we must name and reject what he calls “violating powers and practices” (211) that distort and degrade places, communities, and political/economic structures. By living our lives in this way, we are joining with God in the healing and reconciliation of the world.
Human flourishing isn’t found by transcending the bounds of this world, but by entering into it deeply and engaging with it beautifully for the good of all of creation.
~Sandy Johanson
