If I were an artist, I'd paint The Gulf Oil Spill as a wound on the body of Christ as he hung on the cross. Gushing oil would pour from that wound. I'm not an artist, but that is an image I have--the body of Christ is broken and bleeding. And I'm hurting and crying—and God, I think, is hurting, too.
What arrogance and greed! In retrospect we know that BP had a long history of cutting corners for profit--760 safety violations where other companies had only a dozen combined. And on top of that they had no containment material ready for an accident because an accident was unimaginable. And then they used a dispersant to drown the oil--a dispersant that lacks testing and is in fact banned in Britain.
The mantra of the BP executives in responding to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill was their promise to “make it right.” And in obvious and significant ways that hasn’t happened, including litigation that continues to be an ugly tangled mess with lawyers fighting over fees and financial settlements still pending. Articles concerning the environmental damage are still running in our local paper. Even today, The Ledger (Dec. 5, 2011) ran such an article, “Feds: Bluefin Tuna Probably OK After BP Oil Spill in Gulf.” As much as I want to believe that headline, I really believe Sylvia Earle, a renowned ocean explorer, who says, “I think it’s too early to celebrate a possible greater survival than had been predicted.” She goes on to explain that the revised prediction is only based on contrived models. “The truth is,” she says, “we don’t have enough information to be able to clearly say one way or another what happened to the 2010 class of baby tuna.”
Lawsuits and missing fish are only two examples of how the BP catastrophe has hurt the earth and its people. These difficulties point to many shortcomings—particularly arrogance and greed, but perhaps the biggest ones are disconnection and lack of valuing what is vitally important: relationships. Real relationships with people (who God loves) and with our good earth (that God loves) have been replaced with products and profits.
Perhaps because I’m not an artist I deeply appreciate artistic expression that catches what I feel. Right now I’m thinking of Michelangelo’s marble carving of Christ’s broken body lying in his mother’s arms. Because we know the story doesn’t end there (resurrection is coming), we are able to engage the moment of pain and suffering. We also know our own part of the story doesn’t end here and now—Revelation tells us God wins. It seems in these difficult times we are being given many opportunities to sit with the pain of brokenness. We shouldn’t try to rush through the difficult part. But there is hope, and my prayer is for us to be active, creative participants with God in redeeming and blessing all of his creation—earth and its people, who are yearn for real relationships, for wholeness.
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