I live 40 mins outside of a city that sits right below a big ol’ mountain.
The mountain is Mount Wellington, and that city is Hobart.
It’s worth noting that the mountain was there first.
English settlers first came to Tasmania in the early 19th century to use this land as a penal colony. Why Tasmania? Good coffee and vibe I assume. (this is a joke – the vibe did not arrive until the late 1980s)
Unfortunately, in their bid to establish a penal colony and later a city, the whitefellas all but wiped out the indigenous people of Tasmania. This part of history is only just being told, or perhaps, we’re only just listening.
Indigenous Tasmanians and Tasmanian progressives are rightly outraged at the whitewashing of Tasmanian (and Australian) history. Much is being done to continue seeking the truth and telling it, perhaps for the first time, to the next generation. Part of the response hasn’t just included historical research and truth telling, but is a greater openness and acceptance to Aboriginal culture and customs. As a country who has a history of telling the Aboriginals how we will solve their problems for them, it seems like shutting up and letting the Aboriginals do whatever they need to do for a while is a good strategy.
As a Christian, I feel compelled to seek truth, engage in conciliation, and facilitate healing however I can. That’s not because I’m a bleeding heart lefty, that’s purely because I’m a Christian. I believe the core of my Christian faith moves me actively in that direction.
So, here I am. I’m determined to show up and support and bring peace and do what I can to love and respect people who have traditionally been treated literally like animals.
But in Hobart, and increasingly around the rest of the state, it is becoming difficult to add any nuance to the conversation. I will happily call myself an ally on the Aboriginal community, but I can’t agree with everything they are saying. I can’t support everything they want to do or say. And the main thing I can’t support is the growing trend of personifying inanimate objects – like our mountain, Mount Wellington/kunanyi (it’s traditional indigenous name).
kunanyi is a beautiful mountain! As I walked the beach tonight I looked across the waters at it’s presence and it’s gentle dominance of the horizon. Earlier today I stood almost directly under it in the streets of north Hobart, and I couldn’t help but stop a moment and think ‘wow’!
Looking at kunanyi tonight from my distant beach, I was one step removed from worshipping it.
It almost demands awe and wonder! But, at the last minute, I deflected that worship to it’s creator: God.
The line between enjoying God’s majestic creation and worshiping said creation can be hard to discern. When the heart is stirred and eyes are widened, how easy it is to want to name your next kid after whatever you’re looking at.
But I don’t join with my indigenous brothers and sisters and ascribing personal traits to the mountains, waterways, grasslands, or forests of our beautiful state. I love them, but they, like me, are created. Wonderfully, yes, but still created. If anyone is worthy of worship, how can we aim so low as to hit the creation and miss the creator?
I will campaign long and hard to preserve kunanyi and its beauty and grace so that it still strikes wonder into the hearts of future generations. And I think being a Christian compels me to do that, too. But I will need to stop short of where many Aboriginals would like me too, as I am convinced that Creator God is worthy of all praise, far exceeding that of even his best creation.
So whilst I like to take a nice, happy little centrist view on this, and use my theology as backup, my question to myself is: have I been too conservative? Could I afford to embrace a more animated approach to nature? Does Scripture give me permission, perhaps even precedence, to stop calling kunanyi an ‘it’ and start calling it a ‘her’?
The affirmative case would best be made from the relationship between God, his people, and Mount Zion.
Zion in the Bible is a mountain. And that mountain is mentioned 163 times in the newer translations. 163 times! But it’s not just the volume of appearances in Scripture that is surprising, it’s the relationship between God, his people, and this mountain.
In some cases, God’s people are referred to as the “daughter of Zion”. The prophet Zechariah says,
“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah 9:9
The prophets Zephaniah (3:14) and Micah (4:13) do the same.
Amos (1:2) states, “The LORD roars from Zion”.
Joel (3:21) says, “The LORD dwells in Zion.”
God and his mouthpieces (prophets) have no problems giving Mount Zion front row seats to the marvellous majesty of God. The mountain is center stage. But… it’s not he main act.
So, in the words of the great 20th century prophetess, Natalie Imbruglia, “Nothings fine I’m torn.”
Have I gone too far? Hardly.
Have I not gone far enough? Perhaps.
In my terror of over-animating a rock, have I denigrated God’s instrument of wonder to the sum of its elemental makeup?
In wanting to create a clear line between Aboriginal folk spiritualism and my own theology, have drawn a line in the sand too close to my own toes?
Yep. I think I have.
I think there’s a danger in over-stepping the line, so maybe being conservative isn’t a bad thing in this case, but if I’m honest my conservativism is robbing God of some glory, as I fail to beholden his wonder completely.
The Apostle Paul didn’t have my problem. He talks in Romans 8 about “the whole creation has been groaning”, “creation waits in eager expectation”, and “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay”. Most significantly, Paul says in Romans 1 “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
If kunanyi was created at the creation Paul is talking about, then it has been displaying God’s eternal power and divine nature for thousands of years!! It’s been evangelising the people of Hobart for the past 200 years, and for thousands of years before that to the indigenous people, so that all of us are without excuse. It might just be a rock, it might just be a created thing, but it was created by God!
It was fashioned by the same hands as the human eye ball.
It was built by the same mind as sunsets and strawberries and sex.
It’s just a rock, but it’s a bloody beautiful rock.
And it’s a divinely designed rock.
And if you and I don’t testify to the divine nature of God, it will.
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
Luke 19:38-40