Schaeffer and joy

I found this to be a sobering truth as I read the first chapter of Francis Schaeffer's book Pollution & The Death Of Man.

Near the end of his life, Darwin acknowledged several times in his writings that two things had become dull to him as he got older. The first was his joy in the arts; and the second, his joy in nature. This is very intriguing. Darwin offered his proposition that nature, including man, is based only on the impersonal plus time plus chance, and he had to acknowledge at the end of his life that it had had these adverse effects on him. I believe that what we are seeing today is the same loss of joy in our culture as Darwin personally experienced: first of all in the area of arts, then in the area of nature. The distressing this about this is that orthodox Christians often have had no better sense about these things than unbelievers. The death of "joy" in nature is leading to the death of nature itself.

I think it is true that Christians have a much more careless attitude about nature. People can enjoy nature as they pass, but they can just as easily turn a blind eye as we ravage earth and destroy nature. To make a difference will require world-wide reform, but all reforms have to start with the individual before they can get bigger, let us start to enjoy God's creation. Conservation and protection are how we bring glory to God through nature, not pollution and disruption. Enjoy nature, nature itself points the believer to God.

Lewis On Joy

This C.S. Lewis quote I have seen mentioned by John Piper on a few occasions, and I think it is worth reading and careful pondering.

If there lurks in modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.