On Health and Revelation

An important lesson from the disastrous COVID-19 lockdowns comes, surprisingly, from many high-brow scientific publications describing the physiological and emotional benefits of being outside in nature.

Beyond serving as evidence that the lockdowns were damaging to health, this phenomenon is an insight into God’s revelation.

Ask yourself: Isn’t it odd that humans don’t get the same physiological benefits by being immersed in the buzzing city centers of Paris, New York City, or Tokyo?

After all, both the great outdoors and these hubs of humanity share factors that are supposed to be good for our health: interacting with sundry scents, textures, and colors in areas teeming with life and vibrancy.

And yet, the human machine reserves specific and restorative actions in only one of these environments: untamed nature.

At the Creator’s Doorstep

We can marvel at towering skyscrapers and ornate train stations, but the biochemical messengers that optimize our bodies’ functionality will remain relatively dormant while doing so. But when we are outdoors in the midst of God’s creation, an emphatic physiological response from the human machine kicks in.

Just as architecture reveals insights about the architect himself, nature is a revelation of the Architect Himself. In theological parlance, nature is a part of God’s general revelation – a divine disclosure of His “qualities,” as Paul told the church in Rome.

The shadow of His presence is often unavoidable in the outdoors. If you listen closely to some secularists, you’ll hear them tiptoeing dangerously close to admitting that God exists simply by how they describe nature.

“The Grand Canyon is astonishing and majestic … it leaves you breathless,” they’ll say as they fumble for words. Endless miles of golden Kansas wheat waving in slow, melodic synchronicity strike them as “spellbinding” and “surreal.” Thousands of people will silently congregate along the California coastline, “drawn” by the “unexplainable beauty” of a summer sunset.

Mother Nature vs. Father God

While cities may be eye-popping feats of human ingenuity, experiencing nature often reaches the sublime. Unable to completely ignore their senses, secularists run to the nearest escape hatch and acknowledge creation but not the Creator, instead speaking of “Mother Nature.”

This personification is their unwitting admission that nature is the designed product of intelligence. But they don’t want to take that next logical step. They dance right along the edge, suppressing their reason, and instead conflate the creation with its Maker, like staring at the Sydney Opera House and marveling at the works of “Mother Architecture.”

And so they stand at the Creator’s very doorstep — unable to walk away and yet still afraid to knock.

Refresh Yourself in God’s Revelation

“Nature is not our mother, nature is our sister,” wrote G.K. Chesterton. He’s right. It’s no wonder that our bodies respond differently to it than to our own creations.

The Father of Lies also understands this principle. Just as he perverts our knowledge of the moral law by transmuting it into the secular religion of social justice, he melts the glory of created nature into a deified golden calf.

The result is sadly predictable.

Under the veil of “climate change,” millions worship nature. They drive their Priuses to the Green altar to offer the sacrifice of personal liberty, and with it, their souls. The Fall is always with us, and it still afflicts our reason.

The sheer vastness of mankind plodding along without the light and hope of Christ should stir the echoes of The Great Commission in our hearts.

So make your way into His creation and let yourself be refreshed by His wondrous revelation. Just don’t stay too long. Someone has to tell the people at the Green altar:

But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; And the birds of the air, and they will tell you; Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; And the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind? (Job 12:7-12)

Joachim Osther is a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity. He holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Veritas College and Seminary, and two degrees in the life sciences, a field in which he works as a strategist, advisor, and published author. He has been published at American Thinker, and is an occasional contributor to RaymondIbrahim.com.