CREDIT: PARAMOUNT
Russell Crowe stars in the new Biblical-based summer hit, Noah, who knows something is wrong and can source the cause of it - sin.

Everything precious is in danger, so says Wendell Berry in a November 2013 interview with journalist Bill Moyers. When Berry thinks of precious things he is not thinking of my new smart phone, engagement rings, original recordings of Nirvana, or the stone I picked up from the Pacific shore four years ago. He is thinking of the polar ice caps, animals on the list of endangered species, air, your children born or yet to be born, soil, rivers, gentle people and beautiful landscapes.

In Noah, Noah knows that something is wrong. His world is scorched by industry. Men and women assume that they become more human by wielding power. And the greatest men are those who have the courage to commit the most powerful of all acts, taking human life.

Noah is more direct than Berry is. Noah names the source of our violence and our willingness to exchange paradise for a pair of dice. We exploit the resources and beauty of the entire globe, gambling that by some miracle of technology we will avoid the environmental catastrophes that scientists have been forecasting now for decades. Noah, like any respectable character in the Bible, calls it sin.

True, not all sin is sin. Some of it may just be ignorance. We don't always know that what we are doing is bad. And there are many shades of blame and misinformation, innocence and knowledge, guilt and failure. But there it is: the name for our violence, self-centeredness, deception, and self-deception. Sin.

Many precious things are lost every generation. At present our losses involve not only the integrity of our planetary home, a gift from God. In danger (as always) are healthy minds, caring families, innocent preteen and teen years, the love between parent and child, loyalty to siblings and grandparents, words of truth, gestures of healing, the valuing of life, politics of compassion, and economies of care. All too often we take these things for granted, allowing them to whither, while we pursue the next travel fad, cheap highs, material possessions, money and whatever else advertisers manipulate us into wanting so that their clients' stock will rise.

This week, churches all over the planet will be celebrating Good Friday and Easter. Good Friday is the remembrance of the death of the Son of God. His death is several things. It is the price paid for sin. It is a scapegoat's death — the Son of God taking sin outside the city where people live, outside where it receives its reward, death. It is the final act of violence against God that spells the coming end to all malicious violence: the violence of the Lord's army, of terror groups, of inquisitors of old, of the Hell's Angels, and of every other network that wants to live by terror, hubris and bullying.

Easter — a celebration of the resurrection of the Son of God. A signal that, as aging singer Bob Dylan once wrote in a moment of clarity, “death is not the end.” A signal that whatever the suffering of cancer patients in London's oncology units, whatever the agonies of the millions of Indian kids abandoned by their (desperate) parents, whatever terrors that America, Russia, Afghanistan, and Canada's Indian Act have inflicted or will inflict on their victims, they do not have the last word. God has it and it will be spoken. Everything despicable will be tossed into an eternal trash bin (hell). And everything precious will see the light of day when Jesus comes back. Until that day, believe, hope, love and do the good things of God in anticipation of the return of the King.
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