Humility plays a critical role in a healthily functioning society. This is particularly true in democratic, egalitarian nations like the United States that place a high emphasis on individual rights. In these societies, humility and mutual self-sacrifice are some of the only traits that can keep citizens from continuously butting heads. The popular (and as I have argued in the past, inevitable) loss of this conception of rights–Locke’s famous “liberty not license”– to a highly self-centered conception of rights–“I deserve XYZ or else I will sue the hell out of you”– is one of the chief forces tearing the fabric of our national relations thread by thread.

I am feeling particularly reflective about the role humility plays as the United States faces a now month-long government shutdown chiefly perpetrated by lawmakers that are each too stubborn, and in most cases, too full of themselves, to do what is best for the nation. I have also argued, echoing great minds like Yuval Levin, that this is inevitable in a democratic society because leaders are incentivized to function more like celebrities who can win over the masses than any semblance of the more formal roles their titles suggest.

A stop sign in front of the US Capitol (Photo by ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

But I am not visiting this question today to raise any critique about our democratic system. Rather, I wish to reflect on the role humility is meant to play–by design–in our interactions with the natural world. To do this, I want to examine a single verse in Scripture: Genesis 2:7, which addresses the moment God created the first man.

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

To a Christian, this verse reveals in unambiguous fashion that man has, is, and will always be dependent on his Creator for the life that he lives. Of course, this fact is easy to forget as we roam and play amidst a world filled with technologies and comforts of our own invention. Yet God breathed life into us, and despite all our advancements we are incapable of breathing life into anything. Other than by the natural methods He gave us through marriage, that is.

This is the first and most obvious reading of this verse. But there is a second, equally profound conclusion that can be drawn from this passage. In Genesis 1, we watch as God creates the heavens and earth spontaneously over six days. Everything in those days was created ex nihilo, out of nothing, and formed from the divine will alone. Yet in Genesis 2, we read in more detail the last act of that sixth day, the creation of man.

In a break from his previous creations, God is no longer working ex nihilo. No, for man He works ex materia, out of preexisting material. Namely, the dust.

Hands working with dust. Credit: Alakim_Maksim

At once, this suggests man occupies a contradictory place in the hierarchy of things. Where elsewhere in Scripture he is described as “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5), here he is made out of the literal dust. While man is given “dominion” over the earth and all its beings (Genesis 1:28-30), in an almost ironic way he is completely dependent on that same earth for his very existence.

Man is therefore dependent on God and nature for his being–from his utmost beginnings when life was breathed into his nostrils, to his continued maintenance today. That God gave man the fruits of the earth for subsistence directly after his creation (Genesis 1:28-30) proves that this seemingly contradictory dominance-dependence relation with the natural world was always His design. 

How can mankind, then, be both dominant and dependent on nature? How can man be its ruler and its slave? The answer to reconciling these is humility; to recognize the dual spiritual and carnal nature of man.

You see, much of the harm we have inflicted upon the earth has come from an arrogant, intemperate approach that selfishly views us as masters over all and forgets our humble dependencies. One that forgets the animals, too, were crafted from the dust like us (Genesis 2:19) and which we therefore share an innate intimacy. Harms have come by our infatuation with shaping the world into our image; of leveling mountains for skyscrapers and dredging immense canals to drain the Everglades. 

God crafted us in both power and dependency, which can only be harmonized through work done in a spirit of humble responsibility. When we approach nature this way, when we contour our development to its patterns–we fulfill God’s command to reign with both dominion and care. By living this way, we can utilize our God-given creativity, but in a way that builds and not destroys–a halting reflection of the Creator’s work itself.

For as God Himself famously declared: the dust was before us, and the dust will be after.

By Evan Patrohay