Scripture Sunday: An Ecological Conversion

by Ashtyn Adams

Romans 6:1-4 (NRSV)
1 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

Caravaggio's "Conversion of Saint Paul" (First Version)

Caravaggio's "Conversion of Saint Paul"

I cannot help but think about Paul’s own biographical life when reading this passage in Romans. One of my old professors used to joke that Paul would be dismayed if he knew his mail had been canonized as Holy Scripture, especially as we make all sorts of the twists and turns attempting, or not attempting, to fill in the conversation on the other side. While the Pauline epistles were certainly not written to us, I believe they can still be written for us, especially Romans. Romans is Paul’s longest and most theologically robust letter since he hasn’t actually visited Rome yet. He cannot shorthand anything like in his other letters where he has already established the Gospel. In the aftermath of exile and return of Jewish Christians from Rome during the reigns of Claudius and Nero in 55/56 AD, Paul writes this letter to a church he has not visited, for the purposes of peace amid strife and contention.

Paul’s own life of sin was marked by his time as a militant pharisee and violent persecutor of the Church. Then he was Saul, the man party to the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr killed for his faith, and who voted for the death of other Jesus followers. When he traveled along the road to Damascus he had a conversion experience: a light flashed around him as he fell to the ground, hearing a voice say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” After being blind for three days,  Saul the Pharisee becomes Paul the apostle to the gentiles, the very people Stephen gets his name from. For Paul, grace is an event that happened on the road to Damascus and he never gets over the fact that he has been saved by the same God he once so strenuously opposed. It compels him to go where no apostle has gone and ultimately be imprisoned and martyred himself. The church would look very different without his conversion, if Paul had simply continued as he had before.

​In chapter six, we see Paul’s soteriology displayed, what it exactly means to be “saved.” We, as Christians, are not saved from something, but for something. In chapter two Paul has already asked, "Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4). The good news of Christ is not a get out of jail free card. Here, in chapter six, Paul further presses, “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means!” Me genoito is the Greek word used here, almost a “hell no!” It is not quite a curse word, but it is a very strong no. Anyone who claims that sin can abound so grace abounds has missed the Gospel. A true encounter with the risen Lord leads to newness of life which witnesses to the daily, incremental grace and mercy of God. Yet, this is still the same sort of pervasive thinking in the climate crisis today. When there is a call to action over the rising seas and warming earth, Christians hide under excuses of pragmatism or realism. There is often an attitude that God will fix it, and display his power all the more. It is an unfaithful, passive, and misguided posture which Paul would abhor. The spirit infused process of sanctification only makes us more and more into the likeness of Christ, and empowers us to live into the Kingdom here and now. If we have truly died to sin, we cannot go on living in it. Yet, our relation with the rest of creation is marked by sin, the sin of violence and indifference. We must be radically changed like Paul on the road to Damascus. As Todd Still says, “imitatio Pauli is in fact imitatio Christi, this is, in seeking to emulate Paul in general I am more able to follow Christ in particular.”

 If we have truly died to sin, we cannot go on living in it. Yet, our relation with the rest of creation is marked by sin, the sin of violence and indifference. We must be radically changed like Paul on the road to Damascus. 

What is needed, as Pope Francis pronounced, is “an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” My ecological conversion was in the spring of 2020. I realized I was Saul, the stubborn persecutor of Christ resisting the light. After the first weeks of COVID shut down human activity, the airs and waters around the world cleared, and I felt as though I heard a deep groin of Christ from the Earth asking, “why do you persecute me?” Christ said he was found among the least of these, the prisoners and outcasts, being welcomed and fed without us knowing whenever they were cared for (Matthew 25). Creation itself now needs our intervention, it is among the least of these. It is where we will find Jesus and be transformed if we allow ourselves to be first knocked down, to die to sin. Although, like Rome, Paul has not visited our church in America, I hear him asking, are we to continue damaging the Earth in order that grace may increase? Me genoito​! By no means.

Are we to continue damaging the Earth in order that grace may increase? Me genoito! By no means.

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Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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