The proper starting point for a Christian attentiveness to the ecological crisis, he argued, is the exercise of delight—the enjoyment of all the manifestations of God’s glory in the natural world. This is the place to begin—not with paralyzing fear over the potential of ecological catastrophe (as real as that may be) and not with crippling guilt over the human abuse of creation (as awful as that is, too), but with enjoyment and delight. This is the wellspring of free and spontaneous human action. Drawing on Augustine’s distinction between what we can properly “use” as human beings and what we
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