Oikos: God’s Big Word for a Small Planet. Andrew Francis

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Oikos: God’s Big Word for a Small Planet - Andrew  Francis

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      There is a helpful Greek word, oikos, which means either “house” or “household” depending upon its attendant verbs or adjectives. It is from this Greek root that English speakers gain three important words: “economical,” “ecological,” and “ecumenical.” Those words gain an even more “life-giving” significance when considering the future of our planet. The interrelationship of economic, ecological, and ecumenical factors help us reflect upon, then ask, the necessary questions needed to act decisively and live together for the sake of this single small planet.

      A Small Planet?

      The contracts for this book were signed just weeks before NASA’s planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler, had located a “cousin” to Earth, now called Kepler 425b. This new (to us) planet is in the Cygnus constellation, some 1,400 light years away from Earth. Kepler 425b is what is known as an exo-planet, which circles a “sun-like star” in 385 days—similar to Earth’s orbit of 365 days. Kepler 425b is about one and a half times the size of Earth, giving it a mass of five times Earth’s. These facts place it in the “Goldilocks zone,” meaning Kepler 425b may be inhabitable (and even inhabited), sustaining surface water and equable temperatures, if its surface is rocky (scientific projection suggests 60 percent probability), rather than a “gaseous surface,” like Neptune. Neither I nor my publishers claim any monopoly on prophetic wisdom, but the very presence of such a world as Kepler 425b does mean that Earth is truly the “Small Planet” of this book’s subtitle.

      The ecology of this “new” planet will take generations, if not light years, to discover. Whether we as homo sapiens ever get that opportunity will be determined by our survival beyond mere subsistence existence. What it will take will be globally shared priorities both economically and ecumenically if ecologically wise policies are to prevail to ensure humanity does not curtail planet Earth’s future. Philosophers may take a que sera sera approach, accepting global annihilation or mutually assured destruction or survival with a logical, even reasoned equanimity. However theologians, of whatever faith, must argue from a Godward dimension.

      As this book goes into its final production phase, in September 2016, Harvard University sources confirmed the existence of another large planet, Proxima b, close to Proxima Centauri, which also has the capability to sustain human life. During all this, scientific confirmation of the existence of “running water” on Mars continues to beg the question, “Is there life on Mars?” Scientific investigation of Kepler 425b, Proxima b, and Mars reminds us that Earth is still a small planet in comparison to these others.

      God’s big word

      To understand that economical, ecological, and ecumenical interrelationship, as a theologian and/or as a Christian disciple or simply an inquisitive bystander, means that all the developing debate can have a Godward dimension. God’s oikos vision in the Bible is of Earth as a “household.” In our homes, to live harmoniously within our means, we must live within our economic constraints, within the nature and sustaining of our neighborhood’s environment, sharing peaceably with the human community around us. Why should that set of constraints and questions be any different, except in scale, when we consider what it means to live in this part of God’s household—Earth? Therefore oikos is God’s big word for a small planet.

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