Rev’d Rich Clarkson reflects on an unusual request: Every year in one of my churches we hold a Pet Service. It’s always one of my favourite services because you just can’t predict what is going to happen. Last year the highlight was a tortoise who spent most of the outdoor service trying to do a runner, though thankfully, being a tortoise, she never got far. This year it was raining so we held the service indoors which was ironic because the star of the show was Clive the Duck, who joined in the hymns with great gusto!
The high point of this service is the pet blessing, where I go around and bless each of the animals (or photos of animals that have either been left at home, or have died) with the words “[name] you were created by God and you are loved by God. May God bless and protect you, and all those who care for you.” There are usually a few soft toys there as well who receive a version of the same blessing, on the basis that for a 6 year old their cuddly toy is just as real and important to them as a living pet.
This year, however, I had a new experience which was that I was asked to bless a digital pet – a ‘Bitzee’ to be precise (other digital pets are available!). This is an “interactive digital toy” that you have to look after in order to keep it ‘alive’ and happy, and I have to say I struggled with this more than I do with the cuddly toys, though in the moment I gave the same blessing as with the other soft toys. I’ve been wrestling with this for the last week or so, but the more I think about it the more I feel like my uncertainty reveals something quite fundamental about our subconscious attitude (or my subconscious attitude anyway) to the world.
I have spent years studying environmental theology, preaching sermons, writing articles, and giving talks in which my starting point is that God is the creator of all things. That is absolutely fundamental to my understanding of the world and our place in it (see Genesis 1, John 1, Colossians 1 etc.). But the ‘digital pet’ incident somehow reveals that what I really think is that God made everything… except for the things that humans have made!
And yet if I break it down logically, everything in that digital pet ultimately comes from God too. The plastic comes from oil which comes from prehistoric plankton which comes from God. The electronic components come from metals and other elements which were formed either in geological processes in the earth or somewhere in the lifecycle of stars, both of which come from God. The creativity and ingenuity to put them all together into a digital pet came from humans, who were made by God. So ultimately even that digital pet is, in the grand scheme of things, made by God. As John says in the opening to his Gospel, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
The dominant narrative in modern Western society is that humans and nature are separate, distinct, disconnected. That’s the subconscious narrative that apparently I have, and I suspect that most of you reading this have too – however much we may work to change that it runs deep. And when an idea like that is believed deeply on a societal level then to some extent it becomes true. We build and work and act and burn and behave as if we are separate and then, when our actions affect ‘nature’, we are surprised when those changes affect us through fire and flood and drought and disease.
So the lesson of the digital pet is, for me at least, to continue that work in myself of seeing all things – ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ – as ultimately being of God. To accept the challenge of the 8 year old innocently holding out her digital pet, asking me to bless it as part of God’s good and beloved creation. I’ll try and do it a bit more gladly next year!