Scripture & Creation
Matthew 4:1
Reflections on Wilderness
Why was Jesus led into the wilderness? Why didn't the Holy Spirit direct him to spend forty days in the temple? Why is it that the great prophets tend to be involved with wilderness more than with cathedrals or population centers? Why did the early Christian monastics go into the desert instead of to the cities and churches? After all, the churches were much closer.
Could it be that human society and the sins hidden in our thinking cast such a mental shroud over urban areas that everyone is subtly affected and this influences our thinking and behavior? Every place has its own feeling and presence. The ocean has a different “feel” and energy than the high plains. The mountains have a distinctly different “feel” and presence from Times Square in New York City. This “feel,” while subtle and intangible, is nevertheless a discernable “presence”; it is the collective spiritual and psychic substances of the many influences working in and upon any particular area. This idea of “presence” is a dimension between the spiritual and the material worlds which theology does not address except that it affirms the energies of the Creator in the creation. Most people can feel the differences, for instance, between the city and the cathedral-like deep forests, or even between different places such as the ocean or the desert. Yet most of us struggle to define that difference. In wilderness these presences are most apparent and they are identified as those places where a permanent human presence does not exist.
Throughout the Bible there is continual concern for wilderness. Between the first chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of Revelation, the term “wilderness” appears 281 times. Even though wilderness appears more often in the Old Testament than in the New, the instances where it does appear are of great significance because wilderness invariably appears in the context of prophecy, prayer, the manifestation of spiritual power, or the presence of the Holy Spirit, particularly in the life and purpose of Jesus Christ.
Because of these associations, wilderness serves as a fundamental symbol of Divine Revelation. According to a survey by theologian Vincent Rossi, at least five major and distinct themes emerge from the different uses of the word wilderness:
In the first place, it represents desolation, waste, the absence of God, a place of judgement or a place of punishment. In the second place, and in direct contrast to the first, wilderness represents the place of God’s covenant, hence the place of Divine presence, grace, gift and mercy. Wilderness is the place where God speaks to his people, where He manifests His power. Third, wilderness is also a place of refuge, of security in insecurity. It is the place where God’s elect often go to escape the machinations and malice of the enemies of God, to restore their spirits and to renew their strength. Fourth, it is both a place and an agent of cleansing, healing, purification and transformation. Fifth, wilderness is a visible symbol of the infinitely unknowable, yet absolutely real, Divine Nature.
Wilderness is not some new concept invented by modern environmentalists. It is that region within the created order which has remained beyond the sometimes crude and clumsy efforts of humans to turn creation into higher usefulness. Whenever God has wanted to raise up prophets, he has more often not sent them to seminary or to church. Rather he sends them into the wilderness!
Vincent Rossi provides further commentary on wilderness:
Wilderness is frightening because in it we perceive, however dimly, an order so vast, an intelligence so deep, a harmony so perfect, a beauty so piercing, a power so immense, a law so just and implacable that it dwarfs into nothingness our human successes, failures, concerns, projects, politics and personalities. Yet wilderness is exhilarating, renewing, uplifting, cleansing and healing, and for exactly the same reasons that it frightens us!
He continues:
In wilderness may be found the footprints of God, but they are obscured by the shadow of the fall....
Wilderness is the fleeting image of Paradise in virgin nature; yet it is also the flaming shadow of the cherubim’s sword denying us entry into paradise. Wilderness is a sacred, secret garden to saints and a frightening desert to sinners.
The saints of times past, as might be expected, have much to say about wilderness. Saint Anthony the Great, one of the earliest desert fathers, compared a monk outside the desert wilderness to a fish out of water.
Saint Jerome described wilderness through the qualities which it bestowed upon the monks. He particularly notes appreciation for its solitude and beauty, and the opportunities it affords for spiritual experience. He explains that the desert fathers and mothers went to wild places for a variety of reasons, but especially to encounter the holy. Jerome writes, “to me the town is a prison, and solitude is paradise.”
St. Basil reveals another reason why wilderness benefits spiritual striving:
The contemplation of nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes all insincerity and presumption.
Basil continues and says that this happens because God's creation teaches His qualities.
In contrast to wilderness, the 19th century Catholic priest and poet Gerald Manly Hopkins, SJ described the urban world as “bleared, smeared with toil.”
Wilderness is a part of creation that is untouched and untrammeled by the desecrating, sinful hand of humanity. People are drawn to wilderness to regain balance, to humble themselves, to heal sickness of soul, to regain their humanity and capacity for worship, to pray. There is obviously great need for a return to wilderness to recapture one’s spiritual bearings.
Ironically, perhaps, this is precisely what God Himself determined, because the Holy Spirit drove Jesus, not into the temple, but into the wilderness! In earlier times God used wilderness as a place and a means for the purification of His chosen people! Jesus himself, as man, set the perfect example for all humanity by often retreating to the wilderness to pray. His very presence in the wilderness coupled with his victory over Satan sanctified it forever.
The fact that Jesus frequently retired into the wilderness shows that there is an opportunity in wilderness that relates to our spiritual hunger for the presence of God. No matter how many hours we spend in church, somehow standing outdoors under the dome and in the nave of God's great cathedral of wild nature, the hope for transforming spiritual experience becomes almost tangible. Surrounded by irresistible organic life or in the silence of severe desert beauty, our querulous, questing minds quiet, the psychic knots in our breast unravel, our heart melts, and we are ready perhaps to listen for the still small voice of God.
