Attenborough's Ocean asks: What are we doing here?

Ocean. David Attenborough’s latest made-for-the-big-screen documentary. Perhaps you’ve seen it. If not, please do – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Barrow-rolling seal, sun-dappled kelp forest, coral garden reef, phytoplankton and whale, the astonishing beauty of it all. You’ll experience joy, wonder, horror, anger, hope and much else besides, all in the space of 90 minutes. It’s impossible not to be stirred, maybe shaken. Available in cinemas and, by the time you’re reading this, on Disney+.

What is it in this film that stirs us so powerfully? Perhaps it’s that, like Psalm 104, we see the beauty of God’s creation and shout: “O LORD, how wonderful are your works! … the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great.”

Or perhaps it’s that seeing the consequences of humanity-gone-rogue, the psalmist’s closing cry rises in us: “Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.” Both of these, I’m sure. Most profoundly, however, it’s that it tells us something fundamental about what we’re doing here.

Our purpose

But what are we doing here? Or, to put it slightly differently, what is humanity here for? And what are we – God’s people – here for? As to the first, God tells us in the first chapter of Genesis (1v26-27). We humans are charged with ruling all creation as His agents, ruling as He Himself rules over it. That’s the primary meaning of being made in the image of God, and our “purpose statement”. It’s confirmed in the second chapter of Genesis: we are to work, take care of, serve, guard, protect God’s creation (2v15). What we’re here for is the flourishing of all creation. That’s why its flourishing evokes joy, and its devastation, horror.

As to the second, what are we, the redeemed people of God, here for? I wonder if it’s so very different. To be sure, we’re here to proclaim the saving news that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10v8-13). That news, though, intrinsically and fundamentally, includes restoration to our original purpose. By the blood of the true image-bearer shed on the cross, Paul writes, God is reconciling all things to Himself and renewing in us the true image of God. (Col. 1v15-21, 3v9-10). We don’t have to look far to see the damage wrought by the broken image – Ocean shows us all too clearly – but what of those in whom the image is being renewed?

Surely, this is what we’re here for: both to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and to live the life of the renewed image bearer. That is, to do what humanity was always supposed to do: to rule as He rules, for the flourishing of one another and the whole creation. Ultimately, Attenborough’s film stirs us because it speaks – though he wouldn’t say it this way – to our purpose as humans, and even more so to those in whom the image of God is being renewed.

And if we are stirred, what can we do against such reckless destruction? Ocean proposes a simple and effective solution, for people (especially fishing communities), sea-life and climate: immediately ratify the Global Ocean Treaty – signed but as yet unratified by the UK – and ban bottom trawling, which The Observer describes as “pulling a heavy chain or metal beam across the seabed, in front of a large trawler net. It disturbs any fish or molluscs on the ocean floor and scoops them up.”

I’m neither in the fishing industry, nor am I a policymaker – what can I do? Write to my MP and the PM urging those two actions. In the bigger picture, join the mass lobby of Parliament on 9 July (www.theclimatecoalition.org/act-now-change-forever). And, if I’m out for a fancy dinner, ask after the provenance of the scallops – and if they’re not hand-harvested by onshore fishermen, pick something else (and say why).

There might be more (maybe much more!), that the Lord God leads you into. But know, as you do these things, you’re a renewed image-bearer, doing the job humans are here to do.