Not Alarmist Theology

I was listening to a local Christian radio station the other day. Unfortunately, this is not something that I often do, because the content is usually neither challenging or sound, theologically or Biblically. This moment proved my suspicions. There was a guest on this particular program who had just written a book and was discussing his theological views trying to encourage listeners to buy his book.
The host addressed concerns of the environment and questioned how Christians should respond. This author addressed this with some agitation in his voice. He said that Christians should not be like the world. The world is reacting to concerns of global warming, therefore Christians should not react to this. If Christians do they will look as ridiculous as those who chain themselves to trees. He was making the argument that all individuals who bought in to the idea of global warming were simply crazy. He was also making the argument that Christians who were concerned about the environment were going to appear just as crazy. This means that I am crazy. That is, if you buy in to his arguments.
I have a few remarks about this. My first remark is one that I have emphasized before. I think it is very sad and very disturbing that the secular community has taken a strong lead on this and the "church," at least the American Protestant Conservative community, has been of the groups holding us back from making significant progress. We have bought so much into "conservative" politics that it has tainted the way we view God's creation.
I also want to make another point. I think that this man created a false dichotomy. He seemed to be making the argument that you are either a sane individual who does not care about the environment at all, or you are a crazy radical who chains herself to trees. This is not true. Too often we have been taught that things are black and white and there is never any gray. This simply does not agree with reality. This type of thinking is often the culprit in extremest thinking or alarmist reactions. The truth is that we are all different and many of us react at different levels on a large scale that has two opposite points and many in between.
I agree that Christians should not do anything that will make us look crazy (at least nothing in the environmental realm), however we do have a responsibility to act if we know that something is wrong. I see this in the Bible, time after time, story after story. It seems that one of the many themes in the Bible is that knowledge equals responsibility. If we know that we are supposed to be taking care of God's creation and we know that it is in a bad state, then we have the responsibility to act. I'm not going to tell people who chain themselves to trees that they are necessarily wrong. I am going to argue that this is not the message I am trying to convey nor the theological conclusion I am trying to come to. I am arguing that we are called to act, that may be different depending on calling and conviction.
Not all Christians who believe that we should take care of this creation agree with the alarmists who preach gloom and doom. Another theme throughout the Bible is a strong theme of hope. Grace offers beautiful hope of redemption for those who are completely broken. I believe that God offers that same beautiful hope of redemption for a fallen creation.

A Moral Issue?

I just finished reading a message that Pope John Paul gave back in 1990. It was titled, "Peace with God the Creator, and Peace with all His Creation." It was a very good theological as well as practical look at the issue of an ecological crisis. He covered many different aspects. He covered the fact that all mankind have a responsibility to God's creation. He covered the fact the each government, nation or state has a responsibility to the land that they reign over. He also covered the fact that as human beings we have a global responsibility. All governments and all peoples have a need to band together to face the ecological crisis we face.
It is now 18 years later. When the former Pope gave this message I was 8 years old. At that age I don't think I ever new much about any ecological crisis. I remember some people talking about recycling and I remember my public elementary school making a big deal about earth day and taking care of our planet. What is somewhat disturbing to me is that I don't ever remember my private Christian elementary school ever addressing earth day. At the public school I went to they made a whole day of planting a tree and learning how to separate recyclables, but the Christian elementary school I attended a few years later never addressed the day once. 18 years after Pope John Paul II gave this message I'm afraid to say that it must have fallen on deaf ears.
I have a lingering question in my mind after reading this message. Is this a moral crisis? Is the ecological crisis one that somehow demands some kind of action? If that action is not taken, are we somehow held morally responsible? This seems like a complex question, for it has many different types of responses and can be dealt with on many different levels, but I'm going to try to keep it simple for the purpose of this article.
First, Does this crisis require some sort of action? I'm kind of cheating at this point. There is a question to ask before this. The true first question is, is there an true ecological crisis? I'm going to operate with the assumption that there is. I know that there is a lot of debate over this and I'm not willing to get into all of that at this moment, so just go along with me that there is an ecological crisis and I will address that question in a later entry.
So does this crisis require action? I believe that it does. First we must realize that there are possible actions. According to the most recent scientific findings around the globe there seems to be a majority consensus that we have not come to the "point of no return" as for as global warming is concerned. This means that we can change the course of this ecological crisis. 18 years after the Pope gave this message and there is still hope for us to change. The action is simple. Anything that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere. There are several ways we can do this and I really want to address many of them in later entries. Now we are required to carry out this action to stop this global crisis. Humans are the primary contributing factor to the release of greenhouse gases so we must also be the primary means of change to stop this. We are now required to act if we are to stop this ecological crisis.
So now we get to the real question. If we do not act and stop this, are we acting immoral? I would argue that we are. If we do not act we are causing the oppression, suffering and even death of an unknown number of all nature including human beings. This is immoral. If we cause the suffering and death of others whether present or future we are being an oppressing force. I am reminded of a quote by C. S. Lewis. "What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument."
Based upon the one fact of what we are doing to others causes it to be a moral issue. I believe there is much more to this but I also promised to try to keep this simple. The Pope also believed this to be a moral issue. In fact, he ended this message by making that idea very clear to all.

Does God Really Care??

It's very easy to come to a point in our thoughts on the environment where we truly begin to wonder if God really cares. Does He actually care about the ozone layer? Does He really concern Himself with thoughts of trees? I think the trees are of a very significant importance so I won't completely address them until later. I remember reading an article by Rich Mullins where he emphasized the fact that God loves lilies. Does He? In Matthew Jesus tells us to consider them and how much God takes care of them and how much more God will take care of us.

We often read those verses and realize that God loves us a lot. What we fail to realize is that God loves lilies a lot, He just loves us more. The fact that He loves us more indicates that he loves lilies. We read over that. We tend to be so selfish and only focus on how much God loves us. God loves His creation, Jesus tells us that. Not only does God love lilies, but He also loves birds.

God loves plants and animals, this is what Jesus tells us. God loves them a lot. God loves them so much that He wants to meet their every need. God wants to take care of them so that they don't want. The amazing fact is that He loves us even more than that. If we skip over the fact that God loves the plants and animals then that verse loses so much of the passion behind it, we miss the true story of love that Jesus is telling us. We cannot ignore the fact that God loves His creation.

In Genesis we learn how God created the Earth. We learn every day and everything in order and for what purpose. Genesis is a beautiful explanation of Gods care and love for His creation. After each moment of creation God steps back and admits that He thinks His creation is good. After He creates man and woman, he says that it's not just good, but it's very good. God thinks that we are very good. Again we tend to ignore the fact that God also thinks that the rest of creation is good, just not very good. If we overlook this fact we simply miss the true depth of this verse, we miss what God truly thinks of us.

My point in all of this is that God loves us so much, and He thinks so much of us. We cannot forget that He also loves His creation. The fact that He loves us more and think more of us does not negate the fact that he loves and cares for the rest of creation. If God loves and cares for plants and animals it still hurts Him when He thinks of how we treat them. We treat them as if they are nothing to be loved or cared about at all, we don't even act as if they are a creation of the Almighty.

First Book Review

I was pretty upset when I was first trying to find resources on ecological responsibility from a Christian Point of view. I stumbled across this book when putting together a presentation, and O thank God that I did. This book led me to other resources on this topic and I was very enlightened by the contents of the book itself. I was even more delighted when I was told by a friend who worked at out school library that this was one of the most checked out books. That is encouraging because it means that many people are becoming familiar with the ideas that are conveyed in the book. It is somewhat discouraging because I think that more people should put these ideas into action.

The book is not necessarily a deep theological book. This is encouraging to most but to some it may be a discouraging bit of news. Don't let that fact deter you from reading this book. This book is all about practical biblical principals which, if practiced well, results in good theology. The author is a medical doctor who converted to Christianity. This means that he is not a well of historical theology, orthodoxy and heresies. I was very impressed with how well he knows the Bible. That is always the best foundation you can have, and he most definitely does.

What I liked most about the book was how he took some good Christian ideas and showed how, if practiced correctly, they are good for the environment. I want to give you an example, but I'm limiting info from the book because I would prefer that you read it. An example of this is marriage. As Christians we don't like the idea of divorce and we believe that marriages should stay in tact. He shows how this is not only a moral decay, but a moral decay which has an impact on the environment. If you split a home that means there are two homes using energy instead of one, two televisions, two furnaces, two refrigerators, etc. That is just an example. The author really follows the ideas of Pope John Paul II with the idea that the environment is not the issue, it is the sin that leads to the degradation to the environment.

Not only does he show how moral decay leads us to creation destroying lifestyles, he also shows us how to lead Christian lives in regard to ecology. He does this by giving many personal examples. He admits that he and his family are on a journey and are by no means the perfect ecological friendly family, but he fives some examples of successful changes that they have made. Also, near the end of the book he has some very useful appendixes to help you understand the gravity of the situation and your impact on the situation.

To sum up, this is a great read that I would recommend to anyone.

Smog in Heaven?

I am starting to wonder if the portrait of Heaven that was on the flannel board in Sunday School is even close to the real thing. The flannel board always showed a bright yellow place that had white clouds and streets of gold and a see that was sparkling clear like crystal. I wonder because I'm not so sure we understand some things that Jesus was talking about.

Matthew 6:10 "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

I don't think that Jesus meant that we should do everything to make earth look like that thing on the flannel board. I do think that He told us to pray and ask God that His will and His kingdom be carried out on earth just like it is in Heaven. Of that's the case then most of us should stop praying. I was taught as a child not to pray for something unless I really truly meant it. I shouldn't ask for God to help my enemy until I truly desired God help for them. Do we truly desire Heaven on Earth? Do we truly desire the things of God here where we live? I think we do, and yet I can't help but notice that we don't tale care of this Earth as if we truly wanted it to be His. We don't treat this planet like a possession of the creator. We do not treat it as if we really expected it to be Heaven on Earth.

I believe that the Scripture teaches pretty clearly that all of creation fell and must be reconciled to God. I'll get into that more later, but that point leads me to the next. We don't treat the Earth as if we truly believe that it can be reconciled to God and that all of creation can be redeemed?

With the way that we put our prayer into action, we must believe that there's going to be smog in Heaven.