Saturday, June 21, 2008

the environment

We recently concluded a series of discussions in my small group regarding the environment, dominion, etc.. It was great in that I learned some simple facts but mostly it challenged some stale thinking I had. In the end however I'm not going "green". On the other hand, I like some of Mark Heath's thoughts and will certainly be making an effort to be a better steward of God's wonderful creation.

It seems that the consensus is that global warming is real and man-made, although every now and then I come up against skeptics (some more believable than others). To be honest, I'm not sure I really need to know. Most of the "good for the environment" things you can do have merits of their own irrespective of whether the planet is in immanent peril or not.

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Conventional wisdom at the moment claims that Christians don't care about the environment because of their eschatology - Jesus is coming back and he'll clean up the mess for us. Maybe there is a little of that, but I'm not sure for two reasons.

First, the reason many Christians don't talk a lot about "the environment" is because we have a different name for it. We call it "Creation", and can be found singing about how wonderful it is almost every week at church. In fact a healthy doctrine of seeing our world as God's creation entrusted to us as responsible stewards should be all the impetus we need to cause us to work against those things that destroy our environment.

Second, I think the reason so many Christians care so little about environmental issues is nothing to do with their eschatology but rather because of syncretism. We have made it possible to mix Christianity with secular materialistic consumerism.

I also just read Virgil Vaduva's take on some environmental issues and I agree with his viewpoint.

As Christians we believe that we are entrusted by our Creator with a planet we need to watch over and maintain for our children and grandchildren; we need to be the kind of "environmentalists" that God wants us to be, to love and care for the world we live in, but not do so by allowing Communists in Gore clothing to manipulate us as they are attempting to do.

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