From Nightmare To Dream Come True: Part 1
June 30, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Jeff Shinabarger, co-founder of the Fermi Project and Rwanda Clean Water, is the creative director & experience designer for all Fermi Project initiatives, the editor of Fermi Words, a digital media magazine educating leaders on shaping culture, and the creative mind behind the Catalyst Conference. Jeff lives in Decatur, Georgia with his wife, Andre, and dog Max. (contact: jeffs@fermiproject.com)
It was a nightmare. I dreamt of a boy, about 8 years old, 4 feet tall, no shirt, only ripped up mud stained pants, with a big little belly. I still can’t remember what his face looked like. It was like a Hype Williams music video where he focuses on the sun gleaming around the product he wants you to see. Suddenly the angle of the sun moved and an empty glass of water appeared. The boy leaned down to fill the glass again, and the shot panned back in a cinematic style. I watched the boy dip the glass into a filthy puddle on a mud street. He took another drink. I woke up.
It was 3:27 in the morning. I was sweating. I went to the kitchen, filled up a glass of ice water from my refrigerator door, and took a drink. I woke up my wife Andre. I had dreamt of injustice. Rwanda Clean Water Project began.
That nightmare birthed in me a real world dream to bring clean water to Rwanda. I shared the idea with my good friend Gabe Lyons who gave it legs. He found a foundation partner to help us receive money and provide it to our implementation partners on the ground in Rwanda. We decided to launch the idea of bringing clean water to Rwanda at an event of about 10,000 church leaders called Catalyst in October 2005. As they entered one morning, every person was given a bottle of water: no explanation, no tag, no branding, no cost, just pure clean water. Then we shared the story of the needs in Africa. We take clean water for granted in America. The reality is if there were clean water in developing countries today, sickness and illnesses would literally be cut in half. The leaders responded by giving $134,000!
In the spring of 2006, a group of 15 of us went to Rwanda to report on the first wells that had been dug since that 10-minute offering. Here is what I wrote the day we met the families benefiting from its existence:
Wells. We all saw the child that pumped the well and balanced the tin of water on his head and posed for us to take pictures. He was only one that gains. From that one well alone, there are 2,999 others that smile just like him everyday. That was one of the proudest and most humbling moments of my life. We saw how the simplest modern convenience can change the health and hope of an entire village. This is so simple, yet could change humanity today. What if we worked to give everyone in the entire world an opportunity to have access to clean water? Can you imagine the smile on that child’s face multiplied by millions of smiles from all over the world? Now that would be priceless. A small offering has the ability to change a society.
Job Announcement: Western Creation Care Organizer
June 27, 2008
Overview:
Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Boise (Vineyard Boise) seeks a qualified and energetic Christian to serve as its Western Creation Care Organizer. A unique opportunity, the creation care organizer will serve pastors and people throughout the West – and around the country – by providing resources, training, and networking opportunities to connect passion for God’s creation with concrete opportunities for serving and protecting it. The position is funded for one year and may be renewed pending additional support and other factors.
The environmental stewardship ministry at Vineyard Boise has served as a model for many churches beginning to think about the Church’s responsibility to care for Creation. Through the visionary leadership of Senior Pastor Tri Robinson and the hard work and dedication of numerous lay leaders and church volunteers, the Vineyard Boise’s “Let’s Tend the Garden” ministry has gained national prominence for pioneering pathways for people to serve God and care for His Creation at the same time.
The Western Creation Care Organizer will do enormously important work – helping to spread the Creation Care model throughout the West and engaging and supporting pastors and churches to actively serve and advocate as stewards of God’s gift of creation.
Skills:
• Polished writing skills
• Strong verbal communication skills and public speaking ability
• Organizational skills including coalition building and volunteer training
• Event planning experience
• Budget management
Requirements:
• Passion for God’s creation
• Cursory knowledge of current environmental issues
• Ability to travel throughout the mountain West and Pacific Northwest required
• Valid driver’s license
• Self-directed and disciplined
Principal Duties and Responsibilities:
• Engage pastors who show interest and provide support, tools and opportunities for them to become active leaders who make a positive impact.
• Manage a web portal for accessing project information and tools and track, organize and respond to contacts and inquiries.
• Generate positive coverage for these efforts in Christian and mainstream media.
• Develop a speakers bureau of up to two dozen pastors.
• Drive participation of pastors and leaders in the 2008 Environmental Stewardship Conference at the Vineyard Boise in September.
Details:
Location – The position is based out of Vineyard Boise in Boise, Idaho.
Supervision – The Creation Care Organizer will be supervised by Senior Pastor Tri Robinson and the Vineyard Boise Staffing Pastor. Additionally, the Creation Care Organizer will enjoy the support of an advisory committee.
Start Date – Anticipated starting date is August/September, 2008. Date is negotiable.
Compensation – Salary will be commensurate with experience and in line with Vineyard Boise pay scales. Benefits include paid vacation, sick leave, and health care.
To Apply – Applications and interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis. Position is open until filled. Please send cover letter and resume, no later than July 25, 2008, to:
Emily Hopping
Vineyard Boise
4950 N. Bradley
Boise, ID 83714
(208) 377-1477 (phone)
(208) 377-1471 (fax)
Email: Emily.hopping@vineyardboise.org
Websites: www.vineyardboise.org, www.letstendthegarden.org, www.reform-now.org
How Does A Steward Pray? – Part 2
June 26, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. Part 1 appeared yesterday.
R. Scott Rodin is a consultant and former President of Eastern (now Palmer) Seminary. His book Stewards in the Kingdom is available at Amazon.com.
The prayer of the steward moves to the second level of our created reality and focuses us on our own self understanding. Following again the pattern of Jesus’ prayer, we would begin by praising God for who we are and the way we are made. This simple prayer of praise will already begin to identify struggles we may have with our own self-perception. Whether we tend toward self-absorption or self-deprecation, the prayer of praise will immediately require us to see ourselves as God sees us. When we praise God for who we are and how we were created, we acknowledge his divine purpose for us. We are forced to take more seriously just how fearfully and wonderfully we have been made. And not just made, but redeemed and restored! From praise, our prayer will move to an appeal for God’s will to become our will. That every day we may become more and more the person God created us to be. And as we do, God’s kingdom will more fully come, and his will be done on earth in and through us. We will also pray for our needs to be met on this most personal level. Here we may need to pray for God to meet us in the midst of our greatest pain, where we question ourselves, carry the burden of guilt, struggle with pride or wrestle with despair. None of these reflect God’s intent, and we needs this prayer of supplication if we are to be stewards of our relationship to ourselves.
This will be followed by a time of repentance for the ways we have let distorted worldly views of our self-worth displace the divine view of our immense value to our Creator. Many of us need to seek repentance for allowing ourselves to measure our selfworth by worldly values. These distortions are as caustic to our souls as their counterpart of self-hatred. Both deny our created and redeemed reality as beloved children of the eternal and sovereign God of the universe. Finally, this prayer will lift up those places in our souls where we are most vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy who wishes that we think either more or less of ourselves than we ought. To ‘lead us not into temptation’ is to ask God to show us those places where we so easily acquiesce to the devil’s schemes and slide into either self-exaltation or despair. We need his deliverance from these temptations that we might stay in the balance of a godly self-love and a godly humility. In this way, our prayer will guide and empower us to be stewards on this second level of our created existence.
On the third level, the prayer of the godly steward will begin with praise to God for giving us our neighbors of every form and kind. We cannot be selective in our thanks to God for our neighbor or we will undermine the power of this prayer at the outset. We praise God for all people and we acknowledge in that prayer that God is wise and sovereign in the creation of each. This should cultivate in us a Christian worldview as we seek to live as salt and light amidst our neighbors. Our prayer will move to a focus on God’s will and purpose for our neighbor, and our desire that his will be manifest in everyone. This, too, is a prayer that will keep us from either the sin of envy or of rejoicing in the suffering of others.
If we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, then this prayer for God’s good and perfect will for our neighbor lies at the heart of what it means to be a godly steward at this third level. Our prayer must also ask that God would meet not only the needs of our neighbor, but the needs we have in order to become a good neighbor. That is, we must pray against our lack of neighborliness and seek after those things that will better fit us for service to one another. How do we cultivate a servant’s heart? How do we see our neighbor as God sees them? How do we get around our selfishness with regard to our time and truly be available to neighbors in need? These are the petitions of godly stewards.
Our prayer will then move to our need for forgiveness, and especially our need to be people of grace and peacemakers in our world. Finally, we end this petition with a prayer that God would open our eyes and show us where we are weakest and most vulnerable in our call to love our neighbor. We will seek God’s transformation and ask for his deliverance from the evil that comes when we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves. This petition brings cleansing, insight and empathy that must be a part of the godly steward at this third level of our created existence.
Finally, we come to the prayer of the steward for the creation itself. Here we can joyfully praise God for the wonder of his creation and his sustenance of it with each new sunrise. Our prayer will move to the petition that God’s will be done in and through his creation. If we believe that God’s perfect will and good purposes include his creation, then we will pray that God’s will may truly be done ‘in earth as it is in heaven’.
We will also pray for the needs of creation. We will grieve over the ecological destruction we see everywhere. How desperately the world needs our prayers! In this prayer we will also acknowledge our own responsibility to be the conduit through which God meets the needs of his created world. To seek God’s will for his creation is to seek our own place in meeting those needs. Similarly, our prayers for forgiveness will bring into focus those areas where our own lifestyles have contributed to the destruction of our earth. It will point us to the hoarding of wealth that results in abject poverty, and the over-consumption of our society that causes suffering to both humanity and nature. In this repentance we will seek to be shown where and how we must change in order to better carry out our calling as stewards on this fourth level. This prayer then will move to the naming of those areas that tempt us most, and where we so easily side with the world in the adoration of money and the destruction of God’s creation. As we name our weaknesses here, we will pray for God’s deliverance and his continued transformation of our lives into truly godly stewards at this fourth level of our created existence.
This is the prayer of the godly steward. If we will commit to pray through all four areas according to the pattern taught us by our Lord, we will find a refreshment, inspiration and reengagement with the challenges and joys of our vocation as stewards in the kingdom of the triune God of grace.
How Does A Steward Pray? – Part 1
June 25, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
R. Scott Rodin is a consultant and former President of Eastern (now Palmer) Seminary. His book Stewards in the Kingdom is available at Amazon.com.
As God’s people we are called to be people of prayer. We are also called to live as godly stewards. And there is a powerful integration of these two callings, a rich interconnectedness that can ignite both a deeper prayer life and more passionate pursuit of godly stewardship.
Scripture gives us an illustration of how we should pray and a theology of what it means to be a steward. As we look at each we can see how they can so beautifully work together.
As recorded in Matthew 6, the pattern of the prayer Jesus taught us can be understood as a spiritual progression of eight parts. It begins with praise acknowledging God as our Father and Creator. It moves to an appeal for God’s kingdom to be manifest on the earth and God’s will to be accomplished in and through God’s people. The prayer then asks God to meet our needs. This is followed by an appeal for forgiveness and a heart to love and forgive our neighbor. The prayer concludes with an admission of our need for God’s strength in the face of temptation and our deliverance from evil which can only come from him.
Scripture also teaches us what it means to be a steward in the kingdom of God. We learn that our creation in the image of God means that we were originally created to live in harmonious, meaningful and joyful relations on four levels; namely, in our relationship to God, to ourselves, to our neighbor and to creation. We also learn that the Fall of humanity into sin destroyed our relationships on all four of these levels. Finally, rejoice in the knowledge that in Christ, all four of these relationships were redeemed and given back to us as precious gifts. Our call as stewards is lovingly to nurture these relationships, remembering the price that was paid to redeem them for us, and how they reflect our created purpose as image bearers of our triune God.
How then should a steward pray? If we apply the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer to the four-fold nature of our calling to be stewards of God, we will see a beautiful and powerful prayer-life emerge. Here is what I think it might look like.
The prayer of the steward begins at the first level at the intersection of our praise to our triune God and the acknowledgment that our relationship to God has been bought for us with the blood of Jesus Christ. To be a steward of this relationship should inspire praise, thanks and gratitude. And so we pray in praise to the God who created us, redeemed us and continues to draw near to us as his beloved children. From here our prayer will ask that God’s will for us and all creation will become ever more present as we seek to be obedient to his call. We will continue by praying that God will provide all we need, equipping us that we might remain close to him. ‘Our daily bread’ in this way might mean our daily devotional time, prayer time and study of the Scriptures.
We will follow with a prayer of repentance of all we do that separates us from God and impedes the intimacy he wishes to have with each of us, and we pray for our neighbors who struggle with the same. We close by acknowledging that, left to ourselves, we will repeat the sin of Adam and go our own way. And so we fervently ask God to keep us close to him, to help us resist all attempts by the enemy to lure us away, and to deliver us each day from the trials and snares that lay in our path. The close of this prayer should leave us with a deeper sense of intimacy with God, equipping us to cleave to him daily and live out our calling to be stewards of our relationship at this first and most important level.
In Their Words . . . Ali Illyn
June 24, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
I am a lonely girl. I am lonely because I am a Christian environmentalist at a secular university. There are many, many environmentalists on campus but almost none of them consider themselves Christians. And there are many, many fellow Christians on my campus, but few feel as strongly about the environment as I do. It is frustrating – feeling alone. I joke that I am tired of being the “token” – the “token” Christian in environmental circles and the “token” environmentalist in Christian circles.
Since I desperately want to meet others like me, the Evangelical Youth Climate Initiative (EYCI) conference was like soothing therapy to me. It was a time to build strong relationships with other Christian environmentalists… and it felt good.
Because of EYCI, I realized that I was not alone in my concern for God’s creation, that in fact, there are students from around the nation who care deeply about the environment and are actively working to protect it. I sometimes feel alone at my school, but in reality, there are many others scattered around who share my deep concerns for environmental stewardship.
Additionally, lobbying Congress in DC helped me realize that politicians are paying attention to our voices as evangelical youth. I’ve lobbied before on other environmental issues like protecting the Arctic Refuge or in support of endangered species legislation, but never have I been confronted with so much positive response as I received while lobbying about climate change. After meeting at Senator Murray’s office, a legislative aide told our group that he was “definitely” going to remember our meeting. During another meeting, a legislative aide from Senator Cantwell’s office told our group that our meeting was the one he had been most looking forward to all day.
It was exciting to realize that the EYCI gathering is part of a much larger movement. There is a sense of excitement, a feeling that a shift is coming. Politicians seem to know it, and religious leaders are beginning to sense it as well. Part of this is due to our unique voice as young evangelicals. We are young Christian college students who are beginning to look at our faith as an integrative whole. We are declaring that as Christians we have a biblical mandate to care for God’s people and God’s creation. We are declaring that social justice issues such as hunger, poverty, and the environment should be and will be a part of our faith. And we are ready to work with elected officials and religious leaders to begin to taking a strong stance on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most of all, we are the political and religious leaders of the future and are ready to lead the movement to protect all of God’s creation.
In Their Words . . . Kate Hagborg
June 23, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
This event was my first exposure to any sort of organized political activity. When the van full of Southern college students came to pick me up in Chapel Hill, I harbored secret doubts as to qualification for this conference. After all, I didn’t consider myself to be an “activist,” and I was a greenhorn to the green movement— what have I gotten myself into? I thought.
But my fears were quickly quelled upon meeting Rusty from EEN and the other college students in his tow. They were not a collection of fiery, protesting tree-huggers who would resent me for not knowing the rate of melting permafrost; no, instead, they were normal college students, mostly like me, who have recently been learning about mankind’s culpability in warming the earth, and who want to repent personally and effect broader social change as an expression of the gospel’s restoration of all things. And each staff member of EEN and Restoring Eden that we met were humble, approachable and passionate, eager to know us as college students and to help us organize movements of creation care and environmental protection on our campuses.
I learned so much throughout the three days about climate change, how to take political action, and how decisions on Capitol Hill are made. I met thirty other college students and heard about their work on their campuses, such as starting recycling and compost programs, or bringing in guest speakers from Alaskan tribes to speak firsthand about the changing climate, and I was both encouraged and inspired for greater vision for my own campus.
But what I am most grateful for is that this conference gave me hope. Climate change is such an overwhelming issue, and the daily news tempts me to despair. But this conference was a reminder to me that as believers in the Risen Christ, we must not despair. For all creation waits in eager longing for the future glory that is promised us in Christ, when creation will be set free from decay, and until then, we proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand by doing whatever we can to restore creation and humanity back to God.
This gathering of believers was, to me, a precious reminder and expression of our hope that will not disappoint us.
In Their Words . . . Ben Lowe
June 20, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Everyone has heard of Al Gore’s recent film on global warming – An Inconvenient Truth. We would expect a movie on that issue to come from Gore. What may be more notable is that in January of last year, Dr. Duane Litfin, the President of Wheaton College, joined over 80 other senior evangelical leaders in signing the Evangelical Climate Initiative? Then, eight months later, over three hundred and fifty Wheaton students affirmed Dr. Litfin’s personal position by signing onto the student statement. I am one of those students.
I’m a senior at Wheaton College, and part of the group that helped gather the signatures on our campus and bring themto Washington, D.C., this past November. The purpose of this time in D.C. was to fellowship with other student leaders, release the student statement, and lobby our government towards action to curb global climate change.
And we did that. I had a meaningful time meeting with fellow students across the nation. We got to know each other and I heard many inspiring stories of campuses and administrations taking leadership in positively engaging creation care issues. These conversations have also helped motivate a follow-on meeting, the Wheaton Summit; a groundbreaking creation care summit in January, 2007, for student leaders to confer with each other and meet with renowned climate change expert Sir John Houghton.
I’m encouraged that as Christians, we are taking leadership in addressing daunting environmental challenges such as climate change, and I’m excited by the unique witness we have to offer the world. Al Gore calls global warming an “inconvenient truth.” Climate change fills the world with despair, driven by fear and desperation. With our eyes fixed on Jesus, we see the same issue with hope, driven by His love for us, and for all that he has created and cherishes.
Creation Care As Vocation
June 19, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Need evidence that increasing numbers of Christians are integrating environmental concerns into their lifestyles? Witness the number of young believers approaching Creation-care as a lifetime vocation—a career defined by a sense of mission and a calling from God. Meet Jason Duba, one young man lighting the way….
Q: How did you start doing environmental work at a Christian college?
I attended Whitworth College in Spokane, WA (which I loved), but one thing that disappointed me was the recycling program. Some buildings had no containers, the containers that existed weren’t clearly marked, and many students did not bother to separate recyclables from trash, just tossing it all in the dumpster. As a student senator, I joined together with some other dorm leaders and we started brainstorming an environmental club whose first goal would be to expand and enhance Whitworth’s recycling program.
Q: How did you go from being a campus leader to leading public activism around creation care and climate change?
Once I graduated, I moved into an intentional Christian community located in a poverty ridden part of Spokane where over 90 percent of students at the local elementary school were on the school meal program. I wanted to get involved with creation care so one morning I walked into a local environmental group and introduced myself to the outreach coordinator and began talking about how I might volunteer. As soon as I mentioned my Christian background he shared how he traced his roots as a conservationist to his Christian experience and his idea to connect people of faith with conservation groups and environmental efforts. From there we developed plans for a project we called the Faith and Environment Network (FEN). We applied to AmeriCorps to fund a position and I served an 11- month AmeriCorps term as the first coordinator for the Faith and Environment Network.
Q: What types of events did the Faith and Environment Network (FEN) sponsor?
First off we organized a public event to kick-off the group and invited Restoring Eden’s Peter Illyn to be the key-note speaker. Then in conjunction with an advisory board from faith and environmental communities I developed a congregational partnership plan. Through this plan FEN worked with local congregations on three different aspects of stewardship based on our mission statement: appreciating, understanding, and caring for God’s creation. First, to help congregations develop an appreciation for nature, we organized hikes and conservation service projects in a number of beautiful settings around Spokane. Second, to help congregation members understand some important environmental issues and how they could make a difference, we arranged for local experts to speak during adult Sunday school about green living, the Spokane River, and buying local food. Third, we forged connections with two free, professional auditing services, one for energy and one for waste, which helped congregational leaders improve the operation of their church buildings to demonstrate care for God’s creation.
Q: What are you doing now? I recently moved to New Haven, Connecticut where I have continued my passion in climate justice by working with the non-profit group Solar Youth. I lead two after-school programs in the inner-city neighborhood. We work with junior high and high school students, primarily Hispanic and African- American, about concepts like the ecosystem, water cycle, the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), and climate change.
Last year I had an amazing experience with Restoring Eden lobbying Capitol Hill on climate change issues. So even more recently I decided to work part-time for Restoring Eden in their communications division focusing on outreach media.
If you’re interested to learn more about Jason’s lobbying experience, and want to see a short movie about it, go to www.restoringeden.org.
The Lion, the Curse, & the Evangelical: Part 3
June 18, 2008
Dean Ohlman is a writer, producer, photojournalist and frequent contributor to Creation Care.
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Perhaps none have missed this high calling as profoundly as we evangelicals who say we desire to live by the “whole counsel of God.” Not grasping that the gospel we preach is also good news for the other living creatures that share the earth with us, we have neglected and even abused God’s good creation. We have forgotten that the evangel is not only to be preached, but also to be lived out faithfully under the gaze of the watching world. Witnessing for Christ does not only mean sharing God’s salvation plan for man; it also means we demonstrate renewed appreciation and care for the natural world that God will also save. Simply put, nature is also going to be “born again.” Do we hold that joyous truth in our hearts as a motivation to cherish creation’s fellow worshippers who are also recipients of God’s attention and compassion?
Schaeffer asked us a significant question over 35 years ago that most of us older evangelicals never bothered to answer:
Christians, who should understand the creation principle, have a reason for respecting nature, and when they do, it results in benefits to man. Let us be clear: it is not just a pragmatic attitude; there is a basis for it. We treat it with respect because God made it. When an orthodox, evangelical Christian mistreats or is insensible to nature, at that point he is more wrong than the hippie who has no real basis for his feeling for nature and yet senses that man and nature should have a relationship beyond that of spoiler and spoiled. You may, or may not, want to walk barefoot to feel close to nature, but as a Christian what relationship have you thought of and practiced toward nature as your fellow creature, over the last ten years?
Because our theology of nature is slim and anemic, we evangelicals have simply missed the boat on this matter. By our carelessness toward the natural world, we’ve often been negative witnesses for our Savior and Creator. We’ve also failed to see that many unbelievers will refuse to listen to the good news addressed to them because they see that we have neglected to be evangelical in reference to God’s creation — to be “complete evangelicals.”
I used to backpedal when evangelicals responded to my urging, “Yes, we do have a responsibility to care for creation, but that has to be the lowest of our priorities.” I would agree far too easily. But I’m not going to do that anymore. The reason is that the majority of those who use that argument almost always demonstrate that God-honoring care for the creation does not appear anywhere on their priority list. Yes, the endangered souls of men are our major concern, but we have no justification for prioritizing our evangelical responsibilities in such a way that some of them are never attended to. The reason I feel so strongly about it is that regardless of where it appears on our priority list, when any responsibility is neglected for a long period of time, the consequences of that neglect become greater and more demanding. By our disregard for creation, the responsibility of creation stewardship is rapidly climbing toward the top of our list, because our long neglect of the non-human creation is now beginning to seriously impact the human community we say we love. Water and air pollution and other degradations of God’s good creation are killing thousands every year. The health of people depends upon the health of the earth. That’s why we must be completely pro-life, not selectively so.
Now is the time for evangelicals to speak for the dumb—the voiceless creation that is looking forward to the consummation of all things when it will by the redeeming power of Jesus’ death and resurrection be relieved of the frustration of the curse and of thoughtless human exploitation. Let Handel’s familiar melody touch your heart as you read the lyrics of praise that poured from the soul of Isaac Watts:
Joy to the world! The Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns;
Let men their tongues employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.
The Lion, the Curse, & the Evangelical: Part 2
June 17, 2008
Dean Ohlman is a writer, producer, photojournalist and frequent contributor to Creation Care.
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. Part 1 appeared yesterday.
Mentor to C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, made the conjecture that individual animal souls may even survive death and be reunited with their bodies in the last resurrection: For what good, for what divine purpose is the Maker of the sparrow present at its death, if He does not care what becomes of it? What is He there for, I repeat, if He have no care that it go well with His bird in its dying, that it be neither comfortless nor lost in the abyss. If His presence be no good to the [dying] sparrow, are you very sure what good it will be to you when your hour comes? Believe it is not by a little only that the heart of the universe is more tender, more loving, more just and fair than yours or mine. While many of us know that William Wilberforce was England’s great emancipator of slaves and a catalyst for emancipation in America, fewer realize that he was also one of the founders of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). That great heart broken by slavery was also broken by cruelty to animals.
Contemporary evangelical writer and pastor John Piper in a poem titled “Glorified” imagined the dawn of the messianic reign of Christ when all those who died in faith are reunited—and he also with his cherished dog:
And as I knelt beside the brook
To drink eternal life, I took
A glance across the golden grass,
And saw my dog, old Blackie, fast
As she could come. She leaped the stream—
Almost—and what a happy gleam
Was in her eye.
I knelt to drink,
And knew that I was on the brink
Of endless joy.
Are these men of faith insisting that one must believe in the immortality of individual animal souls? No. MacDonald confesses it as mere hope. But he also goes on to base that hope on the character of God: Multitudes evidently count it safest to hold to a dull scheme of things. . . . Those that hope little cannot grow much. To them the very glory of God must be a small thing, for their hope of it is so small as not to be worth rejoicing in. That He is a faithful creator means nothing to them for far the larger portion of the creatures He has made. Truly their notion of faithfulness is poor enough; how, then, can their faith be strong?
Evangelical Protestants often make of little account the stories about the honored Roman Catholic saint, Francis of Assisi, with his sympathy for and empathy with the animals. Many evangelicals may not realize, however, that the words of one of our most beloved hymns, “All Creatures of Our God and King,” were originally penned by Saint Francis. In this anthem, we sing of sun, moon, clouds, wind, flowers, fruit, joining with us in praise of the triune God. Further, it is this hymn that introduced to Christendom the much-maligned expression “mother Earth.” By that phrase Francis did not imply that the earth had a personality, but that it was the nurturing source of all life. For that reason he concluded, “Let all things their Creator bless, and worship Him in humbleness.”
The truth implied in that song and made clear in many biblical prophecies about the restoration of nature to a state at least as grand as the Garden of Eden is one that has been lacking in our churches and our Christian educational institutions. We understand that the Kingdom of God is, in part, with us now, but will one day be fully realized—at the return of Jesus Christ. We believe that the process of sanctification, becoming more like Christ, is taking place in us now. We stand as witnesses before the fallen world that the evangel, the good news, is true and that some consequences of the fall can begin to be reversed now. Francis Schaeffer believed that because of the redemptive act of Jesus on the cross and the work of sanctification we should be working toward a “substantial healing” of all the rifts created by the fall of man:
My division from God is healed by justification, but then there must be the “existential reality” of this, moment by moment; second, there is the psychological division of man from himself; third, there are the sociological divisions of man from other men; and last, there is the division of man from nature, and nature from nature. In all of these areas we should expect to see substantial healing. . . . On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who—with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit—is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, or we have missed our calling.
Part 3 will appear tomorrow . . .
