The Added Benefit of Being True: Part 1
July 17, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
The Rev. Jim Ball, Ph.D., is an ordained Baptist minister, the President and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the national spokesperson for the Evangelical Climate Initiative.
I heard someone joke the other day about an argument he was making—that it had “the added benefit of being true.” That’s one of the great things about Christianity. I believe that the biblical world-view is true—and it has the added benefit of actually being true.
Take the Gospel portrayals of the disciples. There is certainly no attempt to air-brush out their failures and lack of spiritual understanding. For instance, they try to chase the kids away from Jesus, which prompts Jesus to say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mk. 10:14). And on the very night he is to be betrayed they have a debate about who will be the greatest. Jesus says to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Lk. 22:25-27). Finally, the disciples all fail Jesus in the end, with the supreme example being the one Jesus nicknamed “rock,” Simon Peter. He was no spiritual rock when it mattered most to Jesus. He denied Jesus three times when challenged by a servant girl, and ran away to weep bitterly during Jesus’ night of betrayal.
The disciples, as well as other biblical figures such as Paul (persecutor of the early church), Moses (a murderer), David (an adulterer and murderer), and Abraham (who offered his wife to another man to save his own skin), are pictured in the Bible as weak, foible humans, warts and all.
But this gritty realism about humanity is tempered by the truth about God, that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). Just as it was by God’s power that Jesus was raised from the dead, so too does our hope for our own resurrection rest in the power of a loving, forgiving God.
Of course, the Bible is also very clear that God’s love is not a loophole for our continued sinfulness. “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. 6:1-2).
All of this is to say that when I look at the problem of global warming, when I begin to try to come to grips with the suffering it has brought and will bring to the innocent, I can face the reality of the problem, knowing that the Bible faces squarely the reality of the human spiritual condition, that God has ultimately resolved our spiritual problem, but that I am still called to live a grace-filled life of righteousness. My biblical world-view says not to hide problems, but face them with no illusions, and that the courage to do so comes from knowing that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son …” (Jn. 3:16); and from understanding that “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31).
Organic Farming Reflections
July 16, 2008
I imagine this will be a bit of a reoccurring stream here as I reflect on some of my experiences and thoughts from working with Lynn (that’s Lynn in the picture with her sunflowers) and Chuck at Cane Creek Farm. I hope to do my best to not over-romanticize my experiences. I have zero financial stake in the health and success of the farm. Thus far, I’ve only worked 1 day with them. I haven’t had to go through drought or a hard freeze. I don’t know what it feels like to loose a crop to either. I have never had to work weeks on end in 100+ degree heat. Yesterday was a fierce 70 degrees with a nice cool breeze. So I’ll try really, really hard not to romanticize things. And I imagine if you talk to me in a couple of months, my story might be a little different, but after the first day, I really, really, really want to be a farmer.
So here are some of my thoughts in no certain order . . .
I left the house on the Irenic Luchador and drove 36 miles out to the farm with nothing but a mild idea of what I would do and an anxiety about sweating for the first time in over an year.
This is what I did yesterday:
This is what I learned yesterday:
It was so nice being outside in the fresh air, with dirt all over my jeans and under my fingernails. I learned that 2 people make the work go by faster and easier. Whether it was with talking to Chuck about the Air Force, retirement, Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, and the benefits of goldenseal while we cleared chickweed and worked on the hoop house. Or with Lynn talking about her kids, family, grafting, canning, recipes, and unpasteurized milk while we planted new trees that wouldn’t be ready for a couple of years.
Everything seemed slower. There was no rush. We leisurely worked. And casually chatted. Lynn told me about this old man that she gets some of her fruit trees from who has been running this old nursery for the longest time. Apparently, he’s a world-famous grafter of fruit trees and is known by everyone in that field. Lynn talked about how he’s nearing the end of his life and how it’s such a waste for all of that knowledge and wisdom that will effectively disappear. When you think about this and the other men and women just like him from a couple of generations ago, it’s not hard to see why many of us are losing our sense of location and place. And in the process losing the ties to a simpler and more sustainable time. This man’s daughter left to go to school and his wife passed away. Now it’s just him living out his last days and keeping his wisdom with him. I think I could sit with this thought all day and think about the ramifications.
(Lynn & Chuck in picture at a local Farmer’s Market) I realized how much life goes on in the grass and the soil. I learned that Goldenseal grows best when it’s naturally grown in the woods. So we didn’t spend time out in a field clearing the chickweed. But under the pine trees that surrounded the “farming land”. I quickly realized that in a natural and sustainable environment, it makes sense for some things to grow in their natural environment without “industrializing” them to rows in a field. On my hands and knees under the trees with the chickweed, pine straw, and pine cones I found a whole other world of life. By clearing away the surface layer and getting back to the soil I found grubs over an inch long and as round as a dime. I saw earth worms and crickets, ants and beetles. The whole “forest” floor was crawling. Chuck taught me about the different natural medicinal benefits of goldenseal and how the Indians used it. He told me about the greater natural, medicinal movement that exists primarily in co-ops and the one to which he belongs to in North Georgia. He shared about why he wanted to start raising animals on the farm a couple of years ago so that he could reintroduce one more of the natural cycles with the sheep fertilizing the fields with their manure and by moving them from pasture to pasture. I heard the fear/frustration in his voice when we first started clearing the chickweed and the pine straw away and trying to find the goldenseal buds to no avail. He was worried that last year’s drought might have killed them. I wondered what it would feel like to me if I had invested countless hours and a hundred pound of seed only to see it go to waste. He told me about how different parts of the goldenseal (the root, the leaves, the flower) and different combinations are good for different things.
All in all, it was a good day. I’m sore all over. And I went to bed at 9:00 last night for the first time since I went to India and had jet lag over 2 years ago. As a matter of fact, it’s the first time I’ve gone to bed before 11:30 in nearly 2 years. I was exhausted. But loved every minute of it.
And if you live anywhere in North Georgia or the Atlanta area, I’d highly recommend swinging by the Cane Creek Farm and checking out some of their fine produce and flowers in the coming months.
Leave No Trace But Love
July 15, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Anton Flores is the chair and assistant professor of Human Services at LaGrange College and leads Alterna, an organization that performs Christian acts of mercy and justice in solidarity with poor Latinos.
The concept of “leave no trace” is to provide a guideline for reducing our impact on the natural environment and on the experience for other visitors of God’s wonderful creation. Consider the following principles for how to engage with forests, mountains, seashores, plains, freshwater and wetland environments. According to the Boys Scouts of America, these “leave no trace” ethics include:
1. Plan Ahead and Prepare — Proper trip planning and preparation helps hikers and campers accomplish trip goals safely and enjoyably while minimizing damage to natural and cultural resources.
2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces — Damage to land occurs when visitors trample vegetation or communities of organisms beyond recovery.
3. Dispose of Waste Properly (Pack It In, Pack It Out) — This simple yet effective saying motivates backcountry visitors to take their trash home with them.
4. Leave What You Find — Allow others a sense of discovery, and preserve the past. Leave rocks, plants, animals, archaeological artifacts, and other objects as you find them. Examine but do not touch cultural or historical structures and artifacts.
5. Minimize Campfire Impacts — True Leave No Trace fires are small. Use dead and downed wood that can be broken easily by hand.
6. Respect Wildlife — Quick movements and loud noises are stressful to animals. You are too close if an animal alters its normal activities.
7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors — Thoughtful campers respect other visitors and protect the quality of their experience.
Well, as I’ve been here in Guatemala spending my third consecutive summer serving at the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary I’ve been wondering if there shouldn’t be a “leave no trace” ethic to traveling to the 2/3 World. Many of the folks that I meet coming through the seminary’s guesthouse are coming because they want to both transform and be transformed by the poor. This is noble and perhaps even God-honoring but what does mutual conversion look like and how can this quest, at times and even unintentionally, actually be destructive or even a continuation of the colonization of the “New World” and an elimination of indigenous cultures? Could it be that, without a proper ethic of entering a new culture, especially indigenous ones, we could be leaving a trace that is caustic to the social and spiritual environment?
In Guliz Ger and Russell Berk’s journal article in the September, 1996 Journal of Consumer Policy, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke: Consumptioscapes of the ‘Less Affluent World,’” they excellently point out how materialism is being imported into the poorest countries of the world at the speed of cyberspace. Rather than consumption becoming democratized, Ger and Berk contend that wealthy nations are leaving a trace that will lead to further social inequality, class polarization, consumer frustration, stress and threats to health and the environment. Factors contributing to this unprecedented production of false desires include global mass media and the marketing activities of transnational firms. But they also propose other culprits and I want to highlight and narrow the light on these unusual suspects.
Tourists also ignite these consuming fires of want in the midst of mind-blowing need. But what about short-term missions teams from North American churches? When they travel to developing countries to spread the Gospel, what Gospel are they spreading? Is it the Gospel of God’s kingdom or the gospel of a syncretic culture that has enmeshed materialism with a prosperity gospel that does not translate to another culture nor another time? When church groups visit countries where the majority of its citizens live on less than $2 a day and come armed with the Word of God while listening to Christian music on I-Pods while wearing the latest in Christian threads, what message is coming loud and clear? What trace are they leaving? Is it possible to develop community with the poor and experience the Christ who hides in the distressing disguise of the poor when we enter into this sacred space unrepentant and even unaware of the grip that materialism has on us? How can the poor in spirit and the poor in every other way commune in a way that glorifies God and affirms the inherent dignity of us all? Below is my attempt to develop a “leave no destructive trace” for short-term mission teams who do need to escape from the insular world of America in order to better know God, but not at the expense of the world’s poorest inhabitants. A “leave no destructive trace” ethic for missions could include:
1. Plan Ahead and Prepare – Proper missions planning and preparation helps members accomplish trip goals safely and enjoyably while minimizing damage to natural and cultural resources. At a minimum, short-term missions teams can learn about the socio-political realities of the country they will be visiting.
2. Travel in a Way that Empowers the Poor – Support indigenous cultures when you decide on where to eat and lodge. Instead of seeking out an oasis of American culture, resist eating at a McDonald’s when you’re in Latin America or Africa and instead broaden your palate and support locally owned restaurants or markets that offer local cuisine. As for lodging, try homestays over hotels or locally owned hotels over first-class franchises.
3. Dispose of Waste Properly (Don’t Pack It In and You Won’t Have to Pack It Out) – Leave the luxuries of home at home. Remove from your luggage anything the poor of the country you are visiting don’t need or couldn’t afford. Look in a full-length mirror and remove any items that serve as status symbols (i.e., unnecessary jewelry or fashion conscious clothing).
4. Take Home What You Find – When you return home, share with others what you discovered to be the strengths of the people you met. Perhaps more importantly than what you did in the name of Christ you should share how the poor reflected Christ to you?
5. Maximize your Flight from Consumerism’s Impact – True discipleship is about making temporal things small and making eternal things large. Return home and review all the dead things you lived without and get rid of them! Grow in your generosity and find ways to support efforts to holistically empower the poor around the world.
6. Respect Indigenous Cultures – Quick judgments and ethnocentric noises are damaging to the people you will visit. You are too ethnocentric if your presence alters the cultural activities of the indigenous peoples you are visiting.
7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors – Remember that other visitors may also be spiritually impoverished. Respectfully continue on your journey toward leaving no destructive trace so that others may feel included and invited on this sojourn.
Maybe leave no trace is a misnomer, even for the outdoors. Even if one can follow the principles while camping or hiking both the land and the wanderer are, in the best scenario, both enhanced and forever changed. May the same be true when Christ leads members of His church in North America to fellowship with the poor overseas. “Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along .” – Romans 13:8
Keeping the Romance Alive Through R-60 Insulation
July 14, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Dr. Matthew Sleeth is a former emergency room director and chief of medical staff, who now writes, preaches, and teaches full-time about faith and the environment. In May, Dr. Sleeth was named the executive director of Christians in Conservation/A Rocha USA. He is the author of Serve God, Save the Planet (Zondervan).
I write this on the anniversary of my wedding to Nancy. Much has changed in the 26 years we have been married, but the most wondrous change is that God came into our lives. As a result, we view the world very differently than we did a quarter of a century ago. We now see every meal, every day, every tree, and every lily as evidence of God’s sustaining grace, creative genius, and love.
One of the ways that we have come to demonstrate our love for each other, for our children, and for our Creator is by learning to become better stewards of His creation. Last August we moved from New Hampshire to Kentucky, into a house that was constructed in 1960. The move gave us the opportunity to simplify by giving away lots of stuff that was still cluttering our lives. Clothes went to the Salvation Army, art supplies to a Christian kindergarten teacher, books to libraries hit by a hurricane, and tools to a church friend starting a second career as a carpenter.
Since our move, Nancy has been a busy Proverbs 31 wife making our standard ranch home more efficient and comfortable. I view these actions as evidence of her love. I have responded in kind, and our combined efforts seem to be working.
For the past six months, our electric bill has ranged from a high of $17 to a low of $15. The gas and water bills are similarly modest, and all are as a result of simple changes or additions we have made to the house. The first thing we did was to change all the bulbs in the house to compact fluorescent. We also put our stereo and our son’s computer on a power switch, eliminating the phantom loads. Anything with a timer, instant on, or remote control draws electricity even when off—in fact, stereos in the United States use more energy when off than on. A simple fix is to put electronic equipment on a power strip that can be switched completely off.
We needed to purchase a new washing machine and a refrigerator. At the local Lowes store, Nancy picked out a front loading washer, which uses about a third the hot water of a top loader, plus spins out nearly all the water for much quicker drying. Using the Energy Star comparison tags, she also found a refrigerator that was “off the scale” more efficient than any others in its class. As a rule, refrigerators with side-by-side doors and fancy options use more energy; also, the bigger the refrigerator, the more energy it uses. We lowered the energy use of our new refrigerator even more by turning off the automatic ice maker—ice makers run a heating element so that the ice slides out easily. Nancy chose not to purchase a clothes dryer. Instead, I restrung an abandoned clothes line in the backyard. After I gave a creation care chapel talk at the college a block away, several students even began hanging their clothes on our line. An unsafe porch on the back of the house was taken down, and my son and I built a new one using decking made of recycled soda bottles, thus eliminating the need for toxic stains or paints.
Nancy joined www.freecycle.org and found a free composting bin for the backyard, which eliminates the need to power a garbage disposal in the sink and makes organic soil booster for her garden. She also used Freecycle to give away our moving boxes and some extra building materials. Thanks to Freecycle, whatever we don’t need is used by someone else—including the former deck stairs and extra lumber from the deck, which also eliminates scrape from going into the landfill.
I got busy on the glamorous part of conservation, changing a leaky float valve in the toilet and then putting a gallon jar and two bricks in the toilet tank, cutting the water used per flush in half. I also changed the shower head to a low flow model (purchased at Lowes for about $5), and turned the hot water heater to its lowest setting (120 degrees), and then put insulation on the accessible basement piping. The insulation looks like black foam tubing, and slips around the pipes in a couple of seconds. These toilet and shower projects only took a couple of hours, but will save both energy and water for years to come.
A huge area of thermal gain and loss are the old single pain aluminum windows in the house. We could not afford to replace them right away, but Nancy greatly improved the situation by making heavy, lined drapes for all the windows that we close at night. On hot days, we also close the curtains on the sunny side of the house. The attic only had three inches of insulation, so we increased it to R-60. My son and I put soffit and ridge vents in to allow adequate air flow in the attic.
Trees that bear fruit are so important that the Bible forbids cutting them even in times of war (Deut. 20:19-20). Nancy and our children planted apple, pear, peach, and cherry trees in our front yard, and started a vegetable garden on the south side of the house. The garden is prospering, thanks to a load of old manure from a neighbor’s organic farm.
We have fitted the bicycle with a carrier made of an old milk crate, which makes it safe and convenient for us to cart groceries without using the car. But the most important energy saving decision we made this year is the choice of our home’s location. It is two blocks from our children’s college, which has eliminated the need to fly them home for school breaks. We also chose a home that allows us to walk to the store, bank, and work, which means far less time commuting and more time for family and ministry. In our 26 years together, one of the things we have learned is that our marriage is about a whole lot more than Nancy and me. It is about our children, our ministry, the example we set, and the legacy we leave. We have also learned that romance can be far deeper than the sweep you-off-the-feet, happily-ever-after tinsel of Hollywood. Tending the garden together on a summer’s evening; praying silently while we hang a load of laundry; snuggling close under a polar fleece blanket in winter are all ways that we can show our love for each other, for our children’s children, and for our Creator.
And yes, I can state unequivocally that increasing energy efficiency does keep the home, and the heart, a few degrees warmer. Just the other day I overheard Nancy telling a friend, “Matthew is such a romantic; he gave me the best Christmas present ever–R-60 insulation for the attic!”
Once you start taking steps toward becoming better stewards of God’s creation, I’m sure that you will agree: A little extra warmth and a shared mission is a blessing in any season of a Christ-centered marriage
Local Living
July 11, 2008
It’s funny how we don’t realize things until our wallet or our health takes a hit. Over the last month you’ve probably noticed two threats to both your wallet and your health . . . soaring gas prices and a salmonella outbreak with tomatoes. Let’s take a look at both.
First, let’s take a look at the salmonella outbreak with our tomato crops. Last month, a wave of panic swept over the nation as we were told to avoid any raw tomatoes because there was a chance that they might have salmonella. This is only strange because it doesn’t sound strange to us anymore. And it doesn’t sound strange to us anymore because we’re so used to buying our food in bulk from the industrial food system. Our food is faceless. Sure it has a brand name plastered all over it. But we don’t know the faces of those who planted it, those who weeded it, those who harvested it. Even further, we’re lucky if we can recognize half the ingredients in it. I mean what is sodium acid pyrophosphate or dextrose anyway?
It used to be in the “olden days” that if something was wrong with a part of our food supply, we knew exactly who to go to and which farm it came from. But these days, it’s a sign of how industrial, transnational, and corporate even our food has become that when we have a salmonella outbreak that it takes us months to trace down which farm it came from. And even more disturbing that it only takes one “mega-farm” to have an outbreak to threaten the entire food supply.
Next, lets take a look at our soaring gas prices. Gas prices go up a dollar a gallon and all of a sudden we all start reexamining our trips and how far we’re driving. When the gas prices start to threaten our wallets, we drive less, make our trips count, and stay close to our homes. We don’t go on as many vacations because we can’t afford the high fuel costs. We look for alternatives in travel and plan trips closer to home. We live simpler, shop closer to home, and live locally.
It’s a shame that our wallets and health have to get threatened before we wise up to just how addicted we our to our industrial, corporate world. Our current oil and food crisises wouldn’t even seem odd 50 years ago because they just wouldn’t have been possible. It would have been a totally and utterly unimaginable thing to live outside of a small, local radius . . . to have friends 50 miles away but to not even know our next door neighbors . . . to drive past a locally owned store to get to the chain mega-store . . . to buy faceless food with undefinable ingredients instead of buying locally grown food.
It’s true – we live in a whole new world. A world that is emerging up all around us and a world where we get to reap the many benefits of technology and globalization. I just hope that we don’t forget the power and potential of the local in the process. It’s not that a global market is a inherently bad thing. It just becomes a lopsided system when we rely on it exclusively. It makes us dependent as it exposes our weaknesses.
It’s a great big beautiful world full teeming with opportunities and privileges that our grandparents weren’t afforded with. Let’s just not forget that not everything in the “olden days” was bad. That there was indeed beauty in simplicity, trust in relationships, and richness in community.
So shop local. Live local. Be local.
Creation Care and Christian Character: Part 2
July 10, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. Part 1 appeared yesterday.
John Silvius is Senior Professor of Biology and the Center for Bioethics Associate for Environmental Ethics at Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH.
If obedience to the biblical command to care for creation brings growth in Christian character and godliness, how are these virtues nurtured? Development of Christian virtues requires both the physical disciplines of proper diet, exercise, and rest; and, the spiritual disciplines of meditation upon God Word, prayer, worship, and obedient service. A balanced attention to both the physical and spiritual disciplines is important to avoid the extremes of asceticism and materialism. It is here that many humans fail, being distracted to view the natural world as either an inappropriate object of our enjoyment and care; or, something to be grasped out of pride and a desire for power and pleasure (Romans 1).
Immaturity in the development of the virtues of love, discretion, and moderation may lead Christians to make poor decisions in stewardship of material wealth, time, and relationships.
Over-commitment and anxiety compete for the time necessary to practice the spiritual disciplines needed to develop Christian character. The resultant impoverishment of soul leads to further material and social excesses that destroy relationships, families, and even local churches. Instead of being free to worship God and to find joy in His power and in the material bounty of His creation, their actions further degrade the creation as they attempt to meet spiritual and emotional needs in wrong ways.
Now, consider three cases in which Christian character is enriched through proper stewardship of creation motivated by the Christian virtues. When a person pursues the spiritual disciplines noted above, she is nourished by the Word of God while the Spirit nurtures the virtues of love, joy, kindness, and self control (Galatians 5: 22-23). Her disposition that finds fulfillment in her Creator and His creation enables her to avoid material excesses that result in discontentment and broken relationships.
Instead of degrading the creation, she utilizes God’s provision of the material world with moderation. Her decision to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions by car pooling or public transportation is neither a joyless duty nor a distraction from “spiritual priorities.” Instead, she is able to conserve God’s creation while, at the same time, building human relationships in which she practices the virtues of faith, love, and kindness.
A second example emphasizes the spiritual discipline of regular worship within the body of Christ. It is God’s design that the local church be a place of worship, mutual encouragement, and accountability to nurture the convictions and virtues that grow out of our personal walk with Him. Here, we worship corporately, encourage one another in Christ, and become equipped as a winsome counterculture in a society overcome by materialism, discontent, and broken relationships. Both Ed Brown’s book cited earlier and Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God, Save the Planet (Chelsea Green, 2006) contain many ideas and examples of how churches and individuals can implement creation care as an integral part of their mission.
Finally, when a person practices the spiritual disciplines and regularly worships and fellowships in a local church, he can be spiritually prepared for the vocation to which God has called him as an “ambassador for Christ (II Cor. 5:20).” He gains a small glimpse of God’s great desire to see wholeness, relationship, and beauty restored both in lost sinners and within God’s creation. He willingly considers positive changes in his lifestyle and in support of world missions because he begins to see God’s vision of justice and mercy for the poor and disenfranchised of Earth who cannot compete economically for the energy and resources we consume. He also develops a willingness to learn about climate change and other environmental issues from the scientific experts and to respect differences of opinion among those dedicated to understanding how the creation works.
When an environmental ethic based upon fear of consequences is enhanced by one based upon duty and moral virtue, both the people of God and the creation can flourish. Obedience to Scripture sets us free to adopt a lifestyle based upon love and devotion to our Creator, and free to manage material resources, time, and spiritual gifts for the benefit of our neighbor and his neighborhood. The result can be a spiritual “climate change” that motivates others to make a gentler impact on the creation while taking time to enjoy what God has made and be thankful.
Creation Care and Christian Character: Part 1
July 9, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
John Silvius is Senior Professor of Biology and the Center for Bioethics Associate for Environmental Ethics at Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH.
The hurricanes of 2005 and notable weather events across the globe in 2006 have bolstered the attempts of climate scientists to keep global warming in the headlines. In January, out of increasing concern about global warming, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the hands of the “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight, bringing the time to five minutes before the “figurative end of civilization.” Then, in early February, Dr. Ken Denman, one of the lead authors of a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarized the panel’s conclusions: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” He added, “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Global consequences of this warming trend, which the IPCC report attributes in part to human activities, include altered precipitation patterns, a global rise in sea levels, altered agricultural production, and increased episodes of violent weather.
The climate change debate calls each of us as Christians make an informed judgment and then act accordingly. Some who believe that human practices are contributing to global warming are adopting a lifestyle that promotes energy conservation, reduces greenhouse gas production, and encourages elected officials to enact policies that favor these strategies. One motivation for such actions is fear of the consequences of global warming.
Fear is a legitimate basis for concern for all who love family, church, and country. Christians who fear God acquire a sense of reverence that motivates obedience and exemplary living. However, the “more abundant life (John 10:10)” that “abides in the vine” and bears fruit (John 15; Galatians 5:22-23) is nurtured more by God’s grace than by our fear. For example, we may avoid financial or moral failure out of fear of legal or physical consequences but miss out on the joy and fulfillment of a Spirit-filled life aimed at pleasing God. Likewise, if it is our moral responsibility to care for God’s creation, then our fear of environmental consequences is also an inadequate motivation.
Thankfully, there is a clear Scriptural basis for environmental stewardship, or creation care, which has deeper roots than fear of consequences. In Genesis 1, after God pronounces the creation as good and He blesses it, He creates humankind and grants them dominion over the Earth as image-bearers of His righteous rule (v.26-28). This dominion is further prescribed in Genesis 2:15 as “keeping” or “serving” the creation. In return, God has equipped His creation to “serve” humankind with the fruits of their labor. Here, the Scripture supports an ethic based upon duty or moral responsibility as the proper motivation for serving God and caring for creation.
This duty ethic is evident in the challenge of Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Orlando, Florida, who, when asked for his position on global warming, is quoted as saying, “…we need to do this regardless of what the science of it is. We need to take care of the earth and do what we can to stop the pollution and accumulation of gasses, because it’s just the right thing to do.” The biblical environmental stewardship ethic recognizes the importance of scientific data in making personal lifestyle and institutional decisions. But, it also calls Christians to do more than simply fashion lifestyle according to the current estimates of planetary “health.” Instead, as Edward Brown writes in Our FatherÕs World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation (Doorlight, 2006), “Creation must be cared for because God made it, because he made it as a sacred worship space in which we could meet him, and because he himself walked along its paths, sat under its trees and used it for worship himself.”
Environmental stewardship rests heavily upon duty ethics, but arguably it can be supported more strongly from the perspective of virtue ethics.
Virtue ethics focuses upon how we develop virtues– those habits that produce godly character and moral excellence. It is concerned not only with what we do, but the kind of person we are becoming by our doing. Thus, a virtuous person who understands biblical dominion and stewardship will perform acts of creation care (e.g. bicycling to reduce carbon emissions; leading a Bible study on stewardship; aiding an urban gardening project) not only from a sense of duty, but also as an outward expression of moral virtues such as love, discretion, moderation, and justice. Result: Both God’s creation and His kingdom benefit while obedient Christians experience joy and fulfillment as these virtues are expressed and nurtured.
Part 2 will appear tomorrow . . .
Returning to Conservative Roots: Part 2
July 8, 2008
Taken by permission from Crunch Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical freerange farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) by Rod Dreher, published by Crown Forum, New York, 2006. Rod Dreher’s blog is: beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. Part 1 appeared yesterday.
It’s true that Reaganism, for all the good it did, also mainstreamed a kind of conservatism that viewed environmentalism with contempt. Scorning environmentalists as tree-hugging kooks became a way of proving one’s right-wing bona fides. The role the reactionary liberalism of environmental activists played in empowering conservative ideologues can hardly be overstated. They reacted to every defeat by becoming ever more strident and absolutist in their rhetoric. By the year 2000, a poll by the market research firm Environics found that 41 percent of those surveyed thought of environmentalists as “extremists, not reasonable people.”
Conservatives pride themselves on being hardheaded realists, but our lack of serious concern about the environment does not match reality. Despite the presence of ideologically driven junk science, the evidence for global warming caused by human activity is so overwhelming that conservative columnist John Leo likens right-wing deniers to tobacco company executives who claim there’s no solid link between smoking and lung cancer. Even if the evidence were inconclusive, given the catastrophic results of a global temperature rise — including fiercer hurricanes, flooding of coastal cities, the loss of vast inhabited and cultivated regions to desertification or frost— would compel the prudent conservative (which used to be a redundant phrase) to act as if the worst was likely. The price of being wrong is incalculable – especially considering the century or more scientists estimate it would take for the earth to rebound from global warming even if we slashed carbon emissions virtually to the bone tomorrow.
“Man’s power now enormously exceeds natural limits, and we can now do things that were inconceivable only a few generations ago. So it’s a new problem, and these are grave new challenges,” said Matthew Scully. Global warming is the most serious crisis overtaking mankind as the result of our refusal to live within our means, and to use our immense power wisely, but it is not the only one. In the spring of 2005, a worldwide coalition of 1,360 scientists, under United Nations auspices, issued the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a report that its authors called a “stark warning” to the world. Two-thirds of the world’s natural resources have already been used up by humans, the report said, and the pressure we are putting on the natural world — the rain forests, the wetlands, the fisheries — is so unrelenting and harmful “that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”
The report called out the “dangerous illusions” harbored by the rest of us, who think of nature as something separate from our daily lives, a place we go visit on the weekend or watch on Discovery Channel nature documentaries. In truth, mankind relies on nature to recycle the air we breathe, the water we drink, and much of the food we eat. Man is not an island.
These are far more than “environmental problems”. They are economic problems. They are national-security problems. They are public-health problems. They are “family-values” problems. They are religious problems.
The problem is that most of us think about global warming, the depletion of fisheries, and the eradication of the rain forests as “environmental” problems. In truth, they are far more than that. They are economic problems. They are national-security problems. They are public-health problems. They are “family-values” problems. They are religious problems. In their iconoclastic 2004 essay “The Death of Environmentalism” liberal environmental activists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus leveled this indictment against the leadership of the nation’s environmental groups, saying that their near-obsession with the environment as a standalone issue is one big reason the environmental movement has lost so much political power in the last twenty years.
This is the kind of thing they were talking about, and which conservatives appreciate: to the paper-mill worker in south Louisiana, “saving the environment” is an abstraction that appeals to elites; he’s worried about putting food on the table for his family. It’s very easy for business interests to paint environmentalists as the kind of do-gooders who are going to cost him his job by hurting the mill with costly regulation that will force the mill owners to relocate to Mexico. If that’s the trade-off, no wonder the mill worker is going to fight environmentalists.
Consider, though, that the same mill worker may be coming home from work most days with nosebleeds from harmful chemicals in the air. (This is not a hypothetical situation; it really happened to a close relative of mine, a staunch Limbaugh-loving Republican.) Consider that the mill’s owners threaten the union with moving south of the border, which is a lot easier to do under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), if the union pushes for safer working conditions.
Consider also how much support environmental crusaders might have gotten from churches and ordinary conservative working folks if they understood the genuine fear these men would have of losing their jobs, but also the natural concern they would have about cancer and other diseases they might acquire from dangerous working conditions, and which would leave their families fatherless. To have made those kinds of connections would have required the environmentalists to rub shoulders with dittoheads like my relative. And it would have required dittoheads to accept that they can have something in common with liberals.
Returning to Conservative Roots: Part 1
July 7, 2008
Taken by permission from Crunch Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical freerange farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) by Rod Dreher, published by Crown Forum, New York, 2006. Rod Dreher’s blog is: beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Rod Dreher introduces us to a renewed expression of political conservatism: Dreher calls himself a “crunchy con.” In this excerpt, he argues hat today’s conservative movement has latterly abandoned a long-term conservative stewardship ethic in favor of a current stance which considers environmental issues at best trivial, and at worst a threat to the American way of life.
In a world where efficiency is the highest value, honor comes at too high a price. If you think about it, conservatism today often takes on the characteristics of what conservatives say they hate most of all about liberalism: self-interest above anything else. It is a vision of man as an autonomous being who has only needs to meet and demands to make, no obligations to fulfill. Moral values subordinated to economic ones.
We weren’t always like this. In fact, it is an attitude of relatively recent vintage. Readers of Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk, two of the philosophical fathers of modern American conservatism, cannot fail to be impressed with the profound respect those men had for the natural world, and their distress over the way industrial capitalism saw nature merely as a thing to be exploited.
These traditionalists saw an ethic of conservation as entirely consistent with conservative principle, in part because of conservatism’s understanding of human nature. If you believe that man is inherently flawed —what religious people call “original sin” (the only Christian dogma, according to English writer and proto-crunchy con G. K. Chesterton, that can be proved by recourse to the daily newspaper) — it follows that man, if left to his own devices, will tend toward ego-driven disharmony. Traditionalist conservatives know that absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state, there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary to their own best interests, or those of the community.
For a true conservative, that community includes men and women yet to be born, and for whose sake we are morally obliged to be good stewards of the world we have been given. “In America especially, we live beyond our means by consuming the portion of posterity, insatiably devouring minerals and forests and the very soil, lowering the water table, to gratify the appetites of the present tenants of the country,” Kirk wrote. He demanded that Americans behave more prudently, to honor “the future partners in our contract with eternal society.”
What can that mean to a society and a government putting its children and children’s children in hock to foreign creditors to keep the great smoking engines of consumption pumping — and the politicians, including Republicans, who profess conservatism, in power by pandering to voters? Can today’s conservatives even understand what Kirk was talking about?
Perhaps the best-known fictional explication of the traditionalist conservative perspective on the right relation of man to the natural world can be found in The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic novel was taken to the patchouli-scented bosom of many a sixties counterculturalist, largely for its environmentalist worldview. But Tolkien was a deeply conservative Roman Catholic and a Tory to the marrow. In Tolkien’s fictional world, the artisan elves and the agrarian hobbits showed the right way to live in harmony with nature, making use of its bounty while respecting it. In contrast, the wizard Saruman and his wicked master of Mordor represent the allconsuming drive to exploit nature, and eventually destroy it.
You don’t have to look to political philosophers and artists of the right to find historical precedent for a conservationist ethic. Perhaps the only true conservationist we’ve had as our president was Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican who greatly expanded the national parks, and who passionately loved wild things (especially shooting them). He believed that conservation was a moral and a patriotic issue, because America could not be strong if it did not prudently steward its natural resources.
Book Reviews
July 4, 2008
This is the story of a couple (both freelance journalists) living in Canada’s Northwest who decided to only eat food within a 100 mile radius for 1 year. The only exception being when they were traveling or if someone invited them out for dinner in order to be polite. I think they ended up eating locally for something like 90% of the time. This may sound like something relatively easy to do. But then you realize they couldn’t eat any carbs (no wheat grew in their region), had very little meat, and spent most of their year living in a rather cold and crisp area. Every seasoning they used had to be local. Every ingredient. Every ounce of food. They had no salt. No butter. No bread of any kind. Starting to get the picture? It was a thrilling read. And challenging to me. It’s crazy when you start realizing how far your food has traveled. Especially when our local economies used to support a much broader and diverse food source. But because of globalization, most farms have closed and our food is shipped in from all across the States and the world. It’s definitely much harder for me to pick up bananas in the winter now. Or fish from Japan. Knowing that much of the transportation of this food leads to all kinds of pollution and waste in packaging in it’s transport. It’s extremely challenging to read.
This is a book about the growing number of organizations and people who are restless with the current options in regards to the environment, human rights, justice, sustainability, etc, etc. It’s more or less a history of how these organizations and groups have been moving under the radar for the last couple of decades, moving independently of each other, with no “mission statement” or organizing agenda, culminating in the growing changing tide for change in how view and operate in the world. Paul Hawken then spends time discussing the “blessed” roots of much of the groups and organizations. How their unrest is deeply rooted in their values, faith, and vision for the world. He doesn’t come right out and say “kingdom of God” but it’s pretty much the heart of the book. It feels like the historical counterpart to many of the theology that many others have been developing in regards to creation care. Well worth the time and read.
