The Missing Link
December 3, 2008
While more and more churches are awakening to God’s call to creation care and stewardship of the earth, I find that relatively few are thinking about environmental impacts on the world’s poor or about broader environmental issues beyond the U.S. border. The connection between poverty and tropical deforestation has long been one of my hot button issues—first because the connection is so close, and second because the rural poor are some of the most forgotten, voiceless people in the world. But I have been told several times recently that people don’t link these issues to creation care:
“Sure we want to begin recycling, saving energy and reducing our carbon footprint, but tropical deforestation? Poverty? Shouldn’t you be talking to the missions committee?” Read more
“I think that because it’s so simple, people just don’t get it.”
November 4, 2008
Planting a tree seems so simple, and like such a small creation care step, that most of the time we neglect its importance. In reality, tree cover can mean the difference between life and death for many communities around the world.
Visit www.floresta.org to learn more about the importance of trees, and read here about World Vision’s reforestation initiative throughout Africa.
Put me in, Coach!
October 29, 2008
A colleague who used to work with me at Floresta told me that he became a Christian, in part, because of the despair he felt as an environmental studies major, as he learned about the dire state of our planet. The problems were just too big. All of the solutions proposed by science and government came up short. As far as he could see, there was no hope for the world, except in Christ. And of course, that is what we believe: that Jesus is the hope for the world.
Obviously you could look at many things and draw the same conclusion: injustice, poverty, disease, morality—it is hard to see hope, outside of miraculous intervention from Jesus. But we can always pretend that human nature is going to change, or that we will come up with a magic economic formula (microfinance, perhaps?) or drug that eliminates poverty and disease. Or that once we spread democracy, injustice will cease. With the environment, our ultimate failure is more obvious and possibly more immediate. It is hard to look at deforestation, or the state of the oceans, or climate change and not despair.
However, as Christians, we believe that we will win, that in fact we have already won. Jesus won the victory over death—and what is happening to creation is death—at Calvary. What then is this fight that we are locked in? As I have been involved in community development for the past fifteen years and have seen the importance of local participation, I have become more and more convinced that it is part of what this is about. God doesn’t need us to redeem the world. He has done it. He doesn’t need us to feed the poor, or fight injustice, or care for creation. Rather He allows us to participate in what He is doing in the world.
I think of all of the times that my eight-year-old and my-five-year-old ask to help me with something that I can much more easily do myself. Yet one of the most important things I can do for them is let them help. I think God lets us help, not because he needs us, but because it is good for us. By participating we begin to better understand the heart of God. As we serve the poor, we feel his passion for the lost and the oppressed, the widow and the orphan. We feel his anger at injustice as we fight human trafficking. And we feel His love for the things He has created: the mountains, the forests, the streams, the creatures and the people, as we work to protect them and serve them.
As I have thought about this, I am reminded of the movie Rudy, in which the title character dreams of playing football for Notre Dame. Rudy doesn’t have the size or the talent for it, but his sheer dedication and heart earn him a spot on the team—or at least a spot on the bench. Finally, in the last game, when the outcome is assured, the coach lets Rudy play and he plays his heart out. It becomes the stuff of legend.
That’s where I think we are. The outcome is assured, but nonetheless we get to be in the game. We get to participate in God’s plan of redemption, announcing that his Kingdom is near. I have to remind myself of this sometimes when, for example, I see the disparity between our tiny efforts at reforestation and the environmental degradation that is dooming so many people to hunger, poverty and death. I am tempted by despair. Instead I should remember the privilege I have of getting to be in the game and doing what God has called me to do, participating in His victory. Let’s play our hearts out, and, as Tony Campolo once said, “let’s be heroes!”
Scott C. Sabin is the executive director of Floresta, a Christian nonprofit organization that reverses deforestation and poverty in the world by transforming the lives of the rural poor (www.floresta.org).
