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Subscribe to CommentsEven though I live in Ann Arbor I know many people who are skeptical about the climate science that says human activity is heating the planet. Invariably, they are also devout Catholic Christians or Evangelical Christians–these friends of mine.
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As the engineers seek to contain the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, how do we get our hearts around what’s happening there?
An ancient take on the world around us might help. Few people seem to notice that in the creation account of Genesis, chapter one, God blessed the sea creatures and the birds of the air—the very creatures affected by the British Petroleum oil spill—first.
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Several years ago on vacation, a still small voice told me, “Pay attention to what I’m doing among liberals.” Words of that unexpected specificity don’t come often to me, so when they do I pay attention. Thus began a significant shift in my attentiveness. What we pay attention to matters. What we look for matters.
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I was changed by an old book many years ago: On the Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, a leader in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, spoke of the need to have the “affections”–the emotional, affective, feeling regions awakened. He described the hard heart of Ezekiel’s prophecy as an unfeeling, inert, unresponsive heart. And he had a very physical understanding of the affections, using words like humours, fluids, and the like to refer to them. The bodily effects of feeling: weeping, tears, a stirring in the pit of the stomach, flushing of the face, warmth.
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So what’s your take on Earth Day? I hope you don’t roll your eyes from too much ear-time with a.m. (angry man) radio. Because the Earth is the Lord’s. Creation is his first revelation, the first language he speaks to us. And the church in the United States has been spiritually dull to his voice speaking through creation. To the extent that we are, we’re spiritually dull.
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Climate change is testing us–the global human family, that is. That’s what I think. Obviously, you don’t have to agree with me. But climate change is also testing the American church, in particular. Tests on a global scale are promised in Scripture. ” I will keep you safe in the time of trial coming on the whole world, to put the people of the world to the test.” (Rev. 3:10)
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It’s truly amazing how the mere mention of climate change in a blog post stirs up objections from believers. I’m guessing that three-quarters of those who read this blog think climate change is a hoax.
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Why should human beings care about whether the population of blue fin tuna is decimated by overfishing? Its pretty unusual in the realm of living things for one species to care about the fortunes of another, even though we live in a delicate balance of competition and cooperation with all other living things. So far as I know, human beings are the only species capable of caring whether or not another species flourishes or declines. Which alone makes me think perhaps we are meant to care, or that in our caring we are expressing our uniqueness.
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This is a guest post from Steve Hamilton, a young Vineyard pastor in Maryland who is active in mobilizing the church to help the victims of human trafficking. Steve hosts his own blog, verse by verse.
The pathos [sorrow, suffering, pity are synonyms] of God is on the prophet. It moves him. It breaks out in him like a storm in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes and hopes. It takes possession of his heart, giving him courage to act.”
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
You know how when you are in a conversation with someone and stumble upon some topic that they are really into, and they start getting all passionate and animated, and it makes you take a step back and say “Okay…tell me how you really feel about that…”; well, I believe for God, that issue is justice or what we might more precisely call biblical justice. Biblical justice is the more precise term that I prefer, mostly because it reflects the range of justice issues that I see God clearly and deeply cares about, as witnessed in scripture and in my own experience. The issues of biblical justice are social, economic and environmental. They are also intertwined and interconnected.
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Carl Safina, an environmental scientist and science writer of some note, spoke at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor two weeks ago. Our first secular scientist as a speaker–a man who professes no Christian faith, but is an admirer of Jesus of Nazareth along with Charles Darwin. He was nervous to be speaking to a congregation in the evangelical wing of American Christianity. He was nervous as one might be who is crossing a minefield without knowing where the mines are located. Would he offend people without even intending to? Would he get me into trouble with congregants by what he might say? I told him not to be nervous: we wanted to hear what he had to say about the oceans and science and the environment. Tell us what you know. But I was nervous too.
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