The culture war that shapes our national conversation on such topics makes it difficult to converse on such matters.  We all seem to want to search out confirming voices to create our own echo chambers.

One of the perspectives that most mystifies me is something I hear a lot from those who don’t accept the climate science: that it is a big stretch to think that mere human beings could affect something as massive as the global climate.

Gosh, where does this come from?

Certainly not the Bible.  In Genesis, chapter one, humans are given a prominent place in the creation.  We are to exercise a form of dominion, or rule. That perspective is not a popular within the secular wing of the environmental movement–which is ironic because environmentalists know that human beings are in fact the dominant species on earth, and environmentists are the strongest advocates for improving our influence. In fact, more than any other group, they are concerned about our rule–as we should all be.

The atmosphere seems massive to us.  But if the earth were the size of a volleyball, the atmosphere would be thinner than a coat of varnish covering the volleyball.  Check out this photograph of the earth to get a sense of how THIN the entire atmosphere really is, realizing that our climate is the lowest layer of that thin band.

We’re so used to experiencing the earth as a human-dominated planet that we don’t appreciate how profound the human impact really is. Between a third and half of the earth’s land surface has been transformed by human action. The earth’s total plant growth is reduced by 40% by human action.

Growing up in Detroit, I used to think of “the country,” i.e. farmland, as “real nature.”  But of course, farmland is a human rearrangement of the surface of the earth at scale.  The wildlife that inhabits farmland is drastically reduced compared to the wildlife that inhabits land before it was farmed.

We haven’t been in space very long at all, but the litter we’ve left up there is a serious threat to every satellite orbiting the earth, and much time and attention is devoted to keeping our satellites from being destroyed by flying debris we’ve left behind.

Other examples abound.  Merely through our use of aeresol sprays, we increased the size of the ozone hole.  When the early science came out on that, the manufacturers of the suspect chemical (CFC’s) where skeptical about the science. They launched a campaign to deny it.  But the evidence accumulated, and eventually the United Nations brokered an international agreement that led to the reduction of the use of these chemicals, and the ozone hole is now getting smaller. Crisis averted.

In the 1980’s scientists said our forests were in trouble due to acid rain–the rain was becoming more acidic, thanks to the sulfur dioxide pumped into the atmosphere during the burning of coal at coal burning electricity plants.  The utilities were not happy to hear this.  But the evidence accumulated and we got together and passed legislation to cap sulfur dioxide emissions.  Yes, it was a cap and trade system.  It’s been working brilliantly.  President George W. Bush actually lowered the cap during his administration ahead of schedule, because it was working so well.

We sometimes forget that the author/s of Genesis 1 were writing after the fall, not before it.  By the time Genesis is written, the author knows that humans have not exercised their dominion wisely or well. The command to rule is dripping with irony by this time.

The ancients knew this.  They had a sense of our place in the order of creation and our impact for good or ill on the whole of it.

For the past 30 years climate scientists have been increasingly concerned about the climate warming faster then humans (especially poor ones)  and many other of God’s creatures adapt to.  It’s very complex, and there’s lots of back and forth on the details, but the vast majority of climate scientists are increasingly concerned.  In fact, it’s as close to settled as this sort of science is ever going to be. The science, for all it’s complexity, isn’t rocket science.  Carbon acts as insulator–no one denies that.  There is more carbon in the atmosphere than there used to be–no one denies that. Human activity like burning fossil fuels, is one of many factors that impacts the amount of carbon in the atmosphere–no one denies that.

Yet many Christians in the United States seem predisposed to deny that human activity is helping to warm the planet.

This is not our faith at work in us.  This is something else at work in us.

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.

Yes, before any other blessing had been uttered over this blessed planet, God blessed them first. “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth….God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.’ “ (Genesis 1: 20, 22-23, TNIV)

Anyone familiar with the Hebrew concept of blessing knows that any subsequent blessing cannot impinge on this first blessing.  The second blessing, of course, is ours: “God created human beings in his image…God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky” (Genesis 1: 27-28)

For better or worse, we are the dominant and dominating species on this planet. For better or worse, we rule.  Increasingly, the other creatures thrive, survive or suffer, in the space we allow them.

Our rule over the sea creatures and the flying birds in the Gulf of Mexico has missed the mark of our calling.  We were the ones chanting “Drill Baby Drill” when the price of oil started to rise.   We were the ones looking out for our own interests first, the blessed interests of the other creatures be damned.

Maybe it’s time for us to take a step back from the shrill voices of the culture war and consider the wisdom of the ages.  What does it mean that God blessed them first?

Jesus said, “I only do what I see the Father doing.” By this I infer that it was his practice to look for what he saw the Father doing.  The devil of course was at work all around him, but Jesus didn’t go looking for that. It manifested like an unwanted interruption, and when it did, he dealt with it, but he was looking for something else–what the Father was doing. And he saw the Father doing things in and among those who were not supposed to be the site of much God activity beyond wrath and judgment.

He saw God at work among Samaritans, among women, among the unclean, among the sexually broken, among the left behind and disregarded.  He regarded God among them.

Many were bothered by what he saw the Father doing, but even more, they were bothered by those among whom he saw the Father doing it, whatever it was.

Over the past four years I believe that I’ve caught a glimpse of what the Father is doing among secular scientists who care about the environment.  Oh, I could find much to disagree with in the perspectives and prejudices and opinions of the same scientists, but that’s not what I feel that I’ve been directed to look for.

I see men and women who have reverence for the world of nature–who are humbled by nature.  Many of them don’t see it as a creation, but they often respond with more reverence than those who claim faith in a creator. If you were the creator which would you prefer: credit for the creation or care for it?

They are passionate these environmental scientists.  In many ways they are like evangelicals.  They are vexxed.  They are missional.  They are frustrated. They are invigorated.  They are curious.  They have an apocalyptic vision.  Above all they care.  Ask them a question, show a little interest, give ‘em an opening and their eyes light up as mine do when someone says, “What must I do to be saved?”

I’ve learned from them.  I admire what I see in them.

My perspective has shifted.

And I have found that this shift in my perspective has opened up real conversation from time to time about the things I care most deeply about: God, Jesus, the Bible, the work of the Holy Spirit.

I find honest curiosity about these things. Sincere questions.

Looking back on that origional directive, “Pay attention to what I am doing among liberals” I wonder what the director meant by “liberals.”  Political liberals?  Cultural liberals?  Theological liberals?  I don’t really know.

I think the director may have meant simply “the others.”  Those people who were distrusted by my people.

Since then, I’m bothered by the facile use by believers of these labels, conservative and liberal.

I’ve been accused by a few commenters on this blog of being “liberal.”  That makes me laugh.  Talk to my kids about that one.

I don’t even know how to respond to that particular, what, charge?

I’m still looking for what the Bible teaches about liberals and conservatives.  I can’t find a single word.

I’m wondering why these words mean so much to us who revere the Bible so highly.

Let us lay them down to sleep for a few years, these labels. They’ve been working so hard without a break, chasing after each other.

Why do we identify so closely with words such as these?

Why would we use words like these to describe ourselves as believers?

But I digress, late at night.

What is it in us that inclines to see what the devil is doing?

I think it may be something perverse in us.  Is it the devil in us looking for the devil in others?

Who then would it be in us looking for what the Father is doing in others?   Especially in “the others.”

All the great revivals touch the heart, the affective-feeling capacity of the human being. Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed.”  Charles Finney felt “waves of liquid love” flow over him.  Pentecostals and their offspring wept and laughed and moaned.

There is a work of the Holy Spirit to awaken, soften, tenderize the human heart toward creation.  God is being revealed through his creation.  The earth is the Lords, the work of his hands.  He touches it all–all the time and were he to separate himself even for an instant it would cease to exist.

How do feel toward creation?

O Lord, you preserve both man and beast, the psalmist said.  Is that meant to affect how we feel toward creatures other than ourselves?  We’re in one of the greatest periods of species extinction ever known, much of it driven by the way we use and abuse the creation.  Does this bother us?  I mean distress us emotionally?  Or could we not care less because we already care so little?

The psalmist urged the creatures to praise.  Isn’t that odd?  To us, that is.  It is a poetic nicety. Or is it?  Praise him sun and moon, praise him all ye shining stars. Clap your hands all trees.  Sea creatures and creeping things, give praise.   The psalmist is addressing the creation, as though he has a feeling for it. A feeling of connection. A feeling of comraderie.  A feeling of standing together with the rest of creation before the God of wonder, wondering.

I have a friend who has a feeling for cars.  He has a three car garage with an attached house. He names some of his cars.  I admire his feeling for cars.   I wish I could feel what he feels toward them–I think I’d be more alive, and I’d also take better care of my car. The car is is the work of human hands and the robot made by human hands, but the human hands are the work of God’s hands. And the metal and plastic and oil of a car is also the work of the creator’s hands ultimately.  His hands working through our hands to create this thing out of the stuff, directly or indirectly, which is the work of his hands.

How do we feel about the way beef cattle are treated?  Honestly, for years, I laughed at people who cared.  Only because my heart was hard, inert, unfeeling.

And no I don’t think caring is a zero sum game. As if there is only so much caring to go around, so if we care for the way the beef cattle are treated we care less about human distress.  I think the same heart does the caring for both–so if the Spirit softens the heart to care about one thing, it’s in a better position to care about the other.

But we’re embarrassed, many of us, to say, I care about the way the beef cattle are treated. In certain settings, that is.  Feeding these creatures corn because it’s cheap even though they are meant to ruminate on grass. As soon as they switch to a corn fed diet, they become sick.  But it marbles the fat in a tasty manner.

What do we care if they suffer?  They’ve just been placed on the planet so that we can have cheap burgers.  They don’t belong to anyone but us, for our use, and if we wish and its economically beneficial, for our abuse.  As though we are their creators and they have no other.

Is this the heart that has been softened, awakening, tenderized by the Holy Spirit?

I open myself to ridicule with a post like this, I know.   The ridicule is in my own head, the vestigial voice of a younger me.  A voice with many echoes among my fellow believers.

But what does that say about us?

It says we’re still in a fog. We’re still in a daze.  We’re still only partly awake.  We’re still living as though it were night, even though a new day is dawning.

Come, Holy Spirit awaken us. Remove from us our heart of stone and give us instead a heart of flesh.

Been reading some Francis Schaeffer lately.  I first read Schaeffer as a brand new Jesus freak in 1971, when the Jesus movement was running wild among pro-ecology, anti-war hippies.  He wrote something called Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology.  He sounds like a Christian environmental whacko–I use the term endearingly.  After writing Pollution and the Death of Man, Schaeffer became something like a theologian for the Religious Right.   Yes, a tree-hugging environmental whacko was a leading voice in the formation of groups like the Moral Majority.  But there was a lot of pickin’ and choosin’ goin’ on and Pollution and the Death of Man didn’t make the cut.

But enough of that.

Schaeffer talks about the need for us to undergo a reconciled relationship with creation.  He sees it as part of the work of reconciliation in Jesus Christ: to God, to our selves, to others, and to nature.  And he’s not just talking about a head trip.  He’s talking about a heart trip.  That by a work of the Spirit of Jesus, the Lord of Creation and her firstborn, we would not simply look at a tree as a thing, but we would feel connected with the tree psychologically.

Do you feel connected to the rest of creation?  Do you look at the glorious world around you and see the fingerprints of God and sense a deep relatedness with the rest of creation?  I mean really.

This is a work of the Spirit in our hearts.  We can’t manufacture it.  But we can receive it.  And our attitudes, biases, prejudices–the things we listen to and fill our minds with–can quench this work of the Spirit.  Without which we are less alive to God and his kingdom than we would otherwise be.

I know I was largely dull to this work of the Spirit for many years.  I was darn sure not to worship nature, but I fell off the other side of the horse, to use Luther’s apt image.  I felt entitled to nature.  Nature was a thing that was here for me to use.  Period.

I treated nature like a lousy husband treats his wife: Mostly not noticing her until he felt a need that she might meet.

I thought I was converted, awakened, spiritually alive because I had come alive to God as my Abba, Father, and I had begun to experience reconciliation within myself to myself, and I had begun to taste the wonder-power of reconciliation with others.  But I had more to wake up to.

Something started to happen in me that I was just smart enough, just barely smart enough, not to put the ki-bash on because it was the sort of something that made people nervous.  And it continues to happen.

And I find this all immensely invigorating. Because the church in the United States is getting a little stale in the spiritual awakening department. We now have movements, so called,  that don’t mediate any particular new experience of God. But it ain’t a movement until it mediates a new experience of God or restores an old one.  The Great Awakenings mediated hearts strangely warmed.  Pentecostalism mediated hearts filled anew with the Spirit.  The so-called Third Wave mediated a sense of tender-intimate connection with God as Abba, Father and new ways to dial down and listen for the Spirit’s voice.

I haven’t read much in the Emergent movement, though I’m sympathetic to the  necessity of facing the questions being asked in that emerging wing of the church. But I don’t think it’s a movement yet.   Relief from the bondages of fundamentalism or moving beyond a backward-looking evangelicalism doth not a movement make.

But I think there is a movement waiting to happen.  Or rather happening somewhere beneath the radar.

And it’s to do with the Earth is the Lord’s Day.  It’s to do with humbling acknowledging that our relationship with nature–creation is the biblical word and I much prefer it–is out of whack.  Ruinously out of whack.  We’re a lousy husband and its affecting our husbandry. We’re dull of heart to the voice of God speaking to us through creation.  Which means very little as an insight unless we feel it as a deep sorrow.

But all that can change. We can be awakened.  Our dry bones can rattle again.  Our hardened hearts can receive morning dew, and then light Spring rains, and then a mighty flood.

Go outside today and look around.  Look for something that isn’t artificially colored.  Look for something, oh say, green, with sunlight shining on or through it.  And listen.  You won’t hear words.  But you may hear what you’ve been missing lately, which is the voice behind the words.  If not the voice at first, be attentive to the next best thing, which is the longing for the voice–desire being the landing pad of the Holy Spirit.

This was my response when it first dawned on me back in 2006 that climate change may in fact be real and a serious global problem.  What a test of humanity!  In order to address a global threat like climate change we have to learn how to cooperate with each other on a global scale–not something the human race is very good at.  We have to look out, not only for our own interest, but also the interests of others–again not a skill we have mastered yet.

To pass a test like this might require us to fall at the feet of a merciful and powerful God in ways we haven’t even begun to consider.  If ever the world had a need for a Higher Power it’s now.

And it’s a test for the American church, especially the most vibrant part of it: evangelicalism.  To whom much is given much will be required.

But many of us don’t take to well to internal critique.  We’ve been embroiled in a culture war for the past thirty years in which we have fine tuned the skills of critiquing those we perceive to be outsiders.

We bristle when we hear our own tribe attacked.

Take for example, this broadside leveled against Christianity:

“When we look at the track record of priests and temples, pastors and churches, missionaries and missions, it is obvious that religion in all its forms, including most emphatically Christianity, is a perpetual breeding ground for violence, abuse, superstition, war, discrimination, tyranny, and pride. Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression.”

Gosh, when you’ve got people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, the new and revived atheists lambasting Christianity like that, you tend to get a little defensive.

But this quote is from the author of the wildly popular biblical translation-paraphrase, The Message.  Eugene Peterson says this is why God tests the church from time to time, because we embrace things that have nothing to do with God as though they are the gospel.

Judgment begins with the household of God, said Peter, the disciple of Jesus, the master of internal critique.  We shouldn’t be afraid of it.   Better now than later.

Climate change is a test because it requires us to wrestle with something we American evangelicals, thanks to our recent fundamentalist roots, have deep suspicions about: mainstream science. Without science, there is no way to know whether the climate is changing and why and what it might mean.  But we don’t get along very well with mainstream science because in our view it is dominated by the cultural elites who hold our faith in a kind of polite contempt.   So we tend to trust those who distrust any scientific consensus.

Climate change is a test because it suggests that maybe the American dream, based on cheap fossil fuel energy, could be the world’s nightmare if we don’t begin to find other sources of cheap energy.  And we have embraced the American dream as if it were the Kingdom of God dream.

Climate change is a test, because it bids us to care, really care, about future generations, at a time when we are really focused on the present and the eternal.  We care a great deal about our own fortunes and we care about life after death, but this other biblical concern–for the well being of future generations, is something we haven’t been focused on much.

Climate change is a test because it puts us in the uncomfortable position of considering the deliberations of an organization we deeply distrust: the United Nations.

And climate change is a test because it forces us to use the “s” word and we don’t like the “s” word, except when it doesn’t require any real “s”.

Sacrifice. Climate change might call for sacrifice in the present for the sake of the future.  It might call for sacrifices in our lifetstyle.  It might call us to sacrifice conveniences we enjoy. And we like to talk about sacrifice (especially if the talk is safely theological) more than we like to do it.  Even the most rabid environmentalists don’t like the word sacrifice because they know full well it doesn’t poll well.

But we’re not alone. God is with us. The Spirit has been, is being, and will be poured out for the asking.  We can do this with a little help from our friend, the friend of sinners. We don’t need to be anxious or afraid. We can walk on water in the middle of storms when it’s him out there in the midst of the storm calling us to step out of the boat and onto the lake.

Come Holy Spirit, soften our hearts, and renew the face of the earth!

I don’t get it. There’s no doubt that carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas. That’s undisputed physics.  There’s no doubt that burning oil and coal for energy releases lots of the stuff into the atmosphere and that much of it remains there for centuries.  There’s also little doubt that since we’ve been burning fossil fuels for energy, the average global temperature has been on the rise.

So the basics of climate science is pretty intuitive.

After that, it gets complicated.  Because there are many other factors in a system like the climate: water vapor, sun spots, cloud cover, the list is endless.  And this is what climate scientist study.  They try to take into account all the different factors to determine the probability (certainty is a word scientists don’t like) that the recent warming trend of the last century is due (at least in substantial part) by this human activity.

Hundreds of climate scientists have been working on this from many nations.  They do studies and publish results and bicker and dispute and get lost in the data and come up for air, and generally do what scientists do.  Most of it is eye-glazingly boring to talk about at a party.

I am not qualified to independently verify their results.

But nothing I’ve read or heard or seen makes me think there is a massive conspiracy afoot to dupe the world concerning climate change.

I think the world as a system of vested interests has a very powerful incentive not to accept the science that says climate change is real and we need to do something about it.

I think these interests will continue to provide a very significant ballast that will prevent us from over-reacting to what the science is saying.  I’m putting this mildly.

Talking it Over

I’ve been fortunate to talk personally with many climate scientists at length.  I’ve pummeled them with my questions–mainly things I’ve heard from my fellow Christians who think there is a conspiracy of some sort.  These scientist give very reasonable explanations.

A local friend mine is one of these scientists.  He isn’t an ideologue.  He is one of the most balanced and reasonable human beings I know.  Like me, he knows and loves and respects many people who doubt the science that is his stock and trade.  He calmly answers my questions and makes perfect sense to me.

I have another friend who has worked for the EPA for years.  He’s an engineer.  Actually one of their top technical experts.  He was engineer of the year in the Federal system many years ago. I know this guy as well as I know anyone who isn’t a family member.   He’s not a wild eyed environmentalist.  He has as much personal integrity as anyone I know. I walk with him for about an hour at least once a week. I pummel him with my questions. He answers them to my satisfaction.

He explains to me, for example, how models work.  How a scientist could say, “I tricked  the model” and not mean something nefarious.  I could pass on the explanation he gave me, but your eyes would glaze over.   I’d also be explaining stuff I only know second-hand.

These people are credible witnesses.  I trust their perspective because I know them. They are not on the radio or talking heads on cable television.  They are people I know up close and personal.

On the other hand, the people who object to the climate science–I mean the ones I know personally–as a rule, don’t know as much about the science as these people I’ve mentioned. They are highly intelligent, well informed people, but they are not as close to the science as these others I know.  So I find their doubts about the science less compelling.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

But there’s another factor at work.  More than I’m interested in science, I’m interested in the work of the Holy Spirit.  This has been a long-time pursuit of mine, not a recent enthusiasm.

And the fact is, I experienced a powerful work of the Holy Spirit in my heart some years ago.  I would call it a work of repentance.

I was at a meeting with a bunch of scientists who were concerned about the environment.  I spent a weekend with these scientists and with a bunch of non-scientist Christian leaders, all of them evangelical.  Two groups that had never spent much time together before and whose respective communities tended to distrust each other.

During the meetings, while one of the scientists was speaking, the Spirit fell on me. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.  I felt a swoosh descend from my face to my chest, and my throat tighten and my eyes water.

And I felt sorry, so sorry, sorry like only God can make me feel, for not caring enough about the beautiful, wonderful, sacred creation.

I felt intense sorrow that there has been such a divide, such a cultural gap, such a history of mutual misunderstand between Jesus followers in America and people who would call themselves environmentalists.  It felt to me like I  was sitting on a dividing wall between the two groups, and the wall was falling down, and I was falling with it.

Only it was an good falling, not a bad one. It felt like I was falling into the arms of the father in the story Jesus told about those two sons.

No, I am not claiming that the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear to say, “Al Gore is right and Rush Limbaugh is wrong about climate change.”   But what the Spirit did in my heart that day has a big impact on how I respond to the people who care about this issue, and to the scientists I’ve met who are deeply concerned by what their science is telling them.

We need more love to deal with these vexing cultural disputes.  Yes, more science, and more transparency, and more open debate, but also more love.  Of all the things we need more of, love is the one we need more of most.

And it needs to be a particular form of love: God’s breaking-down-dividing-walls love.  The love that broke down the wall between Jew & Gentile, Slave & Free, Male & Female. Love that falls on siblings who have been squabbling for a long time.    Love that tenderizes hearts that have a tendency to get hard.

The big problems we’re facing today around the world–the crushing load of debt, abject poverty, terror, violence, failure to treat human life as sacred, treating God’s creation as if it were expendable–all of these together are going to require massive amounts of a resource that is freely available to us, but only if our hearts are open.   Love.

Come, Holy Spirit, and fill our hearts, and renew the face of the earth.

Mind you I know I’ve just opened myself to a little ridicule from some of my fellow Jesus fans.  This is the way tree-huggers think.  This is how people who care more about the spotted owl than the financial well being of the loggers in the Northwest think.

But I say: this it the way those who believe the Bible to be inspired think.  Count me in that camp, if you’re keeping score.

The first time God blessed anything or anyone, he blessed the sea creatures. And his blessing was specific, that said sea creatures were to multiply in numbers (the easiest way to multiply, by the way) and fill the seas.  Note: they were not to decrease in numbers, but multiply.

This first-ever blessing by God of anything or anyone in all of the Bible, took place on the fifth day of creation.  It was followed by God’s blessing of humankind on the sixth day of creation which followed a similar pattern: we (thank God, because it’s fun!) were commanded to multiply and fill the earth, and to subdue it.  As though life for us, as for every species, would involve the struggle for existence. As though, we had a special role in creation to represent a Creator in whose image we were created.

A Tale of Two Movements

In the early days of the environmental movement which were also the early days of the Jesus movement, it was common to blame the growing ecological disaster on the Judeo-Christian ethic. We need a new ethic, said those who read the old one as hostile to all but the human creatures. We need, for example, a new sea ethic–a new moral compass by which we find our way on the earth remembering our dependence on the bath that surrounds all land based creatures like ourselves.

Meanwhile our sea ethic was staring us in the face.  God blessed them first. And as anyone who knows this God would understand, a first blessing is not an easy one to discount. First things first.  Whatever this second blessing–ours–means, it cannot mean that we are empowered to override God’s first blessing.

Which means that we must care about the fate of the sea creatures, regardless of the political climate of our day which pits brother against brother, assuming that the love of God is limited, believing the heresy that if we care for the sea creatures we must care less for our own kind.  Not understanding that it is our destiny and our dignity to care beyond our kind.  If the Bible is inspired that is.

A Man Had Two Sons

And now a story.  A man had two sons born at the same time at the dawn of two movements in the 1970’s: the Jesus movement and the environmental movement.  The brothers parted ways.  One became a Jesus freak, the other an environmentalist. Being young and full of themselves, as is the wont of young men, they forgot to listen to each other.  Instead they succumbed to the temptation, common to our kind, to believe the worst, not the best about each other. Even though–perversely perhaps because–they were brothers.

They went their separate ways, until one day they found themselves near each other again in the father’s house.  How their father had suffered because his two sons had gone their separate ways!  The father’s heart was filled with pain and he urged the sons to be brothers again.  As fathers do.

Because fathers know that the well being of the family depends on the siblings learning to love each other. Otherwise who will care for the family once the father and the mother have gone?    The brothers after all are kin. They are as close to each other as father or mother to child.  If they don’t love each other, who will?

As a Jesus freak, I wish to say to those who care about the fortunes of the blue fin tuna that I am sorry for not caring as well as you have cared.  I am sorry that I got caught up in the culture war and forgot to read my Bible.  I listened to the voices of chaos rather than the voice of the Creator, in love with all his creatures. I failed to love  you and I failed to love Him: a double failure.  For this I am sorry.

God help us to love each other so that we may fulfill our destiny here in the Father’s house–which, of course, if we read our Bible’s well, is the world, his temple.

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.

The Interconnectivity of Injustice

The U.S. Government’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons recently released their 2009 Trafficking in Person Report.  At the release, Sercretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton remarking on the ramifications of the current economic downturn said, ”Economic pressure, especially in this global economic crisis, makes more people susceptible to the false promises of traffickers.”  While that is entirely true, it is only the initial one-off assessment of interconnectivity.  My own research into human trafficking has followed the river further upstream from the horror of human trafficking and beyond the economic pressures of poverty to the heart of the environmental crisis.

I first encountered the interconnectivity when I was doing some research on migration crises from countries like Cuba or Haiti to the U.S.  I was researching mass migration and looking at the typical “triggers” that people point to (i.e. natural disasters – such as hurricanes – and civil unrest) that cause people to make choices.  I quickly realized things like natural disasters and civil unrest were only triggers because there were other issues placing people in desperate situations in which a natural disaster or civil unrest was the final trigger to their leaving their home for something, anything else.

The desperate situations and issues before the final trigger included health and immense poverty in these countries.  Most victims of human trafficking were all ready living with the consequences of the environmental crisis when lured into that life.  As I continued to dig further, I found that it was indeed an environmental factor that had set off so many people’s trek down this pathway to the vile clutches of human trafficking.  With little or no economic hope for even subsistence farming due to de-forestation and soil erosion (those are inter-related, especially in a place like Haiti), farming communities cannot eek out a living.  Compounding the environmental degradation is the loss of generational-knowledge of good farming techniques due to the decimation of HIV/AIDS or the push of “advanced agricultural techniques” wanted or unwanted on the farming communities from “advanced countries”.

The primary cause of Haiti’s environmental degradation has been caused by Haitian’s need for energy. With an electricity sector that only covered 10% of Haiti’s population in 2006, chronic energy shortages have contributed to Haitian’s search for alternative sources of energy.  Unfortunately for Haiti’s natural environment, wood became and continues to be the principal energy source for most of the populace, accounting for 70 percent of energy consumption in 2006.  This has directly impacted the environment with the steady deforestation  with an estimated 6,000 hectares of soil lost each year to erosion.

These factors contribute to increased poverty as people leave the countryside and the place of their relational core, family and support for the overpopulated urban environs.  Poverty – both urban and rural – and the risk of disease place people in desperate situations, even to the point of believing (whether they really believe it in their heart) that their children are better off having a chance elsewhere.  They are more susceptible to being blinded by the lies and false promises of a better life, a way out of their present life, for themselves or their children.  This vulnerable situation is preyed upon by human traffickers, and desp erate people sell themselves or their children who may starve tomorrow into labour trafficking slavery (they call them restavek’s in Haiti) and as household servants of the urban and suburban wealthy, where eventually they might become a sex slave or be sold into sexual slavery and/or more labour trafficking slavery and brought into the U.S. or other wealthy nations.  We must realize the market-aspect of this activity of injustice.  It is the wealthy nations like the U.S. who are the major destination-countries of human trafficking, including Europe or Japan.  Human traffickers are bringing their commodities to the marketplace.  Justice is being trampled in our streets.

But the dots were connecting for me, seeing illegal immigration and human trafficking connecting to the situation of extreme poverty, in turn rooted in an environmental crisis.  As I was talking to my boss at the time about my research, I told him, “If we could get to work on the root “push” issues of poverty and environmental crisis (while still working on the “pull” issues of sexual dysfunction and deviation in the U.S.)…if we could do something about them, these ‘homeland security issues’ might evaporate…”; then he looked up at me and said, “Steven please, we’re not the Church; we’re just the government…”

This struck me as a very astute assessment.  It was one of those “a-ha” moments where all the brain-work I had been doing took the elevator to my heart and began working there.  I realized something.  I walked away from my time in government fighting against human trafficking with the firm conviction that my boss was essentially correct:the Church has to fight against this and be the place where the broken walk toward healing in community in Christ.  But we have to also realize that it’s really difficult – nay, impossible without God – to do justice, while still loving mercy, not to mention walk humbly with our God.

Our Kingdom Projects and God’s Kingdom Projects

I heard Todd Hunter recently say something like, our Kingdom of God projects are rarely God’s Kingdom of God projects.  You see, the issues of biblical justice are not issues to arm ourselves with for a culture war, nor mere hot topics for a lot of conversational hot-air.  If we would just take to the streets and do something about them, we might in fact find no culture war left to fight in the wake of justice and healing that follows in our wake.  The issues of biblical justice are about people who are broken and aching for justice and healing.  It’s about God looking for a people to stand in the gap between the strong and the weak, between the powerful and the powerless.  Truth and justice are being trampled in the streets of America, but a war on culture has not made a difference.  What might begin to make a difference would be to wrestle not with flesh-and-blood, but with the powers behind environmental crises, poverty, and social injustice.

Unfortunately, the Church today is a place where the broken run from.  In truth, the Church should be the safe place for the broken to run to.  This fact grieves me so, because I know it to be a fact.  I have sat and given permission to survivors of trafficking to speak their mind and lament what is in their hearts to God.  And do you know what I witness to?  They complain and lament to God that His people have failed them.  And I have been part of that problem and I lament that too.  How many poor are in your local church?  Do those trapped in prostitution find a safe place without condemnation in your fellowship?

But hope persists in the margins, which in fact Christianity was indeed birthed.  Christ was born in the margins, but His people have lost our roots.  My imagination is sparked by “what if’s”:

What if the Church opened itself up to the prophetic pathos of God, so that His heart takes possession of our hearts?
What if the Church – possessed with the heart and Spirit of God – could be moved into action; simple stuff: do what is in front of you, do what the Father is doing kind-of-stuff?
What if the Church became known for doing-the-stuff Jesus did?
What if the Church – or any local expression of it – could become the place the broken ran to in crisis, and not the one it runs from?
What if the Church could swim further up-stream and tackle the messy root issues of an environmental crisis that spreads with each passing day?
What if it begins with me?
This is the kind of prophetic activity that I identify with; for it is indeed the Church who must lead the way in all whole range of contemporary and eternal issues but also in leading people to understand the interconnectivity, because many others get lost in their own selfish agendas and do not have the Spirit to sustain them to love mercy while doing justice.  I think it was Chesterton who once commented, (and i paraphrase): The Church is the only organization whose mission is utterly other-centric, not self-centered, but other-centered as we follow Christ with His Mission into the world, not out of this world…

[He came not to be served but to serve and give His life for many...we who follow Him, take up that same way]

My Prayer

my soul is in torment
my spirit like the torrent of many waters

raging rapids fomenting within
the recesses seething and undulating

like a storm in my soul

let Your exploit overflow
let my life and my hands be Yours
let my actions flow from Your heart

let it be so, O Lord, let it be so…

There were a few raised eyebrows within the church community–not many, but some: Why have you invited a man with no faith to speak at church?   More troubling were the comments to my blog post about the visit before it took place.  I didn’t post them as I didn’t have the heart to. One was a “prophetic denunciation”–how God was angered by the invitation, etc.; another was also in the  “guardian of orthodoxy” vein reminding me that “The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God’”–a reference to the good scientist.  (As though this is the proper use of the Bible: finding a way to use it to call a person a fool. Jesus could use the Bible every moment of every day to call each one of us, “Fool!” but he doesn’t.  Maybe we shouldn’t.)

The way the brain works, these comments have their impact. They get the “alarm” part of the brain going, stimulating fear–just reading the words does that. It takes five encouraging words to match the impact of one “You’re an idiot!” comment.  That’s just the brain doing its brain thing.

no good reason not to

But I never doubted it was the right thing to do. Who wants to be part of church that can’t do such a thing?  Not me.  Our church, the Ann Arbor Vineyard, and the Blue Ocean Institute, which Safina co-founded, are sponsors of The Friendship Collaborative bringing together evangelical pastors and secular scientists to talk about our shared concern for the environment.  The only reason not to invite Carl to speak would have been fear–overblown, exaggerated, disproportionate fear–or worse, distrust. Who wants to distrust the church one attends and pastors? Who wants to believe the worst, not the best about her? Not me.

Carl was warmly welcomed at the first service, so he relaxed for the second. Both were dynamite. The man has great comic timing. He knows his stuff but can tell it to people who don’t as if they are intelligent too. And Safinas has a heart–a big, kind, caring one. What’s not to like?  His presentation was a little longer at the second service, so when it was done, I jumped up on the platform, my back to the congregation, and conferred with Mike Brooks, our worship pastor about how to use the time remaining.  When I turned to face the congregation, they were standing up, cheering for Carl. He was standing there, stunned and deeply moved.   Then Mike Brooks invited to him to play drums in the worship band for the final song–Long Train Runnin’ by the Doobie Brothers. How apt.

find a carl safina to adopt

What if every evangelical church in the United States adopted a secular scientist?  The pastor and the scientist would get to know each other and if a relationship of mutual respect were established the pastor would invite the scientist to speak to the church.  Tell us what you think we need to hear about the natural world as you understand it through the lens of the scientific method.  Don’t worry about offending us, just tell us the truth of the world as you know it.  Sell us your book if it can be read by someone without a Ph.D.

What if the church listened to the scientist?  What if they listened to the secular scientist as they would want all secular scientists to listen to them?  What if they applied what Jesus called, “The Law and the Prophets” (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) to the scientist?

What if the church welcomed the scientist?  By that I mean, what if the church extended the hospitality that Jesus extended to people on the outside of faith looking in, in the way that Jesus extended it?  Let’s share a meal together, you and I, as though we were already friends–while the righteous gnash their teeth at us both.

What if the church were not afraid of what the scientist had to say?  What if the church trusted Jesus to help them separate the wheat from the chaff, just as must be done when anyone speaks, including (especially?) the pastor?

There would be no need to put out the porcupine quills.  The defensive pricklies would be left at home.

oh for the day when this is not noteworthy!

Here’s what I long for–the day when this is not noteworthy.  I long for the day when the church begins to tackle the question of our times: “Who are the Gentiles of our day? Who are the despised of Israel (despised of God’s people) in our day?  Who are the people Jesus would extend a kingdom welcome to without pre-conditions today–a welcome so in keeping with the kingom that the righteous would gnash their teeth as they did in the day of his coming?”

If you are interested in Safina’s take on the experience, check out his blog.

If you were there when Dr. Safina spoke to us, and were moved by the experience, leave us a comment.

If you are the pastor of an evangelical church and you would like to explore the idea of adopting a secular scientist, contact me.  If you leave a coment, I think I can email you directly. Depending on where you’re from, I can give you a few names of scientists who might welcome an invitation, so long as you’re willing to give ‘em “The Law and the Prophets” treatment, a.k.a, the golden rule, which is, according to Jesus–well, the Bible, if I’ve got my Bible right.

ain’t it time for somethin’ NEW?

Rice Krispies go snap, crackle, pop—why not the church?

Wouldn’t it be more interesting if the church made some noise–beyond what we hear week after week?

Wouldn’t it be a sign that we were pressing into the new creation– if we actually did something NEW, unexpected, surprising?