When Christians weasel out of their environmental responsibilities.

I don’t see valid reasoning behind Christians who avoid their duty to the earth. I see apathy disguised as skepticism.

I’ve had some mighty obnoxious discussions with my friend P about global warming. He doesn’t believe in it.

I understand where he’s coming from; I’m actually old enough to remember when the scientists were talking about global cooling, back in the 1970s—they were talking about the possibility of another Ice Age taking place, and vast sheets of glaciers descending from Canada to overwhelm the bulk of North America. (Like that movie The Day After Tomorrow, only with less recognizable-landmark-smashing bad weather.) So when talk about global warming became the rage, I did a little reading and discovered that there’s a whole lot of convincing science-based evidence for it. And that’s before I saw Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

P just really, really doesn’t like Al Gore.

Politically or personally?

Well, politically… but it’s evolved in that way that politics can start with a philosophical disagreement and turn into character assassination. Despite never meeting him, nor watching his documentary, P thinks Gore is a schmuck, an opportunist, and a liar.

I tried to move past the ad hominem attacks to the actual science behind any of P’s beliefs. So… has he heard anything about thousand-year-old ice packs melting? Seems that if we were only talking about the usual 25-year El Niño weather cycle, it shouldn’t create lakes in the ice caps, nor move the permafrost line around on some of the earth’s taller mountains.

Well… P didn’t know anything about that. But he just can’t believe that humanity and pollution can make those kind of worldwide climate changes. There has to be some other explanation, one that the doom-and-gloom types are overlooking—sunspots or End Times prophecy or something like that—because humans simply can’t be able to destroy the earth like that. We’re just not capable.

Okay, what scientific basis does he have for that belief?

Scientific basis? What, are you kidding me? P has no scientific basis for any of this stuff. He doesn’t trust the scientists, not at all. After all, these are the folks who push for teaching evolution in the schools.

So obviously I couldn’t argue my position with P on a scientific basis; he was just gonna chuck the science entirely. I resisted the temptation to respond, “And this is why you’re a Republican,” because that’s not fair to Republicans who believe in science… and went the theological route.

“You don’t believe humans are capable of destroying the earth,” I said. “Are you talking about the species of whom God said, ‘If they can pull this off, nothing will be impossible for them?’ ”

“Where’d He say that?”

That’s from Genesis 11.5, in the Tower of Babel story. I was paraphrasing quite a bit, but that is sort of the gist of what God was saying when He decided to scatter us humans throughout the earth. We can, when we put our minds to it, do amazing things. God’s concern was that we might choose to do some truly awful things; so He scrambled our languages until such a time—say, Pentecost, 33 CE—when He would inspire and empower us to do those sorts of amazing things.

“God Himself said we could do anything,” I pointed out. “He meant for us to do great things through His power, but when we put our minds to it, we can do things through our own power; like build a tower that He’s really not pleased about, or like pollute a planet that He’s told us to care for.”

That part comes from where God told humanity to fill and subdue (‏כבש, tread down) the earth in Genesis 1.28. We have the run of the place. But at the same time, God points out in scripture that the earth belongs to Him. (Ex 19.5) The ancient Hebrews were slaves and tenants to the true owner of the land, God (Lv 25.23) and the same concept applies to the rest of the earth. We must be responsible to not damage the earth or the air—neither our little portion of it, nor through inaction the portions of others.

And if all six billion humans decide to do nothing about the actions of others….

But of course we should start with ourselves—we should keep from damaging our own little portion of it. And that is where we all fail so very horribly. I recycle little. I do take public transportation rather than own my own pollution-spewing car, but I buy products that have to be transported cross-country or cross-Pacific in pollution-spewing trucks and boats. I don’t conserve as much electricity as I could; in fact I tend to go a little squirrelly when the power goes out. Now, multiply my own personal apathy by a billion and there we have the problem.

“I do plenty,” says P. “I recycle my cans and plastic bottles.”

The thing is… we really don’t do plenty. If each and every one of us had to be responsible for our own private landfill, we would be working like mad to make sure that the landfill never completely filled—or contaminated our water supply, or filled our air with smoke when we burned trash. But we don’t. We don’t carpool. We don’t really recycle all that much. We don’t decrease our energy usage. We don’t do enough.

Yet Christians, who should be leading the way in all of this because we recognize our responsibilities before God, generally respond by saying that going this way is taking the slippery slope to earth worship.

Earth worship? I don’t worship the earth; I just want to keep it habitable for the rest of my pre-resurrection lifespan. Where do people get “earth worship” from?

Actually, it comes from another logical fallacy: the association fallacy. The granola-eating hippies who are trying to get everyone to save the planet are actually making such a fuss because they’re a bunch of crypto-Hindu pantheists who believe the earth is a living being, and should be protected, and the way one protects it is by not polluting. And maybe hugging a tree here and there. So the argument is that if earth worshippers try to preserve the earth, and Christians likewise try to preserve the earth, then we’re “falling for” some kind of secret, evil, earth-worship agenda.

It’s completely ludicrous, but I’ve heard it so many times that I wonder if Christian bookstores are selling coffee cups coated in lead paint. Recycling is earth worship? I suppose gardening is also earth worship. As is going outside at all. Best to just stay indoors all day, running the air conditioner full blast, running as many electrical appliances as we can so we can show the world that we pasty Christians definitely don’t worship the earth.

P doesn’t believe recyclers are earth-worshippers, but he is leery of anyone who preaches global warming. While they themselves may not worship the earth, they’ve at least “fallen for” the idea that we need to coddle the earth. The earth, to him, is fine. It’s self-repairing, like a shaving cut. If the particular shaving cut happens to be a giant oil spill, no problem—the earth will somehow magically absorb the oil, because that’s how God made it.

“Waitaminnit,” I said. “That sounds an awful lot like the idea that the earth is a living being. Are you sure you haven’t fallen for the earth-worshippers’ propaganda?”

“No,” he said, “because it’s not. God fixes it.”

“And you’re figuring that if we pollute the earth like crazy, God will fix the pollution before it destroys the planet.”

“Something like that.”

“How big does the pollution have to get before God fixes it? I’m thinking of Chernobyl, fr’instance. There’s a whole lot of irradiated Ukraine thanks to that disaster.”

“Yeah, but there could’ve been so much more pollution if God hadn’t stepped in. Remember how the scientists were talking about a big toxic cloud that would destroy Europe? God stopped that from happening.”

“Out of curiosity, do you figure God fixes other instances of human irresponsibility so that it doesn’t result in untold human suffering? Inadequate levees, for example?”

And the conversation switched to New Orleans (even though I was thinking of the Mississippi River flooding Illinois at the time) and we didn’t really continue on the subject of environmentalism... but the fact is that P already had his mind made up about the Christian’s responsibility towards the earth he or she lives on: Screw it. At the End, God’s gonna make us a new one anyway.

That’s another all-too-common Christian perspective I’ve heard. But the dopey thing is that P, and many others, believe Jesus will return to reign over the earth for a thousand years before the very End… so He’s not gonna make a new earth for at least a millennium. Seems a long time to be living in a garbage dump of our own making. Perhaps we shouldn’t make it one, then?

June’08 Synchroblog.

I’m participating in two synchroblogs this month; some of the folks wanted to write about being missional Christians, and some wanted to write about environmentalism, and some REALLY wanted to write about missional Christians, and people got snippy and feelings were hurt and… we’re doing two. My attitude is the more the merrier.

So if you want to read one of the others, select it from the pull-down menu and click, “I’m tired of Kent already.”

Sonja Andrews: “Little green men.” Sally Coleman: “God so loved.” David Fisher: “Bashing SUVs for Jesus.” Adam Gonnerman: “Rediscovering humanity’s primal commission.” Steve Hayes: “Saints and animals.” K.W. Leslie: “When Christians weasel out of their environmental responsibilities.” Matt Stone: Green Christian manifesto.” Phil Wyman: “Is it all about the green?” Cobus van Wyngaard: “Turn or burn? A new liberal hell?”