Views and Brews: The Environment

Last night we hosted our first Theology Pub, Views and Brews. My anxieties over attendance and dialogue were ill-founded – it turned out that we had a good turnout of around twenty people, and our discussion was lively.

With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day just last week and hot topics in the news, nationally with the oil spill in Louisiana, and locally with the proposed Mega-Dump landfill expansion I decided that a conversation on the human responsibility with the environment would be profitable for drawing a crowd, hearing multiple perspectives on the topic, and being stretched by the Biblical perspective, which I believe many Christians are foreign too.

After discussing our relationship with the environment, whether the issues are merely practical or moral, how we’re failing in some regards to our responsibilities – and how being made aware of environmental care we’re more active in our responsibility, how the issue of the environment is more than, “reduce, reuse, recycle” but is complicated by political and economic motivation, and finally why Christians have the stereotype of being “unconcerned” with the environment, I, with the help of Francis Schaeffer and Joe Thorn, laid out a Biblical perspective on the issue of our relationship with the environment, which is what I wanted to carry over to the blog for those who couldn’t be at Views and Brews last night. (Wow that was a long sentence – almost Puritanical!)

While some lay the blame for the ecological crisis on Christianity, that even in a post-Christian world we have a “Cultural-Christian mentality” which seems to think, “why take care of the environment, it’s all gonna burn” the crisis of our ecology is also to be shared by pantheism. Pantheism holds that we are all of the same “essence,” therefore we ought to take care of the earth because, simply, it’s a part of us. This worldview has been pervasive since the 1960′s.

The first part of the Biblical perspective is, unlike what pantheism believes, (that we’ll all take care of each other and the earth because we’re all a part of it) that, honestly, we don’t really give a rip about our neighbor. We’re selfish. As Jonathan Edwards said, if our family is first we neglect other families, if our nation is first we neglect other nations. This is why racism, sexism, and lack of care for other and the environment exist.

The second part of the Biblical perspective Frances Schaeffer explains beautifully in his book Pollution and the Death of Man. Schaeffer says, “If I love the Lover, I love what the Lover has made. Perhaps this is the reason why so many Christians feel an un-reality in their Christian lives. If I don’t love what the Lover has made – in the area of man, in the area of nature – and really love it because he made it, do I really love the Lover?”

If we love the Creator, we ought to love the creation.

The final aspect of the Bible perspective is that since God is the creator, the world and all that is in the world belongs to Him. It is His – it’s not our own. God has given us the responsibility of caring for creation and using it wisely. This is why, especially for Christians, we should care for and be good stewards of the environment. That we don’t reflects our sin problem and need for redemption. The crisis of ecology is ended when the crisis of the human soul is ended. Of course, Jesus is the only One through whom redemption is made. The sin of man and the corruption of creation is healed in Him. (These are nearly 98% the words of Joe Thorn. I maintain that he is the smart one, and I am the “simpler” one, though with the better mustache).

Simply, then, bad ecology is bad theology.

Put it on a biodegradable bumper sticker and stick it on your bicycle!