St. Timothy Lutheran Church

I'm sitting here on my couch on what should have been a nice, relaxing, fun Father's Day, but instead, because of an acute attack of allergies, I'm feeling pretty miserable. My nose is raw from lotion-less tissues, and the the only result of the allergy medication I took before lunch has been a foggy head, so since I'm unable to do much else, I figured I'd sit down and read a spell.

 John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, recently addressed the San Diego Chamber of Commerce concerning the topic of global warming. To sum up his speech, global warming, at least insofar as it is being influenced by humans, is a complete and utter farce. He concludes that the global warming frenzy was cooked up by influential environmental activists as a means of giving credibility to their stance against the use of fossil fuels. We should, according to John, ignore the claims about global warming, and "get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth."

It seems to me that many American Christians share John's position, at least as I understand it from this transcript. I grew up around people who referred to environmentalists as Tree Huggers and Earth Biscuits, and who ridiculed anyone who even suggested that maybe we shouldn't be chopping down so many trees or burning plastic and Styrofoam. There are a lot of cement factories in my home town, and even twenty years ago, there were a (very) few people saying that these factories were contaminating our air, but nobody I was hanging out with - mostly Christians - took them seriously. Instead, we had lots of jokes at their expense. Lots of conservative Christians will point out that God told us to "rule over and subdue" the Earth, and that we should take full advantage of the resources with which the Earth provides us.

On the other extreme are radical environmentalists who literally do chain themselves to trees in order to prevent them from being chopped down, or who resort to violence against their fellow humans when they believe them to be a threat to the environment. They spend more time defending endangered plants and animals than they spend trying to reduce human suffering, and argue that human life is no more sacred than any other life, plant or animal.

Without going to that extreme, I suggest that Christians need to be more environmentally conscious than we are known to be. It is true that the first commandment God gave us after "be fruitful and multiply" was "subdue the Earth and rule over it," which means that we are to take advantage of the resources with which the Earth provides us. It is true that Humans are the crowning achievement of creation, the only creatures made in God's image, and therefore, in many ways, the highest in the created order.

However, God also gave us a very close relationship with the rest of His creation. Genesis 2:15 says that God placed Adam in the garden of Eden "to work it and keep it." It is highly significant that when Adam rebelled against God, God responded by cursing the ground which Adam was to work. This shocking turn of events, the violent entry of sin into Creation, took place at a foundational level, and, likewise, the only fitting consequences would have to be foundational. Adam would continue to eat of and be sustained by the produce of the land, but now the land would only begrudgingly yield its fruit.

Before sin, Adam's job, Adam's purpose, next to living in relationship with God, was to care for the Earth that God had created. Because of the effects of sin, that job is made more difficult, but it has not been eradicated. When we carry on with our plans without regard to the effects it will have on Creation, we violate one of our fundamental purposes.

So, I agree with John Coleman that it would be very difficult to state conclusively that we are the cause of "global warming," but I also agree with those who say that we need to work hard at reducing the amount of waste gasses and chemicals we're pumping into our air and water.  Of course, this can be taken to legalistic extremes, but I do believe that we, as Christians and individuals, should give careful thought to the impact we have on the Earth by our lifestyles, that we should work toward recycling more, wasting less, using less, and polluting less. When we don't, we're only shooting ourselves in the foot.