[When] it comes to broadening the reach of the environmental movement to red state America, the real savior turns out to be the Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, America's most influential Christian lobbying group, representing 45,000 churches and roughly 30 million believers across the country. According to two new documentaries, it is evangelicals like Cizik who may do more to make global warming a front-and-center issue than hundreds of white-wine fundraisers in Bel-Air and Manhattan's Upper West Side.
calendarlive.com: THE BIG PICTURE / PATRICK GOLDSTEIN - Believers preach gospel of green
Genesis 1: 27-28 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens nad over every living thing that moves on the earth."
I know of a lady who has dominion over her backyard. She walks out there and says "hello ladies" to her flowers, and smiles. I hear her garden is beautiful. She lovingly waters and feeds her plants, and makes sure to keep the weeds out. She spends lots of time with her backyard. Sometimes she has to cut the rose bushes way back and it almost seems cruel to completely cut off branches and the bushes look barren afterwards, but sure enough they grow back even more full and beautiful.
God pronounced His creation "good" several times. Then He gave us stewardship over it, telling us to have dominion over it, just as He has dominion over us. What a priviledge and responsibility to be faithful caretakers of the earth!
He also made man in His image, and called us "very good", as opposed to just "good". We are set apart from the rest of creation. There is a thick ontological line between man and beast, and between beast and plant, and between plant and earth. Let's not confuse ourselves with nature, but let's take really good care of it.
1 comment:
good stuff. I tend to be skeptical of environmentalist activism; maybe not so much because I think they're right or wrong in the claims they make, but rather I doubt the sincerity of zealousness. I know I was vegetarian for political reasons back in high school; I read a lot about animal cruelty and such, even gave a speech on the horrors of eating meat.. But as much as I believed the claims I made, my passion for it had more to do with having a cause to identify with, a cause to distinguish myself from the status quo, if you will, than the cause itself. I can't help project my own egoism I once had over this subject on the environmentalists I run into now; I can't help thinking that if there were no animal cruelty and no environmental problems that environmentalists would actually not be happy because they have nothing more to fight for. (perhaps the situation is analogous to young missionary types who think merely converting people to Christianity is the goal of the kingdom; what would they be passionate about if everyone were already a Christian?)
On a theoretical note: I find naturalism and the truth of evolution (if there is such a truth) a huge problem for modern environmentalist rhetoric. Environmentalists often make the distinction between what's natural (eg. what's found in nature untouched by homo sapiens) and what's unnatural (what homo sapiens have done to damage the environment) as a veridical distinctions and indispensable for their case. But if naturalism is true, then everything that does happen is a product of nature, which includes the destruction of the ecosystem. If evolution is true, what homo sapiens do is as natural as anything else that happens in nature (akin to the comet that killed the dinosaurs; the event of the comet was completely natural, and hence a natural destruction). The actions of homo sapiens, too, is something inevitable as well, for if all things (which would include homo sapien behavior) is a product of matter and natural law, then for us to not do what we have done (like destroying the environment as a much as we have) is something that could not have been prevented, for who could transgress the necessity of physical laws to do otherwise? Aren't miracles such as these impossible?
Theism provides a way out of course: The natural/unnatural distinction is possible since the ecosystem is designed to be thriving, and therefore to destroy it would be to do something unnatural. Furthermore if theism is true than humans are free creatures whose behavior is not dictated by natural laws, in which case it provides grounds for praise and blame since humans have the genuine chance to not harm the environment in the way that they have.
So I agree with the environmentalist concern that we should take care of environment. But until a non-theistic anthropology can make sense natural/unnatural distinction as well as show how human behavior is an exception to universal necessity of physical-chemical laws, such concerns are groundless.
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