“Don’t Trash My Planet” - God
Published September 20th, 2006 in Hearing the WordOur environment has been in the news a lot recently with the passing of Steve Irwin. And after listening to his daughter Bindi give a tribute at his memorial service my guess is that it will have a much higher profile in the coming months and years. The planet is fragile and the life it sustains is under threat, and we humans are the only ones in any sort of place to do something about it.
However, environmental concerns have not often been part of church life. Instead, it’s been seen as the realm of the ‘greenies’ and not something that even registers on the radar when it comes to faith. Some groups have gone so far as to blame Christianity for the state the planet is in at the moment because of some bad biblical interpretations of what it means to have ‘dominion’ over the earth.
Forunately some things have begun to change, and there are some excellent books written on the ecological theology and the link between faith and nature. On Sunday night we started to explore this when Greg gave us a message entitled “God’s Earth”.
We spent the night looking at a number of DVD clips (Planet Earth, Creation and The Wild Thornberry’s) and having communion together with an environmental theme. Then Greg spoke about some of the things that have been on his heart about the environment.
Greg shared about his love for beautiful days and getting back to nature whenever he can. For him, the natural environment is one of the places that he can best connect with God. Nature is amazing and complex and the way everything interacts together is astounding. Genesis tells us that we humans are the only part of the natural world that was given a special responsibility - to take care of the world and the plants and animals that inhabit it. The Earth is a gift from God and something we should look after so we can hand it back in pristine condition.
But do we recognise the planet as a gift? We looked at some stats that suggested we are exploiting the planet for everything we can, rather than managing it in a sustainable way. The worsening natural distasters are perhaps signs that we have medled too far - should we interpret these as God letting us know of his anger at what we’ve done?
It’s difficult to know what we can do as individuals to make any sort of difference. However, knowing the impact we have now is a good place to start. Greg took us through the survey at http://ecofoot.org to explain the concept of the ecological footprint. Basically this gives us an indication of how many planets it would take to sustain the worlds population if everybody lived as we did. For most in the Western world, it takes multiple planets.
Thus, being faithful disciples of Jesus means doing what we can to reduce our ecological footprint and becoming more intentional about how we treat the planet. Environmentalism is an issue of faith. It is an issue of discipleship. And it is something that we need to be more concerned about.
Leave a comment about what you and those in your household are doing to look after the planet that God has given us.
err… I don’t think you need any laser hair removal, Matt… that link is http://ecofoot.org - forget the http://www.
(oh- and a bit frugal on the c’s line one: reently should be recently . )
Strange, when I type in the www version all is good, but I get sent to some strange link in the post. All fixed now anyway.
Now, if it was laser hair addition, it would be a different matter altogether!
(Beat you to the ‘c’ one too…)
We do Clean Up Australia Day every year for church, both at Franga in the evening, and with the Huddle. Not much, but a start.
Hey Digger. Gotta thank you - it was your blog that gave me the idea for the footprint survey. Our church has decided to do Clean up Australia day next year, and I think we are doing tree planting day as well. Its all a good start.
Some other links I used (or recommend)
http://www.climatecrisis.net
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/
http://www.sustainus.org/
http://www.sdp.gov/
http://www.climateark.org/
We should mention that Digger does ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ in the nude.
That doesnt suprise me somehow.
I went through the test clicking all the “right” answers- as extreme as that might be, vegan, no electricity, no running water, no car, motorbike, no flying, max animal/bike/walking power, no packaging, 7 people in a house of 50 sqm or less, etc etc. And I got “if everyone lived like you, we’d need one planet”
pretty sad, really.
Mmm, I know what you mean Alison, because the fact is that we are in the richest 5-10% of people in the world, and a lot of people would have 1 or 2 cars per family, or one per person who can drive. If everyone in the world was like that, there would be more cars than than landmass to put them on for example. I think we merely need to be more careful about how we do things, for example, I think Nuclear Fusion could be a great source of power, but it is quite hard to attain at the moment, due to technicalities like having to have 1000’s of degrees to achieve fusion. I think it’s more about minimisation than complete removal. We do have to be realistic. I could be wrong though…
Thanks General, yes its true we do it in the nude Matt-we’re not ashamed of the bodies God has given us. Not like you clothes wearing Christians, so superficial, don’t you know God looks at the heart not the physical appearance, dear dear, such little faith, I shall pray for you…
Thanks Digs - it means so much!
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Here’s a way that Australians can sign up to let their local politicians know they want to see action on our climate problems. Take a look, sign up, watch your suburb appear as an orange dot. It’s fun and meaningful.