Should Christians be “Green”?
This is a vexing question for me and other Christians I know.Â
Personally, as a scientist/engineer/statistician, I find the “evidence” for Global Warming to be highly suspect, and about as convincing as the “evidence” for unguided evolution. I also find that much of what passes for “green” today poses as many, if not more, problems than it solves. Just look at the current debate to eliminate incandescent lightbulbs and replace them with Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL’s) – which have as many, if not more problems, though they consume less electricity.
In Genesis, man is made to be a steward of God’s creation, which He declared “good”, yet many Christians treat environmentalism as “liberal”, lumping it in with a number of ungodly causes, and dismiss it. Some Christians take the fatalistic view that since God will make a “new heavens and a new earth”, what we do here does not matter. We’re riding a borrowed mule, so why should we waste the effort on caring for it when there are bigger fish to fry?
As Rob Bell recently noted, if we, as Christians, do not take the lead in stewardship of the world God made, we risk telling the world that we don’t care about it, regardless of what the book we believe tells us. And he is right – when we ignore/reject problems with the environment, the world will take over and make us irrelevant in the debate. What we will end up with is vividly illustrated in the sad article linked to by CRN yesterday, where the Bible has been replaced with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Where is the balance between worshipping the creation and being good stewards for the Creator?
14 Comments(+Add)
Hey Chris, great post, I too find the going green concept to me more about money and control than it does about the environment. That said we should be wise and smart with our resources. It drives my wife and I nutz that the community where we bought our house last year does not recycling. I do think it important to be good stewards but when you look at the “solutions” they are really more about money transfer than it is about solutions. An example of this is the Kyoto protocol which basically taxes industrial nations and gives the money to the non industrial nations. When I look at that from a large perspective I see worldwide welfare. Of course, the United Nations is the administrator of this, I am not a fan of that at all. Why don’t we spend more time helping people to became more self reliant. Tony Campolo is part of an Org that does this, I forget the name. I am not the biggest fan of Campolo but I can appreciate what he does there.
BTW did you just link to an article from CRN in a “good” sense?
My wife and I typically fall to the right of the political spectrum, but this is one area where we feel a slight disconnect from most conservatives.
While we’re not willing to jump on the carbon-offset bandwagon (which is ludicrously stupid) we do believe there is no harm in doing our part to take care of the world and there is harm n not doing so – though not apocalyptic harm as Gore would have us believe.
We’re not going to teach a Sunday school class at our church about the importance of recycling, but we are going to do everything we can personally to lessen our impact upon the earth. For us that includes recycling (just aluminum right now as Wichita makes it difficult to do anything else), bringing our own canvas bags to the grocery store and driving only when necessary to name a few.
Jeff,
You asked:
If by “good”, you mean that I share their concern, then yes, by all means!
Thanks Chris, now I’m completely paranoid about breaking the CFLs I installed in four of my lights. I thought they were a good idea because they do save energy and they last 5 years.
I really don’t know that to think about the environment. I think both sides make convincing cases. Although I am with you on what Rob said a couple weeks ago.
I own the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” but have yet to read it. Have you read it? If you have, what did you think?
The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, The world, and those who dwell in it. – Psalm 24:1. This is a stewardship issue where it is our obedient duty to treat what God has created with care. God created many things for us to use, like trees and cows so we can use them but not mistreat them.
The real issue is the agenda behind the “green†issue. There is an element that feels as if they have control over the universe as well as their destiny. They have no regard for a Sovereign God or their total depravity. Think about it. They have the audacity to believe that they have invented something from the earth’s resources that can destroy the earth. Things like energy conservation are good stewardship and as Christians we should lead in that stewardship, but we need to be careful to point out that this world and everyone in it must bow to a Holy God. I think you will find that the same group that believes in evolution will lean to global warming which are theories with no empirical data to support them.
I have some of those lights. I’ve not found them to last 5 years by any stretch of the imagination
I’m just going by what the package says, I have haven’t owned any long enough to know for sure.
You know what is interesting, I don’t know if you guys ever listen to Drew Marshall out of Toronto, if you don’t, I think you Em guys would like him a lot. Anyway, he was talking about this on the day before “Earth” day and someone said that Al Gore stated that the levels are carbon that we are at have not been this high in 10,000 years. Hmmm, no cars, no airplanes back then, isn’t his statement self defeating?
No, I understand what you’re saying. I got them because I figured if they really lasted 5 years I’d be saving $$ and helping the environment. Win, win so to speak. I think I did have one that lasted 3 years. I think.
Of course, I’ve got enough steroids and other junk in me right now to kill a horse.
Chris,
As an engineer who specifies lighting systems, I can definitely see the need for energy saving measures. I think the whole issue about “going green” has really been taken over by other interests now. Many of the people who are calling themselves environmentalists were anti-capitalist before, and this is just a new way to stick it to evil corporations.
I guess on this issue, I would fall on the Libertarian side. If enough people are concerned about environmental issues, than the market will respond. I think having more government regulations, will probably just cause more problems than it solves. As far as how a Christian views this issue, I think we should be careful how we handle all of our resources, since in reality, they’re all from God.
The CFL’s are not quite as dangerous as the story implies, http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp, although they still need to be disposed of at a toxic waste dump. Won’t cost you $2000 or kill your family, but a much bigger pain than the alternative.
Brent,
It’s not as if mercury in light bulbs is a new thing, either. They’ve been around since the 1930’s, and yet civilization has made it. Probably a lot of people have broken a fluorescent bulb in their garage or workshop and haven’t died from it.
There’s about 4mg of mercury in a CFL bulb, compared to a about 500mg in a mercury thermometer. So even if one breaks, it’s not nearly as big a deal as that news story makes it out to be.
This is what I’m talking about. The guy who wrote the anti-cfl article is a free enterprise (read pro-business) advocate. While I don’t dispute the case he cites in his story, in light of the Snopes article and the facts that phil brings up, it certainly appears that the anti-cfl story was sensational.
Advocates have agendas. Agendas typically lead to fact spinning. This is why I have a hard time taking Al Gore at his word, and also those that dispute him.
While I understand Bell’s sentiment, I have to disagree with him on principle on this one, because his statement is based on faulty assumption. It doesn’t matter what Christians tell the world regarding their attitude toward the environment, because (at best) the world is going to assume that we don’t care.
Or worse yet, as clearly evidenced by that story that you linked, we aren’t even welcome in the conversation. If you wanna put full-wall murals of Gore up in your hotel and make your guests wipe with leaves, that’s fine. But there’s no reason to remove the Bible unless you’re making a wholesale rejection of it.
Yes, we certainly need to be good stewards of the creation that God has put man in charge of. And we certainly shouldn’t blindly follow Steve Camp’s idiocy. But 90% of what the world perceives as good for the environment is (at best) political or (at worst) stupid. Christians need to do what’s right, not what is politically expendient.
I know that Bell sees relevance as very important, and to some degree, I agree with him. But God’s opinion of us is always more important than man’s. And when (at least for this issue) man is predisposed to thinking ill of us anyway, this ain’t the hill to die on.
Charlie Peacock said the following. It’s more in reference to success, but it’s just as relevant here: