Environment

Any room for the environment?

Q: If Jesus tells us that our Christian responsibilities are summed up in the command to "love God, and love our neighbour as ourselves" does that leave any room for caring about the environment?

totality vs centre

A: This twofold summary ("love God & neighbour") is a brilliant summary of the Christian life. But we need to think about what sort of summary it is. There are at least a couple of options: does it express the totality of our obligation to God, or the centre of our obligation to God? Does it sum up everything in the Christian life - without any remainder - or does it point us to the core?

more »If you adopt the 'totality' answer you will run into trouble. It's hard to explain why God puts Adam in the garden of Eden 'to take care of it (Gen. 2v15). It's better to see the twofold summary as expressing the 'centre' of our obligation to God. In one sense, if we are loving God with all our heart and mind and soul, everything else will drop into place. But, sinful as we are, we probably need more direction that that. Jesus gives us more direction by pointing to our neighbour. If we fully love God and our neighbour then (as before) everything else will drop into place. But (also as before) we are still sinful and prone to misunderstand, so God has given us the whole Bible to show us what that looks like. Care for God's creation finds it's place there; it's not the central place - but it's not no place either.

a) Yes

The world we live in is not the world as God originally intended it to be. There were no natural disasters in Genesis 1. But the human race choose to rebel against God - and that had consequences. We now live in a world under curse. We are out of kilter with God, and our world is out of kilter with us. Ultimately everything wrong in our world traces back to sin.

b) No

But - you can't jump from the general to the particular. Our world is generally under curse because of sin. That doesn't mean that every bad thing that happens is a direct judgement on some particular sin. Jesus makes that point in Luke 13. A tower had fallen on some people. Others came to Jesus and asked if the victims had been especially bad sinners. Jesus said "No" - but then warned everybody to repent, or they would perish too! The world is generally under curse and judgement. But you can't always link a particular sin with a particular judgement.

c) Yes again.

But then again, sometimes you can. We live in a world with real consequences. And all to often we ignore them - we use the world in foolish or risky or uninformed ways. If we build houses on a flood plain they may well get flooded. If we build houses under a volcano they may well get melted. If we build houses on a fault line they may well get shaken to bits. One way sin works in us, is to encourage us to grab the short term gains - and forget about whether there are any long term pains. This was Adam and Eve's temptation in the garden. It the temptation loan companies use to lure us into debt. It's a factor in nearly every personal sin. It's a factor at for whole communities too. Climate change is an example of the community side of sin. It's not down to any one individual. No one sin has caused climate change. But it is the result of millions and billions of little choices, all building on each other. Little touches of greed, carelessness, laziness, exploitation of the world. And ignorance. As a race, we've turned away from God, and so cut ourselves off from his wisdom about how to take care of our world. So things go wrong.

Climate change and earthquakes - are they caused by sin? Yes - and no - and yes again.