I hadn’t wanted to write a post like this because usually when I read posts like this they’re always kind of snarky and I wanted to avoid the snark.
But I’ve been popping over to Facebook every now and again this evening and I’m struck by how today is Earth Day and Good Friday and an Intermediate Day of Passover. Yet most of the posts on Facebook were about Earth Day.
You know what I mean: “We’re celebrating Earth Day! Send us your tips for how to live Green!”
I maintain that if you live Holy, you also live Green. After all, “The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness thereof.” Because we love the Lord, we love and honour the creation God has placed around us. So I have no problem with Earth Day as a thing to do and talk about. But I am a little sad at all the ways people seem to think that worshipping the Creator is somehow LESS than worshipping the creation.
Why, exactly, is it odd to say that this earth was made by that God so we choose to worship the God? To honour the God?
I fully understand and respect that worshipping God is not a choice everyone has made. Your choices are your choices and I would not dishonour God’s gift of free will to take it from another. But, man! Worshipping God is NOT backward. Especially when compared against worshipping the creation.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Heh. Today I almost tweeted:
The best way to Love Your Mother is to faithfully Love Your Father.
Then I find that you’ve posted basically the same thing, but saying it in a much better and more polite fashion.
Amen.
The concept of “green living” is mostly government-created and is just revived pagan Earth-mother mythos. It has little place in Christian thought, but why would that stop some Christians from syncretizing with it?
http://www.intervarsity.org/news/good-friday-and-earth-day
Jay,
I know that syncretism is a dirty word for many people because it implies a sort of rolling over and giving in, letting the humanistic (in this specific case) hold sway over Christian thought.
I would never advocate subsuming all of “Green” thinking into Christianity, especially the parts which revere the non-human elements of creation and value them more highly than humanity. (ie. Zero Population Growth, forced sterilization, family limitation etc.). Nor would I ever encourage any Christian to embrace false scientific teachings or inaccurate gimmicks. (Carbon footprint calculations and Carbon Offsets are silly and I think it was silly of Intervarsity to make that part of their thing.)
But I think a key part of loving our neighbour, doing unto the least of these, giving our extra coat, etc. is to do all we can to see that we are not wasteful, that we are not destructive and that we work toward making things like clean water available to all those for whom Christ died. I see no harm in this, and since I and my husband have lived this way long before ‘Green’ was ever a thing I tend to believe that Greenism as branded and packaged in the world is their attempt to syncretise with US. 😉
God redeemed and sanctified me. God has done the same things with Eostre and Yule. Why not Greenism too?
I think I mostly agree with what you’re saying, though I think greenism isn’t necessary because not being wasteful is axiomatically a bad thing — it’s already bad by the very definition of the word.
Most green theories, aside from the Mother earth mythos, are repackaged Marxist theory: the holders of capital contribute to a wasteful lifestyle (for lack of a better term) for properly responding to consumer demand, and so consumers have to be resocialized (at taxpayers’ expense, at times) into consuming less. Without getting too deep into politics, subsidized lifestyles contribute to waste. We would be more responsible with our resources if we were allowed to take more ownership of them.
Jay, I think the concept of Christian stewardship predates the US government by a good 1800 years. Probably more. It also predates Marx by 1600 years. Not sure why you think that it has “little place” in Christian thought — you can’t get more than a couple of pages into the Bible (Gen 6-9) without encountering it as one of the fundamental charges to humans. It continues to recur as a theme throughout both the Old (the Psalm that Kat quoted, the admonitions in Ezekiel 34 or Isaiah 5:8, etc) and it’s all over the New Testament. We actually are called to care for the earth and prosper its fruitfulness even as God keeps and sustains us.
Happy Easter, Kat.
I’m not disagreeing with that. I don’t think that Christian stewardship = state-approved environmentalism.
Jay, you might want to Google up the Green Bible. no doubt the folks who put it together had an agenda but it should at least make it clear that taking care of creation is not only some that has a place in Christian thought, but is rather clearly commanded of Christians.
Jay, I guess perhaps my use of the word “Green” has clouded the issue, and I’m sorry. I know, in retrospect, that I should’ve used a less politically-charged word.
Most of the other folks commenting have tolerated me for awhile now and know me to be a staunch Libertarian who finds pretty much any government intervention an anathema and a tragedy leading to individual inaction for Christians. They don’t see the political spectrum the same way at all, but are kind to me nevertheless. 😉
I realize, though, that for those new to me and my writing style it probably does appear that I’m embracing some sort of throw-our-lots-in ecumenism that embraces various treaties and other methods of wealth redistribution. If they weren’t busy trying to clarify my position on environmental stewardship I think they might laugh themselves sick at the idea of ME being the person to take that type of position.
I’ve stopped discussing politics on my blog for a long list of reasons, so my positions–while still firmly held–are admittedly not as readily apparent.
BUT where I think I see us as a Church running into problems is when we throw the very precious baby of environmental stewardship out with the bathwater of partisan rhetoric. I would in fact argue that had we been doing a better job following those many commandments to their logical end, there might not be a problem now. Politics so often tfinds itself trying to patch up the holes left by Christians who aren’t doing as we’ve been called.
Yes, bright lines can be drawn from the modern Green movement to various forms of non-Christian worship as well as non-Conservative political philosophies. That doesn’t mean we as Christians should turn our back on basic questions of Creation Stewardship. After all, bright lines can be drawn from some older missions groups to Communist and revolutionary groups, but we as a church aren’t about to turn our backs on missional outreach.
I hope I’m clearing things up regarding my perspective and not just further muddying the waters. (ha! I didnt mean to make a pun…just realized it after I typed that in. ) And Happy Easter to all of you reading and/or participating in the convo.
Thanks, Bridget, for the good wishes.
Instead of harping on this issue, I’d like to point out we have some things and common: I’m also an INTJ and I’m an anarcho-capitalist (hence the “government is yuck” sentiments). We might agree moreso on this green issue but there is the problem of definitions.
Either way, Happy Easter! That’s more important anyway.
Sorry… “INTJ” ?
And yes, I think the Resurrection is far more important too.
Katherine’s about page, right at the top.
INTJ is a personality type. I’m married to a man who spent the first three years of our marriage working on a graduate degree in Psychology. As his guinea pig I took every measurement test known to man. I know my IQ as determined by two tests, my results of a Rohrschach, where I stand on the MMPI and the fact that I am basically Mr. Spock…because that’s pretty much what “INTJ” means.
Each letter stands for something. I is Intuitive, N escapes me at the moment, T is Thinking and J is Judging. Other people get other cocktails depending on where they fall. (For example, the opposite of T is F for Feeling).
If you look it up there are a ton of sites on it. (tim just walked in the room and said it’s the Myers-Briggs test, known in his mind as the B.S. Pop Psych test. It may be BS but Ive found that it is accurate in my case and does help others grasp where Im coming from. )
I wrote this on an iPad with the “help” of Autocorrect. Please excuse any weird out of context words or odd typos.
OK. Thanks.
The N in INTJ is for iNtuitive. The I is for introverted. Don’t worry, you’re not really an alien, but a human being. 🙂
I’m extremely libertarian in my views, and I tend to make people angry w/ my opinions. I can’t see how to be any other way what with the greed and corruption of man. Most people I know are self-proclaimed socialists or communists. Don’t get that at all–great in an ideal world, which we don’t have.