Save the Planet

Well, I’m at it again. I have finished another go round through The Bible. This time through, I’m going to walk through the ESV.

Environmentalism is a word I think we all talk a lot about in our time. I don’t know if this sounds mean or not, but for all the talk of environmentalists, I don’t think I’ve ever met one. Have you ever asked anyone to give up some of their unnecessary luxuries? I won’t even try. I don’t want to be hated. The way I understand it, environmentalism is kind of like a religion, where no matter what you sacrifice, you’re never really good enough to qualify.

I’ve gotten rid of my incandescent bulbs, but I’m not in the club. This past winter, we kept our house at 15 degrees celcius to save on our natural gas. I’m still not in the club. This summer, my wife and I won’t be using our A/C in order to reduce our electrical consumption. Even if we do have the endurance, I doubt that this will even win a position with the club. I feel like I do most of what environmentalists advocate, but I never seem to fit in.

Being environmental has more to do with waving a banner, owning a Prius and burning a candle during earth hour than actually being good stewards of God’s creation.

Genesis 1:28 (English Standard Version)
28And 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 and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

You can keep your cell phone, even if you don’t need it. I really don’t care. As people, we were called to have dominion over the earth. Having dominion implies that we were to have both the authority over and responsibility for all living things on earth. If we envision the life that the first people lived, it really wouldn’t much resemble the life that you and I are living now would it? Where is the plane ride to the Dominican? Where are the consumer electronics? Where's the night life?

How many of us could be content in the life that Paul seems to be advocating when he’s talking to Timothy?

1 Timothy 6:7-9 (New Living Translation)
7 After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. 8 So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.
9 But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.

If we have food and clothing, we should be content. I don’t know about you, but most of the time, I want at least a little bit more than that. I like to think that I live a fairly simple life, without having too much unecessarry consumption in it. I do like my laptop. I like my cell phone. I like playing my NES. Most of us like the things that this world has to offer more than we should. It isn’t the government’s fault. I’m not even advocating that we turn back the clock.

The debate in our time has very little to do with whether or not we should be good stewards of the earth. It has more to do with answering these two questions;

1 How do I do that?
2 How many pleasures can I keep without wrecking the place?