June 25, 2006

“Our God Is Our Creator”

What Does God Say About Environmentalism?

Contemporary Issues Series

Rev. Brian D. Hawes

Prayer and Scripture: Judy

 

·       In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Quickly, God was faced with a class action suit for failure to file an environmental impact statement. God was granted a temporary permit for the project, but was stymied with the “cease and desist” order for the earthly part. Then God said, "Let there be light!"  Immediately, the officials demanded to know how the light would be made. Would there be strip mining? What about thermal pollution? God explained that the light would come from a large ball of fire. God was granted provisional permission to make light, assuming that no smoke would result from the ball of fire, and that he would obtain a building permit and to conserve energy, He would have the light out half the time. God agreed and offered to call the light "Day" and the darkness "Night". The officials replied that they were not interested in semantics. God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plant yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit." The EPA agreed, so long as only native seed was used. Then God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth." The officials pointed out that this would require approval from the Department of Game coordinated with the Heavenly Wildlife Federation and the Audubon Society. Everything was okay until God said the project would be completed in six days. The officials said it would take at least two hundred days to review the applications and the impact statement. After that there would be a public hearing. Then there would be ten to twelve months before...  At this point, God created Hell.

·       We joke about how ridiculous some of the stances taken by environmentalists are, but here is a story that illustrates how easily our society accepts their views.

·       George Rennau writes, A freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26, 1997. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide."  And for plenty of good reasons, since it: 1. Can cause excessive sweating and vomiting.  2. It is a major component in acid rain.  3. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state. 4. Accidental inhalation can kill you.  5. It decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.  6. It has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.  He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical. Forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical was H20 (water). The title of his prize-winning project was, "How Gullible Are We?" He feels the conclusion is obvious (as cited on SermonCentral.com).

·       In some respects, we’ll believe anything anyone claiming to have some scientific expertise will tell us.  But the truth about environmentalism is much more sinister.  The true god behind environmentalist and their agenda, including global warming, is pantheism.

·       Kevin L. Clauson, in his article “Environmentalism: A Modern Idolatry”, writes, Pantheism, in a nutshell, makes no distinction (or at most a very unclear distinction) between the Creator and the creature. According to pantheism, god is not transcendent. In practical terms, god is in all, and all is part of god. Because the entire creation and god are one, there is a close relation to animism. Animals, trees, flowers, insects, and human beings are all part of god, and god is "in" all of them. A consistent pantheist (and it is doubtful there are or can be very many) would hold that plants and animals are, in a sense, simultaneously our "brothers" and god. To harm them in any way is to harm our kinsmen -- creation and god.  Pantheism deifies and idolizes nature and at the same time leads to a departure from reality and a withdrawal from any meaningful tasks in subduing the created world for God and the material benefit of man. Economic and technological progress halt. This is not an academic exercise. Literally millions of people throughout the world, rejecting Christianity and its view of man, creation, and God, either partially or completely accept the idolatry of pantheism. They adopt an agenda and a vocabulary (e.g., "appropriate technology", "small is beautiful", "soft energy path", etc.). They manifest their religion through such "good works" as guarding animal rights, stopping the deterioration of the ozone layer, saving the whale, eliminating pesticides, or in a more all-encompassing way, saving "spaceship earth." In short, pantheism confuses the creation and its Creator and deifies the creation by locating God in the creation as well as locating the creation in God. Thus, pantheism idolizes nature and provides a consistent religious base for environmentalism. Since men will force their observations and "data" to conform to their religious world view, we must briefly examine the false "science" undergirding environmentalism (or we should say serving the environmentalist idol).  Man is always trying to explain life without God, for to acknowledge God and His power is to acknowledge the need to change our lives and accept His authority.  So instead, we come up with as many systems of propaganda as we can to promote other gods.  One such other god is global warming.

·       Kevin L. Clauson adds, Many scientists, however, question whether there really is a warming after all. Some researchers note that "the Northern Hemisphere actually experienced a cooling period between the 1940's and the 1970's, which led to predictions in the 1970's that we might be headed for a new Ice Age."[10] The point here is that there is scant scientific evidence for a catastrophic global warming (nor for some mythical "Ice Age" either).

·       Martin Livermore, in a BBC News opinion piece, wrote, In the West, with the decline of organised Christianity and the discrediting of Marxism, environmentalism has taken the place of religion for many.  In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature". Googling "environmentalism as religion" returns 854,000 hits.  The new orthodoxy teaches that Mankind is guilty of Original Sin by despoiling Eden (the pre-Industrial world).  This guilt must be assuaged by repairing the damage and protecting all other forms of life.  For the deepest Greens, the only real solution is the disappearance of our species from the Earth - the ultimate sacrifice - and for many others a much smaller "optimum" population of humans is a desirable goal.  The point I’m trying to make here is that environmentalism is a form of idolatry, and its followers will do anything they can to promote it, including intimidating dissenting scientists into silence.  And since radical environmentalists have given the movement a bad reputation, they now couch it in terms of global warming, a much more socially acceptable term.  But it is still old-fashioned pantheism, even if it is repackaged.

·       Piotr C. Brzezinski, an editor of the Harvard Crimson, wrote in an opinion piece, Between 1970 and 2006, global cooling predictions mysteriously morphed into global warming fears. Concerns about rampant Dodo-ism proved baseless: the rate of animal extinction in the U.S. has been declining since the 1930s, and only seven species have gone extinct since 1973. And rather than running out of resources, the world has experienced a commodity glut, with the prices of most metals and minerals dropping by 30 to 50 percent. The litany of failed apocalypses goes on.  Not that this history of crying wolf has chastened contemporary environmentalists. Activists and researchers still issue dire warnings with mind-numbing regularity. Just three weeks ago, a panic-stricken Time magazine story on global warming shouted, "Be Worried, Be Very Worried." Harping on worst-case scenarios like a 220-foot rise in the ocean's water level, the article more closely resembled "The Day After Tomorrow" than a serious report.  Although such scare mongering persists, it has reached the point of diminishing returns. Knowing the movement's track record of false alarms, the American public dismiss dire environmental warnings out of hand. Moreover, these alarming reports attract a disproportionate amount of media attention, discrediting the environmentalist movement twice over: First when the sensational predictions drown out more plausible reports, then again when the highly-publicized disaster fails to occur.  Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. environment is getting healthier...  Of course, environmentalists claim credit for this trend. Alarmists can't lose: either doomsday comes true, or their warnings averted disaster. Certainly, part of the positive trend is due to activism and government regulations, but much of the change is a result of increased technological efficiency as well as longstanding trends that predate the rise of environmentalism.   We know the sinister nature of this movement, and we know the damage it’s doing to us and to people all over the world.  But what can we do about it?

·       Our responsibility as Christians is to develop and promote and act on an appropriate view of the environment.  Genesis 1:26-31, from the New American Standard Bible¸ says, Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the ground.”  27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.  31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. 

·       One of the first things we’ve got to notice is that man is not the problem with the world.  The problem lies in how we take care of it.  God in this passage gives man the responsibility of ruling, or stewarding, the earth.  Man isn’t an infection that needs to be destroyed in order for the earth to survive.  Man is the ruler and caretaker of the earth.  Now, the way we’ve chosen to rule and care take the earth is definitely up for criticism, but we’re not the virus our earth can live without.  Sin has distorted and perverted how we use the earth, but we’re not the invaders the environmentalists would make us out to be.  So what can we do to respond?

·       First, remember that Jesus Christ sustains the earth.  Hebrews 1:3 says, The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things His powerful word.  Even though the world seems like it’s out of control, Jesus still sustains the earth until the day of His return.  When those dire warnings about the average temperature and the level of the oceans and so-called greenhouse gas emissions are screaming through the headlines, it doesn’t matter in terms of what’s really going to happen to the earth.  Jesus is in charge.  Jesus won’t let anything outside of His will happen to the earth.  In Genesis 9:11 God promises that the earth will not be flooded out – I solemnly promise never to send another flood to kill all living creatures and destroy the earth.  When God says it, we can bank on it.  The earth will be destroyed on judgment day, but not before.  Remember that Jesus sustains the earth.

·       Second, become a better steward of the earth yourself.  The Message puts Genesis 1:26 this way: God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”  God didn’t create us to abuse the earth – He created us to be responsible stewards of the earth.  If all of us work to cut down on the amount of pollution we contribute to our environment, we can make a difference.  Environmentalists would agree, but they would take it one step farther and say that whenever it comes down to plants and animals or man, man is the one to suffer.  God says that man is more important than the rest of creation.  In Matthew 6:26, Jesus says, Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not worth much more than they?  Because we are made in the image of God, we are much more valuable than the rest of creation, which means we are the ones charged with caring for it.  Mankind always has to come first, but we’ve got to treasure creation as much as God does.

·       Third, our response to those who value creation above Creator and above mankind has to be one of love.  In John 3:17, Jesus says, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.  I have to admit that it’s very easy at times to condemn environmentalists, to come down hard on those who promote policies and practices that hurt people and who promote falsehoods like global warming.  Jesus doesn’t condemn them, and neither should we.  We can very easily condemn what they do without condemning them if we remember that God loves them just as much as He loves us.  We can hate their lies because their lies hurt people, but as Christians we cannot hate them.  In Matthew 5:43, Jesus says, You have heard that the law of Moses says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  44 But I say to you, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  46 If you love only those who love you, what good is that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that.  Sober and profound words.  Whatever they say and whatever they do, we’ve got to love the environmentalists even while we hate what they do.

·       I have to confess that I haven’t always felt this way about environmentalists, and even now I struggle with alternately laughing at them and wanting them to get stranded in the middle of that wilderness they worship so much.  But I remember, as I’m sure you can too, when the spotted owl fiasco caused most of the mills in Oregon to shut down and tens of thousands to lose their jobs.  We were living in Maupin at the time and Kim’s brother and several guys I knew well lost their jobs.  The economy of that area is still devastated by the losses of those mills.  And all this, in spite of considerable scientific evidence that logging and particularly clear-cuts are beneficial to the spotted owl.  Mankind came in second on that debate, and is still suffering the consequences.  My response to the threat on my ability to support my family as well as the mill workers and loggers was one of anger.  It may have even come close to hatred.  But in truth, the environmentalists were and still are only acting according to their religion, what they believe to be true.  They believe the earth and everything on it (except man) to be god, so they act accordingly.

·       We know the truth.  Christ has freed us to act according to His truth.  We can make the choice to love those who worship the creation.  We can make the choice to honor God’s creative powers by being better stewards of what He has created.  We can remember that, no matter what man says, Jesus Christ sustains the earth and will continue to do so until judgment day.  May all of us choose to have a Christ-like response to those who believe otherwise.  They aren’t evil, just deceived.

·       Let’s pray.