When I was growing up, conservatives often took the position that global warming was a hoax concocted as a sort of desperate rear guard action by environmentalists, a rather silly set of extremists who for some bizarre reason found the Triumph of Capitalism unpalatable. Times have changed [1] and the globe seems to be warming, and the phenomenon has now been given the move neutral and inclusive moniker "Climate Change." One of the arguments from the Right, currently, seems to be that the climate may be changing, but the it couldn't possibility be caused by humans. The argument seems to be that the world is too vast, too intricate and complex, that humans are to small in comparison to make any serious dent in it.
I am not interested really in the politics of the situation or the validity (or lack thereof) of the conservative viewpoint. What I am interested in is the fact that the argument is at least superficially plausible. There seems to be something shocking in the notion that humans could actually destroy the world. It seems arrogant and audacious. What is interesting to me is that Christianity is even more audacious, even more radical than the most fervent environmentalist, because for the Christian human choices did not only cause the rivers and streams of the world to be polluted or the ice caps to melt, but also and further and more deeply, human choice caused the entry of all the pain and death into the world, human choices are the source of both the physical and spiritual pollution that exists in the world. Talk about audacity. We have really messed things up, and we can't fix what we've done to Creation by simply buying a hybrid car.
In his book, The Doors of the Sea, the theologian David Bentley Hart puts it this way:
Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces -- whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance -- that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. And we are not only permitted but required to believe that cosmic time as we know it, through all the immensity of its geological ages and historical epochs, is only a shadow of true time, and this world only a shadow of the fuller, richer, more substantial, more glorious creation that God intends: and to believe also that all of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness. That ours is a fallen world is not, of course, a truth demonstrable to those who do not believe: it is not a first principle of faith, but rather something revealed to us only by what we know of Christ, in the light cast back from his saving action in history upon the whole of time.
This is truly the Christian message, but it is a message that would be incomprehensible to someone who believes that human actions cannot affect the world. But the implication is that the universe (that is, Creation) is in a far worse situation that we might otherwise think, that even if we could, through rigorous public policy and sweeping sacrifice by all the billions of people in the world, even if we were to stop global warming and set right the environmental abuses which we have caused over the past centuries--and we should at least try to do that I think, even then we would still be not all that much better for it.
Christian Environmentalism[2] I believe should be more radical, more audacious than Political Environmentalism. So what does that mean, and where should we begin? I am going to suggest over the next couple blog posts that the answer is Asceticism. Wendell Berry once wrote that the best thing you can do for the environment is to start a garden. This is good advice. But I think the best thing you can do for the environment is to fast.
It seems counterintuitive. It seems that asceticism is the opposite of what we need because it seems to be somehow rejecting the physical world. It seems that the Christian idea of a 'fallen' world would suggest the the earth is not worth saving and might encourage the sort of abuses that we've seen in the industrial West, which has after all Christian roots. Well, it may seem that way, but this is only part 1. And it's getting rather late. So, to be continued...
[1] For the most part. There was a rather colorful Texan manager at a company I used to work for who, based on the air-tight logic that it happened to be a cold day, threatened to shoot anyone who anyone who said anything about global warming.
[2] I say 'Environmentalism' only because 'Creationism' is (Alas!) already taken by Protestant fundamentalists.
4 comments:
I hope you continue with this.
thank you. i will, but it may take a couple days.
hey, that's okay. I still haven't gotten around to writing up the trip I took to D.C. last year this time.
I really should..I was lobbying against oil drilling in a specific area with a young, kinda grassroots, Christian environmental group, a lot of whom had sagging shoulders because of the attitude and perception of Christians where the environment was concerned.
We had some really good conversations, but it was painful to see how much responsibility they took upon themselves.
i realized something after i re-read this, about the way you're looking at the Christian community's role. Perhaps it's because I identify so strongly with the Stevie Wonder lyric make sure when you say you're in it not but of it, that you're not helping to make this world into a place sometimes called hell, but there's something not quite right about it.
Moderation is stressed by the experts, yet very few seem to just be able to practice it because of this urge to overcompensate for what we often feel like other people aren't doing. It might seem like a good idea to suggest that people fast to save the environment, but then what happens to the spiritual environment?
I actually like this idea, as fasting can be a good way to correct an imbalance and avoid consuming more than is needed. I use it in my own life. But productivity goes down. My ability to interact with the world goes down. And...well, few enough people can appreciate me as it is.
It would be nice if we could live more leisurely lives wherein we were able to appreciate each other more (and fasting could play a larger role.) But of course not everybody can be me, and not everybody can work a job like you where energy is perhaps not of the greatest importance. Yet the connection to our environment begins with a connection to ourselves which would seem to prescribe something like fasting and would do better in a community where such appreciation could thrive. Human gardens.
The minute you suggest that this is something that we should be doing, whether talking about Christians or ant farmers, then you may potentially set the world back.
It's really an individual responsibility.
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