Sunday, October 16, 2011

A Very Convenient Truth - I may have to clarify ...

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I realized on re-reading it that Friday's excerpt from A Very Convenient Truth leaves the impression that I'm advocating that the Biblical response to global warming/climate change is to do nothing. Not so, but it takes the rest of the book to put it all into context.

So while I make no qualification to the statement that the changes we're seeing in the climate and other environmental issues like seismic and volcanic activity are all part of God's plan and that trying to "fight" them puts us in opposition to Him, that doesn't mean we do nothing. It just means we focus our attention in another direction and Scripture tells us what that direction is.

To begin with, we have to stop denying the human contribution to global warming/climate change and acknowledge that we, as a species, have violated the First Great Assignment (Genesis 1:28) by not replenishing the earth at the same time that we were being fruitful, multiplying and subduing it.

Next, we need to repent for that and let those sins be covered by the blood of Jesus -- the "trump card" we hold when we receive Christ.

Then, we go and sin no more.

But this all has to come under the umbrella of bringing our walk into line with God in all things: loving Him above all others, loving our neighbours as ourselves, and re-committing to Jesus' Great Commission, which is to be His witnesses all over the world. Indeed (and I go into this in more depth in the book), the Great Commission is the New Covenant version of the First Great Assignment, because it means propagating a spiritual Garden of Eden -- which is what we were supposed to do in the first place.

We are warned, repeatedly, not to observe signs. We are to take note of the signs and understand that when the signs appear, we turn to God, but we are not to observe, or study or obsess on, those signs. God's promise is that as we obsess on Him, He will take care of everything else.

The natural response is to see the "bad" implications of those signs and try to do something about them. God calls us to look beyond that natural response to something higher and place our trust in Him to do what He's supposed to do.

So "do something" about climate change/global warming? Yes ... but ...

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