This blog isn’t about the awfulness of climate change, or the proper God-required call upon us all who follow Christ to be good stewards of his creation. Nor is it to deny how being a Christian disciple must involve justice for the poor and those affected by climate change.
Rather, it’s my equivalent of raising a warning about idolatry. So much of what is being said and written evokes fear and panic. It’s not much of a step then to speak of Mother Nature needing protection, or at worse the cult of Gaia. But this is God’s universe, in which (let it be remembered) he has invested hugely, not least in the incarnation of his Son. It is to this earth Jesus is coming back; and it is this earth, along with the heavens, which shall be renewed.
And I only want to point out that in Scripture extreme weather is seen as punishment for the sin of mankind - see Deuteronomy 11:16,17; Isaiah 24: 5,6; and Hosea 4:1-3. And there is Jesus’ account in Luke 21:25 that people’s hearts will fail within them because of the size of the seas. And I am not sure where all the ecological catastrophes in the Book of Revelation fit in - mass pollution of the seas and air and the felling of trees are mentioned along with the sun scorching. (See chapters 15 & 16 for some of these examples.)
And most of all: the reconciling death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has not only personal ramifications, but cosmic implications. Such a victorious saving work undoes all the badness of the Fall. As has been pithily summarised: in the beginning God made the world first and then humans to inhabit it; in the new heavens and the new earth he starts by recreating humans before he does the same with the universe.
And I wish ( to my own condemnation let it be said) that folk would be as concerned about the prospect of us all facing the dread judgment of God!
Hence my title of the blog! I am just confessing my dis-ease with so much of what is being said and written about. And I am praying for more insight. As well as wanting to be a better witness in every way possible.
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