From: Steve Bishop (stevebishop_uk@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 03:46:00 EST
>George Murphy wrote:
> As a member of the task force that drafted that statement I was asked to
>be on a
>panel to speak about the way things have changed over the past 10 years. I
>focussed my
>remarks on one troublesome change, the fact that _some_ (I emphasize some,
>not all)
>conservative Evangelicals are opposed to serious environmental protection &
>now are in
>positions of political power, influencing the generally bad environmental
>policies of
>the present US administration. I dealt with this concern in more detail in
>an article
>in the online Journal of Lutheran Ethics for Sept. 2003 which can be found
>at
>http://www.elca.org/scriptlib/dcs/jle/article.asp?aid=97 .
As Michael has pointed out one reason for the lack of interest in the
environment is a defective eschatology. Others are a failure to grasp the
full implications of the cross and dualism.
Many Christians associate the cross with personal salvation; hence
environmental stewardship is seen as being an irrelevancy. They see the
Christian's priority as preaching the gospel and bringing individuals to
God. They seem to ignore the fact that Jesus came to reconcile all things
(Col 1: 19-20). Hence, the cross has implications for the whole of creation
and not just humans. It is an excellent antidote to contemporary
individualism!
Another rprobelm is dualism: life is divided into sacred and secular,
spiritual and non-spiritual. Hence, some activities - particularly the
ecclesiatical ones - are spiritual like prayer, bible reading, evangelism,
listening to sermons and others; whereas others such as doing scinece,
gardening, recycling are not seen as being spiritual. Thus, the "spiritual"
is more important than the "earthly". We seem to forget that God affirmed
the goodness of creation in Gen 1, that the cross vindicates creation, that
Jesus' resurection body was a physical one and that the material realm will
be redeemed and restored at the consummation. There is no dualism in
scripture. Politics, environmental,action, business, science, planting
trees, farming are just as much spiritual activities as prayer and praise.
As the Dutch, newspaper editor, educationalist, theologian and prime
minister once said: " ‘No single piece of our mental world is to be
hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the
whole world domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is
sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”
Cheers,
Steve
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