It’s almost too bad that Jesus Christ has been historically
depicted as a long-haired, bearded, and sandal-clad — because the
enviro-hippies behind something called the “Evangelical
Climate Initiative” have now claimed Him for their own alarmist
agenda.
While those physical representations of Christ may be accurate,
the Biblical claims that these Birkenstocked believers make for
global warming reductions are hermeneutically deficient. Most of
their flawed interpretations emphasize the social gospel
(surprise!) rather than genuine Divine intent — a common liberal
tendency.
They include the utterances
of Sir John Houghton, a climate scientist, former chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an “evangelical
Christian,” according to the ECI. In a speech to the National
Association of Evangelicals almost a year ago, he made a scientific
case for the existence of global warming, and its benefits and
drawbacks (with the second far outweighing the first). I will leave
technical refutation and doubt to others, and address the Biblical support he attempted
to use to buttress his position:
“[God] demonstrated this most eloquently by sending his
son Jesus to be part of creation and by giving to us the
responsibility of being good stewards of creation. What is more I
believe that we do not do this on our own but in partnership with
Him — a partnership that is presented so beautifully in the early
chapters of Genesis where we read that God walked with Adam and Eve
in the garden in the cool of the day.”
There you have it! God intended for man to live in temperate
climes. But then again, He also intended for man to live naked: so
much for that. And not surprisingly, Houghton butchered Genesis
3:8, which actually says that Adam and Eve (after the Fall) “heard
the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the
day,” after which they tried to hide from Him — hardly a
harmonious stroll.
But seriously, Sir John’s pining for the early days of the Bible
is admirable. Who doesn’t wish we were in the days of
sinless perfection, in absolute accord with God? Alas, that is not
the condition of the present globe on which we live. Rather than
actually making us “good stewards of creation” as Houghton claims,
God instead cursed the world and essentially said, “Here — deal
with this!” We’ve been toiling over the corrupted soil ever since,
and the unspoiled creation that Jesus was allegedly sent “to be
part of” disappeared long ago.
Still the 86 ministry leaders behind the ECI bought
into it, maintaining that they “are articulating a biblical,
Christ-centered, business-friendly evangelical approach to climate
change and providing a different way of understanding the
problem”:
Once we understand the profound impacts climate change
will have on people, especially the most vulnerable, then we find
plenty in the Bible calling us to take prompt action. Jesus’
commands to love our neighbors (Mk. 12:30-31), do unto others as we
would have them do unto us (Lk. 6:31), care for “the least of
these” (Mt. 25:40, 45), and be proper stewards of His creation (Lk.
12:42-48; Col. 1:16) all require immediate and sustained action to
solve global warming.
These “social Gospel” passages can hardly be construed as a
legitimate case for the fight to reduce global warming. The first
misinterpretation is the proper role of man in relation to the
creation. Calls to “stewardship” in the Bible never have to do with
caring for some pristine earth — for its own sake or for God’s.
Instead God gave man “dominion” over the world and its creatures,
for human consumption and use.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you pollute willy-nilly. Dumping
oil or chemicals where they can seep in someone’s water supply
certainly is unneighborly. But that has nothing to do with Biblical
“earth” stewardship, and linking disputed negative global warming
effects to proper social practices is misleading at best. If
environmentally conscious Christians want to do something that will
clearly and measurably help their poor neighbors, why don’t they
invest in waste removal in places like Port-au-Prince and
Bangladesh instead?
The answer is, because ECI signees have been duped by
environmentalist liberals and have failed to discern their Biblical illiteracy:
This is God’s world, and any damage that we do to God’s
world is an offense against God Himself (Gen. 1; Ps. 24; Col.
1:16).
I hope the ECI endorsers didn’t overstrain their eyes searching
those Scripture references for evidence of God’s anger at human
abuse of the earth. Instead, they would do well to recall some
other Biblical citations that emphasize what the real goals of
Christian ministry should be in relation to the planet. They should
remember that the Apostle Paul disdained those “who set their mind
on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we
also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:19-20).
As for Jesus, contrary to Sir Houghton’s assertions, He does not
dwell on the earth but instead will return to the New Jerusalem
(Rev. 21:22-23), after God also establishes a new heaven
and a new earth (Rev. 21:1).
And don’t forget, God has some serious global warming of His own
planned (2 Peter 3:10). Christian leaders ought to be
warning people about that rather than looking for ways to mitigate
the questionable effects of the current heat wave.
