Evangelicals and the Environment – Reprise

Quite a while back I published a piece entitled “The Christian and the Environment – Top Ten Reasons Evangelical Christians Should Care About the Earth, and All Things In It.”

I had planned to publish a separate post about each one of these ten points, and did publish one, but then I went through a blogging dry spell. The recent Haw River Park controversy has me in a bit of a lather, and I want to address that issue from the broader and more principled stand point of our shared human need for open space and unsullied environments. But before I did that I wanted to republish my “Top Ten.” Here they are, not really in any order:

“The Christian and the Environment – Top Ten Reasons Evangelical Christians Should Care About the Earth, and All Things In It.”

1. Love of God demands it. We must care for God’s good earth because God does. We cannot love God with all of our hearts if we mistreat His world in our sloppiness, carelessness, ugliness, and greed. Period.

2. Passion for God’s glory motivates it. Creation is God’s master work which He declared to be “very good,” and it is meant to reflect His glory; when we despoil it in our greed or carelessness or callousness we rob God of glory due His name.

3. Our stated life purpose requires it. We were given very clear instructions to be stewards of His earth. This is clear both in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It’s like, duh!

4. Love of neighbor inspires it. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, which means that we care about his or her well being as much as our own. This includes what he or she has to breath, drink, look at, work in, or play in. We cannot love our neighbor and not care about the environment he or she has to inhabit.

5. Integrity screams for it. To act and live in integrity and love toward our descendants requires that we leave to them beauty, biodiversity, and ample resources for them to use and enjoy. Personally I am a little peeved at my ancestors for wiping out the Dodo Bird, the Wooly Mammoth, the Passenger Pigeon, and, possibly, the Ivory Bill Woodpecker. Shame on them. Why would I do the same to my children and my children’s children?

6. God’s love for all creation points to it. God so lovingly cares for all of His wonderful creatures – and we should too. ‘”If not a sparrow falls…” If you’re in doubt about this read Genesis One and Two, and then Psalm 104.

7. Spiritual health requires it. How many times have you taken a personal day, a day of spiritual retreat, and then set up a chair in a parking lot? Enough said.

8. Physical health requires it. I mean that not only in the more obvious sense that breathing foul air, eating lead paint, and drinking polluted water is bad for us. I also mean it in the sense that the chemicals and proteins found in a biologically diverse environment may well hold the key to curing all or most major diseases eventually.

9. Consistency demands it. How can evangelicals have any credibility as we strive to protect unborn human children if we are callous about the air children will breathe, the water they will drink, the poverty under which they will suffer, or the ugliness they will inherit and endure. The two go together.

10. Justice cries out for it. Those who suffer the most from foul air, foul water, and ugliness are those who cannot afford “alternatives.” Environmental degradation hurts the poorest people the most. Care for creation is a justice issue.

And that’s it!

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So Says Screwtape

A friend sent this to me yesterday. It is worth a read, and consideration.

In his “Screwtape Letters”  the main character, the demon Screwtape, instructs his apprentice Wormwood as to why God sends us dry times.

“He [God] will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives.

“He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs; to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.

“Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual temptation, because we design them for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better.

“He cannot ‘tempt’ them to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles.

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

I Suck at Blogging

 

I suck at blogging. Or maybe I just suck. Or maybe blogging sucks. Or maybe all of the above.

I can’t find traction. I am too disorganized. I can’t stay with things. I suck at this.

Yeah, yeah, I’m smart all that, and am good at cutting up stupid arguments. So what? I mean, is that a virtue?

This is the same dilemma I faced with my life when I was 20. Did I want to be a lawyer? Did I want to spend my life arguing?

What does God want me to do here with this? Anything? I mean, ideally I would like to make a positive contribution to the well being of the reader and the community. But who am I really to do that? Half the time I need the same lift I would want to give. It is a dry time, and I walk through a desert. I’d like some sort of meaningful dialogue that does not deteriorate into the usual left/right, conservative/liberal arguments. I just don’t know if that is possible.

It seems that you’re either really controversial and feisty, or at least highly engaged and on the cutting edge of the issues and arguments and controversies of the moment, and people read you, or you’re not and they don’t. Or you’re really good at surfing the internet for clever articles to back up your viewpoints. I am totally not into that. The talking heads put me to sleep.

I don’t feel like arguing. But then, I cherish that in which I believe, and it is very hard to just sit there while people take shots at it without check. I don’t mind reasoned critique. But there seems little of that online. Mostly worn out clichés.

I’m needing to decide if it’s worth the time and effort to keep this going. Even when I am doing nothing, the bare existence of a blog unused makes me feel guilty for not using it. And if I only write every few weeks nobody will read it anyway. So, what to do…

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Scripture of the Day – June 7, 2007 – Trust in the Lord and Do Good

Dear Friend,

I switch gears for a few days. I don’t want to let the one-another verses wear out their welcome. We will get back to them.

I thought I’d share a favorite verse of mine today, actually a pair of verses found in Psalm 37 – Psalm 37:3-4.

3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

I share this passage often with people in anxious situations. I have been going to it a fair bit myself lately. The verses before and after are also great. You should read them. Psalm 37 once a day keeps the terrors at bay.

Trust….this is what we have been talking about all through Hebrews 11 and 12. Only as we actively and consciously entrust our lives to the One who knows and loves us do we find peace and purpose.

Do good…We don’t just sit there trusting and otherwise doing nothing. Rather we commit ourselves to doing – to doing good. In the context of the Psalm this means a choice not to respond to the evil doers trying to undo the Psalmist. God will take care of the evil doer; he, the Psalmist, is to commit his energy to being and to doing good – those things which please God. So often in face of temptation, pressure, persecution, or just old fashioned anxiety, we act in a way aimed against the source of our troubles in order to circumvent their impact on us. This usually ends badly and does not glorify God.

Dwell in the land….This has a double meaning I think. There is the obvious physical reality and wisdom of committing your energies to where you are, not where you aren’t. When anxious, when unsure, don’t go anywhere, stay put and do good things there. Dwell there, make your habitation there. Dig in, grow roots, commit. This physical sense of dwelling is a necessary corollary to doing good. People who flit about in body or heart never really do much good. But this idea of “dwelling” also speaks to our true and deeper dwelling place with Christ. Life in the land has been replaced in a sense by life in Christ. Dwell with Him. Stay put with and in Him while the storms of life roar about.

Befriend faithfulness…..Make faithfulness to God and to His word and to your church-mates, neighbors, and employers – make that way of faithfulness your friend. Get to know faithfulness well. Become intimate with it. Be a faithful person.

Delight yourself in the Lord….I love this couplet – the pair of half verses starting here. It holds in many ways the secret of Life itself. We are to make the Lord our delight. We are to set our hearts and affections and hopes upon Him. We are to seek to please Him above all others. We are to look to His provision and His reward.

And He will give you the desires of your heart…..OK, here is what this does not mean: write down all the things you want and desire, hang out with God a while, and then he will then give you all you want.

As we delight ourselves in the Lord, such Delight will frame and change our deepest desires. Our desires will begin to conform to His desires. Soon we will find that He delights to give to us what we desire because what we desire is what He desires for us. We have begun to desire, as well as pray and act, after His will.

This is also the flow of the Lord’s Prayer. In that prayer we focus first upon the Lord, upon His glory and His kingdom; only after do we focus on our needs. I realize that “needs” and “desires” are often not the same. But they become more and more the same as we delight in Him.

I know of no better short summation of living life before God than we find in the first part of verse three – “Trust God and do good.” This sounds a lot like the well known hymn ‘Trust and Obey.” Unless you were wondering I think that that hymn pretty much wraps it all up nicely as well.

So, your day has started. Trust God. Do good. Dwell in the land. Be Faithful. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your hearts.

In Christ,

Joel

 

Scripture of the Day – June 6, 2007 – The Bond of the Spirit

Dear Brethren,

The choice of today’s Scripture has been inspired by our Presbytery meeting yesterday. It is inspired by this meeting because in some there hours of discussion and debate, there was a pervading sweetness, a mutual respect, and a real sense of everyone seeking to preserve the “bond of peace.” The conversation and discussion was earnest. Yet, it was unifying and peace-promoting.

Our passage reminds me of two other things yesterday.

A young man fresh out of seminary gave a wonderful short message on Psalm 133, which in many ways is an Old Covenant way of saying a similar thing as today’s Scripture says. I will paste that Psalm at the bottom. You’ll see the connection.

The other thing is that we approved licensesure for that same young man for the ministry of the preaching of the word. As part of that licensesure he had to take a vow “to promote the unity, peace, purity, and prosperity of the Church.”

These four attributes which he and the members of our churches are to promote are utterly interrelated and intertwined; they cannot be understood apart from the other; they are impossible to fulfill apart from the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit; and they are pretty systematically ignored across evangelicalism in general.

Here is the “one another” passage from Ephesians, Ephesians 4:1-3:

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

We should think of this exhortation as having to do both with local churches as well as with relations between local churches, and reaching into the church gathered across the world. Mostly it finds its tangible living reality in local churches, and between local churches.

So much had happened in our own community of Greensboro over several decades to break down the unity of the Spirit between churches. There have been conflicts between brethren and churches never resolved, and which fester. People hop from church to church leaving bad will and hard feelings in their wake, not having gone through any sort of submitted counsel with their churches before disappearing to greener pastures, perhaps with an e-mail note after the fact. Churches communicate poorly between each other. Church A treats Church B with much little less than Christian respect and charity. She considers her own ministry or preaching or programs to be superior, and thus rejoices when people flee into her awaiting arms. It’s an “arms” race of sorts, people flying in all directions.

This all applies within churches as well. We have all seen or heard of churches that have been soured by a failure of its leaders or its people to promote the unity, peace, purity, and prosperity of the congregation. When this happens it disgraces the name of Christ before the watching world, and it creates little divisions between people and churches that last into future generations. I know of churches that are still reeling from conflicts thirty years or more ago. A lot is at stake (John 13:34; John 17: 20). How we go about things is a huge barometer of who we really are as we talk about being God’s people.

And so, we are to walk in humility and gentleness, with patience and loving forbearance, and an eagerness to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

I am struck by the word “eagerness” here. You can picture an eager child looking into the ice cream store window, an eager linebacker twitching, ready to blitz the quarterback, an eager hiker racing to the top of the mountain, an eager dog waiting for you to throw the stick. Eagerness suggests anticipation, even, impatience perhaps, but one can imagine eagerness without impatience. As regards the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace it means that we are to be extremely sensitive to the unity of the body in the Spirit and to the peace of the church. We should do all things with this in mind, and be very sensitive (eager) to that which may harm or hinder it. We should have hair trigger sensitivity to the unity of the Spirit, and an eagerness, a deep commitment, a huge sensitivity of conscience, to maintain it.

Even as we pursue purity, we do it with peace in mind. Even as we pursue peace we do it with purity in mind. And all along we are attentive to the prosperity of the church. The church is intended to carry out its mission before Christ. It is meant to do that, by God’s Spirit, until Jesus returns. This success is not measured in worldly or financial terms, but it is observable. We are to be aware of our own actions and decisions and attitudes upon that prosperity – both the prosperity of the particular local church as it seeks to carry out its mission before Christ, and the prosperity of the churches in a community as they seek together to honor Christ and carry out His work. We should all seek the prosperity and success of our own local church as well the church of the city, and the broader affiliations we may be  apart of.

Added together peace purity and prosperity result in the unity of the Spirit being maintained.

So, consider the passage in Ephesians 4 as we continue our journey through the “one another” passages together.

In Christ,

Joel

PS – The last two weeks week has been kind of scattered as we have more drivers than people now at our house and it changes day to day as to who gets a car! So my schedule has been a little higgeldy piggeldyof late. I put aside the daily reading for a while, and now wish to pick it up again.

PSS – Psalm 133

133:1 Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.

Scripture of the Day – May 29, 2007 – Jesus’ High Prestly Prayer

Dear Brethren,

I was thinking about Jesus’ prayer for our unity in John 17:20-21 along the lines of the “one another” commandments that we have been looking at. The “one another” aspect is mostly implicit here. But in reading over this great high priestly prayer, and in considering how the book of Hebrews has devoted so much time to Jesus’ high priestly ministry, I thought I would just send this prayer along without much comment, except to say, he is praying for us in verses 20-26. You can spend your life in this passage and never exhaust it. John 17:1-26.

1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

In Christ,

Joel

Scripture of the Day – May 25, 2007 – Spur One Another Along

Dear Brethren,

Today’s Scripture is taken from the book of Hebrews, chapter 10. It is part of a long “therefore” passage which itself builds on the wonderful truths about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10:24-25:

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

I have previously spoken to the unreality of being a Christian “in isolation.” These one-another commandments continue to point out the fact that we can only be what we are called to be together, together in real local fellowships, together with real and flawed fellow Christians, together learning to become the kind of distinctive community He calls us to be for His glory.

This passage reminds us of a very real responsibility we have with regard to the other. We are to “stir up” the another to “love and good works.” So, going to church, or to a small group gathering, or to a community Christian event, we find that should not go with the idea merely of what we’re going to get out of it, how we are going to have this quiet private thing with God (or loud noisy thing with God), how we expect to get a spiritual buzz from the music or sermon or whatever. Church is work. Life is work. Being a Christian is work. If you need to collapse and think only or mainly of yourself, go to the woods, or to a spa, or go get a manicure.

We are to “consider.” This means think about, ponder, set our minds to something. How can we bless our brethren? How can we edify them? How can we help them be what God wants them to be – people whose lives are full of love and good works. We need think to think ahead about that.

One reason that we aren’t as keen about this stuff these days is because, either as consumerist Christians, or as semi educated Protestants, or both, we have forgotten that God fully intends to make us different. He fully intends to change us and transform us. “Being saved” includes that as much as it includes being spared from hell. As it says in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” I could cite a dozen verses, or more, to this same effect.

And God uses each of us as agents of the other’s transformation! We have a role in whether or not our brother or sister becomes what God has called and created them to be! They have that same role for us. So we are to put our minds to how we can best spur others along, edify them, encourage them, so that their lives will be characterized by love and by good works.

This is all the more important as we see “the Day” approaching. “The Day” is the return of Christ. It is “the day of the Lord.” It is “the day of His appearing.” And guess how He wants to find us when he comes? Holy, blameless, expectant, going about His business, alert, awake, obedient. I could site dozens of verses along these lines, but this a devotion, not a book. So I will end with a couple of passages which connect up our obedience and good works with His appearing. Please think about your role in your brother’s being what Jesus wants him to be when he, Jesus, returns.

Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints (1 Thessalonians 3:11-12).

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Hebrews 13:20-21).

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen (Jude 24-25).

In Christ,

Joel

 

Scripture of the Day – May 23, 2007 – Forgive One Another

Dear Brethren,

If you are feeling a sense of déjà vu regarding our verse for today, yes, it is the same verse from yesterday. But today I want to focus on a different part of the verse. Here it is: Ephesians 4:32

32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Yesterday we talked about kindness, today we’re going to talk about forgiveness.

There are few if any qualities amongst relationships within the family of God that greases the wheels of love and peace as does forgiveness, and little that gums up the works as the lack of it.

Forgiveness and forbearance are closely related. We are to forbear much in one another. When the lien is crossed, when an act which we might just forbear becomes an offence we must forgive, well, that line is not described for us, and not well defined, and I think differs from person to person. Some people just more easily put up with things in the forbearance sense. For the most part I think that is a virtue, but there are times when it isn’t, when it enables others to sin, or when we just become doormats.

But today we’re talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness implies a wrong suffered. Does our extension of forgiveness require the other’s repentance. The Biblical data is kind of confusing on that score. But I think we err too much on the side of holding grudges and nursing hurts and slights. Relationships are complex and messy, and often the thing to be forgiven isn’t as cut and dry as your brother sneaking into your house and stealing your jewelry. Thus often, picking apart precisely to what degree a person has properly repented can be tricky. Again, we are to err on being too forgiving if we must err.

Why? It’s simple. We forgive because we have been forgiven. No one has ever sinned against us to the degree we have sinned against God. And, remember, God renewed us, He regenerated us before we believed and repented. Regeneration precedes faith and repentance. Regeneration produces faith and repentance.

Sometimes it takes us really messing up before God and feeling the utter helplessness before Him, desperately needing His word of forgiveness, and understanding how much we have been forgiven, before we become good forgivers of others. Do we come close to knowing how much God has forgiven us?

As one of our brethren said, forgiveness is not so much a feeling as a decision, and action. Forgiveness in its essence is a decision not to hold or count one’s sins against them, not to old their sin over their head. This means that we choose to resume brotherly relations, despite our feelings. You know, we so idolize our feelings, as if they are the or should be the determining factor of so much in our lives. Feelings are running too many trains. We resume normal relations before our feelings have decided; we choose not to hold what we think are the other’s sins against them; we carry on. We may still feel the sting of the thing that hurt us, but forgiveness acts despite the hurt. Forgiveness extends the right hand of fellowship despite the hurt. Eventually, well almost always, when we choose in obedience to forgive, our feelings will follow, and the sting will decline, and true brotherly affection will return.

Failure to forgive destroys families, church fellowships, and Christian communities. It weakens our witness. It becomes generational. It is a cancer eating away at the health of the people of God.

As often as not we are not actually so good at knowing when we have been sinned against. We are inclined to read motives into people that aren’t there. Our pride gets wounded and we feel great offence even when there has been no real offence. Our pride is often the real sin, more than the thing we feel so offended by. So, we need to keep an eye on our own selves, on the planks in our own eyes.

But real offenses do happen, and real forgiveness must follow. Forgiveness greases the wheels of relationships in the church. It shows love to be alive and well. Without it the church cannot be the church. Period.

In Christ,

Joel