The Green God

Fellow Blue Voicer Marigold recently wrote a couple articles on the importance of the idea of a "Green God." That is a God who actually cares about the planet we live on. Hence the idea that maybe we should care about it, too. As Marigold pointed out in her piece, a number of Evangelical Christians are pushing the ideology of "Creation Care" a theological euphemism for environmentalism. I commented at the time of her posts that I felt the concept of a "green god" was irrelevant to environmental causes. I'd like to expand on that a bit and explain why, from a biblical viewpoint, such an ideology is rather weak.

The End Times. Apocalypse. Armageddon. This is a religion that is obsessed with the end of times. Evangelicals in particular are particularly obsessed with Christian eschatology. As Jesus pointed warned:

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains (Matthew 24).

This is perhaps the biggest scriptural obstacle for Evangelicals. Bad things--really bad things--are going to happen; do not be alarmed; these are merely the "beginning of birth pains." Hurricanes, tsunamis, massive earthquakes, it just means Jesus will be back sooner. These are the signs Jesus spoke about and you'd be fool to try and stop or mitigate these things. Don't you want Jesus to come back?

Take another verse from the New Testament:

Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!
Luke 12:24

Ignore the fact that Jesus is completely ignorant of the fact that a great multitude of birds dies every year because they don't get enough to eat. Jesus teaches his followers that planning is a bad idea. God will take care of everything. Don't worry, be happy.

This is all probably summed up best in the book of Proverbs:

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.
Proverbs 19:20-22

God is omnipotent. Do you really think that silly old humans could mess up God's plan? You can come up with whatever plans you want, but this is going down the way God preordained it to go down.

Basically you have these two very fundamental Christian ideas regarding the environment that are completely at odds with any notion of caring for the earth in any meaningful way. The End Times are going to be horribly bad, but they are necessary in order for Jesus to come swoop us all up, well the lucky bastards who believed in the right stuff anyhow. There is nothing you can or should do to thwart the signs of the End Times. Besides, even if you wanted to, God's purpose prevails.

It's great that there are Christians who want to use Jesus to compel people to care about the environment, but I think we should realize that it's a fundamentally weak stance that is at odds with core Christian ideas. As such we should pursue honest ways of educating our friends and family no matter who they may or may not pray to.

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