Election 2016 How would Jesus have us think about Global Warming?

Election 2016

How would Jesus have us think about

Global Warming?

Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Jeff Lampl

“be responsible for . . every living thing”

 Genesis 1:28

“The whole creation has been groaning” 

Romans 8:22

It is hard to argue the fact that all of creation is God’s creation, that God created everything both animate and inanimate, hat he did so out of love, and that every atom, rock, animal, and human being matters to him.  

Nature is not simply a resource given for the benefit of human beings, rather we are created by God to love God’s creation, manage it, and steward it into a vibrant place where humans and nature live in a flourishing harmony.    

When Jesus comes back He will return not to take us away to someplace else called heaven, rather he will come back bringing Heaven with him in order to restore the entire earth to what it was first intended to be, a world in which God and creation are merged.  The bible calls this future accomplishment of Jesus the “New Creation”.

How do you treat nature?   Is it simply there for your convenience and to service your needs?  Or do you treat it reverently as God’s.   The bible talks of creation as something that is alive, and which is groaning (suffering) at the hands of those of us (all of us??) who misuse it.  

 “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope  that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”           Romans 8:19-22 (NIV2011)

Every choice we make environmentally is a God choice, either to honor and love God’s creation or to deplete it and treat is as if it’s just there to service our felt needs.

Do you view nature as a disposable resource or as God’s life giving source of beauty and energy and as having intrinsic value? 

Regardless of the scientific claims of global warming skeptics or believers, it seems to me that Christians are expected to take any warnings of human caused climate change seriously, not just because what we do now impacts our childrens’ future but because caring for the sustainability of our planet is a Christian’s mandate.

“Lord, prevent us all from labeling the environment as a “liberal” cause,

rather, Lord, help us to grow more and more into

an understanding of how it must be

my cause, because I am living in

your world, not mine

Amen”