Going Green
My last post was a bit of a hot-headed rant. I do that sometimes, but I’ve been thinking about the whole recycling/going green thing a lot lately. Yesterday, Melissa at The Living Proof Ministries Blog wrote an article about Christianity and going green. Check over there to read the whole post, but her three main points were:
- God reveals himself through creation, so in a way we are surpressing the glory of God when we trash the Earth.
- God gave man the job to care for the Earth, and everything we do should be for the glory of God.
- The Earth will eventually burn up and be recreated. Nothing we can do can end the groaning of the earth, but when we work to protect the earth, we are joining God in a work that He will eventually perfect with a new Heaven and a new Earth.
As a Christian, I have to be cautious to worship the Creator rather than the created, but I would be foolish to say that I cannot care for the created. If I were to ignore the created because I was worried about failing to worship the Creator, then I would also have to ignore my own body. I would neglect to care for all the earthly blessings that the Lord has given to me. I would be so Heavenly minded as to be of no use to this earth. I would be rendered ineffective as a light because my focus would be on worshiping the Creator and ignoring the created. The ultimate purpose of a human is to bring glory to God, but we have to do that in the context of where God has put us to live.
On the flip side, if we choose not to be a good steward of our life, we will have to live with the consequences of that choice. I’m not talking about losing salvation here, I’m talking about natural consequences. If I go out and spend our family deeply into debt, we will have to live with the stress and burden of that debt. If I create excess waste and turn the whole world into a landfill to satisfy my own consumer needs, then I (or my children) will have to live on a trashed planet; I will be guilty of neglecting and ignoring the blessings of the Lord.
Tags: personal reflections
