Pursuing Holiness

Jay Tea at Wizbang has an amusing post on his frustrations with the global warming faith:

I’ve dealt with the annoying evangelicals many times in my life. Usually, they’re the most irritating sorts of Christians — EVERYTHING is “proof” that God exists. …

I see the same mentality in the global-warming arguments. Every single incident, every single datum point, every single observation, every single measurement, is proof of the theory, and anything cited as evidence against their precious belief is treated much like many cult-like religions treat heresy and apostasy and blasphemy. (Scientology and Islam come to mind.)

Oddly enough, we were talking about global warming in our small group last night and noted the same thing about the cult of global warming. Someone queried the teenagers on whether they thought Christians had a religious obligation to take care of the earth. I immediately thought, oh, here, we go… it was like the time I discovered a Truther in my kitchen. My daughter replied that of course we need to steward the earth responsibly, but that she didn’t buy all the hysteria about global warming. I chimed in on how so much of what we think are scientific facts are actually media hype, and listed the five climate change scares going back to 1895 (including the current switchover to global cooling.)

Another guy chimed in with his expertise (which turned out to be substantial) on how America is cleaner than ever, burning food while people are going hungry is immoral, and there is no kind of pollution we can make that can’t be cleaned up. In fact, this topic had quite a lot to do with his major in college, he used to work at Accuweather, and went on to jobs at companies that cleaned up pollution - including designing bacteria that eats pollutants like creosote. He reminded everyone that C02 is a natural byproduct of life, and plant food, not a pollutant. He also made the extremely pertinent point that hysteria over the environment indicates a lack of faith in God, the concept that we, not He, are in control is antithetical to Christianity. Is He sovereign, or not? In our friend’s efforts to get more bike paths in and around New Orleans, he’s noticed that environmentalists commit idolatry; worshiping the planet and (seemingly unaware of the contradiction) themselves as being in control of the planet.

We agreed that the planet goes through natural cycles as part of God’s plan and design as evidenced by the fact that long before people drove cars the climate was different in various places. We agreed that it’s irrational to expect things to remain the same. We noted the fact that Greenland was once, in fact, green; that IF the icecaps melt and the seas rise, then while we will have lost a lot of current coastal land, we will have gained land in other places. God has a knack for balancing things out!

Everyone agreed that it’s sinful to waste, that we are called to live frugally, spend resources wisely, and show love for our neighbors by not polluting. (i.e. dump waste or chemicals in the river is not showing Christian love for our brothers downstream.) But we also agreed that we clearly have dominion over the earth and it’s not immoral to use it as such. The common sense approach prevailed. Reduce, reuse, recycle, share.

So is it fair to describe this as the Christian consensus on global warming? Well, everyone present was a Christian, and we all agreed. It’s as fair to describe us as indicative of Christians as it is to declare that all scientists agree that facts are all in and the global warming debate is over.

Oh, and the reason the guy brought it up in the first place wasn’t to promote it. He knows it’s taught in schools now, and - as we all acknowledge, there’s at least some good in the tenets of the faith; waste is bad, conservation is good, etc. He wanted to make sure the kids were being discerning about what they believe and who they follow, because, as he pointed out - the leaders of the movement are about as anti-Christian as you can get.

written by Laura