What were we thinking?

August 31, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

The heat these August days has been oppressive in Los Angeles.  I suppose they would seem normal in St. Louis or New Orleans, but not here.  It is someone else’s weather delivered here by accident.

Or, it is the “new normal”, or global warming, present indicative?  The only ones who are still in denial about global warming seem to be the president’s men–the ones who ignore the signs of the times and change the subject:  the Kyoto accord would cost American jobs; there are terrorists out there; the scientific evidence is not all in; etc.

The evidence, however, keeps coming in, day after week after month after year.  At what point does one deem it to be a preponderance of evidence sufficient to convict us.  We are destroying our planet without pause.  We are harvesting it, killing it, exterminating it, clearing it, burning it, strip-mining it, paving over it as if we have a spare planet in the trunk.

And we are destructive seemingly without a thought.  Increasingly, the United States stands alone on every environmental issue you could name.  We are the last to teach ourselves efficiency, restraint, or innovation on things that would preserve life, spare the planet, and have our generation leave a much small footprint on the sacred wilderness.

I still think it was President Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who set the theological tone for interior policy.  I could be wrong, of course. A couple of years ago, conservative blog Power Line took commentator Bill Moyers to task for reminding us of what James Watt  thought.  Moyers summarized:

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, “after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”  Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious.

Power Line goes on to document that Moyers and Grist misinterpreted or distorted Watt’s views.  Yet I remember these views being talked about 20 years ago in connection with Watt.  If he indeed was a closet environmentalist, that slipped by many of us in Reagan’s first term.  I don’t keep a news clipping file on every fool we have suffered in high places, so I could be wrong.  But I clearly remember feeling a sense of outrage about Watt over and over and over from reading the daily news.

Even if Watt was never so irresponsible, the view is emblematic of a Christian faith which cherry-picks the issues it thinks are vitally important for public policy.  Conservative in my bedroom, prodigal in my national parks.

Let’s suppose that no Christian actually holds the view, that we are free to “use up” the earth in this generation and not be stewardship of creation for the future because Jesus will be returning soon anyway.  Even if that were true, where do legislators–who are clearly and verifiably backed by conservative religious money– get their values?

Could it be the same place the rest of us get our shoddy values?  The values that value my own life at the expense of others, and my generation at the expense of future generations?  The values that put my pleasures, my prosperities, my comforts, my titillations ahead of the survival and security and safety of others on this planet? What were we thinking when we allowed our country to become so polarized about issues with obvious moral content?  Is it completely impossible to suppose that Christians of all slants, and people of all faith traditions could agree that this planet needs tender loving care?

And that even if the evidence isn’t final on whether humans are causing global warming and destroying life forms left and right, we already know without a doubt that there is too much filth in our air, our water, our land fills  and toxic waste dumps; that we Americans use up 100 times as many natural resources per person than our neighbors on this planet; that there is no god out there who is pleased by our wasteful and destructive ways.

Whether global warming is ready for the concluding arguments leading to conviction, many people are ready to believe that it is a fitting karma that this generation of Americans is beginning to suffer for its destructive ways.  For those of you who are still in your 20s, it is entirely possible that the American way of life will have completely crashed and burned before you attempt to draw your first retirement check.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Environment, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »