There is no faithfulness or love or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint, with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn; and everyone who dwells there will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea will be taken away. - - - - - - - - - -
Do you see the cause and effect here? There is no faithfulness, love and godliness. Instead there is an abundance of sin. As a result the earth is mourning (lit. drying) and the creatures are dying. When the people of God are not doing their job nature suffers. The church should be at the forefront of the environmental movement. Paul says the same thing this way:
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Cursed. Decaying. Groaning. The NIV uses frustration, bondage, and groaning. We're anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. What do we mean by this? We mean things like Indiana reporting yesterday they've found twelve epicenters for West Nile Virus. We mean Hurricane Ike claiming at least 50 lives last week. We mean the typhoon Sinlaku killing a dozen people in Taiwan. We mean the Mahanadi river flooding in India killing nine and destroying thousands of homes. And these are just news headlines from the past couple days. You don't have to go back too far to remember the national tragedy known as Katrina that killed a couple thousand people in New Orleans, or the world shaking earthquake in the Indian Ocean that killed over 225 thousand people in eleven countries. These sudden storms are the newsmakers. Just as deadly are the slow destructions coming from global warming most evident in the steady southward push of the Sahara desert at a rate of 30 miles each year. Everyone intrinsically knows the wrongness of these "inconvenient truths" and many more are doing more nad more to try and solve the problem. The church should be at the forefront of the environmental movement.
That's the second time I've made that statement, and if any of you are like I was, you cringe when I read it. You may be thinking, "We have more important issues we should be spending our time and resources on." Ignoring the fact that the statement is blatantly false, there are many changes that individuals and groups can make that cost little time or money. Some, like I did, might have a more cavalier outlook, "What would be the point? God is gonna burn it all up and start over anyways." There are theological reasons I changed my view but that would take much more time and space I have here this morning so for the sake of brevity I'll just paraphrase Billy Graham, "Pray like God is coming back tomorrow and live like he will tarry for another thousand years." Let me say it just one more time:
The church should be at the forefront of the environmental movement.
