We all have blood on our hands when it comes to the environment. We’ve spoiled this pristine planet, using and abusing what God has created.

Perhaps the anticipation of a new heaven and a new earth means we don’t need to care. We can exploit our natural resources to our hearts content, and keep our consciences clean by doing as others do — even at the mandate of local government.

To be honest, there is something intrisically wrong with thinking that God doesn’t care about the environment, or that being mindful of “green” causes is a waste of time. We may become annoyed with the extreme factions and dissending voices in the environmentalist camp, or just brush them off as those lost on a cause other than that of Christ.

But we should care, shouldn’t we?

It reminds me of an experience in my late teens, when out with a group of church friends.
And make no mistake about it, these peers were sincere about their faith in Christ, and passionate about following him.

So when one of them rolled the window down while driving down the highway, and chucked a bag of McDonalds garbage into the ditch, I was aghast.

That experience has appalled me even more in recent years, as I try to make sense of the apparent disconnect between loving God and loving his creation.

You could brush the incident off as just the innocence (or is it ignorance?) of youth. But it reveals an all-too-common mode of thinking in the church, among Christ-followers that may believe that love for God trumps all else.

Which is true, really.

I mean the greatest two commandments are love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.

But I don’t think you can divorce caring for the environment from the loving-God equation. And after all, don’t such actions, such as throwing garbage from a moving vehicle, reveal a lack of respect for not only others (who’d rather drive down a litter-free highway), but for what God has created?

(Besides, wouldn’t you get ticked off if somebody tossed garbage indiscriminately around your house?)

You could further state a case for what garbage and litter strewn over God’s green earth ultimately does: it pollutes. 

Now a bag of Big Mac combo leftovers may not turn our waterways into toxic nightmares, but it adds to the overall problem of pollution, a small action in a world chalk full of neglect and contempt for what God has made.

Besides, how can one truly enjoy a sunset framed with trash, or a walk in the forest in which rusted out cars, discarded piles of tires and dog feces mare the landscape?

“The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real intrinsic value. But for the Christian, there is an intrinsic value. The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. It deserves this respect as something which was created by God, as man himself has been created by God.”–Francis A. Schaeffer.

I think the keyword in any discussions about the Christian and the environment is r-e-s-p-e-c-t, as Schaeffer eludes to in Pollution And The Death of Man. It’s a pity that he wrote the book in 1970 and precious little has been done since to reverse the earth-abuse trend.

Decades later, while both public and Christian opinion about the environment is shifting and has shifted, we live in a world on the brink of ecological disaster — all of it brought on by man’s choices.

© 2009. Chuck Kuepfer. All rights reserved.