Treehuggers or “Green” Ethics

A few passing thoughts on the environment and stewardship of God’s Creation. I will state clearly that, at first, I couldn't have cared less about the environment, environmental issues and all the rhetoric and sensationalism that came with the environmental issues that arose during the 80's, 90's and 00's. I was especially mocking and sardonic towards all of the global warning nonsense, and justifiably so as it now appears to have been misinterpreted data that was purposely misinterpreted to make certain people inordinate amounts of money via things like carbon credits (this means you Al Gore). I will now state that I have begun to back off of my aggressive stances towards the people I viewed as rich hippies and misguided treehuggers.

I have more thoroughly examined the truth of Scripture in conjunction with certain environmental issues and have now come to somewhat different conclusions. Firstly, God gave us the Earth and everything in it to be stewards of it. It is His but he has allowed us stewardship (Leviticus 25:23-24). As it is not truly ours we are obliged to not abuse the Earth itself nor the things in it like people, animals and eco-systems (which I now believe are non-sentient organisms). This would be no different than if my neighbor lent me his tools and kids and I trashed or abused them before giving them back.

Based on Scripture I believe God is very concerned with His creation and this is shown in many passages of Scripture (Matthew 6:25-30). We know unequivocally that creation holds together or exists as mentioned in Colossians 1 because of God. The very Christian eschatology or end times of humanity is directly tied to the idea that there will eventually be a new heavens and a new earth. Ravaging the earth carelessly is not glorifying God, it is regarding God’s creation too lightly and is a form of disrespect to God.

So how should I feel about environmentalists? I believe activists have taken a good moral principle and politicized it to selfish and self-serving ends. Poor intentions, poor motives and even more poor theology (or total absence of it). As for meat processing plants or industrial slaughterhouses of the Midwest, they sicken me as they are mechanized callous killing machines that only a dehumanized godless society could produce in its blind groping for the almighty dollar. I must also mention strip mining / open-pit mining that obliterates entire zip codes into tiered “benches”. The truth is that if there were no government regulations, faceless mega-corporations would not be held accountable and we would have large open-pit mines littering the countryside. We would probably also have billions or trillions of gallons of oil floating in our seas and oceans.

We must never forget that the Creation is God’s just as we are God’s. Therefore we are literally obliged by Scripture to do the right thing and attempt to preserve the environment and do as much as we can to deal with the know real issues that would devastate the earth just was we would to protect our neighbors family and property. To do any less is a complete lack of respect and a disregard of things that are not really ours even though they've been entrusted to us. Frankly, this is just an irresponsible attitude and is not Biblical. Unfortunately, this is exactly the way more and more people are becoming in our society. Instead of people being responsible for their actions, everyone has now become a victim that is entitled to something.