OrganicJesus.org

[This is an extended bit of my speech given at Saturday's Faith and American Values Summit. I'll follow up later this week with part two, which attempts to build a theology to buttress the directions of this article... --BDR]

As many of you know, I work for an environmental-Christian non-profit. Our goal is to foster a cultural shift in American Christianity by making it culturally and theologically safe to love, serve, and protect God’s creation.

In our work, we find that some Christians affirm that creation-care matters biblically, but say it cannot be second to mission and evangelism, or are afraid to take it to the political step because of preexisting political allegiances. We try to correct both of these positions.

Whenever I feel like whining about how the world works, there's a temptation for me to go to one extreme and wholly villify something like, say, "The Market", or else for my readers to likewise perceive me as doing such. Alternately, there is a temptation I also find to over-glorify some element of culture, such as "The Family" or "Government" as something worth defending even to the point of being nasty about it.

Really, these things are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, "government" falls into the category of the fallen structures (Principalities & Powers) which God instituted, maintains, and says are intended for our good. I've never been a big fan of government, first approaching it in my extremely Republican years with frustration and cynicism. I decended into the depths of libertarianism and was so adamently against government intervention in nearly anything (I thought taxation was always theft, and thus wrong), so as to be completely ridiculous and I think out of line with the Holy Scriptures.

Lately, though, I've come to see that government does serve some purposes in society and although often very very naughty and responsible for some of history's most epic tragedies (including killing God on a cross, some while back, though that didn't last too long). But before I delve into the "honoring and confronting" bit of this article, I'll be a good little evangelical and see what the Bible has to say about Government.

I think nation and country are also in some sense Powers that are both good but certainly fallen. America, the UK, Iraq, Israel, China, Iran, you name it. Good, but imperfect and fallen.

Again, there's room I think to be proud of where you hail from, but it can't be elevated above the first and second commandments -- Love God and Love People. So, when we're so proud of being Americans that it makes us a-holes to other people, then we've got a problem and granted this "Power" too much power over us. Our allegiance to King Jesus must be above any other allegiance.

Rather than list out my own list of Honors and Critiques, I thought it'd be fun to hear from you all what you consider some Honors and Critiques of your own nation/country/heritage/whatever.

While I expect that most will share about their nationality, I'll share some at the state/regional level from the area I hail from: the Pacific Northwest of America, also called Cascadia. So, here goes:

I honor and am proud of Cascadia's heritage of idealistic pragmatism and populism, embodied in our legislative legacy of the Initiative, Referrendum, the Bottle Bill, land-use planning, and public beaches laws..

I am ashamed of our region for being founded on racism, environmental devastation, and imperial hubris.

OK, ding ding ding, your turn! :)

"I looked and beheld a Green Horse, and the name that it said on him was Mammon, and Hell followed with him." (Book of Brandon 84:38)

The final Power that I'll focus on is the Market -- variously called "The Economy", "the Invisible Hand", "Capitalism", and "the free excange of goods and services." And I think some old ragamuffin rabbi once called it "Mammon." I believe it is the idol of our age, and I fear that we are sacrificing the lives and livability of our children to it. Thus, Jesus' ultimatum of choosing between "God and Mammon" will be the fateful question for this generation. Indeed, the fate of the world may hinge on our responding rightly to the God-ordained, fallen, and meant-for-our-good Power that is The Market.

Let me explain. :)

Last Thursday in Washington D.C., I had a chance to read the following letter to the press, addressed to America's political leaders.

President Bush, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Reid,

Young Christians are concerned about climate change. We have seen pictures of its effects from all over the world: disappearing glaciers, deadly heat waves every summer, melting permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, warmer oceans, and storm-swept levies in New Orleans. All over the world, lives and livelihoods are destroyed daily by this escalating crisis. As the next generation of evangelical Christians, we are waking up to our kingdom responsibilities as members of a global community with regard to climate change.

And the verdict is in: humans are responsible for most of it. Shamefully, we Christians have been slow to come around to this tragic reality. For this we are solemn, and we are sorry.

We mourn for the global “last”, who will be the first to be devastated and displaced by climate change. If we don’t act, millions of the world’s poorest persons will be threatened by rising sea levels and more intense weather events. These are the folks Jesus had in mind when he said that as we do unto the world’s “least of these,” we do also unto Him (Matthew 25:40). We take those words pretty seriously. Hopefully, all of you do, too.

We are saddened to hear that climate change will devastate God’s creation. In Genesis 1:26-28 God commanded humanity to tend His great garden, and in Romans we read that it’s now groaning under us in anticipation of a better future. God made a good Earth, and we want to do a good job of protecting it. To us young Christians, this means getting serious, and seriously active, about climate change.

Therefore, our allegiance to Jesus Christ demands that the threat of climate change no longer be ignored. There’s plenty we can do to combat it. As ambassadors of the real King, we implore you to swift and compassionate action.

But we’ll only get to meaningful climate solutions together. We implore you to collaboratively pass and sign strong laws to combat climate change – soon. We challenge Congress to draft such laws and President Bush to promise specific actions on climate change in the State of the Union Address. Resume America’s leadership on this.

We confess that all of us, including our nation’s elected leaders, will be held accountable for what we did or did not do to combat climate change by the true President of Presidents, Speaker of Speakers, and Leader of Leaders: our King Jesus. We pray that you will act wisely in such light.

Sincerely and respectfully,

The leaders of the Evangelical Youth Climate Initiative