Recycling and the Gospel

 

The other day I was talking with a good friend about investing in the stock market and he mentioned that he doesn't invest in "bad" businesses like oil companies, and he feels guilty when he has to fill up his car with gas. It seems like these sentiments and values are becoming increasingly common and I find them a bit bizarre, if not disturbing, especially considering them from a Christian perspective. 

I think there are bad men and bad companies in the world, to be sure, but just because a company is involved in oil hardly makes them bad. And I certainly don't think that anyone should feel guilty about filling up their tank with gas. 

There are things that as individuals and a society we should be feeling guilty about, but they have nothing to do with gasoline or the environment. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against renewable, "green" energy and preserving our natural resources and keeping our rivers, forests and oceans clean and healthy. We are dependent on them for so many things. But this shift in moral thinking is what concerns me. We are living in a society where pantheistic, naturalistic ideas have gradually supplanted traditional Christian values. 

Many are convinced that saving the planet is a moral imperative, if not the highest moral objective. We are told things like, "If we don't stop carbon dioxide emissions, the oceans will boil, the forests will burn, and humanity may not survive!" This has become the new orthodoxy and to doubt it or deny it makes you an immoral heretic. 

So, we feel virtuous and responsible when we recycle, purchase an electric vehicle and install solar panels, and guilty when we drive our gas-guzzling vehicles to work, forget our reusable bags at the grocery store, or drink water out of a disposable bottle instead of a reusable one. We have come to believe that each of us must do our part to save the planet, and if we don’t, we will face annihilation. 

In many cases we have our values upside down from a Christian, biblical worldview. Jesus never told us to love the planet, but he did tell us to love our neighbors. He didn't die and rise again to save the environment, but to save every person. People are always the priority, not the planet.

We feel righteous as we vote for politicians and programs that will provide social safety nets and care for the most vulnerable, but most of us will not take time, energy or resources ourselves to help the homeless, widows and orphans in our own communities. Most of us don't even know the names of the people living in the houses next door, much less what needs they might have. We are too busy saving the planet to pay attention to the suffering around us.

I feel much less concern for what sort of climate apocalypse may happen in fifty years and am more concerned with people who are hurting, hungry and homeless today. I am even more concerned with the eternal souls of people and that they get the chance to hear the Gospel than that their present, earthly needs are met. There is an eternal reality that we easily miss. Every person on this planet will face God on judgment day and if they have not surrendered to Christ, they will face an eternity in Hell. More than food and shelter people need to hear the Good News that Jesus died for their sins. They need to know that they can have hope of eternal life. More time and money should be invested in preaching the Gospel and less on recycling. 

God is calling us to take personal responsibility for the health and welfare of our neighbors, not to farm it off to bureaucrats in Washington, or leave it up to another organization somewhere else. Jesus got his hands dirty helping the lost and destitute, and he is calling us to do the same. But most important is that we tell people the Good News that their sins can be forgiven, and they can have eternal peace and joy in Christ.

The culture around us would have us carrying a heavy burden of guilt because, supposedly, we are destroying the environment by driving our cars. I think there is wisdom in caring for our ecological resources and we should feel some outrage when there is true waste and pollution. But we should feel much more of a burden for the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of the people around us. We should grieve that people are lost in their sins and destined for an eternity without Christ. We should weep, not because a forest burns, but because lost souls will burn if they do not repent. Our society has so many things backwards and upside down. May it be that Christians live out a lifestyle of what is truly right and good, living a life like Christ, caring for those that are most vulnerable and at risk.

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