Reduce: Dependance on God's Provision

Reduce, reuse, recycle. This has been the battle cry for environmentalists since the nineties. But are such ideas bibical? If we think about what they involve. Let's focus on reduce first.

To reduce means that you use less disposable materials in your daily life. Less packedging in the products you buy, not using paper or plastic cups and plates but glass instead. Using fabric towels instead of paper towels. Basically, reducing how much trash you produce.

To understand how much reducing trash is nessecary look at these statistics from solidwastedistrict.com.

About 22 percent of the 10.9 million tons of glass was recovered for recycling.

In 2001, Americans discarded about 2.4 million tons of aluminum in MSW after recovery—1.5 percent of total MSW discards.

Americans generated nearly 82 million tons of paper products in the MSW stream in 2001,nearly a three-fold increase from 1960.

The amount of plastics generation in MSW has increased from less than 1 percent in 1960 to 11.1 percent in 2001.

2.5 billion pounds of postconsumer textile waste represents 10 pounds for every person in the United States.

The effort to reduce waste for a Christian, requires a dependance on God's provision. That is because to reduce means you go without. You stop accumilating. You trust God will give you what you need to live.

One example of God provision in the bible was when Moses was leading the Isrealites out of Egypt. First, he changed the bitter waters of Marah to be sweet, then gave them twelve springs of water to camp beside. (Exodus 15:22-27 NRSV). But soon the Isrealites complained again when they ran low on bread and meat. So God gave them bread in the morning and quails in the evening. (Exodus 16:1-30) But he had given them specific instrucstions to only take what they need. But some still gathered more. But God had it worked out so that those who had gathered more had gotten less. And those who had gathered less got more. God also told Moses that they shouldn't leave some overnight for the next day. That God would give them what they'd need the next day. But again, some didn't listen and the bread got moldy and full of worms. On the sixth day, God told them to gather twice as much and to rest on the seventh day. But again, some people didn't listen and went out to gather the next day. God told them,

"See! The Lord has given you the sabbath, therefore, on the sixth day he gives you food for two days; each of you stay where you are; do not leave your place on the seventh day." (v. 29)

We can apply this for our lives, when we think about how cluttered and distracted we get when we accumliate more stuff. The Isrealites became so that they tried to work on the sabbath, a day meant to be holy and honoring God. They forgot what God wanted them to do. We do the same thing when we buy the newest fashions, but neglect to empty our closets of our old clothing. We get more than one TV, the newest cell phone with a camera, ipod and a internet access. Then we also get an ipod. Do you see where I'm going with this? We should only have what we need. Even to entertain ourselves.

And then, when what we accumliate causes us to take up land for garbage dumps, put a strain on natural resources and more importantly neglect reading God's word, or worship, or prayer because we are thinking about getting more and more stuff, we are not being the stewards of creation God has called us to be.

So reduce. God will give you what you need.