Again, I apologize for my slacker ways. Procrastination is something I'm working on. Which is kind of ironic if you think about it. So today I will focus on what I should have been talking about over the last few days, the problems of the world that affect the environment and how the Christian Environmentalist should respond.
Poverty
Since the beginning of the human race, people have divided themselves into the haves, and the have nots. And although right now people the world over feel that gap is getter larger and larger, true poverty is a true nightmare. For example, I have a large debt thanks to student loans and car payments. I would love to live in my own apartment and just pay rent. To work at the design career I want to do rather than the job I have to do to pay the bills. But the sheer fact that I went to college and that I own a car (or at least I will in a few years) and that I can afford to buy a few DVDs a month (my one guilty pleasure) I am not poor. There are malnourished, desperate people even right here in our own country. They do not have homes, jobs, they cannot afford any medicine they need and they do not know where their next meal is coming from. It is accompained by feelings of hopelessness, bitterness, mistrust, and worthlessness. This is what true poverty looks like.
God hates poverty. To Him it is as deplorable as murder. God is a loving God who hates to see his creation suffer. Especially at the hands of someone who does not help the poor.
In 1 John chapter 3, John explains how righteousness and sin reveal one to be a child of God or a child of the devil and how Christians are commanded to love one another. In v. 15-17 he writes, 'All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you that that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?'
The envionment ties into all this, because a poor environment causes poverty. For example, a village in Africa might not get the crops they need to survive because the soil has been polluted or strip mining has caused runoff to ruin the soil that had been there. With no food, they are forced out of their homes, wandering until they find an odd job or someone who would give them a hot meal. The hunt for food bypasses the hunt for medicine and people end up getting sick. Imagine what could happen, if Christians decided to help the poor by making their environment a better place to live? Stewardship isn't just caring for God's creation, but for His people. And if Ezekial 22: 29-31 tells us anything, it says that people who don't care for other people or the land will feel God's wrath and they will recieve the same treatment they gave. And Amos 8:v4,
"Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land," If you keep reading, God promises a famine. See how serious He is about this?
War
Humans have been fighting since Cain and Abel. But when we fight over land or beliefs, that is when it becomes war. But when we start killing people, who is left to take care of the land? To protects the animals? To proclaim the good news that Jesus lives? To live to hear the message? While at war, humans get careless about the environment. In fact destroying an enemy's homeland seems to be a battle stragedy. After all how can they fight if they cannot live? And although God does and has let His people go to war, it is only when it's for His name, His Glory does he think of war as just. Deuteronomy 16:v19-20 says that 'Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ' (Hey that rhymes!)
But humans have made war not about God's justice but about land and ownership. We even throw beliefs in there just to give an excuse to justify war. Just remember Leviticus 25 : v 23-24,
'The land shall shot be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land."
Broken Families
In America, we have a fifty perfect divorce rate. Children grow up not knowing a father, or a mother. And it is no coincidence that single parent homes are often the poorest homes as well. God designed families to be a mother and father working as partners to raise their children as to the glory of God. But when sin entered the world, Adam and Eve's sin got passed down to Cain and Abel who became the first murderer and the first victim.
Today, broken families cause a ripple effect for other sins. A father abuses a son, that son one day abuses his son. A mother abandones her family, her child turns to drugs. Because of fear that they can't raise a child because of the possibility of a broken home, women abort their children. Homosexuality is accepted because why limit the chances of people finding "happiness"? And if our family is broken, why would we care if the world is broken too?
God is the Father. He can fix any problem if we turn to Him. 1 John 4:19 says, 'We love because He first loved us."
Loving God causes a ripple effect that counters the ripple effect of broken families and sin. We just need to open our hearts to it.
Sickness
Sadly, our human bodies become ill. God did not meant for it to be this way. Adam wasn't suppose to turn to dust before sin. That was his punishment. And sickness can cause and be affected by all that I have spoken of already. Poverty means no means for medicine. Medical bills can break families and in turn cause poverty. And people have developed biological weapons to kill and weaken an enemy with sickness.
Thankfully, God provided medicine in the form of plants that grow in the earth. But most of those life saving plants and yet undiscovered cures are dying out because of the dissappearing forests and trees around the world. The land need time to heal it self, but because of development and 'progress' we aren't giving the land the time it needs. God even instructed the Isrealites to let the land rest every seven years in Exodus 23:v10-11. God knows that if you use the land too much, you will lose what is important.
Many times over, Jesus cured disease and sickness. He used his power as the Son of God to help restore creation (people) to how God wanted them to be. First with their health and then with their hearts. In Luke 17: 11-19, Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one, a Samaritan came back to thank him and give glory to God. Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?" I think the Lord was wanting all of the men to proclaim God's glory with their testimony of being healed. I believe that is why he healed anyone. So that their faith would give glory to God. He was being a steward of God's creation. Is it too much to ask us of the same?
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