teachings and deans

hi.

a couple days ago i spent a couple days with my friends jasmine and jeremy. two people who have an ever-growing deep concern for our environment. we got to talking, and jasmine and i found ourselves getting more and more...

- angry at the way people seem to address environmental concerns;
- excited about the small things we can do to simplify our lifestyles;
- and ecstatic over this book that we had both finished fairly recently. "serve god, save the planet."

a few hours of conversation led us to the conclusion that there are some things we've both been convicted of, and have come to see in our own living that should be shared. convictions and new understandings that would likely be well received by the communities we find ourselves in.

so...we decided to do a teaching series as a team at sanctuary after the current series is over (early nov).

we want to go beyond simple environmentalism and address the bigger issues of indifference and the radically beautiful life God calls us to.

// some topics we're thinking about: consumption, entertainment, food, day to day "environmentalism," time, simpler - more focused living.

// and a few questions: what do we believe about "full life" - and could we have a warped image of what that is? what is systemic sin? are we living lives that require explanation? how is our care for the environment directly linked to the poor who we are called to serve?

- i'm throwing this out here because my hope is that the blog can become a place where a little dialog can take place - or maybe in this case, a place to post some resources, or point us to some things you think we should look at as we prepare.

finally, someone came to te church last week who works with the author of the book i mentioned. (some very unexpected doors are opening)

excited again. share away.

a few brief theological thoughts...

No less than eight times in Genesis chapter 9 God says 'My covenant is with you and all creation, my covenant is with you and all creatures, my covenant is with you and all the earth.' God is clearly stating his concern and his love for his creation that He created good - to sustain it, to see it thrive, to see it flourish. This is the heart of God for creation, and we see the heart of God continue through the entire biblical narrative.

if somebody wants to argue that we're not doing some terrible things to our earth, this might be somebody whose wealth and ignorance have simply isolated them from how serious it is.

i think many peoples claim of total dominion over the land is a symptom of our deep sinful bend of entitlement, in which we start to believe that what belongs to God belongs to us.

christians can no longer lag behind others who better model sustainable living, that they will heed God's call to care for this earth and everyone and everything in it.

a few thoughts on the book...

Sleeth is a medical doctor. He had a nice home on the New England coast at one point. According to his publisher’s synopsis, Sleeth was living the American dream…

Until he became convinced that the growing number of chronic illnesses he was treating had something to do with the air people were breathing…

The water they were drinking….

The chemicals their bodies were absorbing from a host of sources…

He came to believe the sharp increase he was seeing in cancer among children and young people might have something to do with the environment we live in and the toxins we’re exposed to.

So, following his grandmother’s axiom that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Sleeth made it his life mission to call others to more responsible stewardship of the environment. Before he began preaching to others, though, he and his family took stock of their own lives and reduced their environmental impact wherever and however possible.

Like any good doctor, Sleeth takes a holistic approach to the issue. He does not stop at the symptoms but presses deeper, until he uncovers the root cause of the problem. In this case, the main culprit is consumerism—our insatiable desire for more and more stuff, even (and often) at the expense of those who have little to begin with. That, Sleeth contends, is the root cause of the environmental quandary we now find ourselves in.

---

On the relationship between consumerism and environmentalism…

Being pro-stewardship is not a case of valuing forests more than people; rather, it means valuing human possessions less, and God’s world more

On the relationship between the environment, consumerism, and global poverty (which

Sleeth has seen firsthand during medical missionary trips to Central America)…

How does refraining from buying a teak chair for your deck constitute mission work? … Tides of rural farmers in Central America, South America, Africa, and Asia are forced to abandon lands they have worked for generations and flood the cities. They flee the mountains because their homes are being destroyed. As the demand for deck chairs, plywood underlayment, disposable chopsticks, and teak furniture grows, the trees in the third world are cut down. Poor families often do not own the land they have worked. They have no say and make no profit from the cutting of trees. Yet cutting down the forests around them changes their world. The topsoil washes away. The streams dry up. The trees God planted to hold the land in place are gone, so when a hurricane comes, the hillsides simply collapse and wash away.

On the amount we spend on health care each year (largely treating symptoms while ignoring the larger problem, Sleeth argues) and what we get for our investment…

Rounded to the nearest hundred dollar, every man, woman, and child spends $5,000 on health care annually. A woman’s life expectancy in the United States today is seventy-nine years. In comparison, Mexico spends about $500 a person on health care, and a woman’s life expectancy there is seventy-six years. That’s $400,000 in total lifetime expenditures for the American versus $38,000 for the average Mexican woman—a bundle of money for only three more years of life. Compared to a vast portion of the world’s people, Mexico has a posh health-care budget. Virtually no country in all of Africa has a budget of $100 per capita for annual health care. Americans spend more on dog and cat health care than Africans spend on human health care.

more to come.