Justice and love: why this Christian cares about climate

"The crux of climate change for Christians is the poorest, most vulnerable countries are those hardest hit by global warming. The poor are least able to adapt to the impact of climate change and ironically, have contributed least to it. The carbon footprint of the poorest 1 billion people on the planet is estimated to be around 3% of the world’s total footprint. This is the social injustice of climate change: poor, developing countries will suffer because of the fossil fuels emitted by developed nations. We are commanded to love our neighbour. [...] God requires that His people oppose social injustice and open their hearts to the poor and vulnerable. For the church to turn a blind eye to the injustice of climate change is to turn our back on God’s heart for the poor."

John Cook, founder of the justly famous site Skeptical Science, has written a short piece in Eternity magazine explaining why he takes climate change seriously as a Christian. You can read the rest here.
H/T Liz.

Would Jesus vote for family values?

“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it."

- Matthew 10.37-39 (NLT).

Families are a wonderful gift from God. At their best, they can be places of loving acceptance and stable endurance, where virtues are nurtured and many needs met. They can also be ongoing nightmares, filled with bitter disappointment and all manner of brokenness. Christians need have no illusions about how difficult they can be at times. In affirming their goodness, we admit that this is often taken on trust, a step made in the hope of discovering such goodness in the slow unfolding of loving effort over time.

Some Christians want to say much more than this, and claim that defending "family values" ought to be the primary political goal of Christians. While there are many good things worth preserving bundled up in this phrase, it can also be somewhat misleading, or can receive too much emphasis. Familial relationships do not exhaust or even provide the focal point of Christian discipleship. I am a family man, married with a child and a large extended family with whom I enjoy good relationships, but holy scripture and the gospels assume that my love for my family needs to be converted, deepened and shared with a much broader family, namely the household of faith, and indeed with all, even my enemies. To focus on the family is to limit the scope of this call to what is easy. Even the pagans love their own (Matthew 5.47).

Christ even instructed his followers to "hate" their parents (Luke 14.26) and effectively disowned his own family (or at least radically redefined it) when they came to collect him lest his teaching attract too much attention (Mark 3.21-35). Whether hyperbolic or not, Christ presents a serious critique of an ethic built around familial obligations.

Therefore, I am not sure that Christian hopes and goals for political engagement are best summarised through the categories and concerns of “family”.

Karl Barth gives a good attempt at reading these passages and feeling the weight of the critique that it contains. He is not alone, but is in my reading firmly within the mainstream of Christian tradition on this.

However we end up applying the gospel passages in question, it will not do simply to set them aside as hyperbole. We may not cut off our hands (Matthew 5.30), but at the very least, we try to take Jesus’ words about the dangers of sin seriously.

If we are to follow Christ today, then family too must not be excluded from the orbit of his total claim upon our lives. Within that claim, the demands and goodness of family life are not simply endorsed without qualification, but are re-located and redirected towards a family that includes the widow and the orphan, the poor, the lonely, the single, the isolated and, ultimately, embraces the entire groaning creation.

My hunch is that taking seriously God’s commitment to relationships means relativising the place of blood family, not ignoring them or undermining their dignity (which I appreciate can happen in some quarters), but neither setting them up as the model of all human relationships and the highest social good.

A wedding sermon

Heard this at a wedding today. Given that it has now set the record for being the most widely heard sermon in history, I would love to know your thoughts.

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many people are fearful for the future of today’s world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each other.

The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. People can dream of such a thing but that hope should not be fulfilled without a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform so long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon,
Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon."

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive. We need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen. That way which is expressed in the prayer that you have composed together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.
In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.
Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

- Richard Chartres, 132rd Bishop of London,
delivered in Westminster Abbey on 29th April 2011.
Full text is from here and you can watch it here.

I found it interesting that on a day of widespread celebration, where continuity, tradition and history are very much on show, he made two mentions in seven minutes of the converging crises on the horizon. What struck you?

If you had seven minutes to say something in that context, where would you have gone?

Lent: Simplicity and contentment

Lent is a time for the deliberate discipleship of our desires through refraining and focusing. Often this is portrayed as a somewhat arbitrary burden to be carried, as though the carrying of a burden were itself good. But fasting (or refraining from some regular activity) is not an end in itself, but a means to sharpen our hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for God’s justice. Such disciplines as we accept for this period are not meritorious works of supererogation earning divine brownie points, nor do we seek out pain so as to enjoy the relief from it all the more at its end. We are, in Rowan Williams’ evocative phrase, setting out on "a journey into joy". Lent is a time of preparation for the good news of Easter, but in the light of the cross and resurrection, we discover that the very disciplining of our desires is already good news, not merely preparation for it. The gospel does not add ethics as an appendix, the fine print of obedience you sign up for when you accept the gift of forgiveness. No, ethics is already good news. The disciplining of desire is also the liberation of desire; by learning self-control, we become free. We are learning to love rightly and so learning to be more human.

I submit that a key aspect of this joyful journey for many western Christians is an exodus of liberation from consumerism, the state of bondage in which we are consumed by what we consume. Our toys so often own us. In such a context, learning to delight in less is an affirmation of a life with more of the things that matter. The simple life is not only a matter of justice (living simply so that others can simply live) – though it is certainly that in a world of ever more apparent ecological limits – the simple life is also the good life. Receiving all God’s gifts with thanks enables us to let (many of) them go and to let go the desire for more that makes us discontent. Let us instead become discontent with our discontentment, which robs of us of peace and perspective.

The pursuit of justice, insofar as it is woven within the Christian good news, is also part of this same joyous adventure. It is not a fight, but a dance. We do not create it or establish it; we share from what we have ourselves received. Our goal is not the spread of consumerist “wealth” to every member of society and every corner of the globe. Our goal is that in walking the way of the cross, all may discover it to be the way of light.

Not yet concrete enough? Go and sell your possessions, then come follow Christ.
Originally posted at Theopolis.

Lent: What is the reward of fasting?

"Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. [...] And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

- Matthew 6.1, 16-18 (NRSV).

Does fasting earn spiritual brownie points? Does every meal skipped now give us an extra helping at the messianic feast of the age to come? I don't think that this is Jesus' point here. He is warning against those whose acts of piety (he mentions charitable giving, prayer and fasting) are done in order to be seen by others. Jesus has no problem with good deeds that are visible to others. Indeed, just a few verses earlier, he taught his listeners to "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5.16, NRSV). The issue here is not the visibility of the works, but their purpose. Ostentatious display somehow undermines the point of such deeds, which suggests that their point has to do with our hearts, with our motives and desires (a conclusion also suggested a few verses later in 6.19-21, where Jesus speaks of what it is that our hearts treasure). We give, pray and fast in order to allow our hearts to be shaped by such disciplines. These activities are done for the healing of our desires not the enhancement of our reputation. At least part of the reward of fasting, then, is to discover that our treasure is indeed heavenly and so free from the vicissitudes of material possessions or social reputation.

"Heaven" in Matthew's Gospel is not code for eschatological promise (as it is often misused in much Christian discourse), but is either a reference to God's dwelling place (5.34, 14.19 and all occurrences of "Father in heaven"), or a synecdoche for God himself (3.17, 16.1, 18.18, 21.25 and all occurrences of "kingdom of heaven"). In other words, when Jesus speaks of storing up treasure in heaven, he is not first and foremost talking about the future (unlike, say 1 Peter 1.4, though even there the hope is that it will be revealed, not that we will go to heaven to be with it). Instead, storing up treasure in heaven means cherishing God, seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness. It means a transformation of our desires so that we are not seeking our own glory but delighting in God's. And this is why any attempt to gain credit before others through acts of piety destroys the very purpose of those acts, since it distracts us from the chance to have our desires realigned towards God and his purposes.

Therefore, perhaps the "reward" of fasting (or prayer or giving) that Jesus refers to in Matthew 6 is not that we somehow earn a better future, but that our desires take another step on the path to healing, that we are slowly liberated from our crippling self-obsession. This is no mercenary bonus, unrelated to the activity that wins it. It is the appropriate outcome of the very activities that seek to draw us out of the echo chamber of own hearts. Our reward might well be that we become a little more capable of love.
I have tried head off one potential misunderstanding of this post at the pass.

On imagining the future: Human action is reaction

"Come now you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.' Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wishes, will live and do this or that.' As it is, you in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin."

- James 4.13-17 (NRSV).

If making confident assertions of the likely course of my personal life is arrogance that ignores the fact that I am not in control, then expanding such claims to society as a whole seems sheer hubris.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that this passage from James doesn't rule out all expectations of the future playing a role in decision-making. It is not that Christians are forbidden from considering the future or making plans based on such considerations, but that all our plans must be written in pencil, not ink. This requires a certain chastisement of imagination, or perhaps better, imagination's acknowledgement that it is imagination. The future is uncertain; it is an arrogant boast to confuse pictures of a possible future with our desires for the future and assume that we can (or must) ensure the realisation of those desires.

The future is not ours to seize and shape, but God's to give and take. Our role is humble receptivity, trusting thankfulness, loving perception and hopeful prayer.

Does this stance foster passivity, a resignation in the face of suffering and so a complicity in failure to secure liberation for the oppressed? It can and all too often has. But it need not. And a thorough account of human action will be more open, more honest, more creative and more effective for taking the priority of divine grace more seriously. God initiates, we respond. Human action is reaction. That is the lesson of James.

This does not require passivity, rather an openness to the unfolding possibilities of loving God and neighbour, an openness in which we take seriously our situation and take just as seriously the Spirit's power to breathe new life into hearts of stone.

Each of us is thrown into a concrete historical situation that is neither of our choosing nor our fashioning, born within a family and culture that we can only receive. Rejection or reformation are, of course, forms of reception. We do not begin with a blank slate, even if we wish to shatter or erase what is written. We are born amidst a broken glory. Unbidden, we both rejoice and suffer as a result. Our world, our selves and our time are not creatures of our will, to be made into whatever image we desire. We receive them. And we receive them as the gift of God despite the flaws evident in them, giving thanks for what is good, trusting that what is not is not beyond redemption.

No deficiency in my self or my shared world or the span of time for my life is excluded from this trusting acceptance because at the heart of the world, self and time which I receive lies Christ, who is the hope of healing, of new life in the deadest of ends, of space to breathe.

And so the gift received is my life: my self, my world and the time of the former amidst the latter. And the hidden centre of that gift is Christ, who is the image of my true self, the founding principle of creation and the alpha and omega of time. Human action begins in humble receptivity towards and trusting thanksgiving for that gift.

Yet I am also called to account for what becomes of my self, my world and my time. The gift brings responsibility. Not only is the gift to be received, but understood, entered into and explored. The gift invites not mere submission of the will, but the delight of the heart, the joyful harmonising of the affects. Coming to know this gift involves not simply the intellect but crucially love. Only a participation in God's passionate concern for his creation (whether or not this is how we conceive it) enables us to see what is actually around us. The dispassionate observation of objective inquiry is frequently a necessary step in this process, but it is a limiting of focus that occurs within a broader framework of care. We learn about the world and ourselves and the time available to us because we care what happens, who we are to become. We are responsible for the gifts we have received.

And having become responsible, we therefore care about possible futures, about paths that open before us, about the destiny of the good things entrusted to us. We face future prospects because we cannot do otherwise without closing our hearts and hands. And faithful imagination requires the abandonment of false hopes, as well as the rejection of myopic assumptions that things must remain as they are. The pursuit of responsible care for the gifts we have received may require of us the rejection of utopian fantasies, but also the questioning of the status quo. What we may hope for along the way is neither ease nor comfort, but that the road we walk will not, ultimately, be a dead end, that our labours of love will not be in vain.

The future is not ours to seize and shape, but God's to give and take. Our role is humble receptivity, trusting thankfulness, loving perception and hopeful prayer.

The path of faith, hope and love - that is, the path of true human action in the way of the crucified and risen Christ - is narrow, dangerous and often not immediately perceptible. It can only be walked with prayerful dependence and an ongoing openness to correction and further guidance. But it is a journey into life.

The point of no return was passed some time ago

"I believe we will see increasing nihilism. I think also there is a very big chance that if the science starts telling us we are beyond the point of no return, I think we could open up the box for a whole range of utterly aberrant responses. Some of which might be utter despair and a kind of last minute self-seeking behaviour. Some of which might go in who knows what direction in terms of aggressive scapegoating, projection, pushing this onto to other people, other issues that have nothing to do with climate change."

- George Marshall, "The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing in Climate Change".

This whole lecture (in three parts: one, two, three) is worth watching for many insights into the psychology of responding to the threat of climate change. These comments come towards the end of the presentation and concern the situation that I am particularly interested in: the perception that we are "too late" to avoid some really horrible outcomes. For many people, such a scenario may well lead to the kinds of reactions that Marshall mentions, and things could turn very ugly. The 2006 film Children of Men depicted a world a in 2027 where hope for the future has been lost and the social backdrop is not a pretty one.

The point of no return in terms of avoiding some seriously bad outcomes was passed some time ago. That doesn't justify inaction or "let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die", since (a) negative effects won't hit all at once tomorrow, or even The Day After Tomorrow, but will build over years, decades and centuries, (b) our current actions can still avoid even worse outcomes than are already "in the pipeline" and (c) because of the resurrection, in the Lord our labour is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15.58). No act of love, however apparently futile, is wasted, since love is the future.

Growth and justice

"Economic growth is the magic formula which allows our conflicts to remain unresolved. While economies grow, social justice is unnecessary, as lives can be improved without redistribution. While economies grow, people need not confront their elites. While economies grow, we can keep buying our way out of trouble. But, like the bankers, we stave off trouble today only by multiplying it tomorrow. Through economic growth we are borrowing time at punitive rates of interest. It ensures that any cuts agreed at Copenhagen will eventually be outstripped. Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, growth means that it’s only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accomodated on a finite planet."

- George Monbiot, "This is about us".

This piece, worth reading in full, was written during the height of the Copenhagen conference last December. Yet it has not been rendered irrelevant by the (unsurprising) failures there. This is another way of saying that ecological responsibility cannot be divorced from justice. Though Monbiot doesn't see it, I believe that justice can only be sustainably pursued by love.

Loving our (climate) neighbours

"Acting rightly with respect to the earth is a source of hope, for those who so act give expression to the Christian belief that it is God’s intention to redeem the earth, and her oppressed creatures, from sinful subjection to the domination of prideful wealth and imperial power. Such actions witness to the truth that the history of global warming has gradually unfolded; that those poor or voiceless human and nonhuman beings whose prospect climate change is threatening are neighbours through the climate system to the powerful and wealthy. And Christ’s command in these circumstances is as relevant as ever: 'love your neighbour as yourself.'"

- Michael Northcott, A Moral Climate: the ethics of global warming
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007), 285.

Northcott (a professor of Christian ethics here in Edinburgh) articulates a fundamental point for Christian discussions of ecology. That love is our motivation and the criterion of our choices: not greed in seeking profits or power through higher regulations, not fear or self-protection, not enlightened self-interest or guilt. Any Christian discussion of ecological responsibility needs this corrective lest we simply mirror or unthinkingly baptise unbelieving discourse and assumptions.

Note that framing the discussion within the concept of love doesn't necessarily mean that only humans are included within the sphere of our concern. Northcott here suggests, quite radically for some perhaps, that nonhuman beings can also be our neighbours. Much more needs to be said on this, but to suggest animals (and plants?) as neighbours, as fellow members of the community of life and fellow breathers of the divine Spirit, need not imply that there are not ordered relationships between different forms of life, though it does at the very least imply that nonhuman creatures are loved by God for what they are, not simply for what they can be for us humans.

UPDATE: Were the animals also waiting for the coming Messiah?

The impossible dream: or how economists don't understand physics

"Economists and politicians can’t admit it, but the laws of physics apply, no matter what the latest polls tell us. The Earth has finite resources that will someday limit our economic growth. The Earth cannot forever support 7 billion people consuming as much as Americans consume. And yet we’ve staked our future — individually, nationally, and maybe even as a species — on that impossible dream."

- Rex Nuttington, "The economy can't grow forever".

The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment. Until we get that into our heads, we are not in a position to begin reflecting upon the challenges of global poverty in the coming decades. There is no healthy response to the needs of the world's poor that does not consider the ecological consequences of our present trajectory and present poverty-reduction strategies. A trickle-down model that relies on continued growth of the whole system driven (largely) by western consumerism may have made some worthy progress (depending how you measure it) over the last six decades or so, but cannot be extended into the future without wishful thinking.

Yet if we are not simply going to ask the poorest to shoulder the largest burden, then it is the richest (i.e. us) who need to. If we are going to leave ecological space for the poorest to get out of stupid and absolute poverty, then the section of the world living at levels of consumption that cannot be shared with all cannot continue on our present path. There will be no healthy response to our ecological and resource crises that does not involve a lower level of consumption for the richest. Joyfully embracing less is not simply a matter of personal preference, nor of "saving the planet", but at its root is an expression of love and concern for justice.

The big picture on climate change

Skeptical science, an excellent website run by Australian Christian John Cook that gives very readable and well referenced answers to common sceptic talking points about climate change, has just posted an excellent summary of the big picture on climate change. It expresses very succinctly where the uncertainties do and don't currently lie, with plenty of links for those who want to read more. If you're feeling like you'd rather let the whole climate thing pass you by, or feel confused about where to begin, or just want to get your bearings after reading too many newspaper articles, this post is the one to read.

The site is called Skeptical Science because true science is indeed sceptical, and so John applies this to common "scepticism" about climate change, in order to see where the balance of evidence from the best research lies (see here for a good intro to the idea behind the site). If you have specific arguments that you've come across that seem to "disprove" climate science, here are 122 common sceptic talking points each answered in a single sentence (with links to longer answers). If you are yourself sceptical of the science of climate change, then make sure you read through the list and see if your reasons are already answered in the scientific literature. If you come across people putting forward arguments on other websites, bookmark this page and point people towards it.

Each answer refers to relevant scientific literature for those who want to take the discussion further. John is in the process of turning all his answers into three levels of readership: beginner, intermediate and advanced. The website is also being translated into numerous languages. All this work is done by volunteers, who have come across the site, found it a very useful resource and want to make it even more useful. Neither John nor any of his contributers are paid for what they do (apart from the odd PayPal donation); the site is a true labour of love.

Indeed, John has been quite open about the fact that he is concerned about climate change out of Christian love for his neighbours (especially the poor and future generations). He is doing an excellent job co-ordinating an increasingly popular, complex and useful website (which is now also a free iPhone and Android app) and he does it for love, not money. Praise God for John Cook!

Jeremy Kidwell on the purpose of fear

[W]e may also grant [our fears] overriding control over our moral lives. Thus, if I fear the financial crisis, i.e. my own financial ruin, at the root of this fear is my own love of money and the economy which secures my wealth. Similarly, fears of environmental destruction may reflect an underlying worship of the patterns I am familiar with, such as a ready supply of tropical fruits or an abundance of consumer products without any indication of their source or true cost. In short, my fear may reflect an underlying reluctance to see change, whatever the source.

A Christian response to such fear, I think, is the act of repentance. In this, we identify the underlying idolatries (or distorted loves) that generate our fears and express regret for the destructiveness these misguided attachments have caused. Next, we detach our loyalties from them, and place our trust instead in the only thing which can correspond to our highest aspirations: the personal God who created us. This redirection offers an entirely new orientation by which we can respond to bad news and conceive of our life within changed circumstances.

- Jeremy Kidwell, "The purpose of fear".

This post by my friend and New College colleague Jeremy makes some very good points about the ways that our fears can reveal our distorted loves. By reflecting on what it is that we fear losing, what we love comes into focus.

Yet not all the loves that are thereby revealed are necessarily distorted. Sometimes, we may discover a new love through becoming aware of a threat. For instance, it is only fairly recently that I have learned how much I love phytoplankton. While some of our fears may uncover the shallowness of our loves, some of the things under threat are not so obviously trivial: the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, the existence of myriad species and scores of ecosystems, the social fabric of trust and co-operation, a functioning healthcare system (and more importantly a functioning sewerage and garbage system), the rule of law, and so on. Of course these too can be loved inordinately, but simply to ignore the fact that these more significant goods are also threatened is (or may be) to once again allow fear to set the parameters of my moral vision, since I may be refusing to see the full extent of the threat lest it disrupt not just my convenient idolatries, but things of real (though still secondary) worth.

Why be green? Ecology and the gospel III

A series in three parts
Part One: God the materialist
Part Two: The renewal of all things
Part Three: Three steps towards heaven on earth

Part Three: Three steps towards heaven on earth
Therefore, if the greatest moral challenge of our day is whether we will turn to Christ or anti-Christ, whether we will embrace life or remain in death, whether we will walk in faith, hope and love or remain imprisoned in their opposites, then we can only do so as creatures. Ecological responsibility is not an alternative or distraction from the life of faith, hope and love, but one non-negotiable aspect of it. Ecological concern is not the gospel nor does it stand in competition with the proclamation of the gospel. Rather, it is bound up in the proclamation of the gospel as one of the many spheres of life in which we need to repent and turn from the idolatry of consumerism and greed. How can we preach the good news of liberation from sin without also proclaiming and pursing a life that turns from selfishness and respects the goodness and integrity of God’s world? How can we love our neighbours without considering their well-being as a whole: spiritual, mental, emotional, social, physical and ecological? How can we pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven and not pay attention to the earth for which we pray?

For those already inclined to ecological activism, the gospel provides a more sustainable basis in faith, hope and love, rather than the all too common motives of fear and guilt. For those who are apathetic, the scriptures warn us lest we join the destroyers of the earth (Revelation 13.18), and they invite us into freedom from thoughtless consumption and into concern for the least, who are usually the ones to suffer first and most from ecological disasters.

So, as creatures of the Creator, disciples of the risen Christ, filled with the Spirit who brings life and new life, what are we then to do? I would suggest three initial steps.

First, be thankful. Christian ethics starts in joy, not fear. It flows from peace, not anxiety. It is a liberation to do what is best, not being forced to do the minimum out of guilt.

Second, repent of consumerism. We are not defined by what we buy. We do not need the latest fashion or the shiniest gadget. You don’t need meat every meal or international travel every holiday. God gives us every good thing to enjoy, and so there is no need to hoard. We can learn contentment, which is grounded in step one: thankfulness. Smashing the hollow idol of endless consumption is not only good for the planet, but also necessary for the soul.

Third, embrace life. We belong to the earth. We are each members of something bigger than ourselves, bigger even than humanity: a creation awaiting its Sabbath rest in God. And so keep learning about the world, opening your eyes to the wonder, mystery and beauty around us. Find out what is happening to our planet. Mourn for what is being lost and become involved in movements that seek to nurture life.

Human actions continue to disfigure God’s creation, closing down possibilities and even threatening the viability of society. God doesn’t promise to stop us from destroying ourselves, but the good news of the risen Jesus reveals that he can bring new life even in the most deadly of ends. That is news worth sharing, news worth living.
These three posts were written as an article for AFES's SALT Magazine and are re-posted here with permission.

How to vote Christianly

As I said on the day of the previous Australian federal election, to vote Christianly is to vote for others, and John Dickson has written an excellent piece in the SMH making that point in more detail. Here is a taste:

"Christians should be willing to change voting patterns after Christian reflection on particular policies. A believer who cannot imagine voting for the 'other side' has either determined that only one party aligns with the will of God or, more likely, is more attached to their cultural context than to the wisdom of Scripture.

"Voting patterns, of believers or otherwise, are sometimes based on little more than family heritage or geography. This is unreflective and sub-Christian.

"Equally inadequate is voting for a candidate simply because he or she is a Christian. This is religious favouritism. Having Christians in Parliament is no guarantee - or even indicator - that our nation will be marked by peace, justice, compassion and truth."

Though I do think that Dickson missed two points well worth making. First, Christians will never be content with considerations that stop with national interests. Nationalism is a tragic attenuation of political focus incompatible with the global effects of our actions and the unrestrained extent of Jesus' commands to love our neighbour and our enemy.

Second, the present context demands a serious consideration of the inclusion of the ecological neighbour, both human and otherwise (that is, we are to consider the likely effects of different policies on other humans via their effects on natural ecosystems and the likely effects on those ecosystems in their own right).
H/T Matt Moffitt. Image by Andrew Filmer. The SMH also has a Vote-a-matic tool to help compare policies of the major parties.

Before the last NSW state election in 2007, I also wrote a post about voting Christianly

Link love

Jeremy ponders how to love his global neighbour in a market-driven world.

Why personal energy efficiency could have a bigger effect than you think.

Twenty-two Australian mammals become extinct during the century leading up to 1960. Now, mammal populations are in freefall in Kakadu, Australia's largest national park. Even in a conservation area, biodiversity is not secure.

Kate ponders whether snowball earth was the trigger for complex life forms.

How to save on accommodation costs by couchsurfing, and create a better world at the same time. H/T Joe. In the past, we've benefitted from a similar organisation called Servas.

Milan points out the somewhat obvious difference between the survival of human civilisation and the survival of the planet.

A brief introduction to survivalism.

The Canadian government recently turn up a report into the impacts of the tar sands development. Here is what they don't want people to know.

Stoneleigh reflects on trade during boom and bust and what a just-in-time supply chain means in an era of greater disruption.

The carbon bath: visualising the climate problem.

The difficulty of love

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

- Iris Murdoch.

According to Jesus, we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. I take it that he means we are to love our neighbours in the same way that we love ourselves, rather than directing us to love the neighbour as an extension of ourselves. Love requires open eyes to the needs and opportunities of the neighbour. I cannot assume my neighbour is just like me but have to go through the sometimes painful process of recognising and understanding our differences.

Why Christians must grieve (and fear, rejoice and desire)

Or, why tranquility is overrated (for now)

"And so a rightly directed will is love in a good sense and a perverted will is love in a bad sense. Therefore a love which strains after the possession of the loved object is desire; and the love which possess and enjoys that object is joy. The love that shuns what opposes it is fear, while the love that feels that opposition when it happens is grief."

- Augustine, City of God (trans. Henry Bettenson), XIV.7.

The four basic passions (or loves) fall out on a simple grid: future or present, attraction or repulsion. Attraction in the present is joy, in the future is desire. Repulsion in the future is fear and in the present, grief. In each case, Augustine argues that there can be good or bad versions, depending on whether the love in question is rightly directed or perverted. This put him in opposition to Stoicism, which saw these four as emotional disturbance of the mind and as the origin of all moral failings.

Augustine goes on to show how the Stoics (Cicero in particular) argue that for three of these emotions there is a corresponding disposition "in the mind of a wise man". Desire, joy and fear are each disorders, Cicero argued, and need to be replaced by will, gladness and caution respectively. The difference between the positive and negative term in each case was for Cicero whether they could be held without variation. For example, caution differs from fear in being always present in the mind of the wise and thus not dependent upon changing circumstances, unlike fear, which comes and goes in the presence or absence of a threat. Mental vacillation arising from responding to changing circumstances was thus the cause of all moral fault. The highest virtue is apatheia, impassibility.

While desire, fear and joy each have a positive (since unchanging) Stoic counterpart, Cicero has no place for any disposition corresponding to grief. This is a significant omission, since it reveals a crucial difference between Cicero and Augustine, or between Stoicism and Christianity, namely the place of suffering. For the Stoic, it is impossible for the wise to suffer, since wisdom provides a stability of mind that is the opposite of the perturbations of suffering. Only a fool suffers the fickleness of the passions (desire, joy, fear, grief). If one is wise, then the steady dispositions of will, gladness and caution are unchanging in all circumstances.

The difference in the Christian mindset is eschatology: that the world is open to God's coming future, revealing the present brokenness of all things. This opens the possibility of suffering not always being purely negative. Suffering that yearns towards the future is ever pierced by the failures of the present ("the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present"). The restlessness of Christian desire ("our heart is restless until it rests in you") is not a failure of wisdom or stability, but the proper expression of creation's present fragmentation. Augustine is clear that these disturbing passions are proper to us in this present age. The impassibility so cherished by the Stoics is for Augustine a future hope, but currently an inhuman impossibility "while we are in this place of misery". It is inhuman because to not feel anything means you're not paying attention. It is impossible because no one has so lost touch with their natural feelings as to be entirely impervious to the vicissitudes of life as we presently experience it.

And so grief is as crucial to a healthy heart as desire, joy or fear because the world is not as it should be. Augustine locates the expression of this present fragmentation in the experience of disordered desire, that is, in sin. Grief is therefore primarily grief over sin, as the apostle Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 7.8-11. The possibility of grief arises from the tension between what God has promised and our present experience of failure. And it is not just grief, but all the emotions that depend on this dynamic. We rightly fear sinning more than any physical pain or loss. We rejoice over the repentance of our neighbour. We desire God's promises to reach fruition. And we grieve when we find ourselves once again at fault.

These emotions can be expressions of our disordered hearts, where we fear or desire, rejoice or grieve over the wrong things, or in the wrong way. But Augustine is adamant that the faithful Christian life (and therefore, the truly human life) includes each of these emotions in their proper place.

"Among us Christians, on the other hand, the citizens of the Holy City of God, as they live by God's standards in the pilgrimage of this present life, feel fear and desire, pain and gladness in conformity with the holy Scriptures and sound doctrine; and because their love is right, all these feelings are right in them."

- Augustine, City of God, XIV.9.

Only the beloved can love

Love makes the world go around. All we need is love. If love is so important, then perhaps we can build an identity on it? Perhaps we can say that we are defined by who and how we love, that the quality of our love shows the quality of our person? Indeed, the two commands (or double command) that Jesus revealed at the heart of human obedience speak precisely of this: to love God and to love neighbour (Mark 12.28-31). If these are the most important things we are to do, then might they not be the best way of understanding ourselves? We are those who love God and neighbour.

However, the object and quality of our loves does not provide an adequate basis for founding an identity, nor can they be reliably forged into a self-justification. We are only secondarily lovers. We are first beloved. And only when we are first beloved can we then love. This is true of children: being loved comes before any attempt to love in return. And it is even more true of us as children of God: "We love because he first loved us." "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and send his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4.10, 19)

The good news is that this means that there is no anxiety in love. In loving others, we are not attempting to secure or prove or acquire or protect ourselves. If we sometimes fail in our attempts, we are not destroyed. Instead, the prior love of God for us frees our love from the constrictions that belong to fear. We are beloved; as such, we are brought out into a broad space of freedom and delight. Love is not a burdensome command that must be obeyed lest we fall into destruction. There is no need to beat ourselves up over the imperfections in our attempts to care for those around us. Love is a joyful free responsiveness to God's delight in us.

Of course, loving broken and hurting neighbours will not be all roses and smiles. Tears and suffering are also the fruit of love in a dying world. But our tears are not the price we pay in order to get some love in return. Instead, as beloved of God, we are invited into the sometimes painful privilege of echoing and sharing that divine love.

Freed to love: why (rich) Christians need to think about climate change

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

Galatians 5.13-14.

Freedom is ordered towards love; we are free in order that we might love, and in love become slaves to one another. Christian liberty is the freedom to do good to my neighbour. Central amongst the goods I might do for my neighbour is echoing the divine call to enter into this very freedom to love. And so part of my free service will be inviting my brothers and sisters into the service of those around them: "Let us serve our neighbours and do good to everyone, especially to the household of faith!"

Yet this service is not exhausted by issuing such an invitation. There are many other ways of serving one another as well as proclaiming the good news of freedom in Christ. To be of service to my neighbours, some of the good things I can do will require more specific knowledge of my neighbours and their condition and context. Do they need food? Do they need to learn how to fish for themselves? Do they need to have their fish stocks protected from illegal fishing? Do they need medical aid? Do they need a healthcare system that delivers better care? Do they need a friend they can trust? Do they need a society in which trust is prized and protected? What fear or guilt is oppressing them? Is a fearful society confusing their ability to discriminate between threats? Are they a victim of crime? Is corruption undermining the rule of law in their community? Are they addicted to self-destructive behaviours? Does their society encourage them towards the idolatry of greed? Towards superficiality of judgement? Does their lifestyle (and that of their society) contribute to reducing the freedom of others to love and serve?

The answers to these questions will not be easy or simple. They will not be found only by studying the scriptures (though that will of course be part of it!). To love our neighbour, we have to pay close attention to the world and how it works, including the disputed areas.

At stake is the relation of knowledge to ethics. Saint Paul prayed that the Philippians’ love would "overflow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight" - knowledge of God and the good news of Jesus, yes, but also knowledge of one another and the world in which they are called to love. We cannot love our neighbours without some attempt at understanding them, their history and gifts, their situation and the world which we share, including its threats and possibilities.

For example, Christians amongst areas ravaged by AIDS will need to come to an opinion about whether HIV leads to AIDS or not (this is hotly contested in parts of Africa, and there are campaigns against the use of retro-viral drugs, and shoddy pseudo-scientists throwing mud into the air). Christian parents will need to come to an opinion about the benefits and costs of immunisation (where again, confusing signals have often been sent by the media based on poor scientific work). And Christians with influence in energy, in public policy, or those with carbon-intensive lifestyles and with global neighbours who live in drought or flood-prone areas will sooner or later have to have some kind of opinion on climatology and carbon.

Not every Christian is able or obliged to answer every conceivable question about how to love our neighbours, or to evaluate the variety of threats and opportunities we focus upon. But Christians do need to think carefully about which sources of knowledge are trustworthy, and what we do with that knowledge. Will we trust the IPCC and the national scientific bodies of thirty-two nations when they tell us they have over 90% confidence that human activities (particularly those in developed nations) are significantly contributing to changes with very serious negative effects now and increasingly into future decades (particularly on the world's poorest peoples)?

God doesn’t give us an exhaustive list of who we are to trust and how far. But that doesn’t mean the question is morally irrelevant or that refraining from the discussion is the best use of Christian freedom to love. This may not be the only or the greatest moral issue of our time, but it is a very significant one.

Christian freedom does not mean that we are released from the responsibility to consider carefully the effect that our habits, actions and beliefs have on those around us. Quite the opposite: we are liberated from the intolerable burden of having to save ourselves or our world, and given many opportunities to do all kinds of good. Let us use our freedom in order to love.

Hope in 2010

Is it possible to hope today?

Rev Dr Michael Spence is the current Vice-Chancellor and Principal of my alma mater, the University of Sydney and he is also an ordained Anglican priest working in a voluntary capacity at St Mary's Anglican Church, Waverley (the church in which Jessica was baptised and in which we were married). He recently participated in a panel event hosted by ABC Radio National as part of the Sydney Festival titled Hope 2010: Crisis, Catharsis, Renewal. Dr Spence's contribution is worth listening to as someone in high office giving an account of the hope that is in him. To give you a taste, here are some quotes:

"Love - self-giving, self-sacrificial, unsentimental, others-oriented love - is at the centre of reality."

"Acceptance is the opposite of hope. [...] Hope claims the right to look for and struggle for a world in which all those enemies of love - hate and all its children - are defeated."

"Resurrection is possible. There can be real victory over the enemies of love, both in our own lives and more generally."

"There are just as many pathological reasons for belief as for unbelief."

The fact that he made it from ontological difference to Babe in two sentences was particularly impressive.
H/T Matt.