Comments on: Why are Christians afraid of climate change?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:05:03 +0000

It’s crazy isn’t it, the hostility towards issues of poverty and the environment. I’ve experienced those same frustrations, and they have been part of the motivation behind this site, to kind of redress the balance a little!

Thanks for stopping by, and good luck as you think and talk and keep exploring the kingdom of God in all its many facets.

By: Chloe

Chloe — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:39:55 +0000

This post has been very helpful for me. I am a European, a Christian, living in Washington DC, worshipping in affluent NW DC, with what I understand is a church that is comprised mostly of Republicans. My husband and I became convicted that we needed to care about the environment as Christians and a as couple that professed concern for the poor. We were both very quickly shocked and devastated when we started to talk to other Christians about the environment at our church. We were both baffled. I understand that people may not care about the environment. But to have Christians oppenly attack, oppose and sabotage any effort to care for the environment was beyond my comprehension. I don’t understand the irrational fear of science. I don’t understand how politics can over-ride people’s ability to reason for themselves, to interfere with objectively looking at data and facts. Maybe I don’t understand because both my husband and I come from academic research backgrounds, I don’t know. This article seems to be in line with what I have been hearing from my Republican brothers and sisters at church. It has helped me organize my thoughts, organize the information I gleamed from my conversations with them and inform the approach I need to use when I talk to them in the future.

By: Samantha

Samantha — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:11:08 +0000

I understood that when Israel became a nation again in 1949 that this was the most significant event of all to mark the beginning of the ‘end times.’ However as you say theology is very confusing and many Christians will put their own slant on what’s happening even to the extent of predicting a date and time for the ‘end of the age.’ It’s so easy to get caught up in such things and miss the Christian message to love your neighbour as yourself. I personally am guilty of sitting in front of the box and sympathising with the plight of poorer nations. My sympathy isn’t likely to help anyone and I realise it’s high time for me to take action. In what way I’m not quite sure but I’m working on it. Any ideas?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:56:52 +0000

Yes, Jesus says a bunch of things in Matthew 24 which are about ‘end times’, but verse 34 reads: ‘I assure you, this generation will not pass away before all these things have come to pass’. That begs the question of what exactly is ending – the world, or Israel? History tells us that forty years later, Jerusalem was ransacked and the nation of Israel ceased to exist (until 1949). That would still have been within the lifetime of his hearers, as he said, so it’s a difficult passage and not as directly applicable to the end of the world as many people assume.

But, as you suggest, the best thing for us to do is to look after each other. We may be confused over the theology of what’s going on, but we can love our neighbours regardless. Climate change will devastate the poorer nations of the world, and I believe we can’t stand by and let that injustice take place.

I’ve read some commentators who believe that global warming is restoring the world to the way it was in the garden of Eden, or is God’s mechanism for bringing about the end times. In my opinion it’s not worth arguing with those people. But it is worth pointing out the injustice that is being done by our unsustainable lifestyles.

By: Samantha

Samantha — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:39:21 +0000

Didn’t Jesus tell us to look out for signs such as changing weather patterns, as well as an increase in earthquakes, famines, lawlessness,wars etc. All these things seem to be coming tgether very quickly and as a Christian, I felt that global warming was due to man’s activity on earth, but that God forsaw the end from the beginning. So yes I think that whatever we do now it’s not going to change the end result but didn’t God also tell us to be concerned for our neighbour? Surely we should’t be sitting back waiting for the end to come whilst people are suffering. That can’t come under the heading of Christian love.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:22:56 +0000

Rob, I’m sorry your experiences of environmentalists has been so negative, but surely you need to make up your own mind. It’s perfectly possible to care about creation without worshipping it in any way, and when people are being poisoned by pollution or are seeing their land dry up and their cattle die, then caring for the earth and caring for people are inseparable.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:17:51 +0000

Hello, I am a Christian, and proud of it. And, as the majority of evangelicals in the Barna study, I am not hugely concerned with global warming or anything else environmental for that matter. The reason that I have no interest in environmental issues has nothing to do with the conservative “right wing” media that I happen to listen to and watch. It has to do with a “earthism worshipper” or as I like to call her, an eco-feminist HIPPY! This person that I am talking about is my mother. She placed great emphasis on the importance of the environment and little importance on people. She went to all sorts of protests and save the earth conventions, since they were apparently more important than me and my siblings. She also is proud to be a person who was one of the first arrested as a fight to stop a nuclear waste dump from comming to our town. Funny, she had no problem using the much cheaper electricity that came from the nuclear plant, but she didn’t want to deal with the radioactive waste that came from it, lol… in the blog, you said, “The same loud voices attacking the idea of climate change defend Christians’ rights to affluent lifestyles.” And were talking about the “right to drive SUV’s” and so on. Well, to end my comment, I use public transportation, and my mother drives a truck that gets 15 MPG on a good day and is rated one of the highest carbon monoxide and CO2 emmitors in it’s class. And she says she doesn’t like Christians because THEY’RE hypocrites… laughable!

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:06:28 +0000

Yes, evangelical interpretations of the ‘end times’ have a part to play here too, with the belief that God is going to destroy the world and build a new one – little motivation for preserving the one we’ve got!
Incidentally, this is mainly a translation error. In the Greek original, the idea of a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ promised in the Bible’s book of Revelation, is for a ‘renewed’ earth, not a replaced earth.

By: Surfingdad

Surfingdad — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:17:09 +0000

Great Post – As a former Christian my biggest struggle has always been with this free pass that many Christians seem to have and I think the feeling towards Global Warming falls right into place. Why should evangelicals care what happens to the planet or anyone else when there place in Heaven is secure.

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:45:25 +0000

Interesting post – especially the comments about the emphasis on personal salvation and virtue within modern evangelicalism.

You mention the creationist view that has trouble with science. I’d say that this is closely linked to the apocalyptic view that would hold climate change as a desirable portent of divine rapture. Rather than fight the change, this view would encourage its coming.