Comment: A whole gospel is needed for a whole world

IN WESTERN society at the beginning of the 21st century, all kinds of beliefs are abroad, both expressed and unexpressed.

Even so, it is the lack of a coherent explanation of how we have arrived at this point of crisis and the absence of a compelling motivation to change the way we live which is robbing the effort to create a sustainable world.

Sustainability is an important idea that increasingly gives us a way of measuring the impact of our way of life on the communities we live in and on the wider creation.

However, it is proving to be inadequate as a life-changing credo, if our continuing lifestyle choices are to be observed.

The comprehensive global studies on biodiversity which have been painstakingly compiled by myriad different organizations . . . are an essential part of understanding what is happening, as we see widespread species extinction taking place.

Inconvenient truth

However, from the reception such studies receive both in media and policy-making circles, it seems that wider human society is well able to ignore data which pose an inconvenient challenge to the way we have become accustomed to living at the expense of the poor -- and the planet.

The hope that education in itself is sufficient to bring about change was part of a 19th century developmental myth that should have lost its grip on our imaginations long ago.

Nevertheless, because education and legislation are the principal levers in a horizontal and secular society, they remain centre stage on the platform of environmental campaigning.

Even so, we need to be clear that there is now no shortage of solid science, and no lack of research consensus, about the environmental crisis which is overtaking the earth, God's handiwork.

Whatever we consider to be capable of bringing about change, we do know more and more about what does need to change -- even if it is asking too much of mere information to be, of itself, transformational . . .

All of us live according to what we believe; for Christians the challenge is to do exactly that. However, in order to begin to do so, we need to be entirely sure of what we are called to believe.

GM church

The difficulty is that, for the most part, we belong to what could be called the GM (genetically modified) church.

Our churches are GM because the DNA of materialistic and individualistic societies -- in itself inimical to a Christian understanding of all our relationships -- has been patched into the church's view of life, producing a gospel that is a long way from being authentically Christian or biblical.

An understanding of the gospel which focuses exclusively on the personal significance of Christ's death and resurrection for individual believers is not just incomplete; such a sub-biblical view of Christian good news robs the gospel of its true meaning -- even for the people it seeks to reach.

The gospel, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:4, is about the glory of Christ. It confronts us, as it did those who encountered Jesus in 1st century Palestine, with the question "Who is this?" It does not point to the questions "Who am I, What do I need and What is in this for me?" -- which are more typical of cultures like our own, profoundly influenced by humanism and the Enlightenment.

As a result, even though the core beliefs of the Christian faith and the texts that inform them are before our eyes, we simply have not appropriated them in a way that does justice to what they are about.

This is either because we do not think they are important -- or, more seriously, because they lay such a sharp axe to the root of the cultural tree which shelters and sustains us that we cannot easily open our lives to their challenge.

Redemption

The reality of a broken world needs to shape our understanding of the mission Christ gives to his people, which is to seek its redemption . . .

Just as scripture itself always extends the implications of the gospel of Christ, who is Lord of creation, to the redemption of creation itself, so the reality of his care for his broken and groaning creation calls us to show the love of Christ in practical ways, to bring about its healing.

It is interesting to see this kind of theology being articulated for the first time by quite conservative evangelical leaders. It takes courage to say, as Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, Illinois, did when talking to the New York Times in February 2006: "The evangelical community is quite capable of having some blind spots, and my take is that [climate change] has fallen into that category."

He was one of 86 evangelical leaders who, early in 2006, signed their name to a call for action on climate change, saying: "Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbours."

Human suffering

Though this call to action is a step in the right direction, and it is entirely reasonable and eminently pragmatic to appeal to human suffering as a reason for using creation rightly, it is still only part of the biblical imperative. We care for creation because we love the Creator, not simply because we will suffer if we don't -- although it is true we will . . .

Environmental degradation hurts poor people the most. Once again the key question is one of right relationships, which are crucial if we are going to find a true motivation for change.

We must hope it will soon be realized that it is only a short step from this right compassion for suffering humanity in an abused creation, to the fully biblical realization that we need to respond to the suffering of creation itself, which Paul talks of in the language of "groaning."

It is now thought, for example, that climate change will be the biggest driver of species extinction in this century, which is something we should care about if we understand biodiversity to be the handiwork of a loving God who calls us into a renewed relationship with him that governs our relationship with his handiwork . . .

Poverty

All the statistics show the rich becoming richer and rarer, and the poor becoming poorer and more numerous. It was David Kilgour, Canadian Secretary of State for Africa and Latin America, who pointed out six years ago:

"It is a telling reality that the assets of the world's richest three billionaires exceed the combined GNP of all the least developed countries . . . The global community has a long way to go when three billion people live on less than $2 per day."

Thanks to NASA, we know that climate change, which is probably now one of the greatest drivers of poverty worldwide, continues to accelerate; and 2005 has just been declared the globe's warmest year since records began.

Never has it been more important to understand and live according to the connections born out of relationship with the God of heaven and earth, which a Christian understanding of the world implies . . .

Our approach to Christ cannot be to ask "What is in this for me?" or even worse, "Well, what can I do that will persuade God to bless me?" Rather, we understand who we are through the lens of our primary relationship to the God who has created and sustains not just us, but everything on earth.

It may seem paradoxical or even overnegative to sound a cautionary note at a very encouraging time when, at last, a good number of Christian leaders are engaging seriously with the distress of creation . . .

Trendy moment?

Many really believe that these concerns have finally become a mainstream element of evangelical thinking. However, it is vital that we take to heart the emphasis of Paul's preaching regarding the "groaning" of creation.

Otherwise, we will be left with a kind of dry pharisaism -- or simply another trendy moment in the ongoing drama of popular Christian culture.

To include climate change in the list of preaching topics, or to make sure the church vehicles are all dual-fuel, will be worth nothing if it is simply an add-on to an essentially pragmatic program that seeks to deliver for people what they need most -- or, even worse, if it is taken on as good tactics, a shrewd move in the struggle to find relevance . . .

We are all in an inevitable relationship with each other, regardless of race or religion or place -- not because our lifestyles all impact each other's, as they do, but because we share the same Creator . . .

Wherever we are, and whoever we are, we owe our existence to a loving God, and we discover our meaning in finding relationship with him. At the very least then, our human relationships should recognize a mutual identity and work so that the physical conditions for life can promote the true humanity of knowing the Creator. Life itself, as a created gift given to be lived in particular times and places, is going to speak to us of the Creator, if we can hear it . . .

We should be instantly skeptical if we hear Christians arguing that pragmatic choices must be made between 'saving souls' or feeding the hungry -- or between feeding the hungry and looking after 'the environment.'

Worshipful response

For the Christian, our discipleship is understood as our right collective life, lived as a worshipful response to the living God who, as Paul preaches in Acts 17, "made the world and everything in it . . . the Lord of heaven and earth . . . who gave all people life and breath and everything else."

We should be suspicious, if not for any other reason, because Paul finishes his sermon with the proclamation of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, rooted in his humanity to emphasize the point . . .

This resurrection was, of course, the first manifestation of the eternally material: the resurrection of the body. We affirm it frequently; but we so often miss its force as a paradigm for our understanding of the material world -- in which the body of Christ, God's people, is the first fruit of the new creation, in which the priesthood of all believers is lived out amidst a common created humanity and a marred and groaning creation.

The full version of this article originally appeared in Crux, published by Regent College.

February 8/2007