Rant: Can we move on please?

So today I decided to entertain myself by dropping into a Christian bookshop (an expensive mistake). So I'm wandering around looking for something interesting (I used to love everything in a Christian bookshop, but after studying some theology at university I suppose my standards have changed. Does anyone else feel like they've just walked into a giant self-help bookstore in most Christian shops these days? I don't really need theology-lite thanks. Plus I can't even look at most of the non-book products in there because of some of the fights I know the majors have had in the past over the idea of switching to Fairtrade and ethical products... in a Christian store! But anyway.... I'm getting off topic), when I spy a section titled 'Science'. Now being me (I have an undergrad in Science and I love Eco-theology), that makes my heart start beating faster and I dash over to see what is on offer.

Hmmm, ok, well I can get 'Discrediting Darwin' or 'Creation vs Evolution' or 'Science vs Religion' or 'Why Darwin was wrong' or 'Christian Science' etc etc. you get the gist. There is not a single book in the whole section that does not talk about something to do with the Creationism vs Evolution debate or how evil Darwin is. Now, as important as the thinking around reconciling modern science with religious tradition is, and I think it is very important, this frustrates me immensely for a range of reasons:

Firstly, just because Darwin is famous for the initial ideas around the theories of natural selection and evolution   (and he was not even the very first to publish these, he just expressed it better in the Origin of Species) doesn't mean it is fair to turn him into some kind of Antichrist. Even if you completely disagree with Darwin's theories, demonizing him is unproductive, unfair and unchristian. Keep in mind that this is someone who had thought about joining the clergy. I doubt he was setting out to 'kill God' or 'destroy religion' (and he hasn't, has he?), and even if he was, he is still made in the image of God and deserves our respect.

Secondly, the moment you frame the debate as 'Science vs Religion' you have already restricted yourself to one of two predetermined answers to the discussion and have ignored any possibly of a fruitful dialogue between the two. You can blindly choose Science and toss faith out the window or you can blindly believe religion and toss out every scientific discovery ever made. And really, are you going to do that? No medicine, no iPhone, no wastewater treatment or water purification? Clearly accepting the findings of science (note I'm not saying 'believing' in science because it is not a question of belief. Belief relates to value systems like religion, not observational and experimental methodologies like science. Scientists may hold belief systems that lie behind the work they do, but these are separate from the science and may well be Christian. Perhaps a familiar metaphor is text vs interpretation. We all know a single verse of the Bible can be interpreted many ways. In the same way, scientific results are just data, how you interpret them can differ) doesn't have to threaten our faith, and putting our heads in the sand as Christians is not the answer. I could go on for a long time about the very interesting discussions going on about how faith can learn from science and vice-versa, but I have covered that in other places and I don't think it would be beneficial. I will just say that please, can we not make it 'Science vs Religion', but rather 'finding partnerships between Science and Religion'?

And finally, I find this obsession with a single debate disappointing because as someone with a deep interest in Eco-theology and Creation Care I am aware that it is stealing all the attention away from so many other interesting discussions about the environment, ecology, and what we can learn from science. One of the books I bought today agrees with me, saying:
"The Christian doctrine of creation has too often been highjacked by controversies of creationism, deistic tendencies and a concentration on Genesis 1 to the detriment of the richness of other biblical passages on creation. As a result the discussion of science and religion in the popular arena features Richard Dawkins attacking six-day creationism and the design argument for the existence of God, while many Christians see God the Creator simply as the one who lights the blue touch paper of the Big Bang. Deism, the tendency to see God interacting with the universe only at its very beginning and then going off to watch it from a distance, has been allowed to flourish by separating the doctrine of creation from its foundational scriptures....
Recapturing a Christian doctrine of creation from Scripture allows us to move beyond the controversies of creationism and encounter a fruitful dialogue with science. Perhaps more importantly it also leads to an emphasis that the most important insight into creation is the Creator God who is to [be] worshipped, enjoyed and trusted." David Wilkinson in Darwin, Creation and the Fall: Theological Challenges, Edited by R.J. Berry and T.A. Noble, Apollos (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press), Nottingham, 2009.

There are hundreds of books and thousands of words said on this deliberately divisive and falsely dichotomous topic already. Now can we please move on to the many more interesting aspects of creation, science and religion and their connections and positive interplay?

PS. On a more positive note, I found some really great serious Eco-theology books today, and some guides for living a greener life as a Christian and even an ecclesiology book with a section on the Church and Ecology. This is a great sign for the church greening movement worldwide and in Australia and makes me really happy. A few years ago I would have been lucky to find a single book on these topics in a Christian bookstore in Australia.

The effect of Biblicism on Eco-Faith

I was reading through chapter 3 of Daniel L. Migliore's Faith Seeking Understanding (1991) Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Michigan, today in preparation for class. The chapter is about the authority of Scripture and it mentions what is called the 'biblicist view' where "the Bible is authoritative by virtue of its supernatural origin and the direct identity of its words with the Word of God" (p47). It insists that "every book, every chapter, every verse, every word was directly inspired by God" (p47), as opposed to the traditional doctrine of the inspiration of scripture which "affirms that God the Holy Spirit accompanied and guided the human writers of Scripture, respecting their humanity in all its limitations and its conditioning by historical, social, and cultural context, yet conveying God's Word through those human witnesses" (p47). Basically, in the biblicist view the writers of Scripture were simply secretaries taking down the exact dictation of the Lord without any input of their own.

This view is interesting because it requires that the Bible be infallible. "The defense of the Christian faith thus becomes the defense of the doctrine of infallibility" (p48). Apart from the spiritual issues of this, I bring it up because of what it has been doing to the relationship between science and religion and the environment and religion within some areas of the church. When pushed to the extreme, the biblicist view says the Bible cannot err in anything it says, including any science it mentions. While I believe it is often our interpretation of the Bible rather than what it actually says that causes issues between science and religion (for example in Darwin's time when the Bible had been interpreted using our previous knowledge of science for hundreds of years and then Darwin's discoveries were seen as being in contest with the Bible. The contest was really about the traditional interpretation of the Bible and the science that interpretation was based on, not any particular clash between the Bible itself and the new science), if the Bible is interpreted in a literal way, and assumed to be inerrant, then the earth must have four corners (Isaiah 11:12, Rev 7:1) and edges (multiple references), along with several other things that are clearly not in line with our current scientific understanding, including a 6 day creation.

There are two ways to approach this: the Bible is inerrant and must be interpreted literally, thus the world has four corners; or there is another way to interpret these verses. Perhaps 'four corners of the earth' is a figure of speech based in the culture of the author of that section of scripture who was more concerned with getting across a spiritual message inspired by God than being scientifically accurate in every way for generations to come and scientific advances the author could never have dreamed of.

As someone trained in science myself, how anyone could cling to biblicism to the point of deciding that the earth has four corners and all our science is completely wrong is beyond me. Actually, maybe it is not. If your entire faith is based on this idea of the Bible as perfect, and you only know one way to interpret it, then perhaps the only way to hold onto your faith is to just put your head in the sand and refuse to listen to reason or science. What a shame though to have such a weak and inflexible faith! I can't help wishing such people would do just a little theological study - it tears down those ideas pretty quickly. It soon becomes obvious that we cannot base our faith on the idea that the Bible is scientifically or historically correct - because in parts it is neither. As Migliore says "a church with an infallible teaching office [such as the Pope] or an infallible Bible no longer allows scripture to work as liberating and life-giving Word in its own way. Insistence on the infallibility of the Bible obscures the true basis of Christian confidence" (p48). "Christians do not believe in the Bible; they believe in the living God attested by the Bible. Scripture is indispensable in bringing us into a new relationship with the living God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and thus into new relationship with others and with the entire creation" (p50).

It is my hope and prayer that those who do not believe in, for example, what science says about evolution based on their interpretation of the creation narrative, will stop using this as an excuse to stick their heads in the sand and refuse to believe anything else science tells them (eg. about climate change). I also hope that we will reconsider how we approach the concept of the Bible's inspiration/infallibility. Why should we be defending infallibility instead of faith? How many people have turned away from the church, turned away from a life-giving faith and salvation in Jesus, because someone insisted that to do so they must turn their brain off, forget all the science they ever learnt and believe in things that don't make any sense when taken literally? How many people falsely think that faith and the environment have to be enemies because of this one idea, this one concept of seeing the Bible and its authority? How many of them have no idea that theology based on other interpretations of the Word have lead to a rich and growing school of eco-theology that embraces science and the truth about God's creation? If we care about saving souls, then perhaps some thought on these issues is needed in certain sectors of the church. Happily, these issues do not affect most of the churches I have dealt with - courageous and inspirational groups fighting for God's creation.

The last point I want to make is that I think having to ignore science to hold up a view of the meaning of a couple of verses of Scripture is actually showing a lack of faith. If we have to protect the perfection of God by  ignoring the results of experiments designed using the best minds and technology we have, then we don't actually believe He is perfect. God Himself is inerrant. And the science that is being done today is rather good, and big ideas like climate change are not promoted until even the ultra-cautious and conservative leaning of the scientists is overcome by the weight of the evidence and astoundingly small confidence intervals.
So if the science is right, and God is definitely right, and we believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and thus has value for us, then it begs the question - is our interpretation of the Bible right? Or is it too narrow?

Abbott to reduce Marine Protected Areas if Elected !

This is disgusting! It seems silly politically and could be disastrous environmentally. We need to protest this.

And what is with the media stunt of gutting a fish for cameras? What is it about people and fish... why do our ethics always seem to go out the window around them? I can't imagine a political leader gutting a cow for the cameras!

See: http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201007/s2966304.htm

and the Australian Marine Conservation Society's response:
http://www.amcs.org.au/MediaReleases.asp?active_page_id=61

$25 a kilogram for rice?!

My corporate sustainability lecturer mentioned in a lecture the other day that a study found that if you factored in the cost of the water, producing rice in Australia costs about $25 per kilogram. Which is insane. I don't know anyone who would be willing to pay that much for a kilogram of rice. Of course, this is not what rice costs in the supermarket, which is a beautiful illustration of the externalities (an economic term for "The side effect on an individual or entity due to the actions of another individual or entity." eg. pollution) involved in something like this. Growing rice in Australia is economically viable because rice growers don't have to pay enough for the water they use, and the impact of that water use on the country is an externality - one the environment and animals are paying for, not the consumers.

Examples like this are a great argument for the importance of internalising externalities and having prices that truly reflect the cost of the production of a good for everyone - including society and the environment.

It also begs a question - why do we have such blind faith in the 'invisible hand' when it allows crazy things like this make economic sense? In the driest habited continent on earth, I think it is fair to say we should not be growing rice.

My New Books

Those of you who know me will know that books are one of my biggest weaknesses. I spend far too much time and money reading and buying books. This is something I occasionally try to do something about.... unsuccessfully.

I got caught yesterday because the ANU has a new book stall at its weekly market. A new stall which, unfortunately for me, had a very interesting selection. So here is a list of the books I now own:

1. Habitat Garden: Attracting wildlife to your garden, by Peter Grant (ABC Books, 2003)
This book is full of tips on how to increase the biodiversity in your garden. This is a topic I am really interested. Not so much, as you might suspect, for my own garden (I don't have the fortune to own one) but because I think learning to live with other creatures in 'our space' is vitally important to building a sustainable future. You may have notice that here in Australia we don't build UP we build OUT. Just take a look at our urban sprawl. Not only does this mean houses are taking up valuable agricultural land, but they are also driving out our native species. In our manicured, often remarkably similar gardens, they rarely fit in. After all, if there is one thing I learnt in my biodiversity conservation in modified landscapes it's the importance of heterogeneity (variety). Our suburbs don't tend to have a lot of that, and neither do our gardens. Especially as many of us don't have the time for them. But while there are some species who will never be happy to live in modified landscapes, there are a surprising number who could live in our gardens with minimal extra effort on our part. Not to mention the education value of teaching us to share our space with animals - much like we should be sharing the planet with them. So I bought this book as a reference text to help campaign for a change in our ideas of what our gardens, our cities and our societies should be about.

2. Gliders of Australia: A Natural History, by David Lindenmayer (UNSW Press, 2002). I couldn't walk past this one. David works for the ANU and I've had him for a few lectures. He is a pretty great guy. He works on some really interesting science (including some incredibly valuable long-term, large-scale projects), but best of all, he makes an effort to communicate that science to others through books and educational materials - all of which he writes in his own time. Gliders are one of the groups he has done a lot of work with, plus they are sooooo cute!

3. William Wilberforce: The life of the great anti-slave trade campaigner, by William Hague (Harper Perennial, 2008). I already have a biography of William Wilberforce (he is the star of Amazing Grace, which I highly recommend), but I mean, the guy ended the slave trade and slavery in the British Empire, and he started the RSPCA. He is my hero. You can't ever read enough about your heroes.

4. Buyology: How Everything we believe about why we buy is wrong, by Martin Lindstorm (Random House, 2008). This book talks about why we buy what we buy. It's interesting from both a marketing point of view and because if we can understand why people buy what they do we can help them to break free from the trap of consumerism.

Happily, two of the books are printed on FSC certified paper, so my guilt is a little assuaged.

I'll keep you updated on anything interesting I learn during my reading.

As always, if you would like to borrow any of my books, just let me know on fiveleafecoawards@gmail.com

A Question About Naming

Random question: I was thinking about how I call myself a 'Christian Environmentalist' the other day and I suddenly thought something like 'Eco-Christian' might sound better. It's partly just an academic question, but the names we give to things are important, and the names we give to new movements help people to picture what they are about and decide whether or not that is something they want to be. What do you think? Which name is better? If you are a Christian who also cares about the environment - what do you call yourself?

Building for the Future

I went to a sermon on Sunday night that spoke about building for the future. It was an interesting sermon, with two illustrations I particularly liked. The first, talking about the way we can sometimes find it hard to think and plan for the future because we are so stuck in today, was the movie “Back to the Future 3” where Marty has to drive the Dolorien (car converted into a time machine) off the edge of a ravine to get back to his own time. When he gets there, a bridge will have been built so he won’t crash, but in the time he is in at the moment it looks pretty scary and Marty has trouble getting his head around it when Doc tries to explain.
Actually, it’s a little like climate change. I am sure that if we were to time travel into the future and see the devastation it is likely to cause, we would be desperate to get back to 2010 and do whatever it takes to fight the devastation. But here and now, without that perspective, the idea of spending the kind of money it will take to do something real about climate change is more immediate and more terrifying (for many) than the enemy itself. I think war, under a strict commander might be like that. I mean, you would be afraid of the enemy who are actually out to kill you, but the fear of the commander who can punish you for failure or cowardice would be more immediate and perhaps more motivating.

The other story he told was about a Sunday school teacher who worked diligently for the Lord for many years, but felt like a bit of a failure at the time of his death. Before he died though he talked to a cobbler’s apprentice and brought him to Christ. That apprentice was D.L. Moody, who went on to become a famous evangelist who converted another evangelist who created another, all the way down to Billy Graham. That poor man who thought himself a failure, through one action, begun the conversion of millions of people. It just goes to show that we will rarely know the true impact we have on the world and the people around us. Only God really knows what results will come from the work He gives us to do. All we can do is listen to His will, act on it and do our best, then leave the rest to Him. This is a teaching I am trying to apply in my own life.

I have been discussing with a friend how short-sighted we humans tend to be. It’s strange, especially in the current generation. Scientists like to tell us that we are the only animals with the ability to plan for the distant future using our imagination. That might be so, but then why aren’t we very good at it? Yet the Bible tells us that the founders of the faith had a lot of foresight. After all, they found the promise of descendants as abundant as sand on the seashore exciting, and they were happy with their descendants inheriting the land in which they lived as strangers. I think if Abraham had lived in my generation he just would have bought as much of the land as he could and then schemed to get more, perhaps with a low interest loan he didn’t have the ability to pay off. Then it would be that debt he would leave to his descendants.

One of the interesting things about listening to this sermon was the fact that I was sitting there, excited, thinking about building for the future by caring for the environment and setting 100 year sustainability goals- yet this was not what the minister meant at all. For him, building for the future was about getting more people into his church. It’s funny, isn’t it, how even when we do get around to trying to prepare for the future, we all have such different ideas of what we want that we can’t agree on a way to get there. A lecturer told me once that everyone wants to conserve something. It’s just that they may not want to conserve the cassowary, because they may be more interested in conserving the community, the rainforest, another species, their lifestyle, their ability to drive around etc....

Being Unreasonable People

I was buying some books on Amazon the other day when I came across a title by John Elkington called 'The power of unreasonable people: how social entrepreneurs create markets that change the world". The review of this book quotes George Bernard Shaw - "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man".

I found this quote quite interesting from several angles.

From an environmental point of view, it could be argued that reasonable people are good. After all, it is our insistence on changing the world to suit us which has led to the ecological crisis we are now facing. Just think of how the first settlers in Australia wanted it to be England so much that they introduced rabbits and foxes just to make themselves feel at home.

On the other hand, a reasonable person would say that we should now fit into the world and its systems as they currently stand. It is reasonable to use the system for your own ends, but not to try and change the system for the benefit of future generations. It is not reasonable for you to deny yourself now because your children's children might need the resource you are using. It is not reasonable to give up your life in a fight for a justice that might never come. So, if we are going to save the environment, we probably need unreasonable people.

To make it complicated, maybe we need people who are unreasonable citizens of our society (in the world but not of the world), but with reasonable footprints on the earth.

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, reason has become a value to be strived for and valued. Science began to be treated with a type of reverance and we are told that emotions are bad and need to be mastered by the rational brain. Now as someone who believes in the importance of science (after all, I am doing a science degree) and the undenyable advances it has made in our lives, I cannot say that this reasoned attitude does not have its benefits. Science is a great and important endeavour, and one that should receive far more funding than it does. I don't believe knowledge for knowledge's sake is ever a waste; I think you can never know too much. Especially when you consider the power and arrogance of the human race in contrast to what it really knows about the world. However, this is the root of one of the problems with the dawn of the reasonable man. While I think it is impossible to know too much, it is far too easy to know to little. Man's advances in science have been vast and important, but science has become a panacea in the the minds of the public, instead of the tool it is meant to be. A good scientist will be able to tell you how little we truly know about the world. It is my impression, and perhaps I am wrong, that it is not so much the scientists boasting that science is the solution to everything, but rather the engineers, the politicians and the laymen. A scientist understands the importance of uncertainty, and the significance of the fact that science is based on disproving hypothesis, not proving theories. A theory is simply a hypothesis that has not been proved wrong yet. This does not, of course, mean that science cannot conclude findings with reasonable confidence, or undermine the values of these findings. It does seem to create some loss in translation however. Politicians etc. seem to either believe science is infallible, so that what it says is always correct, or if it suits them, they bring up the uncertainty of science as an excuse not to believe in findings they don't want to be true or that are uncomfortable. They are aware that to the untrained public, only 100% certainty is reassuring, despite the fact that this does not exist in science. Therefore, they have manipulated science into both an all knowing idol for the public and a biteless bark when they choose not to use it.

Engineers like to borrow the credibility from science to suggest projects like putting mirrors up in the sky to reflect the sun away from the earth to help with global warming. Or dumping iron into the ocean for the plankton to eat (it might have worked if the sun had been able to reach through the first few cm of soil). Environmental engineering is a very Cornucopian style of doing everything (science has always saved us before, so it always will). Yet it makes me want to scream. What arrogance, what terrible, insane arrogance that humans think we can simply start tampering with important environmental problems we don't understand! In America, when the Californian Condor was rapidly declining into extinction, they decided to try and save it by leaving carcasses out for it to find and eat; even though they weren't sure exactly why it was declining. It turned out to be lead poisoning. And oh, opps, those carcasses they left out? Shot with lead bullets. Yeah, we are brilliant. So let's throw caution to the wind and environmentally engineer the whole world. What can go wrong? (Note: I don't mean to imply environmental engineers cannot make some valuable contributions to sustainability).

Science is held up on a pedestal because it respresents the ultimate version of the reasonable man. It is completely objective and free from human values or influences (trying to smother laughing with coughs and not succeeding). I think is is about time we all, including scientists, accept the fact that as humans, we are never truly objective, and everything has a bias in it, whether we intend it to or not. To conduct an experiment we have to choose a topic (which will be something we find interesting), we have to design hypotheses (which will be the explanations we think likely because we cannot test everything) and we have to design the experiment (which will have inherant biases because logistics limits the way we can collect data and on what). There are value judgements inherant in all of these steps. In other words, there is no such thing as a reasonable man, if this is an objective and scientific person.

In economics, the reasonable man is known as the rational man or Homo economicus (note the attempt to borrow the credibility of science by using a latin name in the traditional taxonomic form). This being is characterised by the fact that he will always act to obtain the highest possible benefit for himself given available information about opportunities and constraints in achieving his goals. He is rational because he attempts to reach his goals with maximum utility and minimum cost. The theory does not necessarily state that the man's goals are rational from society's perspective.

It is my fear that the value placed on reason and rationality is leading to a growth in social darwinism in the west. After all, it is reasonable to say that if a man is poor, he should get a job and work hard, save money and then he will stop being poor. This reasoning gives us an excuse to throw compassion out the window. If the poor are poor because they are too lazy to get a job, why should we care? Never mind that we are ignoring the many reasons why getting a job might be harder for that person than for us. If a person on the street asks us for money, it is not reasonable for us to give it to them if they are going to spend it on alcohol or drugs. Indeed it is not reasonable to give them money at all. We earnt it, so we have the right to spend it. Yet think about the hypocracy in our judgement of the poor. We are saying they have no right to drink or take drugs, yet many of us to these things ourselves. Why should the poor be held to a higher standards than we are? And surely compassion tells us that if we were stuck on the streets, homeless and cold with no food, we would want to drown our sorrows too? But compassion isn't reasonable. Social darwinism tells us that the poor are not worth as much as us, after all, they don't earn as much as we do. Yet we know this is not the way God sees the world.

I think the ideas or reasonable and rational men leave something to be desired. It is not reasonable to sacrifice yourself for another, or to reduce your own utility that others might be able to increase theirs. It is not reasonable to take the hard or the long road through suffering because it is the right thing to do or because suffering adds to character. It is not reasonable to put aside your own goals, or even sacrifice them to help others meet theirs. Basically, sacrificial love is not reasonable. It is not reasonable to turn the other cheek. It is not reasonable to forgive. It is not reasonable to be humble and meek. Frankly, it is not reasonable to have faith. After all, faith is the belief in things not seen, the proof of things hoped for. To believe in God because you have faith without proof is not reasonable. Yet we do all these things. Therefore, I suppose Christians are unreasonable people.

So next time reason tells you that you shouldn't give the $50 in your pocket to the guy on the street, or that you shouldn't stay home to spend time with your kids when you could be at the office, or that you shouldn't care about the environment when we are all going to die anyway... How about you throw reason out the window and ask what Jesus would do?

Let's be proud to be unreasonable people. Maybe it will help us save the world.

Based on the following Sermon, I think Charles Spurgeon would agree with me:
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=123081044349

"The point is: greed, for lack of a better word, is good" Wall Street

I was flipping past Twenty to One last night, when it mentioned a line from the movie Wall Street - where it said that greed is good. One has to wonder, when it was that greed went from being a sin to being a virtue? After all, I think the Bible is pretty clear on this matter - Psalm 10:3 says that "the greedy man curses and spurns God". Luke 12:15 says "be on guard against every form of greed; life is not in posessions". Think about that verse for a moment. I think this is a message our society desperately needs to hear.

Obviously, greed is not good in God's eyes. So when did it become good in our eyes? When did it become something silently, if not vocally, supported by most of our society?

Perhaps, although it might be more obvious today, this is not really a new phenomenon. After all, before we just wanted to be rich, we wanted to be rich with a title. For most people, poverty is something we fear and strive to avoid. I don't think anyone really sets out to be greedy. We start out just wanting to feel 'secure'. It's insidious. Our society tells us that it is intelligent to save, to have a nest egg for 'a rainy day', and secular society pursues wealth as a means of feeling secure and being able to buy the things we 'need'. Then, as we accumulate more wealth, we begin to rationalise about why we need all of the money we have. It begins to take more and more money to make us feel secure. Yet God challenges us to rely, not on money, but on Him. I was challenged recently by reading a book discussing the conflict between the occurance of rich christians and the starving in the same world. This book boldly declared that wealthy Christians should be willing to sacrifice their own standard of living in order to help the poor. Indeed, it says to not do so is sin. This is a challenging accusation. In most circles at the moment, this is a barrier people are unwilling to cross. We are being sold lines about saving the planet, even reducing our consumption, but few people are willing to actually point out that we need to 'live more simply just so others can simply live'. Those that do point this out tend to be accused of advocating a return to hunting and gathering or some other nonsense. It is possible to reduce our impact on the planet without going back to the dark ages. Of course, the powers that be don't want us to think that, because they need us being greedy. They need us to buy hundreds of products we don't need every year to keep the industries alive, and to keep the economy growing (see my last rant). We don't have to turn progress back, we do have to make radical changes. How radical, I don't know. But why not start by making our lives closer to the Christian ideal? After all, it's an unregrettable option. The worst thing that can happen is we become better Christians. With a bit of luck, we help save the world. Keep posted on my Christian Living Series for some of my ideas on how to do this. For a start, let's fight the sin of greed- because whatever movies or our culture want to tell us, greed is NOT good.

My laptop woes and the origin of consumerism and waste

My laptop has been slowly dying for the last month, so eventually I finally got around to taking it to be repaired. We eventually worked out that I needed a replacement part. The problem is, HP no longer stocks this part. Also, even if they did, it would probably make more sense for me, economically, to just buy a new laptop.

As an environmentalist though, I have qualms about adding to the tonnes of E-waste thrown away each year. I am left with little choice though, because things are simply not made to last anymore.

There is a good reason for that. After World War II, the American economy was booming; but they faced a dilemma. They had all these factories employing people and making things, but they no longer needed the products. If they simply went back to business as usual before the war, the economy would plummit. So they did some thinking and realised something. If you sell someone an appliance for $1,000 and it lasts for twenty years, then your total income from that customer is $1,000 per 20 years. But if you sell them the same product at the same price and it only lasts for two years, then you can sell 10 of that product to the same customer in the 20 years and make $10,000. This example is, of course, overly simplified. Once consumers realised the reduced value of the product they would want to pay less, and externalities such as the environmental costs of being so wasteful , the costs to consumers of having to waste more time shopping, and the emotional costs of having your appliances break when you need them. However, it is perfectly standard for these factors to be ignored by economic models, so it seemed like a brilliant idea. Consumerism was born.

Next, they began making products so cheap that it made no financial sense to repair the old, and people began simply buying new things everytime something broke - and throwing out the old. This ability to buy everything you need and the absence of a need to repair anything then contributed to the loss of skills among the population. People stopped learning how to sew and cook, or fix the car. They could simply pay someone else to do it. Or, in the case of sewing, they would probably just buy new clothes. By this point, everyone was really enjoying this incredible miracle called economic growth. But it was still limited by the fact that people only need so many things. So they found a way past that barrier.

They began using marketing to create desires in people for things they didn't really need. They began to blur the line between needs and wants, so that some kids today find it almost impossible to tell the difference. They created ideas like fashion, which make it necessary to constantly buy new things. Don't get me wrong, I am a girl, and I enjoy fashion, but think about what it makes us do... I remember as a teenager, I would feel compelled at the start of each year to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes, because I didn't want to be seen wearing last year's clothes (luckily, until year 10 I was at a school with a uniform, so this was only really an issue for my last two years of high school). Also, I remember the fear I had of wearing the same clothes twice in one week, let alone two days in a row. It wasn't about whether the clothes were clean or not it 'just isn't done!'

How did the marketers manage to create such fear in me? This is actually interesting to look at from a Christian perspective... Think about the main tools that marketers use to sell us things; they use envy and coveteousness, they tell you that you aren't good enough without their products, and they use sex. They use all of these, also, to create peer pressure. These are not very Christian motivations are they? Covetting the goods of another is against the tenth commandment. Our value is to come from the fact God loves us, not our possessions or looks. We are supposed to be of pure minds, free from lust; and we are to be in the world but not of the world - peer pressure should have no effect on us. And yet, even as Christians, how often do we fall for these things? I wanted fashionable clothing as a teenager because I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be good enough to be loved, and I saw my clothing as reflecting on my value. I think there is also an undercurrent hidden in the whole fashion thing. They say it is about expressing who you are, etc, etc, but it's not really. It is about emulating others. And I think it is about having money, or at least pretending you do. I mean, keeping up with the latest fashions is not cheap. The more money you have, the more closely you will be able to emulate the 'standards'. Poor families simply cannot buy dozens of new, expensive items of clothing every season. But they do try and keep up - where I grew up, it was the poor people who wore the T-shirts with the largest brands on them. They might not have been able to afford as many clothes, but those they did have were from expensive and famous brands, displayed as obviously as possible. In our society, it is cool to be rich, and cool to show that wealth with the latest fashions. I wonder what Jesus would have said about that....

So now we have this consumeristic society, set up in order to create limitless growth for economy. If we stop spending enough, the entire thing grinds to a halt and there is panic. But when are we going to face the impacts of what we are doing on the planet? When are we going to realise that limitless growth is impossible on a planet with finite resources? Growth for growth's sake is the philosophy of a virus. And, like a virus, we are slowly killing our host. If we are going to survive, consumerism may have to go. But do we have the strength to fight something designed to give us our every desire? Can our faith give us the strength to make the necessary sacrifices because it's the right thing to do?
I suppose the future will tell.

Pillars of smoke and fire

Reading a reflection on Exodus 13:21 discussing the way God sends us 'pillars' to remind us of His presence and help when we need it, reminded me of the way God always sends me animals when I need a boost. When I am feeling sad, lonely, or just unsettled, God likes to send me His creatures to comfort me. Usually they are insects. I have had praying mantis (particularly appropriate don't you think?), butterflies, lacewings, beetles, caterpillars... all sorts of creatures simply land on me or appear at these times. Sometimes it is a bird or a lizard. I let the insects crawl over my hands for a while, admiring their beauty, uniqueness and trust. They lift my heart, remind me that God is with me, that He is the great and powerful creator, and that He loves us all. It usually only takes a couple of minute with these creatures to lift my heart and give me a new sense of determination to run the race.

What 'pillar' does God send you when you need a lift?

Where would we be without our fellow creatures?

Christian Living Series: Learning not to fear - the faith to stop the killing

I was re-watching the first Transformers movie the other day when something occured to me. It was the scene where Bumblebee sacrifices himself to save the two kids then the police all decend to 'neutralise' the threat. I couldn't help thinking that we always do that. We humans seem to be unable to live with anything we see as a threat. Throughout history we have wiped out, or hunted almost to extinction, many species that we have seen as either a threat to ourselves or our livelihood. Just look at the declines in wolves, tigers, bears and sharks. Even the Tasmanian Tiger(Thylacine) was wiped out because we thought it would eat our livestock. We have killed dingoes and crocodiles for the same reason. Even people who generally like animals often think it is ok to kill them if they have, or might, kill us. Look at the shouts from the media to kill the shark after every 'attack'. I applaud the poor victims and their families who sometimes have to remind us all that it is not the shark's fault, and we were in their habitat. As the science shows, it's not like sharks get a taste for human flesh, and they move on so fast I have to wonder if it is ever the same individual who is killed when we do hunt down the 'maneater'.

I wonder if maybe humans have been on the top of the food chain for so long that we don't know how to live with threats anymore. It's like our knee-jerk reaction to kill spiders when we see them. On the scale of one to ten, spiders are probably only a two in terms of danger. They are tiny, and quite easy for us to avoid. And yet we don't seem to think that we should have to avoid them, so we just kill them. Where is our belief in the sanctity of life? It all kind of goes out the window when we feel threatened doesn't it? I suppose that's why we do senseless things like put nets near beaches to kill things in the hope that will mean we don't get bitten by sharks (shark nets do not close off beaches as popularly believed, and in fact provide no protection at all. But they do kill hundreds of sharks, whales, turtles and fish each year).

Our fear has also reduced the success of various wolf reintroduction projects around the world. Farmers get scared and shoot the wolves to defend their stock. We can't live with losing a little livelihood for the survival an endangered species? We don't seem to manage the things we fear, or our own fear, we simply annihilate the threat.

So if we could overcome our fear of other creatures, would the world become a better place? I think it would. This is an area where education can play a big role. Have you ever seen someone hold a snake for the first time? When one of the animal shows came around to your school or at the zoo perhaps? It can be a magic moment, a moment that turns fear into respect, and eventually respect into liking, or even love. Today's society desperately needs more contact with nature, and especially more contact with God's creatures. It is easy to fear the unknown, but if we have contact with these creatures maybe we can learn to care for them instead. After all, the Bible says that perfect love drives out all fear (1John 4:18). Maybe if we love and trust God, our creator, a bit more, we can learn to love his creatures; and the killing will stop. I am sure only love can save 'dangerous' species.

Action idea: invite an animal show to your church and help bring people closer to animals. Or organise a church trip to the zoo.

"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you."

Edelman, Marian Wright

We all like heroes. Great, supernatural type beings who never take a step wrong and who do what we can’t. When life overwhelms us, we want to cry out for a Superman or a Wonder-Woman to come and save us.

There are multiple campaigns on Facebook to ‘Bring back Captain Planet’ to help educate people today about the environment. (For those who don’t know, Captain Planet was a children’s show my generation watched which involved a team of ‘planeteers’ with special powers (the ability to manipulate earth, fire, wind, water, heart) which combined to create the superhero Captain Planet. Under the instructions of the beautiful Gaia (mother earth) they travelled around the world preventing and solving environmental disasters. Each episode would then end with a tip on what you could do to help the issue discussed. The show had a lot of impact on many people. ) While the call is for Captain Planet to be used as an educational tool, I am sure many of us just wish that Captain Planet was real. Why can’t he come and fix this mess we have created for ourselves? We feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the ecological crisis and we don’t know what to do- so we want a hero.

We can treat God as a superhero too. When things get too much we just want God to fix it. Yet God has chosen to act through us. We, the body of Christ, are God’s arms and legs and fingers. It is up to us to let God work through us to see His will done. We have to have the faith to perform miracles.

For most of us, this seems beyond us. We think, yeah, heroes of the faith like Charles Spurgeon and Mother Theresa can make miracles happen, but we can’t. Yet the same Holy Spirit resides in us as resided in them. And if we think they never doubted, we would be wrong. I remember my shock, some years after Mother Theresa’s death, when it came out that for 15 years; she struggled with doubt and a lack of faith. It makes her more human though doesn’t it? And really, when you think about the things she saw, how could she not have had doubts sometimes? We all know that children starving on the streets and people dying alone and unloved in the gutters is not how the world is supposed to be. We long for the promised days when every tear will be wiped from our faces and all evil and pain will be taken away.

My recent reading however has reminded me of something really scary about this situation though – God is waiting for US to help recreate the world and bring about this new day. God has chosen to act through us to redeem all creation. What a great responsibility! We can’t just sit back and wait for God to destroy this earth and give us another (believe it or not, this is a common excuse for Christians not doing anything for the environment). No! Instead we must work with God to bring about the perfect world we all dream of. It is up to us. God does His work through us; and those who look for God on earth should be able to see Him in us. “We who live now are not disadvantaged, but wonderfully privileged, for God has chosen to rely primarily on us to carry out his will on earth” (Philip Yancy). If there is not enough love in the world, then we must bring love to it. If there is hunger in this world, then we must feed the starving. If people lack faith, we must lead by example, and if there are species suffering and dying as they wait for the redemption of creation, we must reveal ourselves as the children of God by saving them.

As Philip Yancy puts it, in his book ‘Disappointment with God’ (p92):
“Some people find no comfort in the prophets’ vision of a future world. “Mere pie in the sky,” they say. “The church has used that line for centuries to justify slavery, oppression, and all manner of injustice. They force-feed the hope of heaven to the poor in order to keep them from demanding too much on earth.” The criticism sticks because the church has abused the prophets’ vision. But you will never find that “pie in the sky” rationale in the prophets themselves. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah have scathing words about the need to care for widows and orphans and aliens, and to clean up corrupt courts and religious systems. The people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass.”

Creation can only be saved, freed and redeemed by us. It is time for the church to embrace this message; to stand up and not only catch up with society in our care for creation, but to lead society into a greater level of care and sacrifice for its good. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Another whale gets caught in a Shark Net - how unexpected... not!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/02/2673935.htm


I've said it before and I will say it again -shark nets are stupid and unethical. They give the public the illusion of safety* while providing none and killing thousands of sharks, turtles, fish, dolphins, birds, whales and everything else each year.

One day I'm going to stop whinging and do something about this... Preferably campaign for all nets to be exchanged for devices that create electromagnetic fields to deter sharks. It would be safer for the public and far less deadly.


* If you aren't aware, most shark nets on beaches do not, in fact close off the beach with a big net (in most cases nets would have to go too deep and wide for this to be cost effective), they are simply aimed at killing sharks to reduce population numbers in the area - assuming this will protect swimmers. Considering the research currently coming out about the behaviour of species like the Great White Shark (who travel great distances and are rarely in the same place for long) this seems incredibly unlikely to be at all effective. Hence, we are aiming to kill members of a very vulnerable group of species for no reason. This is a crime going on unnoticed beneath our noses.