Saturday, June 18, 2011

As Christians shouldn't we be the biggest environmentalists around?

First off let me say that I am not by any means an environmentalist. I drive a Nissan Titan that I lovingly call the "monster truck".  I don't recycle (I know, I know), and I have never even thought about painting myself in tiger stripes and spending the day on the street practically naked in a cage to protest the treatment of animals (although I know someone who did).  However, I do think about the environment. I think about what our consumer driven, gas guzzling, disposable lifestyle is doing to the planet that God has entrusted to us.

I started thinking about this the other day when someone commented on the lights in the church. It seems we switched awhile back to the energy saving light bulbs at church. It has apparently saved us some mula on the electric bill (yeah). What got me to thinking about it though was that when I was being told about this the person said "We switched to the energy saving bulbs not that because we are into the "green movement" or anything but to save money on the electric bill"  It was almost like he felt like he had to make sure I understood it wasn't because he had gone soft and become a liberal environmentalist.

So here is my question.... Shouldn't we, as stewards of the planet that God gave us, be the ones who are "going green"?  I look around this beautiful place and see the awesomeness of God everywhere I look.  I believe He gave us this planet to live on, to enjoy, to make a living from, and to gain sustenance from but at the same time He handed it over to our care.

The current political environmentalist movement is NOT what I am talking about here. Like we humans tend to do they have take a good idea and turned into something extreme. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--Who is forever praised. Amen. (Romans 1:25)

I am not by any means suggesting that we should place environmental needs above the needs of people.  I am not saying we should go out and chain ourselves to trees to save the black tipped, red winged, purple beaked whatever.  What I am saying is God entrusted this place to us for as long as we are here and I really think we should be taking better care of it.

Shell

1 comment:

  1. I agree. I sometimes feel like I have to justify to the more conservative and Christian why I do very basic things like recycle. But, I tell my girls, "God asked us to be stewards of this planet." I think kids these days can't escape it to some extent. My kids are the lights and running water police . . .

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