I suppose it’s no surprise that I would be able to find Western irresponsibility propped by Christianity in my own back yard. Veritas Rex (V/R), a conservative Christian Hoosier blog has some rather arrogant and lazy opinions on Christianity’s relationship with the earth and by extension, everyone else on it.
Where to start? How about, in regards to the Democratic National Convention’s lofty goal of reducing the environmental impact of their convention by finding, as Veritas Rex describes,
“900 foolhardy souls to sift through every scrap of trash to ensure that those balloons and used tissues will be composted or recycled.”
V/R, you have to understand that this is the brave new world that we must coax our culture to. Subaru of Indiana, a responsible member of the Market is achieving this, why would we not hold ourselves and our government to this high standard? I’m sure the neighbors of Indiana’s 35 landfills would appreciate it if we were all a little more ‘fool hardy’ and were more intimate with our trash, picking out bio-degradable and recyclable material, thereby reducing what we throw away. Especially given the fact that IDEM has estimatedthese 35 landfills have just over 14 years of capacity left. Throwing away your garbage may be out of site, out of mind for you, but someone ultimately has to experience what we conveniently throw away. I thought this was basic, general consensus, but I guess I’m wrong.
The more dangerous and scary opinions posted at Veritas Rex revolve around the idea that we are not guests on this earth and have been given the right to do what we want to it. It is our earth, Psalms 8 says so. We can do what we want to the earth because God gave it to us. At some point, we as a culture, have to move beyond cherry picking the Bible to find a verse to ‘prove’ a point. Even biblical scholars will tell you that what we read today has been altered from its original text by countless generations of man. Perhaps Veritas Rex should take a more encompassing approach to the Bible and speaking for God, kind of like Bill Johnson who researchedthe Bible and Christian texts and surmised that, “Christianity’s positive contribution to environmental conservation is consistent with its positive contributions to other fields such as literature, art, music, education, health, and science.” Back to the point, the DNC’s efforts to minimize its solid waste is an exercise of cleaning up after yourself and being responsible. Find a bible verse that contradicts that notion.
Unsurprisingly, the topic in his post moves on to the more tired subject of evolution. It’s a bizarre transition, to say the least. It is baffling, really, to transition from the ‘unbiblical-ness’ of caring about what gets tossed into a landfill to the position that any exercise of stewardship beyond recycling and driving a Honda Civic is an endorsement of evolution.
I don’t think these opinions are necessarily Christian arrogance and ignorance. Sure, it appears to contribute to the position, but I think it’s broader than that. The U.S. has not yet been enlightened to the necessity of being intimate with its trash like other countries throughout the world. I know we’ll get there, but biblical justifications for avoiding environmental responsibility is just lazy and it gives other Christians a bad name and God knows they’ve got plenty going on to give them a bad name these days.
1 Comment
August 15, 2008 at 4:36 pm
[...] talked about this before. How the “Let God sort it out” bury-your-head-in-the sand mentality is [...]