How Long Will the Land Lie Parched?

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Last summer was the hottest on record.

This summer has been much hotter.

Raging wildfires in the California hills are spreading at record speed, consuming thousands of acres overnight.

Catastrophic flooding in Louisiana, the latest in a string of under-reported epic floods, has put the National Flood Insurance program billions into debt.

While some politicians debate the reality of climate change, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and international counterparts struggle to come to terms with the clear evidence of sea level rise and ever worsening 

The Migration Policy Institute has identified climate change as an important factor in the unprecedented surge in global migration, with millions on the move due to drought, famine, flooding, violence fueled by shrinking resources. 

The prophet Jeremiah described a world in which human choice brought environmental consequence: 

How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished. (Jeremiah 12:4) 

What would Jeremiah say about oceanic dead zones? The growing man-made deserts in Central Asia and North Africa? Mountain top removal? The lingering sludge of the tar sand spill lining the Kalamazoo?

There is a tight correlation in scripture between the health of the land and the appetites of its people. Adam and Eve’s greed and disobedience in Genesis spilled immediately onto the ground itself: “Cursed is the ground because of you.” 

In Leviticus, God’s people were warned that the productivity of the land would be tied to their obedience in the use of it. Plow and plant for six years, let it lie fallow the seventh, and God would provide far more than they needed: 

If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. (Leviticus 26:3-5)

In the prophetic books, Jeremiah and others warned of environmental devastation resulting from misuse of the land, injustice toward the poor, disobedience of God’s laws. They warned of drought, famine, crop failure, barren fields, thorns and thistles, roving jackals.

Explicit condemnation of exploitation of the land echoes through the prophetic warnings: 

As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats.  Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:17-19) 

As Ezekiel and other prophets make clear, the poor are most harmed by environmental exploitation, least responsible for its cause.

Pollution Yellow Skies, Kay Jackson, Washington DC

Given the connection between greed and global harm explicit in prophecy and increasingly evident in the physical world around us, I find it hard to understand that the strongest opposition to the idea of climate change has come from Christians who claim an allegiance to the authority of scripture.

I find myself wondering: what’s behind the insistence that climate change isn’t real?

Who has most to lose in a shift to renewable resources?

Who has most to gain from continuing the status quo?

Last week I found myself discussing rooftop solar panels with our son, who recently bought a house in Maryland.

I had spent months investigating solar for our own house, with its south-facing roof, and was told by several companies that given our energy efficient house and current Pennsylvania incentives, going solar wouldn’t save us much.

Since the 1830s, Pennsylvania’s energy policy has been shaped by extractive industries lobbying for subsidies and fighting off regulation. Our state is the only one in the country (in the world?) that allows natural gas extraction without any tax on volume extracted.

Maryland and New Jersey, with thousands of miles of coastline and hundreds of low-lying islands, have already seen the effect of sea level rise and have instituted strong policies to shift away from fossil fuel. Both states offer strong support to renewable energy. I find myself wondering: what would it take for Pennsylvania to do the same? 

In 2009, Donald Trump joined dozens of New York executives in an open letter to President Obama commending his attendance at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

As business leaders we are optimistic that President Obama is attending Copenhagen with emissions targets. Additionally, we urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass United States legislation, and lead the world by example. We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.

We recognize the key role that American innovation and leadership play in stimulating the worldwide economy. Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk. We have the ability and the know-how to lead the world in clean energy technology to thrive in a global market and economy. But we must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.

Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet. 

More recently, Trump has described "the concept of global warming” as a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

Here’s the latest Trump energy environment plan, described in a speech in North Dakota this spring:

• We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
• We’re going to save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
• I’m going to ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
• We’re going to lift moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
• We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before.
• We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs. . . . 
• We’re going to do all this while taking proper regard for rational environmental concerns. We are going to conserve our beautiful natural habitats, reserves and resources.In a Trump Administration, political activists with extreme agendas will no longer write the rules. Instead, we will work with conservationists whose only agenda is protecting nature.
• From an environmental standpoint, my priorities are very simple: clean air and clean water.

It's hard to imagine a more delusional, contradictory policy: unlimited gas and coal, no EPA, no regulations, crystal clear air and water. If only.

According our other major candidate, Hilary Clinton: 

Climate change is one of the most serious challenges we face. It’s real, it’s driven by human activity, and it’s happening right now. We need to use every tool we have to combat climate change and accelerate the transition to a clean energy future.

She’s described the tools she’s willing to use, but has also acknowledged that the tool economists consider most effective will not be discussed. 

“The clearest and most obvious way to reach the climate targets is with a nationwide carbon pricing method, whether a carbon tax or a cap and trade,” said Robert Stavins, the head of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “But it’s not surprising, given the politics, that Secretary Clinton would not want to explicitly talk about carbon pricing.”

Climate Change in the American Christian Mind: Stewardship

The health of our globe, our communities, our children has fallen prey to political gamesmanship that will benefit a handful of extractive industries and the investors who lobby hard to bend the rules to their own economic advantage. 

Last year Yale University released a report on Climate Change in the American Christian Mind. The report probed beliefs and concerns about global warming, perceptions of risk, ideas about stewardship and care of the earth and natural resources. 

The margins were narrower than I’d feared, but I still find myself wondering: if the trademark of the evangelical Christian is a strong belief in authority of scripture, how is it that we’ve missed the prophetic insistence that care of creation, care of the poor and obedience to God are inextricably linked?

This post is part of a series on What's Your Platform

Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016

A Different Way July 31, 2016 

Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 

Part of this was posted in 2012: Earth Day Shalom, Ripples of Resurrection 

Advent Two: Listening in the Desert

John the Baptist Sees Jesus from Afar, J. J. Tissot, ca 1890, France

The second week of Advent focuses on John the Baptist and his message of preparation: “ Prepare the way of the Lord.” “Repent and be baptized.”

I’ve been hearing about Jesus’s cousin John since I was small, and have heard dozens of sermons focusing on his call to repentance. Yet I’m still stumbling over parts of his story that surprise me, that remind me how little I know of what it means to listen, prepare, repent.

Today’s Gospel reading is from Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

I’m struck, reading it this time, at the precision of Luke’s historical context. John was clearly no mythical character, but a definite man, in a very precise time and place.

More than that, though, he was a man of influence who walked away from his place of privilege. The son of the priest Zechariah (some traditions describe Zechariah as High Priest), he was raised to be a priest himself.

Yet he appeared in the desert, far from his priestly responsibilities and robes, dressed, according to Mark, in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, subsisting on locusts and honey.

Reading those first verses again, I’m struck by an odd, amusing thought: in the reign of all those powerful rulers (Caesar, Tiberias, Herod, Pilate, Philip), in the time of those powerful high priests (Annas and Caiphas) the word of God came to John in the wilderness.

To an unexpected person, in an unexpected place.

That word wilderness. Sometimes it’s translated desert. It’s not a word we associate with Christmas preparation. We like evergreens, candles, ribbons, snow.

Wilderness reminds me of Syria. Yemen. Somalia. Places we’d rather not think of. People we’d prefer to ignore.

And desert.  The UN predicts over 50 million people will be forced to leave their homes by 2020 because their land has turned to desert. Some of those people are pleading their cause in Paris this week at the Global Climate Summit. Many are already on the move, looking for food, for water.

We are halfway through the UN Decade for Deserts(2010-2020), and still many of our US leaders attempt to ignore the loss of arable land, the fossil fuel impacts on fragile ecosystems, the unprecedented displacement of entire populations. 

John’s message was reversal: high places made low, low places made high, crooked ways made straight, rough ways made smooth.

Dry places brought to life again? Flooded lowlands brought back above sea level?

I wonder.

And his message was repentance: repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.

The prescribed Advent reading ends at verse six, but this week I read on to the end of the chapter:

“Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

It’s puzzling that John leaps so quickly from “repent and be baptized” to “produce fruit in keeping with righteousness.”

Puzzling that the fruit he describes has an economic edge to it:

Share your extra shirts and food.

Don’t collect more taxes than required.

Don’t pad your own pockets at the expense of your neighbor.

Be content with your pay.

I don’t remember hearing that sermon.

Those who heard John and his message chose to go out to the desert.

Turned from their preferred content providers in search of the word of truth.

Listened long enough for their hearts to be moved, their consciences stung, their wills rearranged.

Do we really want to listen?

A word of grief rises from the deserts of our world.

© Hydropolitic Academy, 2014

A cry for peace.

For safety.

For water.

A longing for justice.

For land.

For food.

The voices are hard to hear, drowned out by the Christmas ads, the candidate bluster, the smug repetition of acceptable lies.

Lord, I repent.

Repent of my hardness of heart, my failure to listen.

My collusion in a culture that ignores the cries of the poor.

My complicity in an economic structure always reaching for more.

My small gestures of generosity that fall far short of the enormous divide between privilege and poverty, comfort and despair.

I repent, grieve, and ask, “What should we do?”

What would the fruit of righteousness look like, in this time and place?

What would it mean to share my extra shirts and food with people I will never see?

How will your reversal take place?

Merciful God,

how many John the Baptists,

how many prophets of your light,

have we ignored

because they were not what we were looking for?

How many times have we ignored voices

crying in the wilderness,

"Make straight the way of the Lord."

How many times have we breathed a sigh of relief,

and turned our backs on your messengers,

because they did not speak the message

we expected to hear?

Help us hear anew,

the cry of those who would lead us to Christ.

Tune our ears to your heralds,

that we might also testify to your light. Amen

  (from The Abingdon Worship Annual 2008)

This is the second in a four week Advent series.
Earlier Advent posts on this blog:

Advent One: Hope beyond Terror, Nov. 29,2015

Advent One: Hope is Our Work, Nov. 30, 2014

Advent Two: Peace is Our Promise, Prayer and Practice, Dec. 7, 2014

Advent Three: Love is the Air We Breathe, Dec. 14, 2014

Advent Four: Joy is the Song We're Given, Dec. 21, 2014

Advent One: Rethinking Portfolios, Dec. 1, 2013

Advent Two: Resisting Idols and Injustice, Dec. 8, 2013

Advent Three: Redefining Home, Dec. 15, 2013

Advent Four: Rejoicing in Mystery, Dec. 22, 2013

Advent One: How Do I Know? Dec. 2, 2012

Advent Two: Outsiders In Dec. 9, 2012

Advent Three: Question. Fruit. Dec. 16, 2012

Advent Four: Sing Alleluia, Dec. 23, 2012

Advent One: What I'm Waiting for, Nov. 26, 2011

Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011

Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011

Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011
The Christmas Miracle, Dec. 24, 2011 

Advent Two: John the Baptist,  Dec. 12, 2010

Mary's Song,  Dec. 19, 2010

Christmas Hope,  Dec. 24, 2010 

What Would Make Your Change Your Mind?

I've been thinking this week about how we know what we know – and how hard it is to change our minds.

Information that fits our mental grid is affirmed, accepted, repeated, even when it’s wrong. Information that challenges our tightly-held assumptions becomes proof of bias, of deliberate deception, or is simply dismissed as “talking points from the other side.”

A fascinating commentary on climate change, posted by Tom Chivers of The Telegraph last June, explores the evidence for climate change and the challenge of seeing beyond our own areas of blindness:  

Ask yourself the following: what would it take to make you change your mind on a strongly held belief? An empirical one, a matter of fact. Especially one which you have, in part, defined yourself by.

It's very difficult to do. The power of confirmation bias is well known;Jonathan Haidt, in his fantastic book The Righteous Mind, says that our rational faculty acts like a press secretary, seeking support for policies that are already in place, not looking for new evidence to base policies on. We get a pleasure-chemical reward when we find evidence that supports our argument; holding controversial views, he says, is literally addictive. And now, with the advent of the internet, it is easy to find supportive evidence for almost any beliefs you may hold. Illuminati nuts, 9/11 truthers and Obama birthers, Moon landing conspiracists, Aids denialists, Young-Earth creationists; all of them can find superficially convincing evidence for their beliefs within seconds of reaching the Google home page. 

Yesterday I attended a challenging performance of TheScrewtape Letters, C. S. Lewis’ exploration of spiritual warfare, staged by the Fellowship for the Perfomring Arts. The play, drawing on Lewis’ portrayal of his own mental gamesmanship, illuminates the difficulty of seeing what's true: we are constantly tempted to slide into lazy habits of thinking, to take the easy way out, to judge others and truth itself through a superficial grid of personal preference and emotional response. Real illumination, genuine insight, takes hard work, and as devious Screwtape makes very clear, we are easily deterred by the simplest distractions.

I admire the legacy of Lewis because he chose to do the work of hunting for truth, despite his own prejudice against faith, his own academic arrogance, his own experience both for and against belief. That work is chronicled in a wealth of titles that continue to encourage and enlighten honest seekers: Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, God in the Dock, The Great Divorce.  His stance was always "wouldn't you want to know what's true?" "Isn't it worth the work to find out?" 

"Here is a door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is hiding. Either that is true, or it isn't. And if it isn't, then what that door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal 'sell' on record. Isn't it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then devote his full energies to serving this tremendous secret or to exposing and destroying this giant humbug?" God in the Dock (1946)

Lewis was helpful to me in my own time of wondering. We all grow up with certain opinions, with certain voices loud in our heads. Maturity comes when we’re able to evaluate, to sort through the voices, to look at our own biases and ask: What's true? What is clearly, without question, false? Which voices deserve to be heard? Which can we safely ignore?

In my own faith background there were voices desperate to hold authority, and frightened of science, intellectual exploration, open discussion. I remember, as a high school junior, sharing an interesting fact I’d picked up in my much-loved physics class, and a Bible study leader saying, without hesitation, “that’s not true.” As if somehow science, all science, stood in opposition to faith.  I attended a new youth group with a friend from another denomination and was warned “Don’t go back. They don’t believe the same things we do.” As if hearing and experiencing the Christian faith from another tradition would somehow dislodge me from my own. I saw a narrow path set out ahead of me: “Don’t look left or right. You might be drawn off-course.” As if I were a horse with a bit in my mouth, and thick blinders keeping my eyes straight ahead.

My exploration led me far from that narrow path. The Christian college I attended insisted “All truth is God’s truth” and offered robust discussion in biology, physics, philosophy, history. C. S. Lewis, among other authors dead and living, encouraged me to push hard on what I’d learned about faith, reason, human motivations, Biblical interpretation.

As I’ve read, explored, investigated faith, science, politics, I’ve found voices I trust without question, voices I trust on particular issues, voices I weigh along with others. I believe the Bible, but also know interpretations can be faulty. I value the deep tradition of the Christian faith, but can point to places where the faith was blown off course. There are church leaders I admire, while knowing they are human. And church leaders whose lack of integrity leaves me grieving, and looking elsewhere for insight and wisdom.

This question of authority is essential – whether discussing religious faith, as in the case of C. S. Lewis, scientific understanding, as in climate change, or political persuasion: economic theory, tax policy, health care funding. How do we decide whose authority to trust? Are we able to evaluate authorities wisely?

Last week, thinking about lies, deception, and the faiths that can ensnare us, I spent time reading the stories of people who came to doubt the authority of the Mormon church. Their exploration of their roots was costly: they speak of ostracism by families, threats from leaders, financial hardship. Yet, they also speak of a growing discomfort with deceit, and a determination to know the truth.

The Apostle Paul was certainly one who had been misled by authority, had misused his own authority to search out and harm those who followed Christ, and knew the danger of mistaking power for truth. He warned that leadership lay in setting an example, not through coercive practice or “dominion”:

“Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are fellow workers for your joy.” (II Corinthians 1:24)  

“The elders who are among you I exhort...Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion...nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:1-3) 

Paul was clear that each person is responsible to seek out the truth and determine what’s right, aware, on a very personal level, of how easy it is to follow authority in the wrong direction:

“But test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

"See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ." (Philiippians 1:9-10) 

"Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2)

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent. (I Timothy 6:3-5)

As I noted last week, James 3 offers a good test for recognizing wise leadership and appropriate authority:

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”  

Any voice that is too fast to shut another down, too fast to stir up controversy, too quick to accuse, too eager for power, is a voice I choose to ignore. I’m looking for good fruit, in my own life, and in the lives of those whose example and voice I'm willing to follow: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Leaders whose private lives and public statements don't demonstrate those qualities are not high on my list of trustworthy sources.

In the discussion of climate change, (back to where I started), Tom Chivers calls attention to the question of authority: 

"As a non-climate scientist, I have to accept certain things on authority, as I do with all expert knowledge. This is an argument from authority, but we all do it, and it's vital: if I had cancer, I'd accept the authority of the oncologist and the body of knowledge of the oncology community, rather than try to guide my own treatment with information I'd found on the internet. As Ben Goldacre said long ago in a different context, you have only two options: "you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust".

 "I've decided who to trust, and it's mainstream scientific opinion: the Royal Society, the Royal Institution, Nasa, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, the IPCC, the national science bodies of 30 or so other countries. And that gives me a possible route out of the confirmation-bias trap: I have, in advance, outsourced my judgment to expert bodies. If several of them changed their position, I would change mine. It's far from perfect, but short of becoming a climate scientist myself, it's the only option I have; otherwise my reasonable belief that the climate is changing due to human behaviour becomes an article of faith. As it is, although it is mediated through authority, it's still, I hope, based on empirical data, on the scientific method.

 "What I want to ask those sceptics who, like me, are not professional climate scientists is: what's your way out? You are as trapped by confirmation bias as I am. You will not be able to disinterestedly search through the torrents of information, false and true, on the internet and elsewhere: the more you look, the more you will confirm your own beliefs, because that's what we do. Since the design of the human mind makes you an unreliable judge, what evidence would it take to change your mind? Who, in short, do you trust?"

In all the pressing issues of the day – religious, political, scientific, economic - the questions remain: Where do you gather evidence? What do you do to offset your confirmation bias? Who do you choose to trust? And why? 

And what, if anything, would make you change your mind? 

This is part of a continuing series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform? Join the conversation.  Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.