The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

This article by Meg K.. was the second place winner in the 2006 Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Washington Office Annual Public Policy Essay Contest.

In the beginning, there was an endless void -- a ceaseless expanse of emptiness, a vacuum devoid of any living creature. And then God spoke. "Let there be light," the creator declared. "Let there be day separated from night, let there be sky and sea, let there be flora and heavenly bodies," and it was so. "Let there be fish and birds and land dwellers." Then God saw that everything was good. But as a finishing touch God formed a creature with free will, a creature to care for the earth, a human. The Creator knew full well that this new creation might choose to disobey Him, might discard the purpose of protecting the home it had been given. But God took the risk of untying the puppet strings from the creatures' hands, the risk of allowing them to design, create and destroy freely, and made man and woman in His own image.

The rest of the story is well known. Man and woman decided to eat the forbidden fruit, and so were cast out of the paradise garden, had to create tools to persuade me land to give up its bounty, cut down trees for shelter against the elements and killed animals for food and clothing. Humans had fallen. History passed and God sent them a savior, but they found new ways to stumble. Generations, centuries, millennia came and went, and the ecological footprint of humans grew until it began to crush the earth they were meant to protect.

Why have humans become apathetic to the plight of their God given home? Not only is the earth covered in waste, filled with pollution and rapidly losing beautiful species, but it is also populated with destitute people who, because of their lack of wealth and education, have no voice. The waste of the wealthy is dumped in their backyards, their shade trees taken for other's paper, there are no adequate resources to help them deal with their own waste, pollution of cars-cheap and luxury alike-is heating up our world, and they remain unable to change a thing. We as children of God were given the task of caring for the earth and its inhabitants, including our fellow humans. Christians, because of our intimate relationship with the Creator, have no excuse for forgetting this. Anyone proclaiming to be a follower of Christ takes on the responsibility of caring for the earth we were given-not only because we are commissioned to be good stewards of the planet, but also because we are compelled to watch out for those without a voice, future generations, and the environment we leave for them.

Imagine a world without hundreds of things we now take for granted - a world where millions of God's beautiful creatures no longer exist, where the sea has risen over twenty feet and reclaimed thousands of miles of costal land, where severe droughts and massive wildfires might be a monthly occurrence. Imagine a landscape with only sparse clusters of trees, and everything is shrouded in smoggy haze. If the globe continues to heat up, this nightmare could become reality.

Global warming is the observed increase in average temperature in the earth's atmosphere and oceans caused by accumulation of carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gasses. These form a sort of insulating solar blanket, trapping infrared rays that increase the surface temperature and posing a constantly compounding threat to the globe. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains, "Scientists have used sophisticated computer models to incorporate observations with the many factors that have an influence on climate in order to study past. present, and future climate patterns. These models have projected an increase in global average temperatures that will continue for decades as a result of greenhouse gas emissions." Global warming is not a problem that will go away any time soon.

Each time we flip a switch, push a button or dispose of anything we are compounding the problem and raising the temperature a fraction. By simply raising the internal temperature of a house by 2-degree F in the winter and lowering it 2°F in summer, humans are able to produce about 2,000 pounds of carbon per house annually. By not unplugging our appliances when they aren't in use, we spew 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. One household refusing to recycle even half of the waste produced in a year pours 2400 extra pounds into the air. (An Inconvenient Truth).

The United States of America is a privileged nation. Americans consume all the modem conveniences and "necessities" and, perhaps because of this, are some of the least concerned with an issue they have helped to create. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica the United States emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country, and yet the government rejected the Kyoto protocol (an international commitment to reduce emissions) for economic reasons.

The average annual amount of carbon monoxide released per person in the United States alone is 7.5 tons (An Inconvenient Truth). Each pound in every ton makes a difference as it becomes trapped in the atmosphere, compounding the effects of the sun's rays on the earth. Each American produces an average of 4 pounds of trash daily, 70 of which ends up in landfills (Environmental Defense Fund). In 2001 alone Americans produced 409 million tons of non hazardous waste (Zero Waste America), which ended up in someone else's backyard or in an animal's habitat.

Climate change is proven to affect the prevalence of many diseases and at times can lead directly to loss of life in the form of heatstroke and dehydration. An increase in temperature would also increase the number and range of disease carriers like rodents, It may seem that a heat increase would be beneficial to farmers. It would mean longer growing seasons and possibly increased yields, but these positive productivity changes would be overshadowed by a great increase in droughts, floods and severe storms. More rainfall in certain areas could mean greater soil erosion and standing water, along with less topsoil, and this would make farming in many areas unfeasible, destroying the livelihood of many already poor farmers and decreasing the general world food supply resulting in widespread famine. Higher temperatures could increase the risk of forest and prairie fires as well as increasing the range of invasive species (EPA).

Who would be in closest contact with disease carrying animals? Who would be left in unsafe housing in severe weather and would have little or no access to healthcare if they were hurt by the elements? Who would be hit hardest by extreme food prices and famine? The underprivileged. "The impacts of climate change will be felt on the world's poorest countries the most," states scholar Anup Shah. "Nonetheless, some poor countries have already started to make emission reductions, showing that the rich countries can do it as well." If this is really the case, why aren't Christians acting? There isn't much a lone voice can do to change the minds of world leaders, but acting together, great strides could be made to reduce emissions and waste. There are also numerous simple ways for the individuals themselves to begin shrinking their ecological footprint.

If every household committed to drying their clothes on a line for six months out of the year, it would keep 700 pounds of carbon (per household) out of the air. If every family planted a single tree, several million tons of carbon could be taken out of the atmosphere because each tree can absorb about one ton of carbon in its lifetime. Recycled paper takes 70-90 less energy to produce and it helps prevent the loss of forests that aid in ridding the earth of carbon. Sharing a car trip with someone else for just two days a week will reduce carbon emissions by about 1,590 pounds. If just 1 of car owners properly maintained their cars, almost a billion tons of carbon would be eliminated (An Inconvenient Truth). These are just a few of the small things we can do to reduce the human-induced global warming and the impact it will have on both the underprivileged and future generations. Humans have got one more chance to clean up their act and become the stewards they were meant to be.

Every scrap of waste has an impact on not only the land where people callously discard it, but also on the trees that will be cut down to replace the abandoned paper waste, creatures living within those trees, fellow humans who depend on the animals for a livelihood and communities who now face a more polluted future living beside a dump.

Christians must consider what God hoped for humans to do with the planet and what kind of gift we want to pass on to our children and the disadvantaged. If we deface our beautiful earth and leave for our descendents only a few shreds of the awesome globe and say, "Here, this is all that's left, do what you can with it and try to survive while you're at it," have we honestly completed our duties as stewards? When we contribute to the desecration of the earth, be it by raising our thermostats enough so that we can wear short sleeves in winter, or by refusing to consider what went into a food wrapper and the impact it has after it has been thrown away, we are defacing and throwing back the gift we have been given by God. But it shouldn't be this way. Christians need to accept their obligation to protect the earth and to love our neighbors.

By accepting that every human around us is a child of God and therefore related to us, Christians gain a greater compassion for those whom global warming would hurt the most. Christians ought to bum with a desire to right the wrongs of an industrially oriented, consumerist and wasteful world. Psalm 24 proclaims, "The earth is the LORD'S, and everything in it." We are God's children and must treat everything around us as gifts from our creator. When the psalmist declared, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands," he put into words how God's majesty is reflected in the very sky above us. How can Christians harm what is singing the Creator's praises? It ought to be unthinkable.

Christians have a biblical, moral and spiritual obligation to nurture the earth they were given-not only because they have been given stewardship of the planet, but also because they are compelled to care for our global family members who have no voice, for future generations and the for environment they leave for them. The choices humans make today impact not only the health of the environment in which they live, but also that of the global community. Christians are not separate from or above our environment or the other humans dwelling on the planet. We are all connected by one of God's most beautiful creations and his gift to us-the earth.

Bibliography

An Inconyment Truth online. Microsoft Internet Explorer. http://www.cliniatecrisis.net (Oct. 20, 2006)

Zero Waste America online. Microsoft Internet Explorer http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/Statistics.htm (Oct. 23,2006)

The Environmental Defense Fund online. Microsoft Internet Explorer http://www.csun.edu/science/BFI/waste_stats.html (Oct. 23, 2006)

The Environmental Protection Agency online. Microsoft Internet Explorer http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html (Oct. 20, 2006)

Anup, Shah. "Climate change and Global Warming" June 8 2006, Global Issues online. Microsoft Internet Explorer http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/GlobalWarming.asp (Oct. 24, 2006)

The Bible. New International Version Student Bible: Zondervan, 2002.