The need for evangelical ecology

This article is featured this week at SustainLane.com's Green Faith page.

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But someone may say, "You have faith, and I have actions." Show me your faith without any actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions.

James 2:18, NIV

CAN I ASK A small favor of you all to let me visit with the family for a sec? I need to share something that's been on my heart for a while. You see, there's an odd thing going on in Christian creation care circles.

There's this bit at a Baptist seminary's website posted last week. Like Randy would say, "Yo dog, check it out":

A temptation to Southern Baptists in the next generation will be to speak to issues because of how well received they are in the culture around them. The issue of the care of the environment is one such issue. Should the church speak to environmental stewardship: yes. Can such a discussion lead to discussion about evangelism and the Gospel: no.

Did "Can such.." mean should it? Or did it mean is it possible for creation care and evangelism to co-exist? Either way I thought the answer should be a resounding YES! Well, I emailed and got this non-answer back. LOL! OK, I get it. Must be an anti-green dominionist bunch. Maybe progressive Christians would be more connected to evangelical ecology. I turned back to my notes from an interfaith environmental conference I attended in January. At the time I waxed at length about not seeing Jesus anywhere. The keynote speaker, a Christian bishop and leader in creation care circles, wrote:

It is an interfaith ministry and I try not to focus on Christian doctrine with an interfaith audience.

I could find you more examples. What I'm seeing all over the place, my brothers and sisters, is the notion that it's great to be a green Christian. In fact, it's a moral necessity. But at the same time it's apparently bad to be up front about using ecology as a way to offer other greens the opportunity to become a Christian. I'm not talking about doctrine here. I'm talking about wanting what He wants. Wanting what the whole earth wants.

In short, we are running from green evangelism. And it ain't good.

Evangelism. The word conjurs up images of Jack Chick tracts in Halloween candy bags or folks in shiny suits with equally shiny hair waving huge King James (is there any other?) at passing cars. Shudder...

We gravitate to that passage in James above because it describes faith at work. Yeh! That really describes Christian ecology well. But we can't run away from is James' declaration that people should plainly see our Christian testimony at work. Or better, see Christ working through us. And let's be real here - the only reason we have a testimony at all is so that Christ can use us to draw all men unto Him. If we're to believe Paul in his letter to the Roman people, creation is crying out for as many Christians as it can get.

If that's the case, why aren't we after that too?

I just love hearing Tri Robinson talk about when they first put their church logo on recycled shopping bags. The guy totally lights up when he says people came to Vineyard Boise because they couldn't believe a church would do something like that and want to check it out. And then you see him soften up when he recounts person after person being baptised because they find Christ's love a church family that loves people and God's planet. Or my favorite blogger-sharpens-blogger brother Ed Brown. If you haven't picked it up, buy and read his book on Christian ecology as a mission field. These guys get that a conversation about God's green earth should naturally gravitate to what it means to be part of His family. 

WELL, LET ME personalize this and then I'll get off my soapbox.

A decade ago I was the environmental director at a naval air station up in northern Japan. Every Earth Day weekend we led a large group of folks from the base on a clean-up of Lake Towada Park. We were usually joined by a hundred or so people from the surrounding area.

It wasn't uncommon for locals to track me down afterwards to talk about why a bunch of Americans were picking up trash at a Japanese park. Atsiko-san was one of those. She said she was a devout Buddhist. She said Buddha would like what I was doing.

I said I was a Christian. I asked if we could talk.

As we sat under that pink canopy of Japanese cherry trees, I told her Buddha's teaching didn't explain why we should take care of creation. Buddha told us to attain enlightenment and be one with nature, but that there's no way sinful people can do that perfectly the way God intends. Just looking around, I said, it's obvious that people are natural polluters. If we weren't, we wouldn't be there picking up trash.

I shared with her Genesis 2, how the earth and everything in it was created by God to be perfect, and how people were created in His holy image. I told her the earth was cursed by mankind's sin in Genesis 3. I told her Jesus came to die for the sins of the world, and when He did that, he also broke the curse on the earth. I told her what Paul said in Romans 8, that all creation groans for the salvation of mankind, because only a new heart could understand God's heart and how to care for what He made. And I told her the only way she could be free of that curse herself and truly desire God's heart for creation was to ask Jesus to be her Savior.

She sat quietly for a moment. She said she'd never heard a Christian say something like that before. She sat quietly again. Then she asked me how she could become a Christian. We prayed together and she accepted Christ.

My friends, it's reasonable to be concerned with interfaith harmony, and to be cautious in approaching the green cause de celebre. But please - be yet more passionately consumed by the fact that so many of those around us recycling their trash and cutting their CO2 are on their way to hell. We must not be ashamed of the Gospel at the exact moment when our very act of caring for creation affords us the opportunity to share Christ with people who would never darken the door of a church.

Every act of healing Christ did met both the physical and the spiritual needs. Shouldn't it be clear to everyone around us that we're after the same things?

Grace and peace,

Don