Audience of One

Environmentalism, culture, and evangelism

Last week while recording a concert, somehow Sara and I got talking about environmentalism. Oddly enough, though we’d never discussed the issue before, it seemed like just the kind of thing we’d talked about before, for reasons that will become apparent.

Environmentalism is one of those issues which many Christians have lost their way about. One the one hand, you have Christians who would make the following argument. God is sovereign over his creation, and therefore this stuff about man-made disaster, human-caused global warming, and the necessity of working hard to save the planet from destruction, is all a load of nonsense. Some might add that the world is getting worse, and that this is a sign of the second coming of Christ and so is in some ways a good thing. Working to save the environment shows a distrust in God’s goodness and his sovereignty. That, and environmentalism is very much a “liberal” cause, and as such shouldn’t be considered worth pursuing by “conservatives”. It’s nothing more than nature-worship, and therefore idolatry.

On the other hand, you have Christians for whom the environment becomes the one cause worth fighting for. We’ve messed up God’s creation, and it’s now up to us to put it right. It can combine a low view of God’s sovereignty (“there’s nothing God can do about it, we’ve got to do something”) with a right view of creation (it’s something good, corrupted by the fall, but still something of value). Environmentalism becomes our way of helping our messed-up world.

Neither can be right, because neither have the whole picture. The latter is missing the gospel of salvation for sinners, replacing it with a creation-centric idea about humans saving the world through their own effort. The world needs saving, yes – but sin is the more pressing issue, surely?

But the former view is missing a biblical view of creation. God created this world, and the fall doesn’t negate the first thing he tells humans to do: “fill the earth and subdue it”. The word translated “subdue” doesn’t mean what the first group might think it does – it’s actually similar to the “take care” imperative of the later chapters. Creation is a good gift from God, given to us to look after and steward. If we don’t care about the environment, we’re guilty of ignoring God’s command to us. Sure, the world’s biggest issue is its rebellion against God; but that doesn’t mean that green issues don’t matter!

It’s similar to the view that some hold about social action. I’d never heard of this buzz phrase until a few years ago, when I first heard about the Noise. My initial reaction was exactly what I’m writing against now: I thought it was time and resources better spent telling people the gospel.

The issue, though, is that Christians become very next-world centred, and are seen to not be living “in the real world”. Obviously there’s a large extent to which we don’t conform to the ways of this world, and are going to be distinctive. But our God is a God who cares about this physical world now. Psalm 145:9 says “He has compassion on all he has made”. This shows itself in many ways, but one way the Bible mentions is God’s care for the people he has made. The book of Amos is written about people ignoring the poor and treating them with injustice. Parts of the Old Testament law were designed to keep the ground productive and look after the environment of the promised land so it would remain fertile. God cares about this world and its people – not just that they might be saved. He shows grace to everyone, though saving grace only to some.

If we live in a Christian bubble, only caring about whom we can invite to the next evangelistic event, or about spiritual conversations, we’re going to be highly unattractive people to the world. Christians must be those who look after physical needs in their communities, who care for the environment, because that’s the kind of God that God is, and not to do so would be to say the spiritual is all that matters. It’s not; that idea is called Gnosticism and owes more to Greek philosophy than the Bible.

It’s a similar issue with culture and creativity. It’s very easy for Christians to withdraw completely, spend all their time together, creating Christian art for Christian consumers, not involved with the culture of the day. I’ve heard people describe music written by non-Christians as immoral, and seen Christians applauding those who have thrown out their secular record collections. I know some of it is immoral, but a lot of it isn’t! Most of it is showing God’s common grace to humanity. Steve Turner writes in his book Imagine:

…[T]here are areas of daily living where the experience of the Christian is no different from that of the agnostic, atheist or believer in false gods. For example, I like relaxing in a warm bath. If I were to discuss this with anyone, regardless of belief, they would at least know what I meant even if they didn’t share my enthusiasm. Uniting us would be our common humanity. We all laugh, cry, eat, sleep and sweat, and some of us take baths.

Sport and singing, chocolate or cheese appreciation, wine tasting, cooking, travelling – none of these things are inherently “anti-Christian”, but part of the common ground between Christians and non-Christians. We’re all human, and we all start from the same place.

We can cut ourselves off from culture, get ourselves in a nice little ghetto, and have no effect on the world around us. We can go to the other extreme and lose our integrity as we engage with culture. Or, we can see creativity and culture as good gifts of God, corrupted by the fall but still worth something, and use God’s gifts to reflect his glory back to him.

We don’t solve the world’s biggest problem by singing, or saving electricity, or social action. Not to work at these things too, though, is to ignore what God has also told us: to fill the earth, develop it, subdue it; to look after the poor and the oppressed; to reflect his creativity with our own. To say “we’re gospel-focused people, so we don’t bother with that social action stuff” is to be unloving and unlike God.

Another way of looking at this was suggested by a blog entry entitled Evangelicalism and Art by James Cary. The universe exists to bring God glory, and so our priority as Christians is to live to bring God glory. If we put evangelism as our most important priority, then we’re potentially saying that our priority is the salvation of people, and not the glory of God. It’s a subtle distinction, because of course God is greatly glorified through salvation… but not just through salvation! There’s probably more that we could all do to help proclaim the gospel, but that doesn’t mean that nothing else is worth pursuing.

If evangelism is all that matters, then creating art with no evangelistic purpose is therefore a waste of time. Similarly, if evangelism is all that matters, who cares about global warming? Why bother looking after the poor? Why get involved in politics?

There’s far more to life than just scurrying around like sailors on a sinking ship, trying to get as many people as possible into the lifeboats. Cary writes in a comment to Matthew Mason’s blog entry on a related subject:

To place man’s salvation at the centre of everything is breathtakingly arrogant but it happens a lot.

God is glorified through our stewardship of creation, our use of the creativity he gave us, our involvement in society as salt (and not just light!), our care for the poor and the planet, AND our proclaiming of Jesus Christ as Lord, making disciples of all nations. We mustn’t focus on one to the exclusion of others: those Christians who only care about social action, or environmentalism, and forget evangelism, have got it wrong. They’ve got it partly right though, because the reason they went so far away from the “only evangelism and Bible teaching” wing is because that wing is not biblical; it doesn’t paint a full picture of what Christian living is about, and so to want to react against it was a right thing (they just went too far).

Over the coming months the plan is to look at each of these areas in a bit more depth. Currently art and creativity’s the one I’m reading about, but I’m getting Planetwise by Dave Bookless soon, and hoping to borrow Tim Chester’s Good News to the Poor. It’s all about whole-life Christian living, not compartmentalising. I want to live my whole life for Jesus.

Matthew @ 16:36, May 9, 2008 to Discussions | Comments (2)