the end of the world, a firey blaze of glory, and environmentalism
“the earth provides enough to sustain every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed”
-ghandi
i received a lot of feedback on my earth hour post (ok, well, a lot relative to my site’s traffic), and i was once again intrigued by this idea that some in religious circles seem to hold. that - since the world is going to end any way - we shouldn’t expend TOO much energy (no pun intended) trying to save it. i’m not saying they’re doing everything they can to purposely destroy our resources, but i am saying that they’ve adopted this “oh well, what the hell” kind of stance. i am infinitely perplexed for several reasons, the first of which i’ll explain here, the others will come in later posts:
selfishness and waste are not biblical. i’ve heard the argument that since the world is going to end some day, saving it is not really worth our efforts. this pre-supposes a couple things:
1. that the world is literally going to end. i’m not going to get into eschatology because i’m not sure exactly what i believe, but i don’t hold to a literal interpretation of the idea that it’ll all go down in a blaze of glory.
2. that the world will end soon. unless the world ends, like, tomorrow, or maybe in our lifetimes, this position is purely selfish. even if the blaze of glory thing is true, we have no idea when it’s going to happen, and so we should be doing our best to conserve everything we can for those who come after us.
3. that we have no one to answer to. i suspect what the above scenario REALLY comes down to, is not so much that people are holding to the belief that there is something yet to come, so much as they believe that we are the kings of our own world. the earth is for our usurpation (which is different from use) and it’s perfectly ok to take, take, take whatever we need. not only do we answer to the generations that come after us, it seems painfully obvious to point out that these are the same people who believe we all answer to god.
moving on to the idea of waste: neither throwing away plastic cup after plastic cup nor requiring goods that demand too much from the earth are responsible actions for people who claim to believe the earth is a gift. whether the world ends tomorrow, or in 5000 years, or never, there’s never an excuse for wasting what we’ve been given. the type of waste we’re experiencing in relation to the earth is financially-related (reusables end up being cheaper than throw-aways), environmentally-related (we’re filling landfills with waste along with our air, water, land, etc), and humanly-related (our demand for things we can simply use up in some case creates adverse working conditions for the providers of these goods).
i’m drawn back again and again to this beautiful, simple yet profound native american proverb:
we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
if we simply stopped buying into the idea that the earth was ours to use up, and instead focused on the idea that it was given to us to take care of by god, and is on loan from our children - wouldn’t we have to change many of our self-centered, consumeritic, americanized ways? could it be that these implications are really what we’re afraid of?
March 31 2009 11:12 am | politics and religion and san francisco and soapbox and the city
March 31st, 2009 at 11:21 am
Speaking of biblical, I’ll never understand the argument that because God created the Earth, our actions on the world have no lasting effect. It seems to be a way to dodge responsibility and justify laziness. Um, how does turning it into a trash dump make you more pious? Isn’t it just the opposite? And if you believe (as I’ve read) that “who are we to think we could effect God’s Earth,” well, look around. No one says you have to destroy it utterly to make it worse place.
If in effect, He appointed us caretakers, I’d assume everyone would want to take stock in what a lousy job we’re doing.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
you would think - and that’s exactly the conclusion i would draw - which is why i get so furious when i hear christians give all sorts of excuses for not taking better care of the earth. you want to know what it is? it’s political: the “left” got to environmentalism first, and the extreme “religious right” would rather die than agree with anything from those crazy liberals ;-)
but that’s the topic of my next post on the subject, so that’s all i’ll say for now ;-)
April 1st, 2009 at 11:59 am
“It’s not my fault the planet can’t support my lifestyle”
…me
April 1st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
oh danny, you are more prophetic than you know. that’s why i loved the ghandi quote.
April 6th, 2009 at 8:43 am
[...] my spiritual dissension - i’ve covered that enough for now! - it’s a followup to the idea that people of faith, for whatever reason, aren’t as responsive as they should be to the [...]