Hope in a Time of Global Warming

We've gotten news of another month of record breaking heat, which might lead us to feel despair.  It led me to go back to the final paper I wrote for the Environmental History of Christianity class that I took in the Spring.  I remembered the conclusion as being both a comfort and an inspiration.

I post it below, in the hopes that you, too, will find it a comfort and an inspiration:

In a time of climate transformation, some will be comforted by the now and not yet part of Jesus’ message. Jesus announces the inbreaking Kingdom of God, an event that it is happening before the eyes of those who see him, but with the creation of the new world not yet complete. That message is a powerful one in a time that can look like one of planetary collapse. God has taken chaos before and turned it into creation. Planetary history shows times of extinctions, yet they can lead to a planet full of even more vibrant life forms. These beliefs reinforce each other and can energize believers.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have declared their faith in a God who can work miracles and bring redemption to the grimmest of situations. We are facing such a situation now. Christians have looked at the history of the planet and pointed out the places where God takes brokenness and transforms it into beauty. Our faith is built on those stories of transformation, and the world is desperate to hear these stories too. Christians have preached and proclaimed that they believe in the powers of God and the powers of resurrection, and the coming century will test that faith. Christians can create the rituals and theology that will help explain and guide humanity through desperate times. Christianity is a religion that has supported humans through the biggest challenges throughout history. We are called to do likewise now.

We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.