Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Rev. Dr Peter Walker, Principal of United Theological College, thinks emitting industrial CO2 is sinful. But Jesus told us we must take care of the poor – and there is no greater tool for alleviating poverty than industrialisation and economic development.
RESURRECTING SIN TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE
Recent infernos in California and floods in Germany remind us that climate change is a global drama which may end in utter tragedy for the whole creation if we do not act. Just as when a finger bumps a spinning top from its perfect rhythm, and the rotating toy then teeters out-of-balance before finding a new equilibrium or collapsing, the Earth System has been bumped out of balance. And not by accident, but by a willing, decision-making species. That’s us. Earth System Science tells us this planet is finely tuned, yet one species has been serving its own needs to such an extent that the cost to everything else has become intolerable. And it is showing.
…
As strange as the language of Christian theology may seem in the public square today, the human-induced climate emergency, brought about by our selfish abuse of the planet, surely requires a resurrection of the language of sin. There was speculation in early 2020 that Pope Francis might name humanity’s abuse of the Earth as sinful in his statement on the plight of the Amazon. He did not. In Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon), Pope Francis did denounce the unrestrained industrial destruction, saying “The businesses, national or international, which harm the Amazon and fail to respect the right of the original peoples to the land and its boundaries, and to self-determination and prior consent, should be called for what they are: injustice and crime.” That language of “injustice and crime” is powerful, yet it is not the most inherently powerful language available to Christian leaders.
The abuse of the Earth is a sin. The climate emergency has come about because of our sinfulness. It is a sign, and may prove the most telling of all signs, of our universal gone-wrongness, and of the fact that humanity has turned in upon itself. Calling people to prayer for the planet without naming the sin that makes those prayers and global action to save the planet essential is a profound moral and theological failure.
Rev. Dr Peter Walker, Principal of United Theological College
Read more: https://www.insights.uca.org.au/resurrecting-sin-to-address-climate-change/
What about the sin of denying food and clothing to the poor?
Matthew 25:34-36 tells us “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’”
What will the King say to those whom, however well meaning, would rip away today’s abundance of food, clothing and medicine?
Dr Walker, I have no doubt you mean well. But seeking to tear down the keystone of our age of abundance is a direct attack on the reliable supply of food, clothing and clean water to the poor. How do you reconcile your attack on our age of industrial abundance with the Gospel of Matthew?
Only cheap energy and industrial civilisation can deliver the abundance we all too often take for granted, the abundance which has fed and clothed more poor people, and healed more sick people, than anything mankind has ever previously attempted.
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Rev. Dr Peter Walker has it wrong. It’s the COVID crisis that results from our sinfulness in allowing same-sex marriage. God told me so Himself. By the way He also can’t stand rap music. I’ll be sure and let you all know as soon as He tells me what He plans to visit upon us for that transgression.
Something doesn’t make sense here.
He told me something different; that the Covid was brought on so we would have an impetus to change our social fabric and rebuild better. And that he liked 50 Cent, Jay-Z & even Eminem’s works.
But, we gots a few potential explanations:
God is a Democrat and he is just saying what he thinks people want to hear, so as to build up his power base;
or, maybe I was’t really talking to God … that my info was coming from the devil, posing, trying to get me over to his side.
“my info was coming from the devil, posing, trying to get me over to his side.”
What you say is correct but not for the reasons you may think. A devil cannot exist under an all powerful god without the approval of the god. Ergo, the devil is an agent of the god who is tasked with constantly tempting humans to see if they adhere to the god’s laws. If humans do, then they get their just rewards, if they don’t….well…… no sense saying god help them.
I partly agree, Tom, but, I would say that, when Satan rebelled and took 1/3 of the angels with him, he became an independent contractor. No agency, no respondeat superior.
That an omnipotent God allows a being to use its free will does not make God liable for its actions.
And, it will only go on for so long. God has already set a day — nearer every minute — when Satan will be done.
Thus, the Father of Lies is furiously doing his level best to deceive, to help those mired in greed to wallow in it forever, for he knows. No one, not even he, knows that day or that hour, but, he knows that his time is short.
And he knows that for every soul, the time spent on earth is, no matter when The End comes, very brief. Thus, his most clever deception, one that has no doubt won him many a soul:
“Wait awhile.” (C. S. Lewis)
****************************************
(still praying for you, Tom, and for many others around this place, too)
Hi Janice,
I appreciate your words but disagree. However, this is not the forum to get into a lengthy religious discussion so I will move on.
Hi, Tom,
I know.
🙂
I am not all powerful, and even I could fairly easily do away with all sorts of yucky stuff (spiders, rats, vagrants, meth-heads, patchouli hippies, nutria, people that have the bicycle license plate on their cars, etc.). Since I am not all powerful I couldn’t get rid of all of the yuck, but I could put a big dent in the local population. But I don’t; But that doesn’t mean that they all have my approval.
You assume (devil) existence is a defacto approval of One that has the ability to control said existence. I don’t think it is.
Since I was created in Gods image, I assume that he has the same thought processes as me, and therefore I can speak for him (as can the good Rev Dr Walker).
All that aside, my main point, that Dems and their ilk are analogous the yuck that your run-of-the-mill devil would want on his side, stands.
Look at the graph of the earth’s temperature over the last 450,000 years Link. The temperature ranged from +3C to -8C. Then tell me when was the climate not changing. Also there are 4 previous interglacial warm periods during that time. All of them were as warm as anything we are seeing today. .All of them happened more that 100,000 years ago. Did mankind cause any of them? No man could not have caused any of them including the most recent from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. So why is then that the current increase in temperature of 1C in 100 years could only be caused by man?
I guess “sinfulness” will do if you haven’t got a clue.
The climate change is a hoax created to take rights away and collapse economies so they can bring in a One World Government. Its designed to enslave us just like Covid
It’s like the U.K.’ s Synod of the Church of England which wants to disinvest in fossil fuels instead of exercising a Christian motivation in supporting electricity supply to benighted peoples. Ignorant arts or theology graduates. And closed our churches during the pandemic. Wet. They were open during the Black Death 1348.
Methodist apostate. Nothing surprising here.
What ever happened to the good old days when religious types promoted the notion that Man should have “dominion” over the earth and its creatures?
The more interesting question might be how are leftists, who adore poking fun at religion and its promoters, going to deal with this? If they poke fun at it, they undermine their pet propaganda; if they ignore it, they have religious types that they have laid endless derision on for years, spouting “climate” crap, which makes it sound so much more like…a religion. How delicious!
Dear Reverend Walker
Please open your bible to Jeremiah 23:30–32.
I think he is talking about you,
He is as good as any climate scientist..
Rev. Dr. Walker almost has it right. In truth, God (as Mother Nature who works as a GOF researcher in Wuhan) is smiting us with CoViD for our multitude of environmental sins.
Right. Every time another human enters this mortal coil, it’s a punishment from God.
Sarcasm missed…
Katharine Hayhoe, the TexasTech political scientist, frequently also does this melding of Christianity with her pagan climate schtick as well.
The late Dr.Michael Crichton understood this phenomenon well. His ability to communicate to average People about Climate Paganism scared the bejeezers out of the Climate Scammers.
I agree with virtually all of what Mr. Crichton says there, but am somewhat disappointed at his invoking “fundamentalist” religions;
fundamentalist – NOUN
This is not even possible with a Book that OBVIOUSLY uses non-literal forms of speech of a wide array of kinds and styles throughout. And can therefore only signify the “accuser” is not happy with how this or that particular passage/language has been is interpreted by someone else. It’s bullshit, simply put . . (not literally though ; )
The purpose of God sacrificing His Son was as a ransom for many. Our task is just to tell people that, not to point out their sins.
Where we can we turn from wrongs in response to the love God has shown in taking our punishment, not in response to criticism from the pulpit.
God knew what would happen to the Earth when He made it. He knew the evil one would try to destroy mankind. The climate saga has become the perfect religion to set man against his neighbour, yet without proof that there is any issue. This ignorant church leader is representation of Jesus at its worst. Our sin is rejecting God’s Grace is Jesus.
Let’s be thankful that we are forgiven.
Prof John Houghton was also a church leader, and therein lies the problem.
Not only did he claim to know it all, –
(was co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) scientific assessment working group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore+He was the lead editor of first three IPCC reports…) whose main aim was to mislead millions of people…
but then set about making up a lobby group for his idiotic views….
president of the John Ray Initiative, an organisation “connecting Environment, Science and Christianity“, where he has compared the stewardship of the Earth, to the stewardship of the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve.
He was a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion.
quote
“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport.
The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”
NICE GUY eh?
Excuses all the dead in the German floods that does…(NOT!)
The only emergency is that we get these stupid or greedy policy makers out of office,
“Calling people to prayer for the planet without naming the sin that makes those prayers and global action to save the planet essential is a profound moral and theological failure”.
I notice that the supposed “sin” of making use of the abundant fuels God Himself provided us, and thus adding some plant food gas to the atmosphere, is not actually named here . . (There’s always a “tell”, it seem to me ; )
This of course would be a trickster God, who intentionally set a catastrophe trap for his kids . . Nothing new, I recognize him;
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
The people in the garden bit (so to speak ; ) and imagined God was lying to them, and thus depriving them of something wonderful, through His deception. They separated themselves from Him (psychologically) . . and the rest is history ; )
(But what could it be? This wonderful thing they were being told not to partake of, lest they die? Let’s examine the evidence, carefully;
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food…”
Hmm, “saw” that the tree was good for food? How could she see that?
“… and that it was pleasant to the eyes”
Why hadn’t she noticed that already, if it’s “in the midst of the garden”?
“…and a tree to be desired to make one wise”
She “saw” that?? . . Such a thing would not be visible to the physical eye . . but only to the mind’s eye . .
“… she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
I conclude; It’s believing that one’s own imagination is trustworthy for determining what is beneficial and what is harmful to oneself, which the people were Warned about. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was in the midst of the garden, because they were in the midst of the garden.)
Hmmm. My reading is that climate propaganda has come about because of progressive fascism.
I grew up in the church, was an “altar server” – sometimes went to church 7 days a week doing 7:15am mass and then straight to school. If there were funerals or weddings sometimes twice a day. As an adult in church attending with my own family we had a special guest bishop who decided to tell the congregation which party to vote for in an upcoming election based on “values”. Never been back since in at least 20 years.
In other words you grew up ~20 yrs ago … welcome
Post-Enlightenment = pre-Enlightenment.
The Ouroboros. Yes, we do a lot of that around here.
I wonder how many times the Rev has actually read the entire Bible. I am willing to bet that if someone read the Bible once, it would still be more than this so called Reverend did.
If you bother to read the Gospels, one thing you should notice is that Jesus never told people to do anything he didn’t first do himself. He told people to preach, he spent several years doing that himself. (A careful study of the Gospels shows it was 3 1/2 years.) Jesus told people to live a simple life, he did so himself. He told people to love their neighbor, he showed love even to people that were hated. The Pharisees and Sadducees essentially viewed the common people as deplorable. He told people to sacrifice their life for their neighbor, which the Good Samaritan parable shows means anybody. Jesus did not cower and gave up his life.
Here is my point: Politicians and many of the elite always tell you to make sacrifices. They never ever have to make sacrifices. Always you. The elite can include church leaders, Jeff Bezos, Big Pharma, and so on. “You need to pay more taxes, not me. You need to wear a mask, not me. You need to lockdown, not me.” And so on. Well, Rev … You first. Follow the example of the Lord and you make the sacrifices first. Don’t ask me to do something you won’t do yourself first.
And finally, always remember that Jesus kept out of politics. When people wanted to make him a king, he hid. When the people asked him about taxes, he said ‘render unto Caesar, but God’s things to God’. (Or something like that.) If only all religions today followed Jesus’s example and would keep out of politics.
“‘render unto Caesar, but God’s things to God’.”
I was taught long ago that you only have to take your money and throw it up into the air. God will take what is God’s and let your share drop back down to the ground. Works really well.
Very good point Wade – there is lots of fossil fuel goodness on display in Rev Walker’s office.
Maybe we need to define what is bad or good about increasing CO2. The principals could be the rich, the poor, and planets life forms.
The planets life forms are not impacted by sea level rise. They only care about temperature if the equatorial temperature rise to the point of making that area uninhabitable. Even with a tripling of CO2 the equator does not become uninhabitable. It warms but is not catastrophic warming. A 3 degree C warming does not make the equator uninhabitable. But the tripling of CO2 vastly increases the bio mass of the earth. Currently the planet is starved for CO2. Greenhouse owners will provide their plants with increased CO2. From the planets point of view this is a good thing.
Extreme weather can be designed around if you don’t impoverish yourselves with renewable energy. The only thing that seems to impact people is rising sea levels. And rising sea levels do not impact nature.
When sea level rises because of rising CO2 the poor will just move to higher ground. With improving life style they will be able to afford climate mitigation like stronger structure to deal with extreme weather and air conditioning.
When sea levels rise the rich like Obama will have their sea shore properties flooded. This is probably why they advocate policies that impoverish the poor and hurt nature.
when /if ? “sea level rises because of rising CO2”
what on earth makes you claim this rubbish???
Sea levels have never risen because of CO2.
Co2 usually rises after warming, not CAUSING warming,
so sea levels rising may cause CO2 levels to rise, not the other way around.
Once upon a time the whole of oxfordshire and gloucestershire were shallow tropical oceans as the fossils show, so who cares about sea levels and CO2 anyhow when they have been much higher or frozen solid before?
Surely god can just sort it out again with another big flood.
Genesis 9:13-16.
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Fire is our next judgement.
Preacher Joey Biden warns his flock of stupid demrats that the Wrath of a Climate heated Hades will be upon them if they don’t listen and do as he tells them….gonna put y’all back in chains….Jim Crow will descend upon you!
To the ignorant religious extremist and donkey, the DATA shows that the combined USA and the EU 28 co2 emissions are no higher now than 50 years ago.
The increase has come from China and the developing countries and these countries’ emissions will continue to soar into the future. Here’s the Wiki graph since 1970. Please WAKE UP.
[EW – fixed the image link]
AGAIN Dr Rosling has checked 120,000 data points over the last 200 years and found that humans have moved from POOR and SICK to HEALTHY and WEALTHY and more improvement since 2010.
In 1810 human life expectancy under 40 years but today that life exp is 73. Look at the 5 minute video and the DATA.
When will these donkeys WAKE UP and tell the truth?
God just likes to watch the world burn. Would be nice if God acted like an adult and had a conversation with us instead of just resorting to smiting all the time.
That’s interesting, considering that 96.5% of CO2 comes from natural sources, like volcanoes. Volcanoes must be evil.