It is human nature to avoid facing challenging realities – especially when they ask something of us. Our current normalized way of living our lives with respect to Creation presents us with a reality that none of us want to face. The burning of fossil fuels to power our way of life is poisoning our air and killing people at a higher rate every year than COVID did at its height. Our use of materials and treatment of the land is filling our earth and seas with trash, destroying habitats, and causing species to go extinct every 7 seconds. Our burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is heating the planet, giving it an internal temperature increase, like a fever, that is causing all of its systems to go out of whack. This fever is already causing massive disruption, damage, and refugee crises around the world and, unless reduced by 50% by 2030 and entirely by 2050, is threatening to plunge the global ecosystem – and with it human civilization – into catastrophe.
Our way of life is like a train charging along a track towards a cliff. There is still room to slow and stop the train, but the track is getting steadily steeper and steeper, making it harder and harder to do so. We are in a time of profound global urgency with respect to the living system that gives us all life – and we all have a part to play, for good or ill.
So who is on this train?
There are some people who have never looked out the windows of the train and remain focused on what’s inside the car – they’re just living their lives as they always have, totally unaware. There are some who have dared to look out the windows, but when they see what’s happening, it’s too overwhelming and so they turn back around, pretend everything is fine, and continue to live as they’ve always lived. There are some who look out the window and fall understandably into despair and inaction – there is diagnosable pandemic of “climate despair” today, particularly among the young. Others are actually invested in the train and are (incomprehensibly) doing everything they can to keep others from looking out the windows. “Everything’s totally fine,” they say, wanting to get every dollar out of the trip, and telling each other that they, at least, will be fine because they each have a golden parachute for when the train goes over the cliff. All of these people, whether through action or inaction, are participating in the tragic trajectory of the train.
However, there are others – and their numbers are growing every day – who are doing everything they can to stop the train.
So who are you in this metaphor? And who is God’s Church called to be?
I invite you to join the growing number of people who are working together to slow humanity’s collective train and keep it from going over the cliff. How can you get involved? There are so many ways. First, I would invite you to begin by looking out the window and facing the reality we are in. Take personal responsibility to learn about the climate crisis, about how you can reduce your carbon footprint and live in better balance with God’s Creation, and about how you can join with others to become a part of the community that is working to slow the train, stop it, and ultimately change it into a different kind of train.
See the resources below for ways that you can learn. And I invite you to join the Philadelphia Christian Climate Fellowship, or PCCF. We meet monthly and are working together to build engagement and energy around creation care within and through the Church. We are doing a tree planting in a community garden on Sat, May 18 – you can register here: https://CreationCare.org/Gardening-Day
RESOURCES:
Allen 3-part teaching series on climate action - bit.ly/biblicalclimateaction
CWP resource on how to reduce your household carbon footprint: www.cwpeasternus.org/net-zero-household
CWP resource page: https://bit.ly/philly-creation-care-resources
Join the Philadelphia Christian Climate Fellowship (PCCF) by emailing Allen Drew at AllenCWP12@gmail.com
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