We Must Act NOW!!!
“For the beauty of this Earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth,
over and around us lies,
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.”[1]
If we live in the knowledge of how God gives a purpose to every plant and animal and insect and human being…
if we live in the magnificence of this creation…
if we live in its beauty and how God cares for us all…
if we take care of this earth which is given to us by God to meet our every need…
We must then contrast that with our man-made cultures and systems of governance and corporations that don’t proclaim this truth! They seek power and praise and wealth for themselves by misusing this earth and its people. And now we have come to the tipping point! All that we humans have done to the earth over the centuries and to its people has caused so much damage to the species of plants and animals and insects and people. It is the time when we have to act to care for ourselves and every single plant and animal and insect and human being here on Earth.
Will we return to honoring God for all He does for us? After all, God gave us humans dominion over this planet. We must look to the Native Americans who live in a reciprocal relationship with all living things that support their tribes, in gratitude for all that is done for them, while we of European descent are abusing every gift we’ve been given. Here it is all about me and mine! We no longer have that option, because we have done so much damage to the Earth that we cannot continue our ways any longer. We must stop and pause and decide what is right and true for our planet, and then, individually and nationwide, DO IT!
This will require a sobering look at our goals and habits of the past and a commitment to change how we live and use the earth. We have used chemicals on the Earth to extract elements without thought to what the chemicals will do to the residents and forests which are near that site now and in the future. Even as scientists of the 20th and 21st Centuries have told us what the oil and gas and coal and plastics industries are doing to the earth and its species of plants and animals, in the U.S., we are still committed to supporting the industries that are slowly but surely destroying our planet through contamination of our atmosphere and our oceans and other waters.
If we will only add up all the horrible fires and floods and hurricanes and rising temperatures everywhere on this Earth during the last year or two and look to science for what we can do about Global Warming, we have a chance that the Earth will survive and then get back to thriving—if we act quickly enough. As I read on the internet what each of us can do about Global Warming, I see that our personal/familial choices about transportation, energy and food have about a “10% potential emission reduction,” and that “voting to enable pro-climate behaviors” at the national and state levels, plus pressuring large companies toward more climate and environmentally friendly practices can produce up to 90% reduction on emissions.[2] These are statistics produced by the World Resources Institute that has offices across the world.
We have a chance this year to affect the mid-term elections this fall, to vote for people who care about reversing climate change. In addition, we can contact our representatives at the local and state and national levels now about how important climate change is to our future. And, we can contact our energy companies, stores that we frequent, and any other business that we care about, including our own employers about addressing climate change and making it a big part of their agenda. Meanwhile, we need to rid ourselves of the temptations to buy as much as we can, so that we have what we most want materially, and shift to seeing what we can do for our neighbors and our earth. Nothing material will ever make us feel loved and worthy, only seeking out what purpose God assigned to each of us when we were created will.
If we look to the Bible for inspiration in the story of Jonah and the whale(Jonah 1-4), we see that even when we don’t answer God’s cry, God will work at getting our attention and then lead us to His task for us. Even when Jonah said, “No!” God kept after him, on the boat he escaped in, then He threw him in the ocean and directed a whale to swallow him. Jonah was in the whale’s stomach for three days when Jonah promised to do what God had asked of him. The whale then vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Then God told Jonah a second time to head for Nineveh; Jonah went and preached to the citizens there that “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrow. (Jonah 3:4)” The king of Nineveh issued this proclamation: “Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.( Jonah 3:7-9)” And God relented!
Jonah and the whale are an interesting story of how God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah refused to go. That became a huge wake-up call for Jonah. What about us in the United States these days? I think that the presidency of Donald Trump is a huge wake-up call for us Americans to open our eyes and see the destruction that is headed our way. He has removed the laws that promoted use of non-polluting energy. He has fired so many scientists from the government and stopped supporting scientific research in the universities across our nation. He has put people who don’t believe in vaccines in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has shown little care for the citizens here who need Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid programs that have long supported those on the margins of our communities.
He has used tariffs to punish countries across the world while the prices here on everything keep going up. He had made the cities of Chicago and Minneapolis, which are run by Democrats, the places where ICE and the National Guard are to find the illegal immigrants, but he doesn’t stop there. Innocent citizens are being harassed and even killed by those agents, as was Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week, when she had done nothing wrong. And the immigrants? Legal or not are sent to horrible jails where are barely fed, given no health services, and abused. Is this the way we Americans treat any human beings?
If we just focus on these issues, think about this question: is this the way we want the United States to operate? And, will we serve only ourselves? Or will we join the interdependent associations of communities of peoples and plants and animals and even insects which up until now have served the whole of the earth?
Interested in reading more about this issue from a giving point of view? Read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, which describes how she, a Native American and a biologist, looks at this world.
[1] https://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh092.sht
[2] https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-impact-behavior-shifts