For me, one of the most frustrating things about the pre-occupations of our current news feeds is that they seem to missing out on the really important stuff. Given the seriousness of the environmental crisis, shouldn’t the news focus more on that? On the other hand, what would happen if it did? Would it strengthen our sense of responsibility and our determination to take action, or would it create a sense of fatality and despair? The prospect of what is going to happen because of climate change and loss of species is frightening. Extremely frightening. The pandemic has brought increased challenges to our mental health. The threat of environmental apocalypse brings even more challenges to our capacity for joy and hope.
How do Christians respond to this? Some say that Christ foretold the end of the world in terms that sound very much like the scenario forecast by many scientists. These people say that since the end of the world is going to happen anyway sometime, our response should be to welcome the inevitable outworking of God’s plan. Not a very appealing position in my view!
Others are mobilized to take action, large and small, to do what they can to respond creatively to the crisis. You might like to check out these two Christian initiatives: https://greenchristian.org.uk/ https://arocha.org.uk/
It seems to me that we are called to work with a very delicate balance: realising on the one hand the extreme gravity of the situation, and on the other hand to work and pray for God’s intervention, in a spirit of faith and hope. Recently I heard someone talking about the real dangers of global destruction during the Cold War. The commentator said that in hindsight he found it remarkable that a nuclear holocaust didn’t actually happen in the last century. For my part, I know that at the time there were real spiritual giants praying with all their hearts for the protection of the world. I believe that must have made a huge difference!
In any crisis it is essential to have hope. I don’t think it is naïve to encourage hope in ourselves, while at the same time remaining stonily realistic.
Jesus not only shared every aspect of our human condition, entering into solidarity with it, but as a human being walking about on the earth, he became a physical entity in the material world. People from my Christian tradition talk about this especially when we remember Christ’s baptism in the Jordan river. Although Jesus didn’t need to be baptized to wash away sin, at his baptism the actual physical presence of God entered into the fundamental element of our world – water. Jesus loves human beings and also loves the material world in which we live and has identified fully with it. So, as we work and pray for change, we can also remember that God is involved, fully involved, like yeast working through dough.
Mother Sarah
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