Christian Viewpoint: We are not alone as we address major environmental challenges
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With the COP26 climate summit due to start at the end of this month, John Dempster reflects on the challenges in a warming world:
"What we do really matters," says Judith passionately.
She’s concerned that "some things we do in our lives so very negatively affect the lives of others".
I was talking to Inverness-based Judith Macleod, a candidate for ministry with the Church of Scotland and programme co-ordinator for Eco Congregation Scotland.
This movement works with Scottish churches of all denominations keen to address environmental issues in their life and mission.
Judith is working with Inverness Presbytery Church Support, pulling together a series of Eco-Highland 21 events to be hosted by local churches during COP26 (October 31- November 12) – some faith-based, some practical, which will prompt us to ask "I am responsible here – what can I do?"
I asked Judith and her central belt colleague Adrian Shaw how Christian faith helps them face the future in a warming world.
Judith’s passion for justice has its roots in her faith, she says.
Faith shows her the inter-connectedness of the God-woven web of creation, and our responsibility to care for it.
We need an awakening, she tells me, to the effect our life choices have on people on the far side of the world, on those in future generations, and on the planet itself.
I loved Adrian’s reflection on Jesus’s Prodigal Son story.
The young man’s father gave him his share of the inheritance: off he went and squandered it.
Adrian likened this to humanity’s profligacy with the global resources entrusted to us by the Father. We pillage the earth, polluting it with waste in pursuit of wealth and economic growth.
We need to repent and make radical changes as the young man did, returning to his father in despair, pleading "give me the humblest of jobs".
Our faith teaches us that each human being is precious to God.
If people are to be treated equally, and the available resources shared fairly, then we must embrace a simpler lifestyle, and a gentler way of doing economics which does not worship constant growth.
Perhaps we will only be prepared to do this if we have learned to love the whole global family as God loves us.
For we in the west must humble ourselves as Jesus Christ humbled himself to reveal God’s love for the whole of humanity.
I’m reminded by Judith and Adrian that as Christians, faith and lifestyle are inseparably intertwined.
Working in partnership with God in the ongoing process of healing a fractured world is integral to the gospel. As one by one we are changed, so the world is changed.
