Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Uniqueness of Christian Ecology – Abundance
The Uniqueness of Christian Ecology – Abundance
Jul 6, 2025 6:01 PM

"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" [John 6:9]

Among all the many good things going on last weekend in Boise, I (and a few others) noticed something a bit disconcerting.

The way many of the topics were covered shows how prone Christians are to being consumed by doom and gloom messages of scarcity and lack and overpopulation and an "ever smaller earth." While it’s reasonable to take a survey of the damage and an inventory of the challenges facing the Church on the subject of caring for creation (…first sit down and count the cost…), we must guard against the negative motivation campaigns that are a hallmark of the environmental movement.

This sort of thinking fosters false choices and unecessarily narrows our options for moving forward. For instance, during the session on climate change, this question was asked:

Do we spend our time, energy and money taking care of people? Or is it wiser to use our resources to rescue the planet so people will have a better place to live?

As children of God that thinking should immediately strike us as out of place. It is, in fact, in direct opposition to what we know (or should know!) about how God works.

– God makes everything from nothing[see footnote]. His abundance is not dependent on or limited by what exists on the earth yesterday, today or tomorrow. The cattle on a thousand hills are His. He can make stones cry out or turn them into bread. He both creates and tends to habitats.

– He is the author of life, and rules both the natural and supernatural. He creates living things from dead, whether that be almond branches or best friends. The life He creates does not merely sustain the status quo but is fruitful and multiplies itself abundantly.

– In our relationship with God through Christ we have access to the infinite resources of the Creator. We have the power of prayer that transforms the lives of individuals and nations. Prayer can bring buckets of rain or extended drought. Through Him we can bring water from a rock in the desert, or get money from a fish’s mouth.

– God gives the Church no reason to doubt that if He has given us a mandate, He will also give us the power and the means by which to carry it out. Likewise, we should not be surprised when our own means to solve problems – ecological or otherwise – are limited. Truth be told, He doesn’t need us around to make any of this happen. Our weakness and limitations force us to depend on His abundance and strength so that He is glorified, not us.

I couldn’t summarize this any better than this Torah teacher does here:

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: "I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?" (Jeremiah 32:26,27)

To deny God’s ability is to deny God himself. Nothing is too hard for God. However else we may struggle in our faith, we e to the place where we accept that his power is limitless. Once we get to that point, the door of our hearts is open to whatever he may want to do in our lives. I wonder how many of us cannot hear the great things God wants to do in us and through us, because we don’t believe in his ability. Think of how we would pray and live differently if in our heart of hearts we knew God’s power had no limits.

A hallmark of the Christian ecologist must always be an unflappable, unstoppable confidence in God’s abundance.

Let’s admit here and now that fire and brimstone sermons do little to change hearts, and neither will they green the Church or transform our world.

[Don’s other habitat is The Evangelical Ecologist. Click here for his other posts in this series.]

____

[Footnote: This is also a good argument for thoughtful debate over earth’s origin. A materially-limited view of God is a natural e of routinely seeing Him as merely an intelligent agent acting within the confines of the earth’s self-existing (and thus finite) evolutionary processes.]

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Potty-Mouthed President
The amount of media attention over the past week’s devoted to President Bush’s utterance of a “naughty” word has been incredible. Maureen Dowd uses it as just one more bit of proof supporting her depiction of the president as a frat-boy, who “has enshrined his immaturity and insularity, turning every environment he inhabits — no matter how decorous or serious — into fortable frat house.” She writes, “No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of...
Original Sin
Headline: It’s a Sin to Fly, Says Church Actually, "It’s a Sin to Fly, Screams Headline" would be more appropriate. Here’s what the Church (or rather, the Bishop of London) actually says: “Making selfish choices such as flying on holiday or buying a large car are a symptom of sin. Sin is not just a restricted list of moral mistakes. It is living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions.” I think there’s...
More on Secularism and Universities
Just a brief note addition to Kevin’s post: the free article from May’s Touchstone magazine is Terence O. Moore’s feature, “Not Harvard Bound.” A key quote: The elite schools no mand the reverence and deference of red-state America. The parents and students of “flyover country” are starting to put their money where their morals are or where they believe truth is. There’s a discussion of Moore’s article at Touchstone‘s reader discussion site, Treaders. HT: Mere Comments ...
Connect the Energy Dots…
Today’s NYT editorializes: “a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil supply while holding only 3 percent of the reserves will never be able to drill its way to lower oil prices, much less oil independence.” You’ll often hear plaint that Americans use more than their fair share of the world’s oil. We’re addicted to it, some say. After all, so goes the reasoning, we have less than one-half of one percent of the world’s population, but we “consume...
Beyond Black and White: New Realities of Race In America – BUMPED: Video now available
Anthony Bradley delivers his remarks last Wednesday The 2006 Acton Lecture Series continued today with Anthony Bradley’s presentation of Beyond Black and White: New Realities of Race In America. Mr. Bradley is an Acton research fellow and assistant professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. His lecture describes the new market trends which reflect the changing demographics in America. With a decline in population amongst whites, a stagnated black population, and the ever-increasing...
Environmental News Roundup
Juliet Eilperin, “Bush Pollution Curbs Are Rated Equal to Clinton’s: Science Panel Says Proposed Cap-and-Trade System Will Help Clean Air,” Washington Post, July 24, 2006: The report from the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, represents the latest effort to assess how best to reduce air pollution estimated to cause as many as 24,000 premature deaths each year. The panel concluded that an earlier Bush plan would have allowed pollution to increase over a dozen years, but it found that...
Secular Universities in Decline?
In his New York Times column this week, Peter Steinfels has an insightful analysis of an intriguing and provocative new book by C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University. Those who study the history of American academia are familiar with the story of the secularization of universities as recounted expertly by Christian scholars such as George Marsden (The Soul of the American University) and James Burtchaell (The Dying of the Light), who decry the shunting of religion from...
Taking Games Seriously
An article in yesterday’s NYT, “Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time,” by Clive Thompson, gives a good overview of the current trend in the video game industry, especially by nonprofits and activist groups, to create “serious games,” a movement which “has some serious brain power behind it. It is a partnership between advocates and nonprofit groups that are searching for new ways to reach young people, and tech-savvy academics keen to explore video games’ educational potential.” “What...
Seek Dignity? Then, “You Gotta Shake Your MoneyMaker”
The Super MoneyMaker Pressure Pump No, we’re not talking about Elmore James’ Blues hit covered by the likes of George Thorogood, Fleetwood Mac and The Black Crowes nor its racy subject matter. Rather, it’s how members of the other oldest profession in Kenya and Tanzania power the irrigation pumps that extend both their growing season and range of crops. This foot-powered move beyond subsistence farming to much more profitable harvests, such as vegetables, is facilitated by the aptly named MoneyMaker series...
Federal Funding for the Humanities
Hunter Baker, blogging at his new home on the American Spectator Blog (recently added to our blogroll), responds to a post by James G. Poulos, which emphasizes President Bush’s “proposed emphasis on math and science education, to the patent detriment of the humanities.” Says Baker, “Although I am a faithful disciple of the humanities, I often fort in the fact that the majority of students won’t have much exposure to the offerings on hand. Better they remain busy with their...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved