Care of the Earth: Abundant Life and Care of Creation
I.
Introduction. Rev . Elder Nancy Wilson has an invitation to the White House to
Meet the Pope. Pope Francis is here in America to visit but also to promote
stewardship of the earth and the problems of human-caused climate change. In
Genesis, God commissions humankind with stewardship, or “care of” the earth.
Some Biblical translations render “dominion”, thus what we see especially from
Protestant theologians is essentially the rape of the earth and literally abuse of the
animals. But As people of faith, the nature of human response to climate change,
how we can be good stewards of the Earth that God has entrusted to us, is a moral
and spiritual issue.
II. The population explosion
a. We need to ensure that women have access to contraceptives. In 2000, Hilary
Clinton was the US delegate to a world conference on women in Beijing. The
conference determined that access to contraception would allow women to
regulate their own number of children. Not surprisingly Mormons, Catholics,
and Muslims as monolithic religions opposed these plans. The world view of
these religions allows them to deny the population explosion.
b. Watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BbkQiQyaYc
III.
OUR THROWAWAY SOCIETY. Archaeologists have proven that humankind has
always thrown away our refuse. But with today’s population, we will suffocate
ourselves with our offal. And we have problems knowing what to do since we all are
caught up in the Western lifestyle. Not to mention fossil fuels: coal, oil, natural gas
that are contaminating vast quantities of water and polluting our air.
a. We waste enough Sporks to circle the Earth, and then some.
Talk about a big table setting. According to the Clean Air Council, enough plastic
eating utensils are thrown away every year to circle the equator 300 times. That's
about 40 billion pounds of plastic knives, forks, and spoons, the vast majority of
which end up in landfills where scientists say they'll take 500 years - give or take
a couple centuries - to decompose.
b. Airlines waste enough soda cans to build dozens of planes.
Coffee, tea... or a new plane? The U.S. airline industry has been encountering
some turbulence over its reluctance to institute recycling programs for trash
generated onboard. But here's a fact from the Natural Resource Defense
Council that should grab the industry by its profit-centers and force it to take
action: U.S. airlines throw away enough aluminum cans every year to build 57
new 747s.- one per week
c.
How much aluminum is thrown away and never recycled?
We may be recycling more aluminum every year, but things could still be a lot
better. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, Americans throw away so
Care of the Earth: Abundant Life and Care of Creation
much aluminum that every three months we could collect enough scrap to rebuild
the entire U.S. commercial airplane fleet from the ground up. That's a lot of
wasted aluminum.
d. What these products become when we recycle.
Care of the Earth: Abundant Life and Care of Creation
IV. CONCLUSION. We cannot really call ourselves the people of God and continue to
ravage the home God has given us. It must be a maxim of our faith that we do what
little we can to recycle and renew. If all 2.5 billion Christians did this, we would 1)
have fewer people on the earth, Zero population Growth and 2) save our planet from
overconsumption, air, water and ground pollution, and overall degradation. Pope
Francis is saying we must do this, and we must. Because if Jesus doesn’t come again
to save us from ourselves, we will be the next extinct species. The Bible is full of nondoomsday passages: “With God all things are possible”. And I believe we serve a God
of abundance, and if things seem scarce, God can provide another way. But we must
do our part. We are the earth-creatures that have the biggest brains, and together,
we can do our little part, and we will! Amen.