United with Creation - Red Deer Creation Care Conference, Sermon #1

The following is the first sermon in a series of talks I gave in Red Deer on April 12-14, 2013, on creation care. This text provides the gist of what I said, but of course I riffed a bit. I also had PowerPoint images to go along with this talk. Note that when I talk about creation, I am in no way disparaging evolution. One can affirm creation and evolution, without doing too much damage to the definition of either. To read the introduction of this series, click here.

 

How similar are we to animals? Recently, discoveries in biology have suggested that animals share more in common with humans than previously thought: culture, emotions, humour, long term memory, math, tool use, none of these are considered unique to humans any more. In the past, it was assumed that animals lacked these things, and thus we could do whatever we wanted with animals. But that is no longer the case. Environmentalists use this to declare that humans and animals are equals, and have equal rights.

What is the Christian response to this? Usually Christians respond with a scoff and some statement about how we’re better than the animals. But I would like to suggest that the environmentalists are not all wrong. There is more similarity between humans and animals than Christians like to believe. But I don’t have to base this off of biology – we see it quite clearly in scripture.

An Introduction to Creation Care: A Talk Given at Davenport Church of Christ, Red Deer, April 12, 2013

The following is the introduction to a series of talks I gave in Red Deer on April 12-14, 2013, on creation care. This text provides the gist of what I said, but of course I riffed a bit. I also had PowerPoint images to go along with this talk. Note that when I talk about creation, I am in no way disparaging evolution. One can affirm creation and evolution, without doing too much damage to the definition of either.

I opened with a story that I did not write down, about my bizarre encounter with a strange neon blue marine worm in Halifax, NS, in which I picked up this creature and accidentally dropped it. Its body burst in two, white liquid poured out, and then its smooth face curled up in my direction, its face peeled back and this white puffy flesh emerged. On the end of the flesh were two black, curved fangs. Needless to say, I ran away pretty fast. Only later did I learn that these polychaetes turn a bright blue during the breeding season. They swim to the surface, where part of their body detaches and explodes in a shower of gametes. The white flesh I saw was its esophagus, which it shoots out of its mouth to impale its prey.

#3: We Have Kinship with Creation

'What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?  You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.  You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet.' (Psalm 8:4-6).

'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.'  (Genesis 1:27)

You've got to admit, we humans are pretty awesome.  We are creative.  We have an incredible sense of humour unrivalled in the natural world.  We have the most complex and flexible language capabilities of any species on the planet.  We experience transcendence and immanence.  We worship, have rituals, show a depth of love that is likely unparalleled.  We have science and technology and complicated politics.  We have the most complex form of culture on the planet.  And according to the Bible, we are made in the image of God, beings just a bit lower on the hierarchy than angels, but higher than, and rulers of, the animals.

Home: A Sermon

The following is a sermon I gave at Pine Lake Life Camp (formerly family camp) over the 2012 May long weekend.

Read Luke10:25-37

HOME: What images or words does this word conjure?

The point for this morning’s talk is quite simple: we all desire home, so loving your neighbour as yourself, being a neighbour to others, means bringing home to the world.  That is the church’s mandate, and it needs to be the basis of our daily living decisions.  We’re going to go through Genesis 1 and 2 to see what home is.  We’ll see how humanity became homeless, but not just humanity; and then we will consider the work of Christ to make this world home again.  Finally, we will see that as Christians we are called to restore this home for others.

Top 10 Reasons Every Christian Should Care for the Environment - # 9: God blessed His creation

We continue our countdown of the top 10 reasons every Christian should be taking care of this planet, in preparation for Earth hour at 8:30 pm on March 31. 

10. The world is good

9. God blessed His creation

We Christians have made a great deal of Genesis 1:28: ‘God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”’

Top 10 Reasons Every Christian Should Care for the Environment - # 10: The World is Good

Saturday, March 31, at 8:30 pm is Earth hour, in which people around the planet will be unplugging the electric items in their house and turning their lights off to raise awareness for environmental care.

As an Albertan resident and a member of a fairly conservative branch of Christianity, I have encountered time and again over the last few weeks just how little many Christians think or care about the environment, and how little they think of people who do.  Environmentalism is almost a curse word for many conservative Christians, as if earnestly seeking to restore the beauty of the planet is at best a waste of time and at worst an act of paganism. One particular Christian college recently conducted a survey about their effectiveness.  One respondent was concerned that the college was becoming theologically liberal.  In particular, this respondent was bothered by lectures on environmental care that were being taught in a social justice class.  This boggles my mind.  And so the next ten blog posts are not written for non-Christians or those who already care about the planet.  From now until the end of March whenever I finish I am going to provide the top 10 scriptural reasons that every Christian should care for the environment.

Today we begin with number ten: The World is Good

Creation, Redemption, and the Church

Last fall, I was invited to give a talk on environmental ethics to the pastors and workers within the Churches of Christ in southern Alberta.  We met at Bow Valley Christian Church in Calgary.   I was nervous going in, knowing that my message would contradict the long-held assumptions of many of those in attendance.  But I was convinced that, being rooted in scripture, they would have no choice but to change their ways of thinking about the environment.  Fortunately, my mind had exaggerated the resistance.  A good number of them already agreed with me, but had not investigated the theology behind it.  Others told me afterward that they were initially sceptical, but I had convinced them.  A third group, in the vocal majority during the Q & A after, but a minority among the pastors, yelled at me and told me to 'get my head out of the sand.'  Fortunately, I think they completely misunderstood my message.  The following is the complete sermon that I delivered, minus the slideshow (when reading Genesis 1-3, I showed pictures of creation followed by human-caused environmental destruction).  Here is the sermon:

Chaos and the Deep (Part 3 of 3)

'By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.' (2 Peter 3:6)

Tehowm and Creationists

Now that we have flogged the image of tehowm to death (but hopefully gleaned some insights along the way), it is time to relate all of this back to the relationship between evangelicalism and science.

Chaos and the Deep (Part 2 of 3)

The heavenly ocean and the earthly ocean  

Genesis 1:6 reads ‘And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters (mayim), and let it divide the waters from the waters.’

It is difficult for us to think like an ancient human.  We are taught the water cycle at an early age.  We give our children books entitled ‘Why is the sky blue?’  But the Hebrews did not have access to the same knowledge we have today.  When they looked at the sky, they saw, just beyond the horizon, a vast blue, so far away that even the sun seemed to be contained by it.  At night they saw lights twinkling in the sky against a deep black.  There is only one thing on earth that is vast and blue: the ocean.  And where does rain come from?  The sky.  It only made sense that this blue sky was in fact a heavenly ocean.

Chaos and the Deep (Part 1 of 3)

‘Go, and speed; Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain.’

- Chaos to Satan, Paradise Lost, Milton

‘…darkness [was] upon the face of the deep…’ (Gen 1:2)

How are we to read Genesis 1?  Some evangelicals argue that a plain, literal reading of Genesis is the only truly Christian way to understand it – anything less invalidates the very authority of Christ.  Genesis 1, they argue, was revealed to us as a guide to the how of the Creative process.  Yet the very opening of Genesis delivers a fairly decisive blow to this notion, with the enigmatic phrasing of ‘the deep’ and ‘the waters’.  It is the purpose of this article to plumb the depths of this mysterious image used throughout scripture, and in the process to challenge some long-cherished beliefs of evangelical Christianity.