So I observe that behavior that shames
and threatens is becoming more and more common the more secular we become. This social climate change is destroying our
collective capacity to adapt to any challenge.
Let me try to be delicate: as a preacher I think some of the well-meant
concern for the environment comes off as a little too preachy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been interested in renewable energy my
whole life. I want to see us plan communities where we are not so dependent on
the automobile. But I don’t want to hear
that I’d better change my environmental footprint or be cast into a world-wide apocalyptic
nightmare. This may be true enough. But this kind of fear isn’t the best motivator.
I can tell a person with COPD that he’s
going to die if he doesn’t quit smoking to calm his nerves, but heaping death
threats on him is not likely to calm him down.
Some of this secular, “green” moralizing has
all the subtlety of the road-side evangelism of my youth. “Avoid hell.”
The signs said. “Repent before it
is too late.” One time a youth pastor, a
kind of self-appointed John the Baptist, started preaching to me and my 13 year
old peers as if we were corrupt officials in Herod’s regime. None of us were innocent, of course, but the
dumb stuff we were doing was already caused by fear. Heaping additional fears on us didn’t help.
Only
hope helps. Paul tells us that virtues “rest on the hope of eternal life.” People will naturally take care of what they
think will always be theirs to enjoy. Christians care for the world with the assurance
that God will purge the world of all deathly elemental forces. (2 Peter 3:12) This
hope is not extinguished by bad human behavior, for our hope is not rooted in
science or human strategy, but in God. It seems that once society is cut off from such
joyous hope, we inevitably grow fond of pestering and fear-mongering.
