10/5/2010

my favorite class this year is, by far, my graduate environmental policy and planning class. we sit around a table and talk, freindly-ly about how it should go down and what we should do to sustain our environment, if it even needs sustaining. but until today, we'd only talked about methods, not ethics.

ethics, values, whatever you want to call what you believe, not how you act, or how you should act. this is the subject that people argue about, this is the subject that people don't argue about, because they don't want to hurt feelings.

so my thinking started with this quote:

"it all comes down to values, and we all have different values, so these arguments will always happen and radical policy changes will never happen."

you know, i think Daddy gave us His written Word, so that on some level, we don't have to come up with our own values that conflict. like, we're so influenced by the world and not by the kingdom that we're going to think our values are godly, when they're just disguised worldliness.

so even though i think that we shouldn't threaten the salmon population by building dams, if we're actually following God's command to subdue the earth and glorifying Him by using our engineering knowledge to protect the livelihood of people (who are more important than fish), who am i to say that the resulting threatened salmon population isn't within His will?

which then got me thinking about the tower of babel, and how they thought they were cool enough to building a tower to get to heaven, and then God was like "No" and then he spread them all out and made communication difficult. now, we think we're cool enough to make our own heaven on earth and God's response now is "No" and then he spread our resources out and made sustainability difficult. not that God is actively smiting us, because He's actively redeeming us through Jesus. but the earth is also experiencing the suffering that comes from the Fall and will one day be fixed up for us to all live together happily ever after. but i just wondering if we're all looking at this from the wrong perspective...

so heres what i think Father's values are regarding the environment:

1. God made the environment, and made it well, therefore it is part of His beautiful creation (genesis 1:31)

2. we are a part of the environment and were created to be in it (genesis 2:15)

3. we were also created to use it and take care of it (genesis 1:26, genesis 2:15)

4. God ultimately sustains the environment (isaiah 43:20-21, matthew 6:26)

5. destroying the earth is bad (revelation 11:28)

how this translates in to action, i don't know yet.