Posted on 08/03/2023 12:43:43 PM PDT by Morgana
Douglas J. Moo is a prominent biblical scholar and theologian. The author of Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World, he recently retired as the ‘Kenneth T. Wessner Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. Before this, he spent decades at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he also served as chair of the New Testament Department, editor of Trinity Journal, and director of the Ph.D. program in Biblical and Theological Studies. He’s written extensive commentaries on the New Testament and was the chair of the Committee on Bible Translation, which produces the NIV and its variants.
During a June 2023 event at Denver Seminary titled ‘The Gospel Initiative: Evangelicals and Creation Care,’ Moo explains why ‘creation care is a form of biblical social justice, and says some of the ways we can love others and prevent climate crisis is using less a/c and buying smaller cars.
I think it’s the simplest way to present the mandate for creation care for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus is simply to be reminded of the two great love commandments. Love God by faithfully stewarding his creation. Love others, our neighbors, by providing a healthy and sustainable environment for them to inhabit.
..Extended in time. I couldn’t complete a presentation without a picture of my grandchildren. So the others I am called upon to love are my grandchildren and their children after them and their children after them.
Sometimes we are too easily involved in simply kicking the ball down the field, putting these problems into the next generation and just getting tired of trying to deal with them ourselves. But as we fail to deal with these problems they become exponentially harder to deal with and we’re leaving up a really problematic legacy for those who come after us.
Extended in space. Here’s the estimate of what’s going to happen in Bangladesh if the climate continues to change and the oceans continue to rise as people now predict it will. 15 million people affected, losing their land, not able to grow crops on it any longer, not able to live on it any longer in many cases. 15 million people affected.
Well, you know, things like this are going to affect cities like Miami as well. What’s the difference? Look at the comparison of the GDP. Miami can afford to build seawalls to elevate their highways as they’re already doing because of the effects of the rising sea are being felt in Miami and other coastal areas. So they can afford to do that. Look at their GDP. Look at the GDP of people in Bangladesh. They can’t afford to do these kinds of things.
At a certain point, again, climate change, I’m sorry, creation care is simply a species of biblical social justice. Here’s a map that kind of reminds us of this. As climate change takes place, the countries who have produced the most greenhouse gases are going to be perhaps least affected.
Countries that do not produce nearly as much greenhouse gas over time because they’ve not been industrialized are going to feel the real brunt of climate change. So very simple way, what does it mean for me to love the other? What does it mean to love my brother and sister? Not people who live next door to me, but as Jesus reminded us in the parable of the good Samaritan that love needs to extend beyond the usual boundaries we might set for it as we look at people at different parts of the world being adversely affected by climate change.
He continues:
Should creation care be one of the issues we’re concerned about when we choose what “candidates to vote for? I think it should be. It’s not the only issue that I’m gonna choose a candidate on, but it is gonna be one issue on the list of things as a Christian with a renewed mind I’m concerned about…. I think Al Gore had it right. It’s an inconvenient truth because if it’s true that climate change is happening and it is damaging the environment and harming other people around the world, that might mean I have to change my lifestyle.
That might mean I have to buy a smaller car than I would necessarily like to have. That might mean I need to turn the temperature in my house down a little bit so I’m not quite as comfortable as I used to be. Oh, wait a minute, we Americans, that’s interfering with my lifestyle? No, no, no, that’s sacrosanct (Ed note: regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with) and that’s true I’m afraid even in the Christian church.
You notice he only "claims" not is.
Start with yourself Dougie and check back with the rest of us in about 50 years.
When I worship the first thing I always think about is climate change and my AC. /s Perhaps there are some misaligned priorities here, just a little.
The “Cremation of Care” more like. (ala Bohemian Grove)
Wheaton has been woke for a while
Every little bit helps.
My foot to his arse would be loving care for others, especially those who need air conditioning.
The Left has a peculiar misunderstanding of how economies work. The greater the demand for something, the more available and the cheaper it is. The Left thinks because one person has something that he took it from someone else and the other person is deprived of that thing. This was probably truer before the industrial revolution. But now the more people want something the more available and the cheaper it gets. As for energy usage, the reason we all live far better than people did even fifty years ago is because we have had cheap energy. Cheap gas and inexpensive cars mean people can work fifty, a hundred or two hundred miles away and still live in a nice home. To believe that is bad requires you believe in an apocalyptic future where we all drown in an impossibly hot planet. The sea level hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Just today someone posted a photo of Plymouth Rock which is notably the same as a famous painting depicted it when the Pilgrams landed. Everything the Left believes is fundamentally wrong.
Loving others — including those in the third world — would be to encourage use of the readily accessible and inexpensive energy sources the LORD gave us — we call them “fossil fuel” — to make electricity plentiful and inexpensive so THEY can run THEIR air conditioners too.
Communism delenda est
Wokeism delenda est
Godless pagan earth worship delenda est
If we dropped in to his office to discuss this, unannounced, on an uncomfortably hot day in August, I wonder what we’d find the room temperature to be. ;-)
“Look at the comparison of the GDP. Miami can afford to build seawalls to elevate their highways as they’re already doing because of the effects of the rising sea are being felt in Miami and other coastal areas. ”
BS! They’re building them higher because of the fake data being presented that the levels are going to rise and not actual physical rising which has not occurred.
Moo is just another heretic who can couch his leftist ideology in Christobabble. This is just another example of the attempt to subvert the evangelical churches in this century that destroyed the witness of the mainline churches in the last century.
So Jesus wants everyone down south to work in the sweltering heat?
My whole House air conditioning is running nicely and my wife’s Escalade got 11.2 MPG.
Suffer, heathen scum!
During the Vietnam war Theology Schools became refuges for those who wanted to avoid the draft. The Leftist founder of Sojourners Magazine, Jim Wallis attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourners
"Sojourners magazine was originally published in 1971[3] under the name The Post American, coming out of the Sojourners Community.[4] The name was changed to Sojourners in 1975, when the community moved from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, to Columbia Heights in Washington, D.C. The mission of Sojourners is "to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world."[5]
The magazine was originally published quarterly, then every other month, and since January 2004 has been published eleven times per year, with a single issue published for September and October.
The Sojourners Collection is maintained by Wheaton College in its archives and special collections. Collected materials include magazine issues, correspondence, original manuscripts and administrative papers, as well as information on the Sojourners Community, founder Wallis, and other communities and organizations affiliated with the publisher.[6][7]"
Snip.... "Sojourners CEO Wallis served as a member of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, which advises the president and White House staff on a range of concerns.[11] Sojourners has organized high-level meetings with the White House and political leaders on both sides of the aisle."
Freon was cheap and easy. Also the best coolant. When the patent ran out Dupont helped to ban it. Thank G Bush too.
Cities like Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas only exist because of modern AC
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