Welcome to the Party

I don’t mean to suggest that all Southern Baptists, or for that matter every Evangelical, is anti-environmental. But it is demonstrably true that these brothers and sisters in Christ, while not shy to speak out on many public issues of religion and morality, have been markedly silent about the devastating pollution of God’s creation.

In fact, some have been surprisingly obstinate to the conversation. Global warming deniers and oil industry sycophants, you know who you are.

Well, at least for the Southern Baptism Conference, no more! No more silence about pollution, no more heads-in-the-sand attitude toward accountability for government and corporations, no more wink-and-nod ignorance about the Biblical and spiritual implications of this problem.

The Deepwater Horizon spill has awakened the beast. I hope.

In a reasonably strong statement this month, the SBC expressed their grief over this tragedy, called on government and corporate interests to work together to resolve it, and acknowledged our common responsibility to God and neighbor in caring for the creation. These words are, I would say, the least that one would expect from any faithful community.

But then hidden within the statement a small, powerful gem of truth, one with the potential to bear an amazing witness to the creating and saving God, a little phrase that could, if taken to heart, change the world:

Our God-given dominion over the creation is not unlimited, as though we were gods and not creatures, so therefore, all persons and all industries are then accountable to higher standards than to profit alone …

Wow. Sin. Now that’s what we need to hear.

Because this is the true tragedy – the Horizon spill is not an accident, not an unforeseeable catastrophe, not a miscalculation of engineering. No, it is the angels of our worse nature brought to bear, the cost of our self-centered, self-serving, greedy-live-only-for-the-moment-and-damn-the-consequences mode of being. Every drop of oil in the Gulf of Mexico today is an incarnation of human wastefulness, intransigence and unwillingness to change.

In the words of the SBC, it happened because we think we are gods and can do whatever we desire to this planet.

And it’s time to be called to the higher standard.

Which brings me to what is missing from their statement, the natural, logical and necessary conclusion to this great simple truth. It is far too simple to decry the problem, cry alas for the suffering, call for repair and rebuilding. To truly understand this moment, to truly appreciate its author, is to call for acts and lives that will justly address it.

The problem is deeper than our addiction to oil. The problem is our willing addiction to oil because it is cheap, easy, and immediately satisfying.

The problem is sin.

Brothers and sisters, you have rightly identified the problem. Now, I pray, come join the path toward the renewal of us all.