Climate Change, it’s all over the news, it’s all over social media, whether we like it or not we can’t escape it.
It’s debate that gets people fiery: on one side you have the youth of today, who believe they have no future because of the parasites of the baby-boomer’s generation; on another side you have the mainly older generation blaming how much youth are consuming today with their supped up 4x4s, iPhones, buying bottled water and the consumption of electricity on their big screen TVs.
Then you have those that believe it’s all a myth designed to create a one-world government. Who do we believe? The UN? Climate scientists? The scientists that believe that humans are not responsible for Climate Change?
One true source
The fact is, as Christians there is only one source we can trust with 100% assurance—the incorruptible Word of God.
When God makes a promise to his people, his promise is eternal. He never breaks a promise, otherwise he would not be God, and the promise that God made to his people after Noah got out of the ark was:
“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night
will never cease.” (Genesis Chapter 8 verses 21-22)
As Christians, you either believe what the Apostle Paul said about God’s promises being Yes and Amen (2 Corinthians 1 verse 20), or you don’t.
God promises us, as long as the earth endures, summer and winter, cold and heat, seedtime and harvest will remain which also means the promise is for as long as the earth endures.
I take the incorruptible Word of God over anything the world says, any day.
It means there will always be food that will be grown, the seasons will take place and the weather will be both hot and cold, whatever the temporal variations maybe.
We are to care for His creation because the world is His, Genesis teaches us that. But we do not decide its fate. The rainbow reminds us that whatever the temporal variations maybe, God is in control for our good.
We have a people problem
However, the world likes to take God out of the picture doesn’t it? The world is independent, and what happens when you take God out of the picture? Anxiety, chaos, war and greed emerges. Everything you are seeing today is a by-product of the sinfulness of humanity.
We have not got a climate problem—we have a people problem. Now it’s very easy, when Christianity gets political, to see the opposition as an enemy that needs to be destroyed, rather than a soul to be reached and saved. Our tone in this debate must always be polite and respectful.
I have a man in my Church who actually goes to climate protests not to be confrontational, but to be reassuring. He goes to these protests to agree and find common ground. Yes, there is something wrong in this world, man is greedy, man is corrupt, you have every right to be afraid.
Then he gives them the Good News and that should be our response. We should be compassionate because there is a generation that is afraid and have been told their whole lives that they have no future.
Victims of a fear ideology
You saw that in Greta Thunberg’s face as she addressed the UN the other week.
She has been told that she will die, her friends will die and will have no future. She has virtually been put in front of the cameras to pretty much beg for her life.
She has OCD, Asperger’s and depression. She has been told her unhappiness is the world’s fault and has been put in front of the world’s media as this messianic figure who could save herself and others from this fate.
That is a lie…She is 16 and she does not seem like a very well or happy person, she is looking for peace and I know where she can find it. The only part of her speech that was true was that she should be at school. She should be enjoying her youth, but she has had her childhood stolen from her. She is instead of a victim of an ideology that is not of Christ.
This ideology, which integrates philosophies on economics, globalism, migration, human rights, and free speech, is knitted together by the Marxist notions of liberation, struggle and oppression.
Their tool is fear and she is a victim of fear, just like millions of people in this world. Fear does not come from God, fear comes from the enemy, the father of lies. This has never been about creation care; this is about something so much bigger and it is not of God.
So how do we respond?
We need to be discerning in these difficult times. Don’t hitch yourself to this ideology, it is not of Christ.
Ben Kruzins is the Campus Pastor of The Hub Baptist Church in Ocean Shores on the North Coast of New South Wales. He is also a Journalism graduate who has written articles in The Canberra Times and The Sydney Morning Herald.