You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet … Psalm 8:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 9, 2019): Psalm 8

A friend recently asked me where I stand on climate change. He was not an adherent to any religion, and his exposure to the Christian Church seemed to have been dominated by climate change deniers. And the inquiry behind the question seemed to be “do all Christians deny the existence of climate change, or at the very least do they deny the contribution to climate change that is being made by humans.” My response was to assure him that not all Christians were climate change deniers, and also I was not counted among the deniers. I am convinced that climate change is very real and that people bear the responsibility for the damage that has been done to creation.

And I share his astonishment that more of us don’t accept responsibility for what is happening to our planet. I recently watched one lecturer remind his listeners that the amount of greenhouse gases that are currently in the atmosphere are nowhere near the maximums that our world has experienced during its long history. And that is true, but what was left unsaid is that the greenhouse gas concentration is currently higher than it has ever been during the human era. In terms of the traditional creation story, the last time that the greenhouse gases were this high was before day six and the advent of animals, and finally humans, on the face of the planet.  

The consideration of the traditional creation story is something that Psalmist wants to bring to our minds. The writer of Genesis instructs us that “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (Genesis 1:28). But to rule over something carries the command of caring for it. It is the very thing that we want our politicians to remember. Ruling always involves caring.

I believe in the existence of human-created climate change, but more than that, I think that this might be one of the sins that we will have to answer for when we stand before God. Not just that climate change happened on our watch, but God made us rulers and caretakers over all of creation, and yet we also continue to remain so unrepentant about what it is that we have done. Forgiveness is always available, but often we are not even asking for it. We have allowed creation to come to ruin on our watch, but we don’t even feel the need to apologize for our action, or inaction, and our responsibility in the process.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 9 & 10