Not quite new earth

The sermon yesterday was on 2 Peter 3:10-18; the new heaven and new earth passage.

It could have been so good, but instead of that we got a lecture on pop-environmentalism that first set up the, to my experience, straw man of Christians who think that because the Lord will burn up the planet we can despoil with it. Well, I've never heard this, ever, in over 40 years of active Christian life, some in quite radical groups (Action for World Development being the most prominent; I think that its folded now, but was loosely connected to the Australian Bishops (RC) Conference).

A quick look around the Bible will indicate that despoiling, greed and exploitation, including of future generations, is in congruent with the creation mandate and the fruit of the Spirit. Note that most critics tendentiously read the creation mandate outside of the conception of a loving God who made the creation out of love. 'Subdue' does not mean pillage, it means manage fruitfully.

The sermon decended into sad farce with the promotion of empty human induced climate change strategies, including a march to call for 'climate action' held in Sydney.

Political maneuvers that are the underlying motive for 'climate action' along with other social activist topics either had not come to the teacher's attention or were ignored. The touting of 'science' where there is none also escaped attention, as did the effect on the poor, who bear the brunt of the economic costs of misdirected public policy.

There is plenty on the net that is critical of pop climate rhetoric, but the greatest indictments are models that cannot model the past, have missed the current pause in temperature changes and farcically propose that a single number trend (which is not clear) has any meaning in describing something as complex, deferentially variable and statistically inscrutable over time as climate!

A couple of links: the Pope, and not the Pope.

Aside from the facts, it is worth noting, when beating up on either the church or the West in general for its perceived transgressions against someone's view of 'right' is that the concepts being deployed are generated within and are consistent with a broadly Christian world-view and tradition, and are typically best exemplified in those places where there is a general Christian consensus.

Thus, once again, reform comes, over the long term, through the gospel.