Regarding global (luke)warming ....

Wind farms to reduce dependency on emissions-spewing coal-powered plants. (See notes for photo credit.)

Wind farms to reduce dependency on emissions-spewing coal-powered plants. (See notes for photo credit.)

Interviewing an expert after the recent 8.1 magnitude earthquake off the southern coast of Mexico, a local radio reporter lead with this question,

“Dr. (so and so), to what extent would you attribute this earthquake to global warming?”

The expert quickly responded that global warming had nothing to do with this earthquake or with the study of earthquakes in general. He then offered a brief explanation about earthquakes and noted that this region near Mexico experiences considerable earthquake activity.

Not that the question was surprising. Global warming or “climate change” is so hot that the condition’s promoters manage to find a way to associate it with all nature events.  (Pun intended.)  Like this Tweet by “kate”

3 hurricanes, the entire west coast is on fire, & now an earthquake in Mexico? THIS IS NOT GOD. THIS IS CLIMATE CHANGE.
— Tweet by kate‏ @kate__bear

Climate change believers are practically stumbling over themselves to prove that global warming is real while promoting whatever measures they deem necessary to reverse or slow the warming trend.

Detractors claim the theory is flawed and that modulations in climate temperatures are natural and historically well-documented. They claim that climate change advocates advance actions that unnecessarily impedes development that boost economies and improve the human condition.  

Me? I tend to file the debate under planet stewardship. Our creator God charged humanity to manage and care for the earth home he gifted to us.

The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. (Genesis 2:15, NLT)

My take of man’s original charge was to balance nature’s needs with his own - except the unthinkable happened. Man disobeyed God and all once blessed through man became cursed including the very creation he was to care God’s image-bearer.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you;  through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3: 17-18, NIV)

At odds with both God and creation, man has fought for survival ever since.  

So creation diminishment is indeed a man made issue but the root cause is not global warming but global luke-warming as identified in the book of Revelations.

“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Laodicea. This is the message from the one who is the Amen—the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s new creation:

“I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth! (Revelations 3: 14-16, NLT, bold added)

This is a letter from the Lord to a church in Laodicea who purport to follow Christ but who live in a manner the Lord labels as “lukewarm.”  God is so repulsed by this condition that he warns he will spit them from his mouth.

While gross to read and think about, even more repulsive is that global “lukewarmness” in the Church isn't just a church problem, it places our planet in much greater jeopardy than any emission or practice or chemical implicated in the global warming/climate change debate. Here’s why - The redeemed church factors into God’s plan to restore our ruined planet.

Listen to what Paul wrote to the Romans:

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8: 18-22, NIV, italics added)

Nothing wrong with having a healthy concern for the well-being of our planet but fellow believers, in particular, let’s not become so preoccupied with defending or combatting so-called global warming/climate change that we are lax about the much more serious condition of global luke-warming.  

The remedy for lukewarm is hot.  

Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me.
— Luke 11:23, NLT

Notes:

1. Biblical verses on Creation Care: http://www.earthcareonline.org/pages/bibleverses.html

2. Photo by Karsten Würth (@inf1783) on Unsplash