God is Green: Environmental Cult

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

19 October 2009

Humans want to have power and they enjoy playing around with all kinds of ideologies in order to gain access to this toy.

Process Theology is the claim by humans that truth is not static but in progress and static theology should be replaced by theology in process or progressive theology. Instead of approaching the world through the eyes of Revelation as contained in the Word of God (in both testaments) process theology wants to approach the world with the best in human nature that is geared to growth and improvement.

Linked with process theology is also the ideology of Unitarianism and Universalism or UU. It uses an eclectic approach to the Bible by "pick and choose" elements that fit their frame. The Bible just decorate their own preconceived worked out ideas. More important than a personhood of the Holy Spirit that serve man, is the glorification of man's reason and sensibility as been written with the finger of God. UU's include Buddhism, Paganism, Liberation Theology, Theological Pluralism with an accommodationist approach.

Linked with both process theology and Unitarianism Universalism is Environmentalism.

What all these modern movements or tendencies have in common, is:

1. modernity replace the Bible

2. leaving behind "old unworkable ideas" and update with contemporary understandings of things

3. replace God's revelation with human reason.

Adventism do not accept any form of pantheism and a mother-earth theology is not acceptable to them. It is contrary to the revelation of God as embodied in the Two Testaments. The Green movement wants to claim that the World is sacred and even a Green Bible was issued.

Green Bible

The Green Bible NRSV: A Priceless Message that Doesn't Cost the Earth is a Bible that was created to serve Environmentalism. It shows that God is green and explains how people need to take care for and protect God's creation. The forward was written by bishop Desmond Tutu and also by N. T. Wright, James Jones and Pope John Paul II. There are about 1000 passages about creation care and it is highlighted in green ink by using an updated Revised Standard Version.  

http://books.ekklesia.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=2405

By January 2009 already 25000 copies have been sold. The Humane Society endorsed the Bible. Evangelicals felt that they do not interpret the Bible literally and that they read the Bible with an agenda.

To get a feeling of what these environmental cult sympathizers say, we cite a blog comment:

"Yes, these religious fundamentalists are worried that the 밎reen Bible?won뭪 follow the Bible literally. You know, they are worried that the 밎reen Bible?won뭪 say that it is alright to own a slave or sacrifice animals as well as humans as it is 뱎leasing to the Lord? Or that it is alright to murder and rape people in the name of a fairy-tale God. It makes my mind boggle that people still in the 21st century believes in religious dogma and superstition. Will we ever be able to leave the Dark Age?"

ShareThis Newsvine Digg Facebook Reddit Technorati Delicious Published: January 7th, 2009

Simon Leufstedt the founder of Green Blog which is an environment blog put on his site a number of items worth looking at. He calls a congressman stupid because he "says God decides when the earth will end" (published April 15, 2009). The Congressman in the USA said at a meeting on environmental issues that God is in control of the earth and that He has promised in Genesis 8:10 that this world will not be destroyed by a flood again.

Ecumenism, Pluralism and Environmentalism

Howard Sulkin, the president of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies said that there is clearly internal division within religious groups regarding the role of environmental stewardship, but it is a fact that there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of other religions that are driven by holy doctrine to protect, in their viewpoint, God뭩 creation-Earth. In Kentucky there is an interfaith Power and Light charitable company that tries to serve environmentalism by building churches and houses of worship according to environmental concepts. There is nothing wrong in this kind of approach per se, but the owner of the company,  Tim Darst, cannot go unnoticed:

밓udaism, Christianity, and Islam are all founded on the same scriptural basis, and even in Buddhism, there is a universal carrying for creation.?

One particular protestant denomination "gave away bags, filled with green goodies (IE efficient light bulbs) and literature about recycling in a certain city" it is reported on Green Space Today.

Another denomination said that it is over 2000 years ago that Jesus said that He would come soon but that they might as well go ahead and plant trees. Satan smiles very happily with the deformation of evangelization, mission, gospel as we can see environmentalism is doing. Environmentalism costs and unless they can serve humans directly and almost immediately, the goals are just a  second style consumerism.

Various studies are done to determine people's egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations and how these aspects affect their beliefs and behavior regarding environmental awareness. These very same attitudes play also in people's rejection of Christ and His message or mission and its role in countries.

Peter Harris wrote an article on "Christian belief and environmental concern" Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology vol. 38 no. 3 (2007) in which he indicated how important a balanced view of environmentalism is for a Christian:

Does environmental concern itself make any sense if we are simply part of a blindly determined process, and an unseeingly competitive struggle for survival? But if we affirm that we are living in a created world, are we ready to respond to its constant prompting to reach out for the Creator? And if we actively acknowledge that, are we ready to treat the world around us as important first of all to God himself, and not merely there to meet our needs?

http://www.arocha.org/int-en/3288-DSY.html

Adventist view of Environmentalism

This world is not going to exist always. There was a beginning and because of sin, there will be an end. Entropy is the running down of something and that includes this earth. Besides a steady process, God has history in His hands and decides to do great cataclysmic events before His second coming. Thus, one should expect at the end of time, which is now going on since 1798 already, with the end of the Holy Roman Empire,  that strange events will be on land, air and sea. Although environmentalist do their best to connect it solely to human causes, the Revealed Word of God puts it differently. Angels will be set forth to cast various scales that will inaugurate various plaques, earthquakes, disasters of all kinds that has nothing do to with human engineering. Thus, the solution of these problems have also nothing to do with human engineering.

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