Environmental Meth Face
Introduction
The website for the U. S. Department of State lists “Climate and Environment” and “Climate Crisis” among its top policy issues and priorities. Climate change is one of today’s hotly debated issues. There are lots of debated questions related to the climate: Is climate change actually happening? If so, how serious is it? Who or what is responsible for it? What should be done about it?
A lot of debate is focused on whether or not human beings are causing the climate to change through excessive carbon emissions, greenhouse gasses, and the rest.
First—and this is a bit off-point—but I find it fascinating that humans have such a sense of responsibility for the environment. A great question to get in the habit of asking is, “Which worldview can account for this?” In this case, which worldview can explain why humans feel responsible for the environment?
Atheistic-materialism can’t. In that story, humans are materially no different than any other living organism—just another carbon unit. Also, according to that story, everything is an accident, so it doesn’t ultimately matter what anyone does with anything else.
Only the Christian worldview can explain why humans feel responsible for the planet. It’s because we are. That is a God-assigned responsibility.
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
— Genesis 1:28
But back to my point in this post. I believe Scripture offers a surprising insight into the human effect on the environment.
Sin Pollutes
According to Scripture, the most significant man-made pollutant to the environment is sin.
It is tempting to think of sin as an abstract, immaterial thing, not a real thing that has a tangible effect on the environment. But sin has real-world consequences. The root of sin is in the human heart, but when we sin, we sin with our bodies (Romans 6:12–13).
When Adam sinned, God cursed the ground: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field” (Genesis 3:17–18).
And Romans 8 tells us that “creation was subjected to futility … in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20–21).
So we live in a moral universe where the material world is affected by sin and redemption. The material world is not a CGI background and we don’t live our lives in front of a greenscreens. Human sin affects creation.
Scripture frequently speaks of sin’s defiling, polluting effect on the land. Murder pollutes the land by unjustly spilling human blood.
“You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land.”
— Numbers 35:33 (emphasis added)
But it’s not just murder. Blasphemy and idolatry also pollute the land (Jeremiah 3:2, 9). And according to the prophet Isaiah, breaking any of God’s holy laws defiles the land.
“The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.”
— Isaiah 24:5
Lest we think that defilement refers to an abstract “spiritual” status with no material implications, the prophet Jeremiah sets the effects of sin in direct contrast to the promised land blessings.
“And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.”
— Jeremiah 2:7 (emphasis added)
Covenant Blessings and Curses
When God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he established his covenant with them at Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments are not ten good ideas or ten suggestions or ten tips for a better life. The Ten Commandments are a summary of the covenant obligations.
“And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone”
– Deuteronomy 4:13 (emphasis added)
The covenant God made with his people came with promises and warnings—blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Go read the vivid, contrasting descriptions of blessings and obedience in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. One thing that stands out is how central the land and the environment is in both the blessings and curses.
For example,
“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.”
— Leviticus 26:3–4 (emphasis added)
Contrast that with this curse:
“And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.”
— Deuteronomy 28:23–24 (cf. Leviticus 26:14, 19–20).
Another curse for violating God’s covenant was exile, and Scripture connects exile to the environment. One of the purposes of exile was to give the land rest from the covenant breakers who never trusted God enough to rest.
“Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.”
— Leviticus 26:34–35
So what Scripture reveals is that human moral behavior has an effect on the land and the climate. One of the clearest connections between covenant and climate change is found in Psalm 107:
“He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants. He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. And there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in; they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield. By his blessing they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish.”
— Psalm 107:33–38
When the inhabitants of a land are evil, God dries up rivers and turns fruitful fields into wastelands. That is not an isolated weather event, but a change to the climate. When people trust the Lord and fear him, however, God blesses them by blessing their fields and vineyards and herds.
Psalm 107 ends with this invitation: “Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the LORD” (Psalm 107:43). I don’t doubt that what I’m saying sounds like folly to climatologists and ecologists who deny God. I’m interested in the wisdom that God’s Word offers. We neglect God’s gracious revelation to our own peril.
What Happened to the Promised Land?
Modern readers of the Bible are sometimes puzzled by the apparent discrepancy between Scripture’s description of the Promised Land and what we know the land of Israel to look like today.
When Abraham and Lot parted ways, Scripture says, “And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the LORD” (Genesis 13:10). God frequently described the Promised Land as “a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8; cf. Exodus 3:17, 13:5, 33:3; Leviticus 20:24, Numbers 14:8; Deuteronomy 6:3; Joshua 5:6; etc.). When the spies scoped out the land, they cut down a single cluster of grapes so large that two men had to carry it on a pole (Numbers 13:23).
Today, the Jordan Valley doesn’t look anything like a garden paradise.
“This description of a moist, fertile landscape in Abraham’s age is in stark contrast to the dry desert environment of the Jordan Valley which exits [sic] today. Only near springs along the riparian boundary of the Jordan where modern irrigation is practiced are any trees and green vegetation evident. The rainfall south of the Sea of Galilee is so sparse that practically no vegetation of any kind is possible without irrigation in this hot, desert environment.” (1)
If we assume the Promised Land looked like modern Israel, it would seem God over promised and under delivered. But if we read our Bibles carefully and believe God keeps his word, we should expect Israel to look the way it does today.
Not Just Israel
A common mistake when dealing with these passages is to write them off as irrelevant Old Testament passages that only applied to Israel. But God’s moral law is universal—it applies to all people in all places at all times. Listen to what God told Israel before they entered the land.
“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.”
— Leviticus 18:24-28 (emphasis added, cf. Leviticus 20:22–23)
Over and over God emphatically repeats three things. First, the nations who lived in the land before Israel were guilty of committing moral abominations (even though they were not God’s covenant people and did not have the Ten Commandments). Second, the land itself was polluted by the moral transgressions of those nations. And third, the land itself “vomited out” its previous inhabitants.
Every nation on earth today is under the same obligation to obey God. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul told a Gentile audience, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,” (Acts 17:30). No nation on earth can claim exemption from God’s moral law based on being a Muslim nation or a Hindu or Buddhist nation or a secular pluralist society.
The Lesson Book for the Nations
Not only does God’s moral law apply to every nation on earth, but every nation on earth is meant to pay attention to what happened to the land of Israel and heed the warning.
Think about it. Why did God spend thousands of years of redemptive history working with Israel?
That age of redemptive history is not irrelevant. Through Israel, God provided all people with vivid signs and shadows and with historic evidence of his redemptive work. Daniel Fuller insightfully refers to Israel as the lesson book for the nations. That is, Israel’s history vividly warns every nation of the dangers of disobedience.
It’s like that Faces of Meth campaign that used before-and-after mugshots to show the horrifying effects of meth. That is an effective deterrent. Likewise, in his mercy, God has given all the nations of the world an effective inducement to trust and obey him, if only we would pay attention to history.
“And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick—the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout …—all the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.”
— Deuteronomy 29:22–25 (emphasis added)
Israel’s history is the greatest historical warning to every nation on earth of what happens to people who rebel against God, reject his Word, and violate his commandments (cf. Ezekiel 5:14–15). God means for Israel’s punishment in history to serve as a warning to the other nations of earth.
Conclusion
A majority of Americans (two-thirds!) believe that climate change is affecting their local community and want the government to do something about it. The proposed policy solutions include planting a trillion trees, providing tax credits for capturing carbon, restricting carbon emissions, and increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars. None of those policies can atone for human sin.
We live in a land polluted by sin. Our nation practices many of the same abominations that the inhabitants of the land of Canaan practiced—fornication, sodomy, theft, corruption, violence, idolatry. We have aborted over 70 million babies since 1973.
“They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.”
— Psalm 106:38
To the modern, post-enlightenment mind, everything can be explained as purely natural phenomena with no moral or spiritual dimensions. But if we read our Bibles carefully, we would know better.
And the Bible reveals Jesus as the Savior for sinners. His blood was shed to atone for our sin and to bring healing. The place to start for anyone concerned about the environment is with repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ.
Footnotes
1 - Larry Vardiman and Wesley Brewer. “A Well-Watered Land: Numerical Simulations of a Hypercyclone in the Middle East.” Answers Research Journal 4 (2011): 55–74. https://answersresearchjournal.org/simulations-hypercyclone-middle-east/.