Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Stewards of Eden - Dr. Sandy Richter
130 Plays1 year ago
Can a Christian be an environmentalist? Biblical Scholar Sandra Richter joins Nick and Matt to talk about why creation care is an important part of being the image of God. They discuss how divisive politics, the privileges of wealth, and peculiar understandings of the Bible have all contributed to the suspicion many Christians feel toward environmentalism. All this and more as they discuss Sandra Richter’s book, “Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says about the Environment and Why it Matters."
Resources Referenced: Stewards of Eden, Epic of Eden by Sandra Richter. Appendix to Stewards of Eden
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous. https://linktr.ee/posthumorous
For more resources and recommendations, check out reparadigmed.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Dr. Sandra Richter and her work
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Re-Paradigm podcast. Today we're very excited to have Dr. Sandra Richter with us. Sandra is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.
00:00:26
Speaker
How are you today, Dr. Richard? I'm great and it's great to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation. It looks nice and warm and sunny out there. We've got a much colder, more dreary day here.
00:00:36
Speaker
October actually is the height of Santa Barbara summer. Who knew? And for a girl raised in New England, I joked my first five years here that I'd been waiting for five years for fall to come. And it finally dawned on me it wasn't coming. Any year now. Yeah.
00:00:58
Speaker
Maybe around February, we'll start getting a little bit of fall, but you guys will get the colors. So we do enjoy that.
Discussing 'Epic of Eden' and Old Testament context
00:01:06
Speaker
So we mentioned to you right before we started recording here that we really appreciate your book, Epic of Eden. We just want to plug that shamelessly for our listeners on our website. You can go to the recommendations page and you'll find Dr. Richter's book, Epic of Eden. It's a great introduction to reading the Old Testament and to try to start reading it contextually.
00:01:27
Speaker
And it's introductory level. I think it's readable for anybody. Today we want to talk specifically about stewards of Eden. We're in an image of God series and we're talking particularly about creation care and what the image of God has to do with creation care. So that's a question for you. What does creation care have to do with the image of God or vice versa?
Creation care as Christian responsibility
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think it's the essential issue. And this is whenever we step into a contemporary topic that affects society, when we step into issues of environmentalism or racism or
00:02:06
Speaker
political parties or dealing with marginalized, whatever the topic is that is affecting us as a society, we are always so tempted to launch into the newest ideology coming down the pike. Because it's good and it's morally right, as far as we can see, we leave the biblical mandates back in the rearview mirror. Let me take the biblical mandate and move it right up
00:02:35
Speaker
into the front and center. And as you've already tagged, the fact that humanity is made in the Salem, the image of God, the fact that humanity in Genesis 1 was given authority and responsibility over all of the created order.
00:02:55
Speaker
The fact that that image means that we are God's representative, his steward of this planet, is the bottom line for why Christians should be environmentalists, which some of your audience is already going, what?
00:03:11
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that's the wrong political party. If I'm going to be an American, and a Christian, I can't be an environmentalist.
Kingdom politics vs national politics and environment
00:03:21
Speaker
One of the things I do in the introduction of the book is challenge Christians to step over their American political party or maybe step away from it for a moment and attend to kingdom.
00:03:37
Speaker
politics. And in kingdom politics, humanity has been created as God's steward, his representative. We've been given responsibility for this planet. We are the gardeners. We are the superintendents. He is the landlord. We are the caretakers.
00:03:56
Speaker
And in that role, one of our responsibilities is the protection and the cultivation of the garden.
00:04:08
Speaker
because that's what a good manager does, right? Like if God gave me a task or if anybody gives me a task, a little domain to work and keep, we'll use the biblical language, then it would be my job to work and keep that and not to manage it in an unsustainable way. So that's how you see that, or let's just say environmental care fitting right in with the call to be the image of God to rule the earth and subdue it.
00:04:32
Speaker
Absolutely. This first mandate that we received as God's creation, as God's special creation was, and for those who are familiar with Epic of Eden, we are day six beat in the creation order.
00:04:51
Speaker
which communicates that days 1-6a are under not only our authority, but our stewardship as well. When we move on to Genesis 2 and the second telling of the tale, Adam specifically, and the word Adam, Adam means humanity, is specifically charged.
00:05:13
Speaker
to tend and to protect this garden. The verbs are Shemar and Avad. They're very common, they're very standard to cultivate and to protect.
Neglect of environmental issues by American Christians
00:05:27
Speaker
So how in the world has the church lost track of this set of commands which stand at the very dawn of creation?
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of where we wanted to go next because honestly, in the introduction here, I didn't think anything you said would be all that controversial. In my mind, it's not because it does seem like fairly straightforward. God tells you to like take care of the land and so take care of the land.
00:05:52
Speaker
or at least attempt to, but that's kind of the question. It isn't at all obvious to a lot of, I think, evangelical Christians in the United States that we have much or we should have much of an interest in the land or in the creatures of the earth. We do tend to, you know, still view humanity as important or at least preach that way, right? But we don't seem to think there's much of a calling for us to care for the, let's just say, the environment
00:06:18
Speaker
So you have three reasons for that in your book, and you touched on one. You say politics is maybe a reason why. You also say the Western church is sometimes sheltered from the effects of abuse of the environment, let's say. And then you also say that our theological posture is often that all of God's creation, his good creation that was fallen, is bound for destruction. And so what's the point? Could you just touch on those three again?
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. The issue of politics, in my experience of speaking across not only this country, but other countries, seems to be the one that's most front and center. For American Christians, and not just evangelicals, but American Christians, we will joke, not in California, but in other parts of the country, the joke will be, are you a Democrat or are you a Christian?
00:07:16
Speaker
And if I dare poke the bear here, you can edit that out. Just don't poke the elephant, right? I'm just kidding. Oh, now that was good. That was good. Okay. So what has happened in the United States of America is that we, the Christian community,
00:07:36
Speaker
have allowed our national politics to override our kingdom politics. We do this all the time and we do it with all sorts of issues. We're unaware of our own biases until someone like Matt and Nick pull people back to the biblical mandates and say, really? Do you see what the kingdom is talking about?
00:07:59
Speaker
And then we start rethinking. So there are just a lot of folks out there who have recognized that the Republican Party tends to be the pro-life party, and therefore Christians should be Republican.
00:08:18
Speaker
Then there's this additional step where environmentalism, which by the way is very pro-life, typically gets associated with the Democratic Party. Then it winds up guilty by association for those who are convinced that being a Republican is the appropriate stand. My big challenge here is I'm not throwing,
00:08:44
Speaker
trying to criticize either political party. What I'm charging the Christian with is realize that you are a citizen of another kingdom and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are ever going to fully represent the kingdom of God and realize that political posturing is also not political action.
Overlooking global issues due to national focus
00:09:10
Speaker
Um so frequently so when we get to kingdom politics when we lift our eyes above either You know the donkey or the elephant the bible starts speaking to us. Okay, so that's one issue the second issue that I name in the book is very common to issues of social justice generally and americans
00:09:30
Speaker
The United States of America is blessed to be a wealthy, secure nation. Now, certainly not everyone in this nation is wealthy or secure, but generally our borders are safe, generally our infrastructure functions, and generally Americans don't go hungry, generally.
00:09:52
Speaker
Because of that, it is often difficult for us to realize that the widow and the orphan are endangered and starving all over this planet. We don't see the refugee camps. We don't see the bowels of the Gaza Strip right now. We don't see Madagascar where one out of every 10 Malagasy women dies in childbirth. Pause over that for a moment. One out of every 10. Why?
00:10:22
Speaker
does one out of every 10 Malagasy die in childbirth? The answer is malnutrition. Why would Madagascar, this beautiful lush island, be a place of such food insecurity? The answer is environmental degradation, where outsiders have come and they have plundered this island and they have plundered it in the name of quick gain economics.
00:10:49
Speaker
and left the subsistence farmer, the fishermen, the common man and woman unable to feed their own children. So we don't see the impact of environmental degradation. And I give many examples in the book. I talk about the Ganges River. I talk about Madagascar. I talk about Appalachia.
00:11:09
Speaker
and mountaintop removal in our country. The fact that me sitting here in my Santa Barbara suburb, I don't see this stuff. There's a lot of big money out there that wants to make sure I don't see this stuff.
00:11:22
Speaker
Well, it's kind of interesting. Is it correct then? There's probably multiple reasons, but I can think of two reasons in particular why it's the case, why wealthier areas don't see the effects of environmental degradation as much. One is oftentimes environmental degradation doesn't happen as much in the backyards of people who are wealthy because they have more political voice, maybe.
00:11:43
Speaker
They can complain louder because they have more political cache or cash, one of the two or both. But the other thing is too, it seems to me that a person with less financial security, less financial wealth simply cannot innovate or cannot purchase what they need to innovate when the change happens as much as someone with wealth can. So for example, like if let's just say in your backyard suburb of Santa Barbara, right?
00:12:11
Speaker
If some company brought in some, I don't know, a bunch of chemicals and they leached them into the ground, right? You're probably still not going to necessarily feel all the full brunt of that because you can innovate away from that. You can purchase bottled water because you have the opportunity to do that. You don't have to drink their groundwater.
00:12:31
Speaker
There's this back door of escape from the effects of environmental
Church's role in environmental and social justice
00:12:34
Speaker
degradation because wealthier countries and wealthier people can innovate so they keep themselves from the effect. Those are like two that I can think of off the top of my head. There's probably more. Am I wrong?
00:12:45
Speaker
No, you're not wrong. And you can think of the Love Canal in New England. You can think of mountaintop removal and the poisoning of groundwater in Appalachia. My goodness, we can look at the enormous piles of trash in Haiti because there is no trash removal. Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
I've been there. You're not exaggerating. It is worse than anything you could say right now. Anything you say right now, you're not exaggerating. There's also the forced draft urbanization that happens in many countries like Haiti, and that's a phrase that most of your listeners have never heard before. What that means is that in order to confiscate land and in order to move workers into urban centers where the factories are,
00:13:32
Speaker
there's often a national drive to move farmers off their lands and into the cities. And Haiti is another good example of this and that driven primarily by insecurity and by poverty, but you wind up with tens of thousands
00:13:48
Speaker
moving into urban centers hoping for food security and for life security and there's no place for them. So they wind up living in the most compromised areas and being subject to the hurricanes and the floods and the trash and the groundwater, etc, etc. So yes, the less powerful, the marginalized, who
00:14:11
Speaker
the Bible calls the widow in the orphan. These are the people who will first feel the impact of environmental degradation, and those of us who have means will do our very best to protect ourselves from the same. And one of the things I say in the book, and I want to say it loud and clear for your listeners, is one of the best things about the Community of Christ
00:14:35
Speaker
is that over the centuries, we have been the first to respond to the cry of the widow in the orphan. There is a reason that almost every charity organization, nonprofit hospital, and orphanage on this planet has the name Christ, Savior, Frost, Christian in it. Because we're good at that. The problem with this particular crisis is the church doesn't see it.
00:15:03
Speaker
And I think that part of my calling is to help the church see it. I've had people on podcasts over and over again ask me the question, what's your big idea? What is it you're trying to accomplish? And to quote a very old movie, my hope
00:15:23
Speaker
is to awaken a sleeping giant because I think in this cause the church is asleep and I think of fabulous people I know who have taken their lives and their callings to Haiti and to Madagascar and to Kenya and to Somalia and they've done it with an environmental agenda and in the name of Jesus rather than building orphanages right now they're rebuilding farms and they're teaching the locals how to sustain themselves
00:15:51
Speaker
I think this connection between creation care and caring for the poor was something I had not seen clearly in scripture especially, but you made that point over and over in the book that in the Mosaic law, the way Israel is called to take care of the land is very much set up so that it also takes care of the poor and the foreigner.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yes, and not only in the fact that sustainable agriculture was part of Deuteronomic and Levitical law. Let's pause over that for a moment. Your listeners think that Deuteronomy and Leviticus only talk about skin diseases and who not to have sex with, right? That's the whole lock hood.
00:16:31
Speaker
There's the one about not muzzling the ox. That's the other one. Whereas both of these law codes are filled with mandates about making sure that agriculture is a sustainable so that the next generation has what they need, that it is honoring to the land and to God because he owns it. There's the bottom theological line, the land belongs to Yahweh.
00:16:59
Speaker
As you've said, that the way farming is done is done in a fashion that it is shared with the marginalized. Granted, most of the people listening to us right now are not farmers, but that doesn't change the hermeneutical principle
Biblical misinterpretations and environmental neglect
00:17:15
Speaker
that the way we produce, the way we manufacture, the way we get food into our home and energy into our businesses,
00:17:25
Speaker
has to be sustainable. So that the next generation has what they need, so that we honor the God who owns it, and so the marginalized can survive. This seemed like three fairly important reasons. I can't argue with you there. Good. The last point, why Christians have sometimes been anti-environmental. So you said politics, you said we were sometimes shielded from its effects. And the last one is our theological posture that says the creation is going to go to hell in a handbasket anyway.
00:17:54
Speaker
It's actually speaking at denver seminary a number of months ago and the folks in the audience actually had an acronym for it's all gonna burn anyway i had never heard it before i should have written it down. Okay what is your girl is there a serious.
00:18:12
Speaker
Well, they were there because they were allies to environmental concern, but they had heard the acronym a number of times. I'm going to have to call someone and get that back. What you're after is what we could read in 2 Peter chapter 3. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat.
00:18:42
Speaker
and the earth and its works will be burned up. So just a straightforward reading of that text tells me that every endangered species, every water system, every resplendent field in the Midwest is going to burn up. And if I were reading that text in isolation, I would be convinced of the same.
00:19:08
Speaker
But one of the things I do in the book is I help the reader recognize that these passages of ultimate judgment are sprinkled throughout the entire Bible. And in the Old Testament, they're spoken of as the day of the Lord.
00:19:23
Speaker
which is the day when Yahweh shows up. He judges the wicked and he delivers the marginalized. When we get to the New Covenant, the day of Yahweh is reinterpreted as the Parousia, the Second Coming.
00:19:40
Speaker
When the rider on the white horse breaks through the clouds and essentially what he's doing is he's marching on this planet. And again, if your readership knows Epic of Eden, they know that the bottom line here is that when humanity rebelled, God said, all right, it's your planet. Good luck. Here we are with the lovely mess we've made and the solution to this problem.
00:20:05
Speaker
is for God to reclaim this planet and set all things right. That's the ultimate solution. That ultimate solution has several demarcators. One of them is judgment. Every oppressor, every evil dictatorship, every torturer and pedophile,
00:20:24
Speaker
Is gonna finally get their due the others deliverance those who have been faithful and their allegiance to the kingdom Has not failed will be delivered and in that judgment and in that deliverance. We also have a resurrection Yeah, and that resurrection is of us the kingdom citizenry.
Human responsibility in creation's curse and redemption
00:20:44
Speaker
This is the hope we live and die for and
00:20:47
Speaker
But what a lot of Christians miss is that the planet is actually part of the resurrection story. So I'm just going to jump over to Romans chapter 8 and then I promise to circle back to the it's all going to burn thing.
00:21:03
Speaker
And in Romans chapter 8, which is one of my very favorite passages in the New Testament, of course they're all my favorite passages, but here we go. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that's to be revealed to us.
00:21:19
Speaker
So Paul's talking about the end of all things. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Now that should make our ears perk up. Creation is longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Who are the sons of God? You and I are. And it's not a gendered term. It's a functional term. To be a son is to be an heir.
00:21:40
Speaker
Paul knows that and he knows he's talking to a mixed audience. So women are heirs as well as men. So what is creation waiting for? The revealing of the heirs of God. For the creation was subjected to futility or frustration, not of its own will.
00:21:58
Speaker
but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. What in the world is Paul talking about? Certainly doesn't sound like being burned up.
00:22:16
Speaker
No, it isn't. What he's talking about is the ultimate mark of our salvation. And the ultimate mark of our salvation is our resurrection. Paul makes it so clear throughout the book of Romans that we are not fully redeemed until this flesh that has been cursed with death is resurrected to eternal life.
00:22:38
Speaker
All of this is talking about the resurrection of humanity, which will mark the deliverance of the creation. Now the creation is going to be delivered from the same curse it was placed under when we rebel. Why should creation have to be subjected to a curse because of my rebellion? Because I'm the steward.
00:23:00
Speaker
I'm the authority figure and when I rebelled, everything under my authority was struck by the same curse I was struck for. Yeah, the child who has a bad parent suffers, but it's because of the bad parent who was supposed to take care of the child.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And if I'm a bad gardener, my garden suffers. It sure does. Yeah. So the last sentence or two, for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now. Left that one. One of my teachers in seminary was Meredith Klein.
00:23:35
Speaker
the amazing reform theologian, he's arguing that the dead bodies of the daughters of Eve and the sons of Adam being placed in the ground to decompose is what the earth is trying to push out like a mother in labor.
00:23:50
Speaker
Because creation knows that you and I were never meant to die, and our bodies should never be in the earth. So creation is trying to birth those bodies into new life. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves growing within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, heirs, the redemption of our bodies. So what Paul's theology is here is that in our rebellion, everything, days one to six,
00:24:20
Speaker
In the creation narrative we're subject to the curse of our rebellion and that with the redemption Of humanity all of creation is redeemed as well and if we jump over to revelation We hear about the new heavens and the new earth and that that rebirthed heaven and earth is actually heaven Yeah, the heaven that we talk about so the big plan Is not just fire insurance for you and me and the people we love the big plan is the resurrection of this planet
00:24:48
Speaker
So if God intends to resurrect this planet, it's not disposable. It's not all going to burn. So then that last question is, so where does the burning language come from? And the answer is that the language that is being used in Peter and Thessalonians about fire and destruction is language that he's pulling out of the Old Testament lexicon. And those are always the terms used for the judgment.
00:25:17
Speaker
And if we take what I say in the book, if we take the Old Testament lexicon and we apply it to the New Testament passages, we've got it. There's going to be a massive judgment. And in that massive judgment, there will be the final outpouring of mercy for all the oppressed. And in that process, we in this planet will be resurrected because we are not disposable and it is not.
Hope in renewed creation and environmental stewardship
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, and burning is obviously an image for purifying. We all know the idea of heating up metals and sifting out the metals that aren't wanted or the contents that aren't wanted. Yeah, I was going to say too, just explicitly, the same type of descriptors are used of the land of Israel when exile is promised upon them.
00:26:01
Speaker
I don't know of a time when the land of Israel in ancient times was ever completely literally scorched. I don't think that's actually what happened there, but judgment certainly came. And that picturesque language of the scorching of the land is used on that judgment. Yeah. And one of the images of the return of the king.
00:26:19
Speaker
illusion intentional, is that the land will flower and fruit and once again, as it did in the days of Eden, provide all of the needs that humanity has. Which, by the way, is a big part of the curse that the planet does not produce as it ought because of the curse we brought.
00:26:38
Speaker
Well, it certainly seems that if God created and designed humanity to be these image bearers, where creation care is an important part of who humans are, that if God was going to restore humanity, that without that ability to continue interacting with creation on somehow, could it really be a full restoration?
00:26:58
Speaker
And it cannot be, and partly because you and I are creatures. We were never designed to float around the heavenlies. We're not angels. We're not part of the Elohim, the citizenry of the immaterial world. We are material.
00:27:13
Speaker
And we're made out of the soil and we're designed to live here. And in that created identity, we need a created habitat. God's original intent was to give us the perfect ideal habitat where we could stretch all of our abilities and deploy our imagination and creative gifts to their furthest extent. The final plan is to restore the first plan.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, we've said this on the podcast before, but if anyone's confused by that language of heaven being a renovated earth, just read Genesis 1 and 2 and then Revelation 21 and 22. Read the bookends of the Bible and you'll kind of get the idea there. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. And hear that repetition of iconography, especially in Revelation 22, where we're reading about heaven, but we're hearing about the tree of life.
00:28:06
Speaker
and the river that flows through it. All of the language of Eden is there because your biblical authors want you to think of Eden when you think of heaven.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I want to say one thing about the theological posture of it's all going to burn anyway. I do want to acknowledge, and I think you would too, that there does seem to be a profound mystery about how much continuity there really will be between this world and the resurrected one. That's even difficult to understand about our own bodies. You know, when Jesus was resurrected, his body was gone from the tomb.
00:28:43
Speaker
How did that transformation take place? So there is a continuity question. Is this creation discontinuous with the new creation or is it somehow transformed? I don't know if anyone knows exactly what that looks like, but one thing that I've said many times to my friends is
00:28:58
Speaker
I think it is important that no matter what type of continuity there is between this world and the next, the next is a physical one just like this one. And we are supposed to be preaching about this new world to come, this new creation. As we're preaching that message, don't we want to be living that out in our little pocket of society, in our little pocket of earth in the here and now to showcase what that could be in key ways, in real ways, albeit maybe limited ways.
00:29:27
Speaker
I want to affirm that the New Testament scholars that I use both in stewards and in all of my research on environmentalism, the NT Wright, Gunton, Mu, Ben Witherington, they would all say exactly what you said, that we know there's continuity, we know that the disciples eventually recognize Jesus,
Personal action in environmental stewardship
00:29:50
Speaker
we know that he kept the scars of his execution, but we also know
00:29:57
Speaker
that his resurrected body was different enough that, well, one, he's walking through locked doors, apparently, and two, his own disciples don't fully recognize him. So yeah, I do not claim to have the bottom line on the continuity, but what I do claim is that that continuity communicates value.
00:30:17
Speaker
It communicates value. We sometimes with a pre-millennialist, dispensationalist, some of the various theological streams that are fed into the evangelical movement, we have been lulled to sleep on that particular topic.
00:30:37
Speaker
And also, we're just distracted. We're distracted by our own needs, wants, and comfort. Now, you said something else in there that I really wanted to tag into. The idea of our own little pocket of our world. I just wanted to tag that, and I'd love to hear more from you guys as well. Usually, when I get to the end of a lecture or set of lectures on environmentalism, 95 times out of 100, the audience is like, OK, what do we do?
00:31:07
Speaker
It really doesn't take a lot to awaken the passionate church on these issues.
00:31:15
Speaker
But what does happen in that moment is we wind up face to face with how profoundly difficult the task actually is. And our stewardship of this planet is no easier than our caring for every orphan created by the HIV AIDS crisis. It is no simpler than stopping the
00:31:43
Speaker
ever-present wars on the continent of Africa that create refugee populations left and right. So folks slam into a wall with that, with, oh my gosh, we probably can't fix this. I'd like to throw that back to you guys and just ask you the question, as you crash into that wall, what do you start thinking about?
00:32:07
Speaker
See, this is why we have you on the podcast to answer all these questions. That's actually where we're going here towards the end of this interview is basically asking the question with the prerequisite that it doesn't seem to me that any Christian environmental ethic would tell us all the simple solutions, not at all. It does seem to give us a general posture toward environmental care and our posture
00:32:34
Speaker
tournament environmental care should obviously be that of trying to take responsibility and to do better and to be sustainable that That does not mean that all them I think you mentioned this earlier all the innovative solutions that people have or the fad of the day Doesn't mean that they're all right. Are they all the best way to do it ever?
00:32:52
Speaker
Absolutely. Not at all, but I do think that the Christian environmental ethic should not be one of dismissiveness towards those who are bringing forward issues. So, well, since you turned the question on us, personally, I get totally overwhelmed.
00:33:08
Speaker
I wouldn't know what to do. I don't have that much power. It's not like I'm a political person who has policy making ability or anything like that. All I know how to do is try to clean up my own life with my own family, with my own property first, and then with my family and friends, hopefully church community to get them on board with being as environmentally sustainable as possible. I mean, that's doable to start with your own home, I think, right?
00:33:37
Speaker
Okay, I'll launch in here. I respond the same way. I find it overwhelming. And when your readers get to the appendix of Stewards of Eden, I'll open the chapter with an article that I read coming out of April 2018 in Sierra Club. By the way, Sierra Club is one of the environmental organizations I'll recommend. It is not perfect. You will not agree with everything that they support and do, but they're very effective.
00:34:06
Speaker
And they're good with their finances. I trust them is what I'm trying to say. I love the end of your book, by the way, where you provided a bunch of resources. That was very helpful. Thank you. I'm glad. So there's a climate science guy. His name was Eric Holthouse.
00:34:23
Speaker
And he was being interviewed and he confessed that his research into climate change had landed him in a therapist chair in need of help with unmanageable anxiety. And the quote is, like many people who care about the fate of this planet, I've spent most of the past year alternating between soul crushing despair and headstrong hope.
00:34:47
Speaker
So first of all, let me say that your experience of being overwhelmed, welcome to the world of environmental concern.
00:34:54
Speaker
But of course, if you were deep invested in the orphan problem, if you were deeply invested in the HIV AIDS problem, if you were deeply invested in marginalized youth in the inner city, you'd probably be feeling the same way. And the reason we feel that way is because we're swimming upstream. We're swimming upstream against Adam's curse, yeah? And we're swimming upstream as citizens of another kingdom. So as we sit here on this podcast, and as your audience listens, how many of us
00:35:23
Speaker
feel those set of feelings. And I can tell you that every one of us who truly desires to make a difference in this fallen world, we feel those feelings because of that upstream reality.
Reclaiming environmental witness and overcoming biases
00:35:34
Speaker
So what does Paul say to us? Yeah. Over and over and over again.
00:35:39
Speaker
Paul tells us to have a hope. Paul tells us to keep swinging. Paul tells us to stay in the fight because Christ has overcome this world. Yeah, the light has been introduced to the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And he tells us over and over again that it looks bad. It looks really bad. But the job of the Christian is to be salt and light.
00:36:02
Speaker
in the midst of this. So that's what I wind up telling my audiences, that being a good steward of creation looks the same as dedicating a portion of my income to Compassion International. And it looks the same as taking time out of my crazy week to disciple some kid on the margins at the local high school. It's a drop in the bucket. And I know it's a drop in the bucket.
00:36:28
Speaker
but sanctification in my own life demands it. And then I think about the cumulative impact of sanctification and what the church has been able to do on this planet when we stuck to our guns. And I'm thinking about the current political climate. Oh my gosh, are we polarized and the world is at each other's throats? Maybe when we stuck to our guns was a poor choice of words there.
00:36:56
Speaker
We stayed in the fight. Can I go there? The watchman stayed on there. But that political climate, where everyone is polarizing and everyone's at each other's throats and you can't post a picture of your favorite blenders without someone being offended. As I interact with friends and family and they get mad at the church,
00:37:19
Speaker
You know, stay out of politics. If you just stay in your own place, you know, stay in your lane, everything will be fine. And then I think about the abolitionist movement. And I think about the temperance movement. I think about women's rights. And I think about orphan legislation and child welfare laws. And guess where all those things came from? They came from the church.
00:37:42
Speaker
who stayed in the fight. All that to say, I can clean up my own life. I can listen to the sermon for myself. I can make sure that I actually have some idea how much energy I'm consuming, how much plastic I'm putting in the trash, how I'm teaching my children and petroleum and plastic are the two biggest issues right now where I'm investing my funds. I can take care of my own life. But I also, as you said, I can influence my family.
00:38:08
Speaker
I can influence my church and I can influence my community. And I can tell you that most of the unchurched generation right now thinks that the church couldn't care less about the environment. They might be right about the evangelical church. That's the sad reality. I know an awful lot of evangelicals who care very much. I think that when people use the term evangelical, they mean moral majority and religious right.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on if you're using Bevington's definition of evangelical or like the modern post 2015 definition of evangelical. Right. Well, and I'm using John Wesley's and George Whitfield's and I'm talking about a multicolored multinational movement of revival that has transformed South Korea, that has transformed Kenya, that
00:38:54
Speaker
has transformed me, has transformed you, whatever. My point being, we've been a terrible witness on this topic. And if only for the sake of a witness, we need to clean up our act.
00:39:06
Speaker
It seems to me that in the face of a world with a lot of injustice, I mean, we could talk about racial injustice. We could talk about like a bunch of different issues today. We're talking about environmental care. There is going to be solutions offered to these injustices, to these problems. And those solutions are offered by people of all kinds who care about the issues or who are suffering or who know people who suffer. Right.
00:39:29
Speaker
might it be the church that is in those conversations that is leading those conversations so that our solutions to problems aren't just more problems. I just can't think of a better people group to be in that fight to use your language than the church to come at the fight with a biblical worldview, one of God as the owner of the earth, the owner of the land and ourselves as stewards of the land, caretakers of it.
00:39:55
Speaker
with Christ as the Redeemer of the humans who are supposed to care for the land. I just think we have a lot to offer in that conversation, and I really appreciate your spending so much time in your career pushing we, evangelicals, right, towards caring about these things, which to your point, maybe are issues that don't jive with our political party, right? Well, maybe we need to be in that conversation to make that change, right? Instead of sitting in the sidelines.
00:40:21
Speaker
And honestly, I'll use that to launch a little bit, I think on the problems of racism, on the problems of international politics, on what else is so hot right now. Yeah, racial inclusion, diversity, etc, etc, etc.
00:40:39
Speaker
The church's failure is because we've listened to our political parties instead of our kingdom citizenship. In the first century, we were offered the solution to bias and prejudice and the marginalization of the other. If we had actually championed neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we've been leading the charge as opposed to the folks being dragged behind with our heels dug in.
00:41:07
Speaker
If we would listen to our creator, if we would listen to the moral code that outdistances our own, if our allegiance actually was with the kingdom, oh my gosh, what we could do.
00:41:19
Speaker
And we can absolutely see examples of Christians and groups throughout history where they have stood up and done that. I think we should look around and say, hey, that ability, that power is there. We can participate in that. We don't need to fall into despair, but we shouldn't fall into an action. Yeah. In fact, I opened my conclusion with this quote. I don't even know how I bumped into this quote, but I love this quote.
00:41:47
Speaker
It's coming from a guy named Gus Spath, who was the chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter. So he's been in the game forever. 35 years as an insider in every environmental organization you can imagine. And, you know, I'm thinking about what you guys said earlier that I don't have that kind of political influence. I don't have the levers to pull to really change things. This guy had the levers, right?
00:42:11
Speaker
And this is his opening quote, not a believer, not sure. I used to think that the top environmental problem were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy.
00:42:33
Speaker
And to deal with these, we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists, we don't know how to do that. I hear that quote and my first response is put me in coach. I know how to do that. We know the answer is how to do that. Yeah.
00:42:51
Speaker
So for all of our listeners, I mean it might be the case that you've always just by default been a skeptic of any type of talk of environmental degradation or anything because you perceive it as being on one side of the political aisle that you don't see yourself to be on or whatever. I really hope that any listener that's in that position
00:43:11
Speaker
at least considers the theological basis for having an open ear towards cries of injustice, towards cries of mismanagement, and is open-minded towards the solution. We are not at all, and I don't think, Dr. Richter, I don't think at all you're advocating that there's a bunch of easy solutions out there. No. But we need to be on the front lines of caring about the issue, and we need to be engaged with it.
00:43:37
Speaker
not despondent and not just ignoring it. I think there's probably some political currents in our culture just calling us to kind of just ignore these things, but I don't think that's the Christian response at all.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think you've tagged some D's there for alliteration, right? Despair, despondence, or dismissiveness. And I don't think we're free to do any of those things. Yeah. As we wrap up here, any final words of admonition, encouragement for the church? Next step, if someone is convinced by your theological argument, which we really hope they are, any practical steps besides those that we've already mentioned?
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah. I love that question. Where do I start? The first thing we both need is start with me.
Practical steps for environmental engagement
00:44:25
Speaker
Start with my own attitude. To change that attitude, you're going to have to get informed. You're going to have to find out what's really happening. You certainly could buy and read my book. I wouldn't mind that at all. But the other thing you could do is you could put your money where your mouth is a little bit and join Audubon. Join Sierra Club.
00:44:46
Speaker
join the nature conservancy those are three are definitely put in front of you there all reliable organizations even national geographic doesn't want to job. And you know thirty thirty five dollars a year you're having that magazine come into your house you're on their mailing list you're gonna start getting informed and as you get informed and you start recognizing the complexity of the problems you're gonna be more motivated to respond.
00:45:09
Speaker
And what I have in the back of the book, and guys, if you would like me, I have like a little PDF of the responses I can send it to you. You can put it up on your website. Yeah. Just there's so many ways we can respond and so many things that really are not going to compromise your life at all. You know, first steps certainly get informed. Second steps, start paying attention to how much energy you use. That's a huge one.
00:45:39
Speaker
How big is that car? How many miles a gallon does it get? Do we really need to be driving vehicles that are as big as our storage sheds? You know, just an idea. What are we doing with our houses? In my house, we've taken steps forward progressively. I haven't bought a bag of plastic bags
00:46:01
Speaker
in probably a decade, because you don't need to. Every bread bag that comes into your house can be reused and used very effectively. So we've marched forward on issues of petroleum and plastic, which are the two biggies, and I support organizations. There are small steps as you move forward. The first one definitely is to get informed. The second one is to start figuring out how you and your family can start taking steps the other direction.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's very helpful. And I think as you gain more information, you just probably become more skilled in the things that you actually can change, right? It's when you're flying blind, when you don't know what the issues are, well, you don't know how to deal with them. You certainly, you don't even know what to think about them because you're on inform, bro.
Conclusion and appreciation
00:46:49
Speaker
That first step is something that I certainly need to take more seriously too, and your recommendations I think will be very helpful. Good. I'm glad. We appreciate your time today. Thanks for hopping on.
00:46:59
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Thank you for the invitation and thanks for engaging such an important topic with your audience. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We appreciate it. Enjoy the California weather. Okay. Thanks guys.