My Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster reflects on the challenge of climate change, in light of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is taking place in Glasgow for the next two weeks.
You can listen here, or read the text below.
The Challenge of Climate Change
The first Christians believed they were living in the ‘last days’. They thought Christ would return soon and that the world as they knew it would end. The harrowing scenes recorded in the book of Revelation signaled an expected ‘end times’ of death and destruction.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is taking place in Glasgow for the next two weeks, is a stark reminder of present-day predictions of death and destruction. These warnings are based on decades of scientific research that tell us that potentially life-destroying climate change has been caused by human activity. Only with urgent action can we avoid catastrophe.
Christian disregard for the environment is rooted in centuries-long abuse of passages in Genesis, where God instructs people to ‘subdue’ the earth and have ‘dominion’ over other living creatures. An alternative Christian tradition of living in harmony with nature, exemplified by Saint Francis of Assisi, has struggled to gain ascendancy.
I grew up in the United States, where the best-selling book of the 1970s was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. Lindsey claimed that Revelation prophesized present-day events, making Christ’s return imminent.
Lindsey’s ideas were dramatized in programmes produced by American tele-evangelists, which my mother tuned into on Sunday mornings as we got ready for church. It’s well I remember apocalyptic scenes of contemporary wars and famines, accompanied by dramatic voiceovers of passages from Revelation.
President Ronald Reagan accepted these interpretations of Scripture and believed that Revelation’s fiery prophecies about the end of the world included nuclear destruction.
Such beliefs foster a fatalistic perspective about the end of the world and have contributed to careless attitudes about environmental protection, including climate change denial.
But for the world leaders gathered in Glasgow, it’s clear what needs to be done: they must enact policies that enable the world to ‘repent’ in the original meaning of the word, which includes changing how we live. Let’s pray that they meet the challenge.