The front cover of
Planetwise
(Photo: © Inter-Varsity Press/CMS)
As information fatigue about climate change abounds and some argue ecology is merely hype and green taxes, Dave Bookless reminds us that the future of the planet is one of the biggest challenges we will ever face.
Climate change is a symptom of a far bigger problem, a much deeper sickness in society, says CMS environmentalist Dave Bookless.
In the foreword to his new book
Planetwise
, we’re reminded that the world produces two million tonnes of rubbish every day.
Half a billion tonnes of oil are spilled every year through accidents, dumping and leakage.
Six-and-a-half million tonnes of refuse, including toxic and non-biodegradable waste, are discharged into the world’s oceans.
Dave Bookless
(Photo: © CMS)
Against that horrific environmental backdrop, Dave argues that our entire lifestyles need challenging but acknowledges that our reading his text is likely to be merely a starting-point.
“At the heart of it is this: as human beings we have got our relationship with the planet all wrong. It is not just that populations are growing and energy-hungry lifestyles increasing, but we have been living in a way that simply cannot continue.”
He reminds us that the environment is created by God, not the New Age movement, and the earth is God’s good creation.
He’s unequivocal that this earth is our God-given home and “the Creator cares about his house-guests’ behaviour”.
He’s adamant that caring for the earth and its creatures is a core part of what all Christians are called to.
And he underlines that our culture — especially our Western, urban, industrial, consumer culture — has surrounded us so effectively that we’ve failed to notice the plain message of the Bible and our place within it; there’s a huge amount about God’s dealings with the earth that we’ve tended to overlook.
Now, at last, he writes, we’re being forced to think again as we face up the damage our way of life has been causing this planet.
So the book asks us to look more closely at the story of God and the whole of creation.
Bookless cites Romans 1.20: “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
If we believe that the universe is interdependent and relational because it was made by a relational God, then it follows that our lifestyle choices have implications and consequences for the natural world — the Book of Genesis, Dave argues, militates against any purely human-centred world-view. Until we acknowledge that we are fragile, earthly animals, even though made in God’s own image, we cannot really know ourselves.
Our choices also have implications and consequences for other people; our contributions to pollution and greed and living how we want, whatever the cost, affect the living conditions and lack of choice of people in impoverished contexts in developing nations.
Bookless advances the view that we have damaged the world not only through inadequate information or poor decisions, but through selfishness. We make a spiritual choice to be selfish and say no to treating the earth as if it really is the Lord’s.
The hope,
Planetwise
re-articulates, is that when Jesus died on the Cross, he did so to restore all the relationships that had been broken by sin — the triangle of relationships between God, people and creation.
So, caring for creation is not insidious, irrelevant or incidental to Christian faith, but intrinsic to the good news of the Gospel. If we are convinced of this truth, Bookless emphasises, it cannot remain in our heads but must start to impact on our lives.
The rest of the book explores how we are to live this out in our discipleship, our worship, our lifestyles and our ‘mission’.
To order one or more copies of
Planetwise
from CMS, visit our online shop now.