Rupert’s Blog

New Earth and Carbon Emissions March 1, 2007

I wasn’t there. I was having a great time with some of the students from our church, away for a weekend praying, learning, walking and talking (and there might have been a bit of wine tasting and poker playing thrown in for good measure). So I wasn’t there when church got a little controversial.

A mate of mine was speaking, part of a series on money, on how we spend our money in an environmental way, that honours the fact that we are stewards of creation, with a mandate to tend and care for the world that we live in. All fine and dandy, until he asked if there were any questions at the end of his talk, and a debate ensued about (amongst other things) whether it is OK to fly all around the world to preach the gospel … would the souls saved justify the carbon emitted? I may well be trivialising the debate (I WASN’T there!), but it did get me thinking …

Meanwhile, across the pond, Jerry Falwell was preaching in his church (rather larger than ours … and I WASN’T there either) that global warming is a myth, designed to distract the church from our real task:

“Further, there’s no need for the Church of Jesus Christ to be wasting its time gullibly falling for all of this global warming hocus pocus. We need to give our total focus to the business of reaching this world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and stop running down meaningless rabbit trails that get our focus off of our heavenly purpose.“

As I touched on the a previous post, how we understand the end times does influence what we see being important now. I think we have spiritualised the gospel, making the goal “heaven” and the only thing that really matters is: our ticket there. So, as Falwell states, the most important thing we can do now is evangelism. Even if we do see a mandate to care for creation, it is still second best to seeing souls saved. In the end, God will destroy the earth, and create a new heaven and a new earth, or so many have believed.

There is another stream of theological understanding: God is not going to create a new heaven and new earth, but to restore the one we have now. Restore to be perfect, without the ravages and consequences of sin. The Old gives way to the New as God restores the whole cosmos.

There are many reasons to favour this understanding. For example, the Greek word for New in 2 Pet 3:13 and Rev 21:1 is not the word ‘neos‘ [meaning new in time or origin] but ‘kainos‘ [meaning new in nature or in quality], implying that the current world won’t be destroyed and a new one created in its place, but the one we have now will be renewed. NT Wright holds this view, and there is great paper available here to download, written by Michael Goheen, Professor at Trinity Western University, British Columbia, Canada, and author of The Drama of Scripture.

Goheen sees this understanding really does matter. If we believe in in a Brand New Heaven & Earth then our main mssion is getting people that ticket to heaven. However, if we see God restoring our whole cosmos, and our new life will be to live on this restored earth, then our mission “is to be, speak, and do the good news. If redemption is the restoration of the whole of our creational life, then our mission is to embody the good news that every part of creational life, including the public life of our culture, is being restored. It will mean being good news in our care for the environment, international relations, economic justice, business, media, scholarship, family, and law.“

I wasn’t there on Sunday. So why don’t we discuss here: does souls saved justify carbon emissions?