Serve God, Save the Planet

Note: I'm blogging again! I'm trying to write about what I read this summer. Here is the first installment.

I read this review by Andy Crouch and immediately ordered the book. Andy seems like a good guy, and since our relationship to the natural world is often on my mind, I thought it would be worth a try.

It was worth the few hours it took to read.

Briefly, Serve God, Save the Planet is a pragmatic argument for the "creation care" movement - the idea that part of our calling as believers is to be environmentally conscious. God created it, and gave us the task of maintaining it (see Genesis 1:28), and we have, according to the scientific community, done a fairly awful job of living up to the responsibility. As Sleeth puts it, "The earth is our ship . . . the only vessel available to carry humans through the ocean of space, and it is rapidly becoming unseaworthy" (16).

Sleeths own story is interesting by itself: he was a successful chief of staff at a New England hospital when he came to faith and quickly, with his wife and two children, began working to downsize their carbon footprint. They moved into a house the size of their former garage, cut their trash output by 80%, and their electricity bill to less than $500 a year.

The book reads more like a series of articles than a book-length argument. He starts with some theological/biblical considerations and moves on to practical concerns. He attacks our patterns of consumption, saying we have "too much stuff." He argues for six days of work (which accomplishes "something real, something positive, and stress[es] our muscles) and a day of rest in nature. He urges us to turn off our TVs and to raise our children to be servants, not consumers. He explains why his family is eating less and less meat (unsustainable agriculture). And so on.

When I read Crouch's review, I pictured Sleeth as a fairly conservative evangelical. But some of his opinions surprised me. He believes in global warming. He drives a hybrid and doesn't like SUVs. He is concerned about overpopulation, and so is in favor of broad distribution of (ethical) birth control. He does not own any pets. He hangs his clothes on the line. And then there is the endorsement of Brian McLaren on the front cover, which, because of the studies of my friend Maphet, raised red flags for me.

However, the heart of the book is not intellectual or theological arguments but, as Sleeth writes in the opening paragraphs, "Seeing a need and acting to meet it" (16). Indeed, Sleeth describes his very conversion experience as an end to his environmental hypocrisy. "Although I believed in the 'environmental cause', my belief did not translate into action," he writes, until he became a Christian (23).

And this is where the book met me this June. Belief should lead to action. I believe that God created the world to glorify himself and to sustain us. If our activities damage his creation, then our activities attack his glory and threaten our sustenance. If we cause the extinction of a species, then that is once less species that can glorify God, and one missing link in the labyrinthine web of life created by God to give us food, clothing, shelter, and pleasure. I believe that there is something special, even holy, about the created world, and that it glorifies God in a way cell phones and televisions and hammers do not.

I also believe that human use of the world since industrialization has tended toward outright abuse; that the world's resources are limited; that we 20th and 21st century Americans consume more than our share and are making it harder on people in developing nations to live; and furthermore that overconsumption is bad for our bodies and souls, aside from its effects on the earth.

Well, and what have I done to act on these beliefs? Aside from occasional recycling, gardening, and handwringing, not much.

Since reading Sleeth, however, Kelly and I have felt free to act on some of these beliefs. To date, we have:
- installed a dozen compact fluorescent bulbs
- begun recycling paper, cardboard, steel, aluminum, glass, and type 1 and 2 plastics at the East Ridge Recycle Center
- line dry our clothes (and diapers) more often
- turn lights and electronics off when they're not in use

It's not that we think these things are having an enormous impact on the environment. Every time I go shopping, I think about how much more energy they use to run a store and how much more waste they generate than we do at home. Instead, I think it is an issue of personal responsibility before God. Wastefulness is bad. Greed is bad. Stewardship - of not just our money, but our land and energy as well -- is good. Generosity toward poorer neighbors is good.

As an aside, this is why I don't think the answer lies in the kind of renovations Al Gore is said to be making to his house. So now his pool will be heated with solar electricity. Good! But the notion seems to be that we can have a more sustainable lifestyle without having to sacrifice any personal comforts. I don't believe it.

As a final note, I think one of Sleeth's most intriguing ideas comes up almost in passing in chapter three. "For the majority of us," he writes, "our relationship to the world is not one of caretaker or steward." We don't know the names of plants and animals as well as we do cars and trucks. We have not planted trees; we have not renewed anything. Instead, most of us only use the world. And in only using the world for our purposes, we have abused it. Just because we do not readily see the effects our actions have does not mean we are not responsible for them.

Which leads to a conclusion and a question. One, I'm convinced we must cut back on our consumption and be more grateful for what we have. Two, in an industrialized society where most of us are separated from our sustenance, how can we regain a sense of being the planet's caretakers?