Globally green, spiritually grey

By Paul Schratz

The way Green plans are flying fast and furiously these days, one could be forgiven for thinking we’ve suddenly solved all the previous problems that commanded our attention.

It seems only yesterday that health care was the No. 1 Topic on People’s Minds, as determined by pollsters to an accuracy of two per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Suddenly health care has been supplanted by ecology, with everything from fixing global warming to imposing carbon taxes now part of the must-do list on every politician’s agenda.

No argument here that concern for the earth’s natural environment is not a laudable objective. We are called to stewardship, which includes responsible use of the gifts God gives us, including everything vegetable, mineral, and animal.

As with most examples of fanaticism, the problem is not so much with the goal, but with excess passion for the goal. Just as it did with health care, the difficulty arises when concern for an important public objective starts becoming an act of worship, as is quickly becoming the case with environmentalism.

Indeed, in a Page 1 article recently, one national newspaper headline asked whether environmentalism had become “the new religion,” complete with its own rituals (recycling), scripture (the Stern environmental report), and prophets (Al Gore).

Frank Wagner, who has been something of a prophet himself as a Vancouver candidate for the Christian Heritage Party, was prompted to ask why the media seem to confine themselves to such a restrictive concept of environment when addressing this topic.

While the environment is certainly a critical issue, how we actually define environment can be very different for various people at various stages of life, Wagner observed in his January newsletter entitled Environmental Safety.

Example: for an infant waiting to be born, the environment consists of the womb. Traditionally a safe place, it has now become a hostile environment, with one abortion for every three births, not counting the non-surgical abortions through contraceptives and the like. “In other words one out of four children gets out alive,” says Wagner. “For the other three it’s the most terrifying home on earth, and also their last.”

Wagner points out that while threats from global terrorism are real, the greatest danger we all face is that of spiritual death, which ironically has much in common with physical mortality.

Our wanton disregard for life on earth in many cases is putting our spiritual life in great jeopardy, he says. Abortion threatens the unborn; euthanasia threatens those who are suffering from illness and disability; embryonic stem cell destruction threatens the newly conceived; and all these acts threaten our souls.

The world is certainly an important thing, but it’s not the only thing.

Or as Wagner puts it, global warming is nothing compared to the temperature of hell.