Hope in God's Future

It is easy to get frustrated at the churches' lack of urgency about climate change.  I have raised the issue a few times in ecumenical meetings and the sense I get is that many do not see the relevance of climate change to ecumenism or indeed church life in general.

It is most encouraging to find the Joint Public Issues Team of the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches have produced a report Hope in God’s Future: Christian Discipleship in the Context of Climate Change.

The report is encouraging because:

1. It recognises the implications of climate change for the world's poor, future generations and the non-human environment.
2. The need for repentance (the photo is Moh Tj's), even for Christians to repent, is acknowledged.
3. The institutional nature of the problem is also acknowledged.  People in general benefit from the behaviours that generate the gases that cause climate change but individuals feel helpless to make any difference.
4. Whilst the report describes actions churches can take to reduce emissions, and how they can support their members, the need to make a contribution in the wider world is also sown to be important.

Yesterday, I said we need to be born again again and the report similarly urges repentance.  A recent post dwelt upon being born again, and the need of one man with much invested in the status quo, to let go of behaviour that separates him from God and embrace a new way of living.  The Greek word for repent is metanoia and means literally to turn around, to turn your back upon the old ways and to face up to a new call from God.

But is it biblical for those who have been born again to be called once more to repentance?  Of course it is.  Wesley knew that it was possible to fall again.  His elite classes were those who had fallen again.  They were elite because they had learned humility.  (Some contrast to those sects that teach the elite are the morally superior who will be raptured, leaving the rest of us nominal Christians to the mercy of the devil.)

St Paul wrote at great length about falling again.  He knew those who were justified continued to sin.  The question has always been how those who fall again can be called to repentance and reassured they were still saved. 

Wesley wrote at great length of sanctification, the lifetime change that happens as the Christian learns to love.  His complex system of classes and bands, were there to encourage Christians to work on their lives and become holy.

Hope in God's Future is right to dwell upon repentance for another reason.  The problem is not out there in the environment, it is in the human heart.  The problem is not a scientific one, although science may be able to address some problems.  It is in our relationships with each other, with the non-human environment and with God.  If we cannot address this we cannot address the physical problems we face. 

The complex interplay of millions of personal decisions, creates a nexus of powerthat is outside anyone's control.  It is a power based upon our corporate idolatry, our attempts to put ourselves and our obsessions before God.  We believe the power of Jesus on the cross has defeated these powers.  The cross itself was a physical manifestation of the power of Rome.  The image of God crucified should be sufficient to help us see the reality of what is around us.

The power to overcome the causes of climate change is with the Body of Christ, the marginalised few who live for the world and not for themselves.  They live for the world in the power of Christ crucified.  It seems to me it is the ecumenical movement that has the potential to make this possibility into a reality.