During a “climate criss” lecture at SEBTS last year, Jonathan Moo, an Associate Professor of New Testament and Environmental Studies at Whitworth University, shared his extreme understandaing of “creaton care” for the Christian, telling students they ought to buy carbon credits if they take any flights.
He recommended giving money to Climate Stewards USA, a project run by “A Rocha,” a nonprofit where he’s on the board, and then tells them “in order to be faithful to the gospel, we must care well for God’s creation. It’s not an option.”
“I have an argument this evening, which is pretty obvious I guess from my somewhat perhaps controversial title. That is, that in order to be faithful to the gospel, we must care well for God’s creation. It’s not an option. It’s not just something we might add on to lots of other programs we might do. It’s not even just a clever strategy for evangelism, although I do consider it one of the ways in which faithful Christian witness might must be lived out in our time, and one that many people around us, many of my students are longing to see the church do more fully.
And the reasons why this is absolutely vital and to be woven into all that we do and proclaim, is first and foremost, because it is part of the Gospel. It is part of what it is to love God and neighbor. If we love God we will care for the world that God created and declared good. If we love our neighbor, we cannot help but care for the world of which they are part. So, to love God and neighbor is to care well for the creation.”
He continues:
I think most of us don’t need simply another list of things that that might look like, or a new set of programs to add to all the other things we already do. We need to have our eyes lifted again to the mountains. Our eyes focused again on the gospel to see again the world afresh that we might do that.
h/t @wokepreachertv
