The Church, and Methodism in particular, has long been active on matters of social and environmental justice. We have heard Jesus’ message of good news to the poor. We understand that being Christian means getting involved and making scarifies of our time, money and other resources to help bring heaven into earth. However climate change is an issue that calls for a slightly different approach.
We still need prayers, time and awareness but to combat climate change we need to look inward to our patterns and habits, we need to look at our own souls.
Let’s take an example like the genocide in Darfur. This is widely held to be caused by an increasingly unpredictable climate, caused by our greedy lifestyles. The Christian response has been – and still is - to pray more, to give more, to write to politicians more and to send mission teams. All this is important, but what’s missing is that the primary cause of a problem like Darfur, is not in Sudan, but here. It’s caused by our carbon emissions. In fact, you could go one step further and say it’s caused in our hearts, by our greed and consumption, what Christians call sin.
Human-caused climate change may be a new problem, but its central cause isn’t – a lack of humility. We all, in the UK, need to use less of the precious resources we find in creation. This is so different to the culture of more, bigger and faster we are increasingly a part of.
It is our unseen, unquestioned life practices that are causing flooding in Bangladesh, hurricanes in New Orleans, and droughts that lead to war in Darfur. We don’t see the links, partly because it’s too uncomfortable. In order to act effectively on an issue like climate change: the church doesn’t need to do more, it needs to do less. We need to slow down, rekindle community and stop assuming we have a divine right to fly, drive and consume food from all over the world.
This is difficult, challenging stuff. It’s not easy to look at the things we enjoy and face the loss of giving them up. Fortunately, Jesus is again one step ahead of us. He’s provided us with a community – the church. This is to keep each other in check, to challenge each other too. Let’s get the Methodist circuit involved in this, making a difference, while also being the church we are called to be.
