Care of Creation @ Urbana09

So what does a toothbrush and renewing of the mind have to do with each other? Plenty. Stay with me a minute and I’ll explain.

In Romans 12, Paul give us some excellent advice about what to do with our knowledge of God and His ways when we become Christ followers and when we listen to what the Holy Spirit tells us as we go about our daily lives.

Paul says that we are to “renew our minds” so that we can “test and approve what God’s will is”. In other words, Paul is telling us that as believers and followers of Christ, we have to start to think differently than we used to think if we are going to fulfill the purposes that God has for us.

Most of us can easily see how this applies (or should apply) to our daily lives. For example, most of us know that we need to think differently and renew our minds when it comes to loving our neighbor. We realize that anger, impatience and prejudice are examples of “unrenewed” ways of thinking and, although we would like to get it right all the time, we know that the right thing to do is to consistently and constantly try to put this “renewed mind” into practice as it applies to our daily lives.

Around us, we can see some evidence that results from “renewed thinking” – things like global and local missions, neighborhood food-banks, and neighborhood outreach are such examples. If you are working on changing your aggressive driving habits, if you are burdened to care more for your neighbors or you are convicted when facing dishonesty at work or cheating at school then you know what I mean by “renewed thinking”.

“But what about that jump from renewing your mind to a toothbrush. What’s the connection?” you’re saying.

OK, here goes.

The other day, my wife purchased two new toothbrushes (no … not the electric kind!). That in itself, is usually no big deal. However, these were toothbrushes that I had never seen before. In the package, each standard toothbrush was packaged with three replaceable heads. That’s right; the package came with one complete handle and three heads. When one wore out, you popped it off of the handle and popped in a new one. Change the head, keep the handle because the handle doesn’t wear out. It’s a small thing but a big illustration of how thinking differently can help us use God’s resources a bit more wisely.

I looked at these toothbrushes and it didn’t take me long to realize that someone who cared about the world we live in stretched their mind a bit and thought differently. It’s probably not too far from the truth to thing that sometime during the design of this product, someone said “Hey, what we have been doing just isn’t right. We need to do something different. We need to think about what we are making here and make it better”.

From this, it was a small jump for me to realize the connection between thinking differently, renewing our minds and caring for God’s creation.

First of all, thinking differently is a good thing. In this case, it is an illustration of the first thing we are going to have to do if we are going to care for God’s creation. Thinking differently means that we have to look around us at all the habits we’ve acquired (for example, how we consume, how much we consume, how we treat the wilderness) and start to think differently about them. (And yes, it’s true that old habits die hard!) But thinking differently needs to go beyond that. See, the problem with thinking differently is that it can be a one- time action. For real change, we have to take this one time action, nurture it and grow it to make permanent changes in how we look at God’s creation. These permanent changes can only come through renewal – that is by “making new” our minds so that we act in new ways that are driven by what we believe and how we think about creation.

See, that’s why Paul didn’t tell us to “change what we do” but he told us to “renew” or “make new”. He wasn’t telling us to change our actions; he was telling us to act bigger – to renew our minds. What Paul was talking about is change that is permanent and long lasting. He was telling us that renewal has a major affect not only on us but on the world and the people around us.

It’s this permanent change that is the type of change each of us needs to deeply ponder and consider if we are going to eventually change how we care for the gift of creation that God created and gave us.

In a way, I am hopeful that the message of thinking differently about where we live is starting to get thorough to people. Small things like “environmentally kind” toothbrushes, “green” cleaning products, healthy, locally grown foods and paper coffee cups in themselves are not going to save this planet. They are, however making inroads into making restless that long suppressed part of the mind that says “resources are unlimited and I don’t have to care about the world around me”.

I am also confident that Christ followers can be real leaders in this area as they renew their minds and hearts. After all, from your minds and hearts come actions. And those actions — consistently living out what you believe – whether it is related to loving your neighbor or caring for creation – becomes a witness to those who don’t know God and the gift that he gave us in His son and His creation.

If you’re thinking about environmental missions either as a part-time or a full time career, it might be worth adding to your thinking, a bit about cities and how they play a part in the future condition of creation.

Just a quick glance at the world tells us that most societies seem to divide where people live into two areas. People either live in a city or they live in a rural area. That’s true (except for the ‘in-between’ place called the ‘burbs which, for the most part, are just young cities.)

What is also obvious if you look around is the impact that cities have on creation — which in turn has an huge impact on the quality of life for the people who live in them.

The basic thinking is that cities can’t be “country”. They are mutually exclusive. You can understand (not necessarily agree with) this thinking based on the fact that most cities are built by altering an area that was once a rural landscape into something that is “unnatural” (un ‘nature’ al). We push aside God’s creation and put something of our own in its place.We then pipe in pieces of creation (water, food and fuel) to replace what we pushed aside and pipe out the stuff we don’t want (trash and sewage).

For those who can pay what it costs to have access to those resources, all is well. For those who can’t pay or who are prevented from benefitting from these resources the city presents a whole host of ‘quality of life’ and justice problems.

There are many people today who are starting to challenge the notion of “it’s either city or rural”. They understand the benefits of people living close to one another but, as believers, can’t reconcile what cities do to the quality of life of those who are poor and can’t reconcile the effect that cities have on creation.

So what to do? There is a movement on now to seriously re-think how our cities are built. The view is that cities should and can be tightly integrated with the environment and the creation that was once pushed aside when the city was built. They believe that creation can be woven back into the fabric of the city and as this is done, the quality of life for all people living in the city will be improved.

Here are some examples of how this is being done.

Community Gardens

There are many cities around the US and the world who are starting to bring agriculture back from the “rural areas” into the cities. These cities are taking under-used or unused land, (there are also churches using their land), reviving it and planting gardens on it. The result of these efforts are that fresh food (at very reasonable prices) is brought back to families who need it. In some cases, the family consumes all it produces and in some cases, the enough is produced to re-sell at a community market. Related to this movement is the movement toward green roofs and the development of urban “open space” such as the recently opened Highline park in New York City.

These community gardens work to bring the neighborhood together as well as providing environmental education and appreciation opportunities to both the young and the old.

Re-Architecture That Imitates God’s Creation

Biomimicry is the practice of adopting what God has already perfected in Nature to buildings in cities. A good example of this is roofs that are shaped liked tropical leaves that collect and funnel water. Roofs like this allow drinking water to be collected and stored and have the benefit of reducing polluted runoff and collecting water for use in community gardens. Clean drinking water is critical to health and quality of life so building houses and buildings to adopt what God already invented makes a lot of sense.

Transportation Alternatives

Providing low cost and and non-polluting (or at least less polluting) transportation is critical to those who have to get from one place to another to work. Many cities are starting to push aside their ‘car-centric’ world and working to become more bicycle friendly. They are also encouraging people and providing training so that those with limited means can learn how to maintain their own bicycles. The reasoning is that getting to a job is as important as creating the job in the first place.

So… what does this all have to do with environmental missions? The point here is that in a lot of cases, environmental missions:

1. … does not need to be relegated to rural areas. The environment of our cities provides a whole host of opportunities for missions and for improving the quality of someones life.
2. … does not have to be overly complex and resource intensive. There is opportunity to work to repair creation through neighborhood projects such as community gardens, open space parks and restoring urban streams (a process called daylighting).
3. … can be an integral part of short-term or long-term missions and is a perfect way to build a “missions heart” in church youth groups or adults looking to help those in their own communities.

Think about it. Environmental missions that restores the land and people’s lives at the same time. Opportunities here in the USA and overseas.

What, then are we waiting for.

What does it mean to be “trapped in place”  and what does it have to do with missions?

If you are living in the Western “2/3″ world (as opposed to the “third world”), you are probably blessed an abundance of choices. Within limits (some imposed by God, some financial, and some imposed by family requirements or tradition) you have the option to make choices about where to live, what college you attend, what kind of work you want to do and even how you want to serve God.

You even have the blessing of choice in the little things — like what you’re going to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

In our western lifestyle, we sometimes have so many choices that we “freeze up” and say ‘ HELP –  I don’t know what to do!’ (If you don’t believe me, look at the breakfast cereal isle in your local supermarket some time!) and sometimes, (continue reading…)