I heard a speaker a while back- a lawyer and professor at Pepperdine at the time (he's moved on). A famous author, He also spoke at churches (institutional Churches of Christ) about social and cultural issues, particular issues surrounding pro-life. He said that for years he'd been asking his students a series of questions, and their answers disturbed him.
HE asked if they could call Hitler evil. They mostly said no, that he was doing what he believed by his own lights, and they couldn't call evil. He said that starting in the 90s, if I recall correctly, it may have been the 80s, even his Jewish students started saying this.
He asked if you were in a situation where you could save a human infant or save two bengal tigers, which would you save? Overwhelmingly, his students would save the tigers. He said he clarified the question- imagine, he said, that this is simply not a question of extinction or any threat to the species at all- you could save a couple of tigers, or not, and it won't make any difference to the tiger population, or you coudl save a human baby? They chose the tigers.
People, he then started asking those same questions in the churches he visited (he was usually invited to teach the high school class), and he got the same answers. Being from Pepperdine, of course, most of his speaking was done outside the south. In case you don't know, down south, the institutional churches *generally* consider themselves conservative and everybody outside the south liberal (I stress that this is a generalization). So he said that he heard that a lot when he would tell Christians how much trouble their youth were in - 'well, that's because you go to liberal churches. Down south it'd be different.' So he went down south. And it wasn't any different. Christian youth admitted without blush or shame that they would rather save a couple of tigers than a human baby. I do not know if he made it to any noninstitutional churches for comparison, but my observations, having grown up and spent most of my adult life in one and then moved to the other is that the NI are great, but it seems that far too many are really only about 20 steps behind Insittutional groups, and they're only about 20 steps behind the cultural trend- and the cultural trend? It's on the DOWN escalator.
Keep this in mind as you read the rest:
This is one of those old, but new things. It's a bit of history. I came across it while looking for something else. You may have heard of Rahm Emmanuel's recent bit of 'trouble' because he called Democrats he didn't like 'REtarded,' and Sarah Palin (mother of a retarded child, as am I) is calling for his firing. I think firing is over the top, but I am appalled by the number of people, left and right, Christian and nonChristian, who use this word as a pejorative, and who defend Emmanuel's behavior. What does that have to do with the following article? James G. Watt was once forced out of his career because when the bean counters asked him about the make-up of a commmittee, he said "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." It was, oddly, the word 'cripple' that freaked everybody (on the left) out and made him a pariah. Anyway, I was looking this up to make sure I remembered it correctly, and I found this:
Click on this link for the whole article.
" A liberal theologian and active participant in the National Council of Churches, Barbara R. Rossing of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, published a book titled "The Rapture Exposed." In it she attacks a large segment of the Christian community after attributing to me erroneous motives and beliefs on the basis of a fragment of a sentence taken out of context. Rossing contends that Christians who believe in the Rapture presume that there is no need for stewardship of natural resources because of the expected return of the Lord. She writes: "Watt told U.S. senators that we are living at the brink of the end-times and implied that this justifies clear-cutting the nation's forest and other unsustainable environmental policies. When he was asked about preserving the environment for future generations, Watt told his Senate confirmation hearing, 'I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.' Watt's 'use it or lose it' view of the world's resources is a perspective shared by the Rapture proponents."
Rossing fictionalizes this whole scenario and neglects to finish the sentence, which was as follows: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."
Moyers, to his credit, has made a personal apology to me. But there has been no apology for the affront to major segments of the Christian community. Rather, the charges have escalated. On Feb. 14, the National Council of Churches issued a statement "in an effort to refute" what NCC theologians "call a 'false gospel' . . . and to reject teachings that suggest humans are 'called' to exploit the Earth without care for how our behavior impacts the rest of God's creation. . . . This false gospel still finds its proud preachers and continues to capture its adherents among emboldened political leaders and policymakers."
If such a body of belief exists, I would totally reject it, as would all of my friends. When asked who believed such error, where adherents to this "false gospel" might be found, the NCC turned to its theological sources, Moyers and a magazine called Grist, which had also apologized to me. I then contacted the chairman of the NCC task force and asked him about the "some people" who believe this false gospel and the "proud preachers" advancing this false gospel. He could not name such persons.
Be alert. I learned this lesson two decades ago -- the hard way. Never underestimate the political impact of the twisted charges by extreme environmentalists now advanced by the religious left to divide the people of faith."
Please read it all, and consider the source the next time you hear an accusation about Christians not caring about the environment. It ought to shock us that the NCC would make such a specific accusation against an entire group of people, but then be unable to name a single guilty person within that group.
I think this is still pertinent today because this sort of demonization, marginalizing, and argument by strawman still happens. On one AGW site I read (AGW is basically man-made global warming), they are advocating using the term "Pro-Polluters" as the insult of choice to marginalize those those who either don't believe or merely doubt that global warming is caused by humans, or don't believe cutting back carbon emissions is the best way to deal with 'saving the earth,' or, in fact, in any way deviate from the groupspeak.
And the sad thing is, Christians have been co-opted, deceived, and sometimes willingly participated in this ugliness because of their own political ideology and they use these same shameful strawman tactics- making up a position they then attribute to those who disagree with them so that they can then refute and belittle an argument of their own making.
NOBODY I know thinks pollution is acceptable. But I have heard repeatedly, again, shockingly, from CHRISTIANS, that those who think AGW is a crock really just want to keep spewing pollutants. That is intellectually dishonest, uncharitable, and deeply unbecoming of a Christian.
NOT believing in AGW, NOT believing that reducing carbon based emissions is the most effective way to be good stewards of thsi environment or to get clean air and water is simply NOT the same as being 'pro-pollution.' In fact, that is a dishonest, underhanded, nasty tactic, and it's a grievious thing when even Christians (real Christians, not the groups mentioned above) are guilty of it. Beware.
Those of us who homeschool think we do not have to worry about this, but we forget that our fellow believers are being seeped in this extreme environmentalism that is deeply anti-human at its core.
I'm not sure that I recall having seen or heard that full poem before. But that might be because I haven't read Alice in Wonderland.
:) Our two year old LOVES this poem!
Interesting. =)
