Creation Care Mom

These are the penultimate commandments for Christians. There are so many references throughout scripture that tell us to love our neighbor. A few to check out: Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31-33, Romans 13:8-10. If you’ve been around the sun a more than a few times, you know that living it out poses its own sort of challenges.

It all begins in Genesis with the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Their disobedience fractured/damaged our relationship with God, with each other, and with all the non-human organisms we share this planet with. This damage remains, even after Christ’s coming, and only through the Holy Spirit can we attempt to redeem all those broken relationships. In a time period, where fear and anger against others’ is stoked for the sake of power, it can be even more difficult to live counterculturally with love for everyone.

With that being said, one of the challenges that can occur is HOW. How can I be a good neighbor? What actions make the most difference? How is loving my “neighbor” overseas different than loving my actual physical neighbor?

Now many a book and blog has been written on the how. It can be looked at for several angles, from immigration, to poverty reduction, to simple acts of kindness, and hospitality. But my specialty is creation care, so that is how we are going to look at this.

A lot of times when this commandment is discussed we focus on “if I were that person how would I want to be treated”. So if I was living on an island that was slowly disappearing because of sea level rise, what would I hope people are doing about it? If I lived on subsistence agriculture in Africa, but the weather extremes were increasing my crop losses, what would I hope the world would be doing about it? If I lived next to the interstate in Austin, TX and heard it was going to be widened, increasing the number of vehicles everyday, whose pollution I would breathe, what would I hope for? In the United States, we can feel somewhat isolated from climate breakdown, extreme weather, and food insecurity because of our general wealth. So it becomes even more important to really sit with being in the other person’s shoes.

Sea level rise is attributed to increasing planetary temperature. Glaciers across the planet and major ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting as temperatures rise. This rise is driven by the huge amounts of greenhouse gases that we are releasing into the atmosphere through our manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural systems. A few feet of sea level rise could put whole islands underwater. So for those living in island nations, their hope is that we recognize the harm we are doing to them and our planet and change course before they become refugees with no home to return to.

Scientists along with rapidly developing AI tools are continuing to refine attribution science. This is how we come to know what weather events are worsened or even impossible without the climate change that has already occurred. It’s no surprise that being a subsistence farmer anywhere in the world has always been at the whims of the weather. However, attribution science is allowing us to investigate how much worse it is now than in the past. We can see how the weather dice have been supercharged against us. This leaves subsistence farmers battling between the extremes of not enough what and absolutely too much water, between droughts and floods. If this was your brother or sister or mother, how would you want them to be treated?

In the United States, we have to reckon with the historical ramifications of segregation. This includes how and where we chose to build interstate highway projects. I-35 goes through the heart of downtown Austin. It’s width, plus the on and off ramps, and the parallel frontage roads essentially created a wall dividing the city in half. It probably doesn’t surprise you that at one point that divide was also a racial one. This section of I-35 is in the beginning stages of a massive expansion project which is a bad idea for climate and for people. Widening highways rarely reduces congestion and usually make the commute worse because of induced demand. A projected 50% increase in traffic will increase the pollution around the highway impacting childhood asthma rates, lung cancer and other cardio and respiratory diseases. More cars=more CO2 emissions making it harder for Austin, the state of Texas, the USA, and the world to meet our carbon dioxide reduction targets. Finally, it will displace businesses and homes of many. You can read more here. Imagine living in this corridor. How would you feel? What change would you like to see?

There are many other scenarios I could speak to. Imagine your cousin develops cancer living next to a refinery. Your aunt’s home is swallowed by the earth because the permafrost melted. You’re out on the water as a fire quickly sweeps in and burns your whole community to the ground. Everyday, our neighbors are living with the consequences of the brokenness of our relationship with the planet we live on as well as our refusal to change our own habits and behaviors out of love for them.

So what will you do? How will you love your neighbors both near and far through acts of creation care? What sacrifices are you willing to make? What behaviors are your willing to change?

Would love to hear from you in the comments. Please share your ideas and reflections.