sin

How do I live a good life?

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I’m going to hurt as many people and do as much damage as I can”, unless they are mentally deranged.  Usually we don’t even think about how we are going to live our day, but if we did we’d think something like “I’m going to try to be nice to people, to do my job well, to keep the environment safe”. 

Yet if we look back at the end of a day we are more than likely to think “I wasn’t very nice to X, I did that bit of work badly, I didn’t need to drive so fast”.   And most like as not, we would then justify our actions in our head to make us feel better, “He caught me at a bad moment,  I was late for lunch and wasn’t given time to do a good job,  that idiot in front of me was dawdling and I needed to get home.”  But we have let ourselves down.  We have not been the person we want to be, or could be.  And when we find ourselves doing the same thing every day we avoid thinking about it, and are likely to get angry if someone points it out to use.

There is a better way.  There is a way to be the people we want to be.  And it starts with understanding what’s going on.  An ancient letter written by Saul of Tarsus helps to enlighten us: 

Within us we have two ‘natures’.  We have our ‘sinful nature’ and we have our ‘spirit’.

Out sinful nature is that part of us which clamours ‘me, me, me’ all the time.  Its roots are in the animal instinct that successfully evolved us to survive when everything else was out to eat us, and where if we didn’t grab something for ourselves then something else would.  It is the instinct which leads a lion to defend its territory, the instinct which leads a gerbil to eat its young if there is not enough food, the instinct that leads the black widow spider to eat its mate.  It is the instinct that leads us to crave riches, to accumulate wealth beyond what we can ever use.  It is the instinct which says that the human beings in my tribe are more important than the human beings in yours.

And then there is our spirit.  Our spirit is revolted by the idea of eating our young; we know that we should not eat our babies.  It is our spirit which leads us to help and to make sacrifices for those who are suffering:  looking out for those shielding in the Covid crisis, giving to food banks, marching in Black Lives Matter rallies, campaigning to save the environment.  Our spirit calls us to love, and to goodness.

The ancient letter describes the consequences of following each ‘nature’.  Obeying the spirit leads to life and peace.  But giving in to our sinful nature leads to death; death of love, death of peace, death of goodness.  We become filled with anger, guilt, bitterness, self-pity, depression and despair.

We are slaves to whatever we choose to obey. But many are not willing to make that choice.  We flip flop between doing what we know is right and good, and giving in to our selfish ‘lusts’.  And we live in a constant state of dissatisfaction and guilt.  We strive for more wealth, but it doesn’t satisfy.  And at the same time we wish that injustice would go away; “how can we have food-banks in our country?”

Even if we were to say ‘I choose to obey the spirit, to love and to be good’ we would still find ourselves failing.  And at the end of the day we would be full of guilt and shame, and like as not we would give up.  “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. We need help. 

And there is help available, and hope.  If we have made that decision to obey the spirit, and we do sinful or selfish things then the ancient letter tells us that it is not us that does them, but the sinful nature within us.  It is just that our spirit is not strong enough.  We need to strengthen our spirit, to resist the temptations to give up.  And we can do that. 

The spirit within us is a bit like a battery, it has power but only a limited amount.  We need to plug into the mains.  We need to connect our spirit battery to the mains supply of the spirit that is called the Holy Spirit; an inexhaustible supply of love and goodness – God.   Then the power of sin can be broken.  And how do we connect?  We ask.  We speak with God; we pray.

And we also need to reinforce our decision by focusing on what is good, by giving honour and praise to goodness and love – resisting out sinful nature telling us not to be a ‘goody-goody’.  We remind ourselves of the importance and value of self-sacrificial love.  In a word, we need to worship love and goodness.

We may still do sinful things, but we can plug back in to the mains, pick ourselves up and start again.  We do that by ‘repenting’; an old fashioned word that means wishing that we hadn’t done it and committing to try again. Part of repenting is accepting and confessing that we’ve sinned.  Then we receive forgiveness for what we did wrong and be re-energised to follow the spirit again.  We know that we receive forgiveness because Jesus – God – said that we are to forgive, and so we know that he will forgive us.  And if we are particularly stubborn about accepting that love and goodness (God) would forgive us, then we look at Jesus’s crucifixion; he gave himself as the ritual sacrifice that the Jewish people believed carried off their sins.  And we look at his resurrection – showing that those sins had been dealt with.

When we deliberately choose to obey the spirit, it is empowering.  We do things that please the spirit, and it makes us feel alive.  It brings us peace.  We take joy in the good that we do, and we are able to actively love others.

Think of people you know.  Can you recognise any who are obeying and following the spirit?  It is written that “By their fruit they will be known”.   Fruit that you might look out for are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Wouldn’t we all like to be like that? 

We can be!

How should we respond to climate change? – A Christian perspective

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

The earth’s climate has seen dramatic change. Four and a half billion years ago, the earth was formed.  Its atmosphere had massively high levels of carbon dioxide, and there was very little oxygen.  Miraculously, life originated in this extremely hostile environment, and for the next one and a half billion years or so the cyanobacteria began cleaning up the atmosphere and enriching it with oxygen and allowing the formation of the protective ozone layer.

Over the next two billion years the beautifully designed process of evolution took those earliest forms of life and developed them into the staggering array of life that we take so readily for granted today.   Darwin hinted at the beauty of the process in the final paragraph of his book “the origin of species” when he wrote “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

So it is clear that man-made climate change will not destroy the planet, nor will it extinguish life.  But it will disrupt the extremely finely balanced ecosystem that sustains the human race.  That disruption will enlarge areas of local extinction of humans (desert regions), and in the extreme the whole planet could become unsuitable for human life.  Whilst wealthy countries are able to create local ‘microclimates’ with technology, for example air conditioning, people sentenced to live in the ‘natural’ local climate will inevitably suffer and may face extinction.  We already see an increase in suffering from natural disasters such as the cyclone Idai, and other increasingly destructive climactic events.

Greater parts of the world will become uninhabitable not just for humans, but for the cornucopia of other species who thrive in the environment that spawned us.  New species will emerge, but many of our present ‘friends’ will disappear.

The first book of the Bible describes how we were given the world to look after.  It is clear from the description above that if we don’t look after it then it will not be taken away from us, but we will be taken away from it.  This is reminiscent of the description of Adam and Eve being taken away from the Garden of Eden: the garden still thrives, but they were no longer in it.

God allows us to do things that harm us.  He doesn’t want us to, but he allows it.  Such action is called sin.  The basis of the Old Testament law was that God gave us rules that would bring us wellbeing, but our selfishness leads us to choose ways that harm ourselves and others.  Greed, lust, envy, and all the ‘sins’ damage both us and our neighbour.  Climate change is damaging to us and to our neighbour, and so the actions that leads to climate change are ‘sin’.  God permits us to damage the planet that sustains us, but it is not His will.  And disobeying the will of God is sin.  It is not good for us to do it!

There is not space here to fully discuss how we, through our actions are hurting God themselves, but we might empathise by imagining how we would feel if after giving a loved one a beautiful gift – perhaps a bunch of flowers,  we see them slowly trashing it, picking off one petal at a time.

So, how should we, as Christians, respond to the challenge of climate change?

First of all, we must recognise that it is real! (see for instance https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

Climate change is not the sin, but the consequence of our sin.  We need to reflect on what sins are the root cause of climate change.  Greed, selfishness, gluttony, envy will be high on our list, but a thorough examination of our lifestyle (in the context of and comparison with the other seven and a half billion people on the plant) must bring insight.

We then need to ‘repent of our sins and turn to God’.  There is surely enough evidence that we know that we are sinning, but we need to let the evidence sink into our hearts and truly convict us before we can honestly repent.  Until we reach that state then we might feel a little guilty but we will not have the power that comes from true repentance.  We need to be so convicted that we get on our knees, confess, and ask for forgiveness.

We must work with God to eliminate our sinful behaviour. We will need to be bold, counter-cultural and outrageously attractive in our approach.  We are Christ’s representatives, and our response has to mirror his character. And we must encourage our brothers and sisters to do the same.  Not only must we turn from our damaging practices, but we must do our utmost to relieve the suffering of those whose homes and livelihoods are ruined by the changing climate.  A radical change in our lifestyle must include loosening our grip on our wallets.

For example, we need to ask ourselves why we need to go to America, or China, or Australia for our holidays, for a speaking engagement, or for work.  99% of the world’s population cannot afford these luxuries – and yet many are closer to God than we are.  http://www.globalrichlist.com/

We have to challenge every decision of where we spend our money.  Should we always buy the cheapest, or should our buying decisions be made to minimise planetary damage?

We can make reparation for the damage caused by our personal sin.  We can ‘offset’ our carbon emissions, for example “Climate Stewards helps you to offset unavoidable carbon emissions by supporting community forestry, water filter and cookstove projects in the developing world”.  Some are beginning to do this for holidays or the odd long haul flight, but that is surely just lip-service.  Should we not examine our carbon emissions over our lifetime and offset them?  (see https://www.climatestewards.org/) At only £20 a tonne, many of us are in the privileged financial position to be able to do that.  There is real potential for tree planting projects to ‘buy some time’: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-could-buy-more-time-fight-climate-change-thought.  And churches can do the same, committing to offset past energy usage and adding carbon offset as a statutory spend each year.  It is much easier if we all make the commitment together.  Leadership from our Bishops can help here.

Those of us who live comfortably in brick houses in rural England can send financial assistance to those whose pole and dagga houses are swept away by floods or typhoon. (see https://www.christianaid.org.uk/emergencies/south-asia-floods-appeal)   As James says:  “Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, ‘Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well’—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?  So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”  Communication is so good that we see our ‘brother or sister who has no food or clothing’ daily on our TV’s or computer screens.

We will of course fail to live up to our aspirations, but we can try. And when we fail, God’s grace will free us to try again.

And finally a thought about our legacy.  The younger generation are worried.  Environmental issues are at the top of their concerns.  And the younger generation tend not to know Christ.  We have a wonderful opportunity to bring them hope, both for a world to live in and from a God who loves them.  That is a far better legacy than bequeathing a scorching earth that is hardly able to sustain human life.

Let us be at the forefront of change, not dragging our feet but leading the way to a sustainable future.