Vanguard Church - Bob Robinson: 2009

12/31/2009

12/30/2009

Cornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

Final Post in an Assessment of the Cornwall Alliance’s “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”

After the environmental movement had gained momentum in the 1970s with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Acts, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, economic conservatives and business leaders sought to fight back. With the election of business-friendly Ronald Reagan, whose glib dismissal of Redwood Trees was already legendary from when he ran for governor of California, those who dismissed environmental causes had their man. Reagan appointed James Watt as the Secretary of Interior, who was clearly antagonistic to the environmentalists of his day. Watt was a devout member of the Assemblies of God, and embraced a strict dispensationalist theology that underscored the return of Christ and the destruction of this world. “Watt periodically mentioned his Christian faith when discussing his approach to environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, ‘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’” (Wikipedia). Watt had an extremely low regard for the Endangered Species Act. He sold oil and gas leases in wilderness areas. He sought to end the Land and Water Conservation Fund. He supported the development and use of federal lands by commercial interests. He cut the government’s regulations protecting the environment.

It is no secret that Ronald Reagan was the darling of the Religious Right, the politically conservative wing of evangelical Christianity. The Religious Right was unable to differentiate between social issues and economic issues, buying the entire Reagan Republican political philosophy hook-line-and-sinker. It became an expectation that if you were an evangelical Christian and wanted to support religious freedom to practice your faith, support family values, stop abortion, and stem other societal sins, you were also pro-big business and pro-free market capitalism.

But other evangelicals called this into question. Ron Sider’s landmark book, Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger was gaining a wide reading among many thinking evangelicals.

It’s no coincidence that Sider (along with other key evangelical leaders) was instrumental in the formation of the Evangelical Environmental Network (a network of individuals and organizations, including World Vision, World Relief, InterVarsity, the International Bible Society, and the American Scientific Affiliation).

As I said before, there is an ongoing debate in American evangelicalism concerning global Warming. I believe it is a good thing to have this in-house debate. I said, “It forces us to re-examine the Bible, our presuppositions about a Christian Worldview, and how all this has a major bearing on the issues of our contemporary life.” The Cornwall Alliance loves to banter about that term: “Christian Worldview.” But, as I’ve studied their theology, I have concluded that their definition of “Christian Worldview” is a syncretism of biblical theology and American free-market capitalism.

They state,

“A clean environment is a costly good; consequently, growing affluence, technological innovation, and the application of human and material capital are integral to environmental improvement.” (p. 9 of A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor)

In other words, they believe that the best way to improve the environment is through economic means. The main way to be good stewards of God’s creation is for more humans to participate in free-market capitalism. The Cornwall Alliance believes that the worst thing for third-world countries is the current battle against global warming. The best thing to do for the world’s poor, according to them, is to have them develop capitalist free markets. The main way that they can do this is through the burning of fossil fuels so that they can have the electricity to grow in affluence, technology, and capital. So, for the Cornwall Alliance, it's an either/or proposition: either follow the folly of ending global warming (since humans are not really at fault and the temperature of the world is cyclical) or care for the poor. It's that simple. The opportunity costs involved in reducing man-made emissions is too great.

“Overall economic policy toward the poor should focus on promoting economic development, including making low-cost energy available, through which they can lift themselves out of poverty. It should not focus on wealth redistribution, which fosters dependency and slows development.” (p. 4)

Cornwall Alliance points to data that shows that as a nation’s technology rises, so does its pollution. But as the nation gets wealthier, the pollution issue is always handled.

“Historical data show that as societies move from subsistence agriculture to low-tech industry, pollution emissions rise—yet the benefits to health and longevity outweigh the risks posed by the pollution, as demonstrated by rising life expectancy and standard of living during that period. Soon, however, the added wealth and higher technological levels brought on by economic development enable the society to afford to reduce pollution emissions even while attaining still higher standards of living.” (p. 10)

The assumption of the Cornwall Alliance is that laissez-faire capitalism will ultimately benefit the environment when left to its own devices. They actually believe that “the invisible hand” in which they have so much faith (i.e., the self-regulation of the marketplace because of the mixture of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand) will also take care of the environment. This is such a fallacious premise that it’s laughable. It is only when the people, represented by government, regulates polluters that the environment is cared for. The anti-regulation agenda of Cornwall Alliance is as much a “Reagan Worldview” as it is a “Christian Worldview.”

The Cornwall Alliance states several things toward which they “aspire.” Let’s take a look at some of these aspirations (p. 14 of A Renewed Call to Truth).

We aspire to a world in which human beings care wisely and humbly for all creatures, first and foremost for their fellow human beings, recognizing their proper place in the created order.

As we already discussed, this is a truncated understanding of the imago Dei, reducing it to merely dominion over the rest of creation. This kind of theology all too easily leads to the exploitation of the environment and the animal world for our own selfish desires.

We aspire to a world in which objective moral principles—not personal prejudices—guide moral action.

Yes, that would be great, if any of us were capable of this. My point here is this: the Cornwall Alliance is just as guilty of allowing personal prejudices to guide their moral action.

We aspire to a world in which right reason (including sound theology and the careful use of scientific and economic analysis) guides the stewardship of human and ecological relationships. Abusing the creation is sin—an offense against the Creator. But abuse of creation must be defined by Biblical law, not by shifting, subjective personal or societal preferences.

Yes, that is definitely the goal. And I thank God that they recognize that abusing the creation is sin. But my point is this: The Cornwall Alliance’s interpretation of “Biblical law” has been proven to be very “subjective.”

We aspire to a world in which liberty as a condition of moral action is preferred over government-initiated management of the environment as a means to common goals.

This sounds to me like it could be a motto written on a sign at one of this summer’s Tea Parties. Libertarians prefer “liberty” over “government-initiated management.” This is certainly a legitimate political point-of-view, but it is not something that can legitimately be central to THE Christian Worldview.

We aspire to a world in which the relationships between stewardship and private property are fully appreciated, allowing people’s natural incentive to care for their own property to reduce the need for collective ownership and control of resources and enterprises, and in which collective action, when deemed necessary, takes place at the most local level possible.

Again, I have to ask this question: Does this sound like American ideology or Christian doctrine? The Bible is not a book concerned primarily with private property rights. It is not a capitalist manifesto against communal ownership of resources. In fact, the ancient Israelites had a very communal understanding of ownership, and the Year of Jubilee was instituted by God to guarantee that market-induced sin could only go on for 50 years. The early Christians were not so concerned with private property rights. “There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. (Acts 4:34-35). This passage from the New Testament, when read in juxtaposition with the Cornwall Alliance’s position against “wealth redistribution,” is striking. I’m not saying that the Cornwall Alliance cannot take this position; I’m just saying that this is more ideological than theological, and we should say so.

We aspire to a world in which widespread economic freedom—which is integral to private, market economies—makes sound ecological stewardship possible for ever greater numbers.

I agree with this statement on its face. However, the “possibility” of sound ecological stewardship is most often not accomplished through the good-hearted work of free-market capitalists. It most often must be imposed upon them by governments that have a greater stake in the “external costs” of their doing business. In economics, an external cost is the impact on a party that is not directly involved in a transaction. The primary parties in the transaction do not feel this harmful cost, and so the prices do not reflect these costs in its production or consumption. Pollution is a harmful external cost, and the marketplace has no way of self-regulating something that is external to transactions.

We aspire to a world in which advancements in agriculture, industry, and commerce not only minimize pollution and transform most waste products into efficiently used resources, but also improve the material conditions of life for people everywhere.

This final statement is one that we can all affirm. This is the world that all evangelicals should aspire toward.

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?
Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration
Imago Dei is More than "Dominion"
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the Fall

12/24/2009

12/22/2009

Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the Fall

I’ve been critiquing the theological section of the Cornwall Alliance’s new document, “A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor,” which was written to support their new statement, “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.”

I ’ve looked at how the Cornwall Alliance truncates the imago Dei to merely “dominion,” severely slanting their view of humanity’s responsibility in the world. Now I want to look at how they dismiss the Fall’s effect on humanity’s responsibility to cultivate and care for the environment, which leads them to think that we humans cannot do irreparable harm to the environment.

In “An Evangelical Declaration,” they state,

“We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.”

Theologically, they defend this statement by making this claim in “A Renewed Call to Truth,”

“A crucial element of the environmentalist worldview is that Earth and its habitats and inhabitants are extremely fragile and likely to suffer severe, even irreversible damage from human action. That view contradicts Genesis 1:31. It is difficult to imagine how God could have called “very good” the habitat of humanity’s vocation in a millennia-long drama if the whole thing were prone to collapse like a house of cards with the least disturbance—like a change in carbon dioxide from 0.027 to 0.039 percent of the atmosphere (the change generally believed to have occurred from pre-industrial times to the present).” (p. 6)

In other words, the Cornwall Alliance believes that the Bible teaches that there is no way that humans can cause irreparable harm to God’s good creation. They scoff at the idea that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could cause global warming –

“But clearly this scenario rests on the assumption of the fragility of the whole of the geo/biosystem—an assumption contrary to the Biblical worldview. That an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from one molecule in every 3,704 to one in every 2,597—from 270 to 385 parts per million—should cause dangerous warming is fundamentally inconsistent with the Biblical worldview of Earth as the “very good” product of the infinitely wise Creator. The Biblical worldview instead suggests that the wise Designer of Earth’s climate system, like any skillful engineer, would have equipped it with balancing positive and negative feedback mechanisms that would make the whole robust, self-regulating, and self-correcting.” (p. 6)

There’s a glaring irony in their argument, however:

To make their claim about the environment, they not only look at contrary scientific evidence (which is very appropriate to do), they compare atmospheric clouds to the iris of the human eye,

“Actual observation of cloud response to surface temperature shows they are a net negative feedback—they reduce both warming and cooling, keeping temperature within a narrow range. The clouds’ response is somewhat like that of the iris of the eye. The brighter the light to which the eye is exposed, the more the iris grows, shrinking the pupil to protect the retina from discomfort and damage. The dimmer the light, the more the iris shrinks, enlarging the pupil to increase vision… Although these and similar findings (discussed in the science chapter) have stunning implications for the ongoing debate about global warming, their more important effect should be to prompt Christians to praise God for the way in which Earth, like the human body, is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). In some senses Earth, like the eye, may be fragile, but overall it is, by God’s wise design, more resilient than many fearful environmentalists can imagine.” (p. 7)

Here’s the irony about their argument: Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness. People with diabetes are 40 percent more likely to develop glaucoma. People with diabetes are 60 percent more likely to develop cataracts. More than 21 million people in the United States have diabetes, with 6.2 million people unaware that they have the disease. Another estimated 54 million Americans aged 40 to 74 (40.1 percent of the U.S. population in this age group) have pre-diabetes, a condition that puts them at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

And... What is the leading cause of Diabetes?

“Obesity and lack of physical activity are two of the most common causes of this form of diabetes. It is also responsible for nearly 95% of diabetes cases in the United States, according to the CDC.” ("Causes of Type 2 Diabetes," WebMD)

So, if the human body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God (which Christians do not dispute), how is it that we can do such irreparable harm to our bodies that we can go blind?

We certainly believe that the human body is an amazing creation from a loving and good God. We also believe that the human body is amazingly complex; it is obviously intricately designed. We also believe that God did not simply design the human body and then leave it on its own – God’s sustaining power is amazingly displayed in things like the blood-clotting cascade.

But, even with all this amazing evidence of God’s creative and sustaining power, we would not go on to presume that human sinfulness (the sins of being a glutton and a sluggard) cannot have terrible effects on the goodness of God’s creation of the human body.

Here’s the point: The Cornwall Alliance claims to espouse “the biblical worldview.” But I differ with them on at least two major points of what the Bible teaches:

1. The Cornwall Alliance believes that the Bible teaches that since God made humans as the imago Dei, there is an ontological difference between humanity and all of the rest of creation. God placed humanity in a privileged position of dominion over the creation, and this dominion means we not only have the responsibility to master it, we have the right to do so with force, as long as we do so for the good of the human species.

I beg to differ. As I said in my last post, the ontological difference in Genesis is not so much between humans and everything else, but between God and all of his creatures. Humanity is certainly the pinnacle of the creation because we are created in the image of God, but this image-bearing does not place us in a privileged position as much as it places us in charge of caring for the rest of the Creation, to cultivate it, to serve it, to “lord under it” more than to “lord over it.”

2. The Cornwall Alliance believes that the Bible teaches that since God made this earth, humans can only do small amounts of harm to it. It is ultimately “robust, self-regulating, and self-correcting.” Human beings cannot (through their sins of gluttony, selfishness, greed, laziness, and consumeristic excess) possibly do irreparable harm to God’s good creation.

I beg to differ. The Cornwall Alliance minimizes the effect of the Fall on our ability to righteously image God. Our ability to have dominion over God’s creation (i.e., "to cultivate and keep it," Genesis 2:15) is severely warped because of the Fall. Human sinfulness can, and often has, created incredible harm to the environment. And humans often need to make dramatic changes in the way we live and do business in order to fulfill our responsibility to steward the creation. The idea that humans cannot do irreparable harm to the environment that God has given to us to steward is, in my view, the unbiblical worldview.

NEXT
Cornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?
Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's DeclarationImago Dei is More than "Dominion"

12/19/2009

Help End Child Slavery - Send This to Chocolate Companies

Update on Our Anti-Slavery Campaign (see our previous post, Slavery and Chocolate)

The International Labor Rights Forum has provided a website where you can send a letter to the major chocolate manufacturers (Hershey, Mars, and Nestle) holding them accountable to their commitment to the Cocoa Protocol to end child labor.

Go here to take action on stopping child labor in the farming of cocoa.

Dear [ Decision Maker ],

Since 2001, chocolate consumers around the world have been very concerned about the conditions facing cocoa farmers in West Africa. Reports of the worst forms of child labor and trafficking, as well as the general poor economic and social conditions facing farmers, continue to emerge many years after your company signed on to the Harkin-Engel Protocol.

I am aware of the initiatives your company has supported through various chocolate industry associations. I know about your funding for projects throughout West Africa (such as the International Cocoa Initiative, the World Cocoa Foundation and the Sustainable Tree Crops Program), the government survey project and the verification process through Verité and the International Cocoa Verification Board. I am also aware of the industry commitments announced in July 2008 including increasing "certification" throughout Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa sectors in 2010 which will "ideally, over time... indicate an improvement in the status of child and adult labor practices." Despite all of these programs, I still do not feel assured that the chocolate I buy from your company is made by workers and farmers whose rights are fully respected.

Now I want to know what YOUR company specifically is doing to ensure that your cocoa beans are not made using the worst forms of child labor and other forms of exploitative labor. Can you please tell me the specific commitments and supply chain management initiatives your company is using to ensure you are complying with international labor standards?

After eight years of scrutiny, I look forward to learning more about the specific work you are doing to ensure that your candy bars are made without trafficked and/or child labor.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your address]

12/17/2009

Imago Dei is More than "Dominion"

Assessing The Cornwall Alliance’s “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”

Here are two statements (one affirmation and one denial) that are included in the Cornwall Alliance’s “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”:

We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.

In today’s discussion, I’m going to begin looking at their theological underpinnings for these statements. In their supporting document (A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor), there are three chapters. Chapter One is entitled “Theology, Worldview, and Ethics of Global Warming Policy” (pp. 3-25) and is authored by Craig Vincent Mitchell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, along with a number of contributing authors, including E. Calvin Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance. Beisner has been the go-to guy in the conservative side of evangelicalism when it comes to opposition to environmental causes. He has been attacking the mainstream scientific consensus on climate change since 1989.

Before I get into my critique, I want to re-state that there are a a number of statements in the theology chapter of Renewed Call to Truth that can be affirmed by most, if not all, evangelicals. See my last post.

Things We Need to Critique
The theology of the Cornwall Alliance sounds good at first pass, but when I read it more in-depth, I find three things particularly troubling.

The first is a narrow understanding of the imago Dei to merely “dominion,”
the second is a dismissal of the Fall’s effect on the environment due to humanity’s sinful use of it, and
the third is an ideological slant toward free market capitalism (production and consumption) as defining a Christian worldview.

Today I will look at the first of my concerns, that the Cornwall Alliance has a narrow understanding of the imago Dei, reducing it to merely “dominion.”

Over and over again, they point to the Genesis 1 mandate that humans are to “have dominion.”

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”__So God created man in his own image,____in the image of God he created him;____male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV)

They state,

“Men and women were created in the image of God. Humanity is the pinnacle of God’s created order, unique in all of creation. God gave people a privileged place among creatures and commanded them to exercise stewardship over the Earth.” (p. 7)

In the theology of the Cornwall Alliance, human beings, as the imago Dei, are not only given the authority to rule over the creation, but they are to do so knowing that they have the privileged place of primacy in that creation, giving them the right to make decisions that will benefit humanity even though it might harm other creatures in that creation. What is troubling about this theology is that it does not bring into account the fact that humanity’s choices are deeply flawed—their thinking is futile and their foolish hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21). If we act out of perceived privilege, we all too often do so for our own selfish benefit. I will get more into the Cornwall Alliance’s dismissive attitude toward human sinfulness in my next post.

The Cornwall Alliance's insistence on narrowly defining the imago Dei as humanity's "dominion" over the rest of creation exacerbates the problem. They place the phrase “have dominion” in Genesis 1:28 above anything else that might give this phrase a fuller, more nuanced meaning.

“Some Christian environmentalists have argued that Genesis 2:15—which they suggest should be translated to say that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to “serve and keep” it—governs the interpretation of 1:28. Assuming this, they resist the idea that 1:28 mandates a powerful subduing and ruling of the Earth by mankind. But the language in the two stipulations differs radically. In 1:28 God used kabash and radah, words meaning, respectively, to subdue or bring into bondage, and to have dominion or rule. The words denote strong and forceful action. In 2:15 God used abad and shamar, words meaning, respectively, to work, till, serve, or sometimes by extension to worship, and to keep, watch, preserve, or sometimes by extension to obey. Further, if, as these writers understand it, the object of these verbs is the Garden (or by extension the Earth), then translating the Hebrew abad in this instance as “serve” is mistaken. Although it may bear that sense when followed by a personal object, it does not when followed by an impersonal object. It is unlikely, then, abad and shamar in 2:15 were intended to define kabash and radah in 1:28.”

I find this argument incoherent and unconvincing. In their attempt to make dominion the primary purpose of the Image of God, they dismiss the cultivation and keeping of the earth as being somehow subservient to the mandate to rule it. This makes no sense. Most interpreters see the cultural mandate in Genesis 2:15 ("Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.") as a further description of the mandate found in Genesis 1:26-28. I have to wonder what ideology is driving the Cornwall Alliance to so elevate “dominion” over “cultivation,” “keeping,” and even “serving” the creation. Perhaps it is an ideology that equates the gospel with free market capitalism. This I will address in a later post.

The imago Dei in humanity does not give us a “privileged place” over the creation, but a mandate to act as God’s stewards of his creation. As Genesis 2:15 shows, we need to exercise dominion in the same manner that God exercises his dominion. God does not “lord over” his creation, but rather “lords under” it by way of serving it. Jesus Christ is our model here (see Mark 10:45); our Lord shows that God has dominion by caring for the well-being of his creatures. The Hebrew abad (work, cultivate, serve) can, and should, be seen as the mandate for humanity to serve the creation. We are to cultivate the creation to make it all that God wants it to be. And when we do this, we are glorifying God by being the "Image of God," for we are reflecting the very character of God.

Again, I have to wonder if the Cornwall Alliance’s dismissal of Genesis 2:15 is ideologically driven, not exegetically driven. Biblically, to “have dominion” is to act as God’s vice-regent for the care of his creation. This means that humans are to love God's creation as He does. This means that humans are not to exploit the creation for our own "privileged" desires.

The Cornwall Alliance believes that what's driving the environmental movement is a desire to demean the pinnacle of God’s creation (humanity). I understand this concern. However, a biblical worldview places humanity as part of the Creation that God created, loves, and redeems. In their attempt to make a clear ontological difference between humanity and the rest of creation, they lose the fact that the ontological difference in Genesis is not so much between humans and everything else, but between God and all of his creatures. Humanity is described as yet another creature. We are surely the pinnacle of the creation because we are created in the image of God, but this image-bearing does not place us in a privileged position as much as it places us in charge of caring for the rest of the Creation.

NEXT
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the Fall

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?
Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration
Cornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration

Assessing The Cornwall Alliance’s “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”
Before I get into my critique of the first chapter of the Cornwall Alliances Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor, I want to point out that there are a number of statements in the theology chapter that can be affirmed by most, if not all, evangelicals. This chapter is entitled “Theology, Worldview, and Ethics of Global Warming Policy” (pp. 3-25) and is authored by Craig Vincent Mitchell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, along with a number of contributing authors, including E. Calvin Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance.

Here are some very well-said statements:

“Earth’s living and non-living systems, including the climate system, along with the whole of the universe, are not accidental products of chance but the planned outcome of wise and loving divine design and powerful sustaining.” (p. 4)

Agreed. And what they are trying to get at is this: Most of those in the movement to end Global Warming do not conform to a Christian worldview. They do not know that God created and sustains all things. This certainly must be remembered by Christians who will be partnering with activists in the movement. Their non-Christian presuppositions may, and often do, lead to warped decisions.

“Earth and the various living creatures in it, while “very good” (Genesis 1:31), were not yet as God intended them to be. They needed filling, subduing, and ruling. Was this because there was something evil about them? No. The Biblical doctrine of creation rules out notions of the inherent evil of the material world, including (as Gnostics, Hindus, and Buddhists believe) that matter and spirit are antithetical, and (as the Platonic and neo-Platonic doctrine implies) that there is a hierarchical “great chain of Being” from God (who has most being) to nothing (which has none). No, it was not that there was something evil about the Earth and its non-human living creatures. Rather, it was that they were designed as the setting, the circumstance, the surroundings—the environment, if you will—in which Adam and Eve and their descendants are to live out their mandate as God’s image bearers. As God created it, Earth and all its constituents were very good. They were perfect—not terminally perfect, but circumstantially perfect, perfectly suited as the arena of man’s exercise of the imago Dei in multiplying, filling, subduing, and ruling according to the knowledge and righteousness that most essentially constitute the imago."

Again, agreed. I really like how they say that the Earth and all its constituents were “very good,” and “perfect—not terminally perfect, but circumstantially perfect.”

“[The] Biblical vision anticipates, through the wise application of knowledge and skill to the raw materials of this world and the just ordering of society, the development of environmentally friendly prosperity—the achievement of high levels of economic development and the reduction of poverty right along with reductions in resource scarcity, pollution, and other environmental hazards.”

Nicely said. Humanity’s original mandate as the imago Dei has been in place since Genesis 1 and 2 and still holds. As humans continue to work out what it means to be human, especially in light of the redemption found in Christ, the biblical vision of Shalom becomes more and more apparent, even though it will not be ultimately fulfilled until Christ returns.

Next, I begin my critique.

NEXT
Imago Dei is More than "Dominion"

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?
Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the Fall
Cornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

12/16/2009

Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard

Assessing The Cornwall Alliance’s “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”

“An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” states,

“Some people claim repeatedly that melting sea ice, an increase in global-average temperatures, stronger storms, more floods, and more droughts are occurring due to humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. But how many of these changes are real versus imagined? And of those that are real, how much, if at all, can they be attributed to human activities? Indeed, there have been some significant climatic changes in recent decades. For instance, the normal summer melt-back of Arctic sea ice has increased in the 30 years during which we have had satellites to monitor this remote region of the Earth. There has also been a slow and irregular warming trend of global-average temperatures over the last 50 to 100 years—the same period of time the carbon dioxide (CO2) content of the atmosphere has increased.

But correlation does not mean causation, and there has been a tendency in the media to overlook research suggesting that these recent changes are, in fact, related to natural cycles in the climate system rather than to atmospheric CO2 increases from fossil fuel use. That changes occur does not mean human beings are responsible. There is good evidence that most of the warming of the past 150 years is due to natural causes. The belief that climate change is anthropogenic (human-caused) and will have catastrophic consequences is highly speculative.”

Notice that the Cornwall Alliance does not deny that “there have been some significant climatic changes in recent decades,” and they even talk about the spectacular melting of Arctic sea ice and the irregular warming trend of global-average temperatures over the last 50 to 100 years. But they dismiss that this is human-caused, even though this occurred at the same time the industrialized world provided major increases in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels.

They suggest a different view of the data:

“Recent progress in climate research suggests that:
1. Observed warming and purported dangerous effects have been overstated.
2. Earth’s climate is less sensitive to the addition of CO2 than the alleged scientific consensus claims it to be, which means that climate model predictions of future warming are exaggerated.
3. Those climate changes that have occurred are consistent with natural cycles driven by internal changes in the climate system itself, external changes in solar activity, or both.

In fact, given that CO2 in the atmosphere is necessary for life on Earth to exist, it is likely that more CO2 will be beneficial. This possibility is rarely discussed because many environmental activists share the quasi-religious belief that everything mankind does hurts the environment. Yet, if we objectively analyze the scientific evidence, we find good evidence that more CO2 could lead to greater abundance and diversity of life on Earth."

I don’t claim to be a scientist, and I’m sure that the scientists that the Cornwall Alliance cites are reputable. However, it must be said (and this always gets the roll-of-the-eyes from those who side with Cornwall) that the overwhelming majority of scientists who specialize in this area have not only clearly documented the steady rise in global temperatures over the last fifty years, but they also project that the average global temperature will continue to rise in the coming decades and they attribute most of the warming to human activities. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded the 600 scientists who were engaged in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, Climate Change 2007 (AR4). There is at least a 90% likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves.

What is it with Evangelicals and their skepticism and even cynicism toward the scientific community? Perhaps it dates back to the Scopes Trial (1925), and the ongoing fight over Evolution being taught in the public schools. Over the past 85 years, evangelicals (and especially those on the more conservative side of the movement, what can be called, for the lack of a better term, the Fundamentalists) have been trained to have antagonism toward scientists.

And this cynicism toward them rears its head in the supporting document from Cornwall Alliance, "A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor." In chapter 2, entitled, “The Science of Global Warming,” they write,

“While climate models have come a long way, and many of them do a reasonably good job of mimicking average aspects of today’s climate system, their ability to predict anthropogenic global warming and any changes associated with it has been overstated.

There are so many adjustable variables in climate models that the modeler must, at some point, decide that the amount of global warming produced by the model looks “about right.” Then, when modelers get together to compare results, there is peer pressure not to be an outlier—that is, the model producing the most warming or the least warming. This then causes the different models to converge to average—the result of ‘group think.’

Furthermore, scientists are people, and it is human nature to think we know more than we really do about our area of expertise. That tendency, combined with natural idealism—who wouldn’t want to be part of an international effort to ‘save the planet’?—suggests that there is ample opportunity for scientists’ biases to influence the results of scientific research. Climate models are indeed fairly spectacular inventions—but that does not mean they are up to the task of predicting the future state of the climate system.”

This is the same argument that those who advocate for Intelligent Design over against Darwinism have used: Scientists abdicate to “peer-pressure” and “group-think;” they get so caught up in being the experts and that they have already found the scientific truth, that they dismiss any contrary scientific evidence. I find this parallel very interesting.

And the recent scandal of hacked emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia adds fuel to the fire that these scientists are ungodly people out for their own gain and the destruction of all that Americans hold dear.

But I think I agree with what conservative columnist Michael Gerson, George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, recently wrote in his Washington Post column,

“The hacked climate e-mails reveal a scandal, not a hoax. Even if every question raised in these e-mails were conceded, the cumulative case for global climate disruption would be strong. The evidence is found not only in East Anglian computers but also in changing crop zones, declining species, melting ice sheets and glaciers, thinning sea ice and rising sea levels. No other scientific theory explains these changes as well as global warming related to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution.”

NEXT
Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration
Imago Dei is More than "Dominion"
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the FallCornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

12/15/2009

Do All Evangelicals Hold to a Conservative Political Viewpoint on Economics?

Assessing The Cornwall Alliance’s new “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”

The Cornwall Alliance, a politically conservative and religiously ecumenical group, has recently released “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.” Overall, the statement has some-much needed cautions as evangelicals engage in the debate about Climate Change. It’s supporting document, A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor has many very well-said and excellent points.

However, this is not THE Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, because it is clear that within our camp there is an on-going debate going on. Also, it is not THE Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming because the presuppositions that guide this declaration are (1) politically conservative in that it elevates free markets and private property rights, (2) fundamentalist in that it is suspicious toward the scientific community, and (3) mistaken in its narrow theological premise as to the meaning of the image Dei.

I’ll tackle each of these points in order, first with this post, and then later with some more posts.

First, it must be said that not all evangelicals are as politically conservative as those on the Cornwall Alliance’s Board of Advisors. Among the “Criteria for Stewardship Ethics” (p. 14 of A Renewed Call to Truth are these statements:

__"We therefore aspire to a world in which

liberty as a condition of moral action is preferred over government-initiated management of the environment as a means to common goals.

the relationships between stewardship and private property are fully appreciated, allowing people’s natural incentive to care for their own property to reduce the need for collective ownership and control of resources and enterprises, and in which collective action, when deemed necessary, takes place at the most local level possible.

widespread economic freedom—which is integral to private, market economies—makes sound ecological stewardship possible for ever greater numbers.

advancements in agriculture, industry, and commerce not only minimize pollution and transform most waste products into efficiently used resources, but also improve the material conditions of life for people everywhere.

These aspirations sound more like the party platform of the Republican Party than it does a consensus of evangelical Christians.

NEXT
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration

Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change
Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Imago Dei is More than "Dominion"
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the FallCornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

12/14/2009

Evangelicals Divided Over Climate Change

The Debate Inside the Evangelical Camp is Good, and We Need to Keep it Up

As the United Nations conducts its Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the debate within evangelical circles has been re-engaged. This month, an ecumenical group called The Cornwall Alliance (a group that contains people from Catholic, evangelical, and Jewish faiths, connected by their affinity for conservative politics) released an “evangelical declaration” and a supporting paper that called into question the popular consensus concerning Climate Change. The original “Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship” (2000) was signed by American religious and political conservatives in the Roman Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical worlds (among them, Roman Catholics Richard John Neuhaus and Robert Sirico, Jewish leaders David Novak and Dennis Prager, and Evangelicals Calvin Beisner, Charles Colson, and James Dobson).

The evangelical arm of this ecumenical group has released what they believe reflects an evangelical understanding of the Bible as it relates to the issue of Climate Change. "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming" along with its supporting document, "A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming" have created a renewed opportunity for evangelicals to debate the issue of Climate Change, especially as the U.N. discusses how much and when nations should reduce greenhouse emissions.

This debate has been going on for a few years now. Historically, environmentalism has been an issue that evangelicals have dismissed, seeing it as something irrelevant at best and harmful at worst. When environmentalism grew as a movement in the 1980s, evangelicals saw this issue as something that non-Christians and Liberals championed because they did not understand that God had placed humans at the pinnacle of the created order. They said that as the Imago Dei, human beings have the right of dominion over the entire creation, meaning that we can use the raw materials of this planet for our own advancement. Not until recently has there been deep thought given by evangelicals as to how our exploitation of these resources actually does not reflect the image of the God who is described as having “compassion on all he has made” (Psalm 145:9).

In the 1990s, a group of leading evangelicals created a group called the Evangelical Environmental Network. Their "Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation" was signed by nearly 500 key leaders. In it they said,

"Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator---whom we know dimly through creation, but meet fully through Scripture and in Christ. We and our children face a growing crisis in the health of the creation in which we are embedded, and through which, by God's grace, we are sustained. Yet we continue to degrade that creation. These degradations of creation can be summed up as 1) land degradation; 2) deforestation; 3) species extinction; 4) water degradation; 5) global toxification; 6) the alteration of atmosphere; 7) human and cultural degradation. Many of these degradations are signs that we are pressing against the finite limits God has set for creation."

In 2004, the National Association of Evangelicals issued a landmark document called “For the Health of the Nations: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.” In this declaration, we saw that the tide had turned, for among the incredible statements on how evangelicals can and should engage several social and political issues, the NAE said,

“We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part. We are not the owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God to “watch over and care for it” (Gen. 2:15). This implies the principle of sustainability: our uses of the Earth must be designed to conserve and renew the Earth rather than to deplete or destroy it… Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation. This involves both the urgent need to relieve human suffering caused by bad environmental practice. Because natural systems are extremely complex, human actions can have unexpected side effects. We must therefore approach our stewardship of creation with humility and caution. Human beings have responsibility for creation in a variety of ways. We urge Christians to shape their personal lives in creation-friendly ways: practicing effective recycling, conserving resources, and experiencing the joy of contact with nature. We urge government to encourage fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, encourage sustainable use of natural resources, and provide for the proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats.”

The politically conservative segment of evangelicalism (i.e., the Religious Right) did not agree with the NAE. The Cornwall Alliance wrote an Appeal Letter to the National Association of Evangelicals on the Issue of Global Warming, in which they said,

"We respectfully request that the NAE not adopt any official position on the issue of global climate change. Global warming is not a consensus issue, and our love for the Creator and respect for His creation does not require us to take a position. We are evangelicals and we care about God’s creation. However, we believe there should be room for Bible-believing evangelicals to disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue... Evangelicals are to be first and foremost messengers of the good news of the gospel to a lost and dying world. We are to promote those things that please God and oppose those things in the world that clearly violate His righteous standard of conduct. We respectfully ask that the NAE carefully consider all policy issues in which it might engage in the light of promoting unity among the Christian community and glory to God."

In that same year, Christianity Today issued an editorial ("Heat Stroke: The climate for addressing global warming is improving") in which the CT Editors wrote,

"With each passing year, we lose the ability to slow and minimize the effects of global warming. This is our Father's world, and it is filled with our brothers and sisters. Christians should make it clear to governments and businesses that we are willing to adapt our lifestyles and support steps toward changes that protect our environment."

And then in 2006, another group of evangelicals began The Evangelical Climate Initiative, with 86 evangelical leaders signing their statement, Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. They wrote,

"As evangelicals we have hesitated to speak on this issue until we could be more certain of the science of climate change, but the signatories now believe that the evidence demands action...In the face of the breadth and depth of this scientific and governmental concern, only a small percentage of which is noted here, we are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it... The earth’s natural systems are resilient but not infinitely so, and human civilizations are remarkably dependent on ecological stability and well-being... Even small rises in global temperatures will have such likely impacts as: sea level rise; more frequent heat waves, droughts, and extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods; increased tropical diseases in now-temperate regions; and hurricanes that are more intense. It could lead to significant reduction in agricultural output, especially in poor countries. Low-lying regions, indeed entire islands, could find themselves under water. (This is not to mention the various negative impacts climate change could have on God’s other creatures.) Each of these impacts increases the likelihood of refugees from flooding or famine, violent conflicts, and international instability, which could lead to more security threats to our nation. Poor nations and poor individuals have fewer resources available to cope with major challenges and threats. The consequences of global warming will therefore hit the poor the hardest."

And so, here we are in 2009, and the debate continues. The debate is stoked by what conservatives are calling "Climategate" - hacked emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England showing that certain scientists manipulated data, tried to get around the British version of the Freedom of Information Act, and attempted to freeze out critics by manipulating the peer review process. Those in the Religious Right see this as further evidence that scientists have anti-Christian biases. Calvin Beisner of The Cornwall Alliance is quoted in Baptist Press as saying, "The people who have fabricated or twisted or massaged the data are public servants using public funding and in the process promoting public policies in which trillions of dollars and millions of jobs and the livelihood of billions of people are at stake."

In politics, Sarah Palin's editorial in the Washington Post and Al Gore's response have added more fuel to the fire. Evangelicals should be careful not to get caught up in their bickering.

I believe it is a good thing to have an“in-house debate” about Climate Change among evangelicals. It forces us to re-examine the Bible, our presuppositions about a Christian Worldview, and how all this has a major bearing on the issues of our contemporary life.

Next, I will examine the latest documents from The Cornwall Alliance, and discuss with you what it says.

NEXT
Cornwall Alliance: Fundamentalist Suspicion Toward the Scientific Community Dies Hard
Other posts of interest on "Global Warming:"
Things We Can Affirm in Cornwall Alliance's Declaration
Cornwall Alliance's Interpretation of the Imago Dei as "Dominion"
Cornwall Alliance's Denial of the Power of the FallCornwall Alliance’s “Christian Worldview”: Free Market Capitalism

12/10/2009

Creation and New Creation: And How They Relate to Spiritual Gifts

A third way to understand Spiritual Gifts

The issue of Spiritual Gifts is one that can easily divide a church, and therefore it must be handled very carefully.

On one side (particularly those in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements), we have churches that see certain charismata (free gifts) as supernatural gifts that demonstrate God’s extra level of grace to the recipient. For Pentecostals especially, the gift of tongues is seen as a “second blessing” and evidence of the “second baptism” of the Holy Spirit.

On the other side, we have those who insist that these more “miraculous” gifts (tongues, healings, prophecy) were “Signs of the Apostles.” God gave the Apostles special gifts so that people could recognize them as the authoritative Apostles of Jesus Christ. The vindication of their authority laid the foundation for the church through their inspired writings. After the Apostles died and their writings were gathered as the New Testament, the place of signs and wonders had past. Therefore, we should not seek them today.

I think there is a third way to understand this. It has to do with Creation and New Creation.

In the beginning, God made humans in His image. Throughout history, we see humans gifted to do wonderful things that imaged God’s creativity, love, and dominion over the creation. For instance, Bezalel, Oholiab, and other men were “filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts” (Exodus 31:1-11). God’s gifts of poetry and song were given to various people, as well as the gifts to interpret dreams and to prophesy. So, God’s gifts to humans (so that they can do the work of being “Eikons”) are freely given to his people at various times and in varying degrees. This is the normal state of affairs in God’s good creation. We've grown accustomed to calling human "skills, abilities, and knowledge" (like crafts, poetry, medicine, etc.) as "natural," while we call certain more flashy gifts as "supernatural." No dichotomy like this is found in the Bible, not in the original Created Order, nor in the New Creation in Christ.

One of the great prophesies concerning the New Creation was given by Joel:

And it shall come to pass afterward,
____that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
____your old men shall dream dreams,
____and your young men shall see visions.
Even upon the menservants and maidservants
____in those days, I will pour out my spirit. (Joel 2:28-29)

Joel says that when the New Creation begins, God’s spirit will be poured out like never before. When Jesus began his ministry, we read that “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee” (Luke 4:14). This power heals and casts out demons (Luke 4:31-41). Jesus proclaims that “if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). A new day had begun to dawn in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But this power not only does these amazing feats, but it also does what we would not normally call "supernatural." This power anointed Jesus to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:15-22). Overcoming injustice is not normally seen as "supernatural," but it is just as much a part of the New Creation as casting out demons.

Jesus then sent his disciples out, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” and told them, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (Matt. 10:7-8). And the power of the Holy Spirit did not end with the Apostles, for when the Spirit was poured out on the church at Pentecost, Peter saw that it was Joel’s prophecy being fulfilled (Acts 2:16-21).

In the original Creation, God empowered humans to do that which should come “natural” to them. God gives "free gifts" to his people so that they can fulfill their call and purpose - to be Image-Bearers. These gifts do not transcend our natural existence, so to call these gifts "supernatural" is a misnomer. Certainly they come from the Supernatural One, but they are natural to being human.

In other words, Spiritual Gifts should be seen as belonging to the natural order of God’s good creation. In the words of Albert Wolters (Creation Regained: Biblical Basics of a Reformational Worldview), the more ‘miraculous’ gifts…

“are gifts of the Spirit as genuinely as love, joy, and peace are, but they do not add anything to what God had intended for his earthly creation from the beginning. They are therefore ‘natural.’ They are like faith, only someone regenerated by the Spirit can have faith (true faith, that is, faith in Jesus Christ) but this regeneration does not make faith foreign to the Creator’s original purpose. And just as faith as a general human function is not unknown outside the body of Christ (though it is always misdirected there), so the charismatic gifts are not unknown outside the body of Christ (though they are misguided and abused there).”

So, in the New Creation, we find that all the "free gifts" from God are meant to edify the church and to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. So, the gift of tongues, if used in accordance to how the Bible says they must be used, will do this. And the gift of administration (to pick one of the less flashy gifts) can also do this. Wolters writes,

“All human talents and abilities can flourish and blossom under the regenerating and sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit to the glory and service of God. When opened up by the Spirit they are all charismatic gifts. This applies to social tact, to a way with children, to a knack for communicating, to mechanical skill, or whatever. There may be degrees of importance or splendor in the gifts, but all alike qualify as ‘charismatic’ and ‘spiritual’ if they are directed to Christ’s redemption, sanctification, and reconciliation.”

Not everyone has been given all of the Holy Spirit's gifts. Not everybody has the ability to be a math whiz (I jokingly tell people, "I went into ministry because I understood there would be no math"); not everybody is a poet; not everybody is mechanical. Neither is everybody given the gift of tongues or healings or prophesy.

The point is this: All of these gifts need to be seen as a part of God’s intention for the Original Creation, and all the more in the New Creation that came in Jesus Christ.
_

12/09/2009

A New Paradigm for Children's Ministry

The purpose of children’s ministry should be to partner with parents to encourage children to place their faith in Jesus Christ and to instill in these children a Christian worldview.

This philosophy has a number of components; let me break it down:

To partner with parents: The main task is to train and encourage parents to personally live according to a Christian worldview and then to offer practical ways that they can impress this lifestyle of faith onto their children. The church needs to partner with parents by creating an excellent “Family Ministry” that holistically ministers to the family, as opposed to a “Children’s Ministry” that may have a “drop-off” mentality (that sees the church “taking care of that” while the adults go and do something else.

So, a healthy children’s ministry works cross-functionally in the church with other departments (adult ministries, preaching ministry, women’s and men’s ministries, missions, community service and outreach) to help disciple parents in what it means to live in this way.

To encourage children to place their faith in Jesus Christ: We must remember that just because a child is from a Christian home or because he or she is at church, this does not mean that they have embraced Christ as savior.

Those involved in the children’s ministry must get to know each individual child and take the time to engage him or her with the gospel message.

To instill in these children a Christian worldview: Much of children’s ministry curriculum is geared heavily toward understanding issues pertaining to character (that is, lessons on acting morally). Bible stories are taught in a way that teachers’ application for the children is to help them embrace behavior that we think is appropriate for Christians.

A favorite verse that is used to underpin such ministries is Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”). The thinking is that our goal must be to teach our kids to behave a certain way and to give them incentives to be good little Christians, so that we will see children that “will not depart from” behaving as good Christians. But kids grow up to become adults with minds of their own. When their church training has been focused on how to behave, there are no guarantees that they will not walk away from this life when they get older. This kind of children’s ministry is severely short-sighted.

Rather, I'd like to see a totally different paradigm: The ultimate goal is to help children believe and own a holistic view of the world that is rooted in the story of God’s redemption of all things. When a child embraces God’s plan of redemption and sees himself or herself as an active player in that plan, they find purpose and meaning in life rooted in biblical teaching.

Our hope is that this Christian worldview, if deeply engrained in our children, will overcome the troubles or persecutions that come because of their Christian worldview, as well as the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth (Matthew 13, the Parable of the Sower). If they see themselves as partnering with God to bring redemption and reconciliation into this world, they will see the Christian life as being about more than the good behaviors that Christians do, or the bad behaviors that bad people do. They will see their life on a deeper plane—wanting to become a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.