Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
July/August 2007

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Where next on the planet?

by Roger Hutchings

Everybody's talking about it. It's in the papers, on the news. And now it's in Barnes in Common as well! Is there no escape?

We see pictures of ice melting, maps of half London under water, dire warnings about everything from air travel to waste disposal, de-forestation to spreading deserts.

Planet Earth is in trouble - except that there are a few scientists who say it isn't, and we should all stop being so silly.

My instinct is that humanity does have a major problem on its hands. I'm not a climatologist, or any other kind of "ist", so for me it is a matter of instinct.
The problem can be put simply: If we go on treating the world as we do at the moment, our grandchildren and the generations beyond that will have great difficulty in sustaining a viable way of life. The planet will not allow it.

Christians don't have any monopoly on dealing with this. In fact, some say it's the biblical idea of our dominion over creation, as described in the story of Genesis, which has made us believe we can use all the resources of the world as it suits us.

The exploitation of oil and gas, the mining of minerals, intensive methods of food (and other) production, the global scale of trade - it all works together to mess things up, and the whole process is fed by a seemingly insatiable greed for more.

We want more things, more travel, more transport, more choice, more drugs, more knowledge, more inventions. We want an ever-increasing standard of living.

Even though occasionally I resist this attitude in some way, by catching a train instead of a plane or making sure I recycle what I can, I recognise I'm part of it.

All of us have lived with the expectation of material progress all our lives, and just about all of us who live in Barnes are people for whom that progress has worked well.

The global scale of the issues is not only hard to grasp, it can also be a way of avoiding them. There is a sense in which it really is up to 'them' - the U.N., national governments, multinational companies, scientists, technologists.

Even the word "globalisation", which has entered the language in recent times helps to confirm that we, Barnes residents and some of us Christians are powerless: The mighty forces of global trade and the global economy are beyond us to influence.

Theologically, that's unacceptable in my book. It'll take time - perhaps more time than we've got - but I believe we have no choice but to find ways of changing our own lifestyles, and seeking to change the life of the world, the expectations of our race.

I have a hunch that just as sometimes Christians have brought change to individual lives by proclaiming the gospel of salvation, so we must proclaim the gospel of stewardship to change our corporate lives.

Taking care of what God has given us is no longer a platitude, it's part of a manifesto which will affect your decisions and mine on just about every choice we make, under the sun.

Our witness on these things is about God's kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven".

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