Friday, January 3, 2020

Do Humans Cause Climate Change?

“Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have kept good from you” (Jeremiah 5:25, ESV).
Taken out of context, that verse becomes hard to understand. The word “these” in Jeremiah 5:25 refers to the spring and autumn rains that blessed Palestine, but which were cut off because of their sin. The Revised English Bible clarifies the point by translating, “your wrongdoing has upset nature’s order, and your sins have kept away her bounty.”

So, there you have it. Jeremiah claimed that, in this case at least, humans caused climate change. But Jeremiah’s claim was broader than the claim of the politicians. They claim only that our emitting of certain gasses affects the climate. The Lord claims (through Jeremiah) that all our sins have a negative effect on nature.

I do not have a problem with the claim that humans cause nature to malfunction; my problem is with the restricted way in which the claim is normally made. The scriptures tell us repeatedly that human sin is the cause of “groaning” for all of creation (Rom 8). I have no doubt that humans are the cause of drought. Science and scripture both point in this direction. In fact, the scriptures state it more clearly than any science.

What I have a problem with is the fact that the same people who say, “we cannot drive cars, fly airplanes, or eat hamburgers without causing the global temperature to rise,” turn right around and deny that the fault lies with humans when other things go wrong. These same people try to deny that HIV is the result of sin – even though the evidence for it being caused primarily by sin is perfectly clear. These same people try to deny that sexual sin has led to an increase in several types of cancer, although the science behind that is also abundantly clear. These same people, so concerned with protecting nature by using only renewable energy, deny nature when it comes to homosexuality.

I am careful with fossil fuel, far more careful than the biggest mouths in Washington. I believe that we have a duty to respect God’s creation (Psalm 24). But I do not restrict that duty to the issue of fossil fuel. It applies to all sin, and especially to those sins that clearly run contrary to nature.

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