Setting Fire to the World

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! Luke 12:49-51

Jesus said he wanted to set fire to the world. Burn this stinkin' place down. Or maybe burn it up. Never could figure out which way that should go. It's like going downtown. Once you get there, are you really uptown?

What? Was Jesus some kind of pyromaniac? Wanting to put a torch to creation, set the earth on fire?

I thought God had made everything and pronounced it "Tov!" (very good).

Even the stuff we humans have stuck onto the surface is at times unable to get in the way of the beauty and wonder of God's creation.

Maybe Jesus didn't really want to physically set the earth ablaze. Maybe he wanted to do what my Uncle Obert used to say some of the neighbores needed with their farm work. They needed some fire in the pants.

That is, they needed to get something done.

Jesus said that kind of thing wouldn't sit well with everybody. In fact, it might split families down the middle. Might turn fathers and sons against each other. Might set the women to a-hair pullin' cat fight. Even the in-laws would bust up over it.

Considering what we bright, intelligent humans with all our satellite and space station diagnostic tools, all our climate data, all our computing power already know about what lies ahead for us in the way of consumption spikes, extinction spikes, greenhouse gas spikes and population spikes, you'd think we'd actually be burning the candle at both ends to get something moving to help head off the damage.

We aren't doing that. At all. Seems like we're still looking for the Jesus that's like a big novacaine shot. Or maybe a big general anesthetic.

We're afraid we won't all get along anymore if we actually get to work doing what we are supposed to do: love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. That would sorta include future generations as well as the people who right today are impacted by the consumption we consider to be our right. Our right and privilege as Americans. Because we are the good guys.

Oh, don't worry. I'm not leaving out our all-out opposition to sin, death and the Devil. That's 'cause I haven't forgotten that Jesus has already handed us the victory there.

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y! That's what life is to be lived in the knowledge and the power of.

So why do we trust in war and weapons to deliver the goods?

Why do we trust in fear? Still...

Why?

Jesus would say, "For God's sake, open your eyes! Get to work! Get moving! Stop standing there dying and get busy living!"

Forget the fear.

Oh, and last time I checked, mothers and daughters-in-law and fathers/sons don't always get along so hot as it is.

Only thing that needs a match put to it is our reluctance, our fear, our foot-dragging, our blindness.

Take a look around. God didn't give us this to destroy but to give glory through life, not through ashes.

Peace,

Roger

When Mountains Cover and Hills Fall...

The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed.Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars.

They shall say to the mountains, "Cover us,"

and to the hills, "Fall on us." Hosea 10:8

In Luke's account of Jesus' death march to Golgotha, Jesus quotes Hosea and directs the weeping women to turn their thoughts to what may lie ahead for them, not for him.

What does lie ahead? Something to ponder on a level that has less to do with the apocalyptic and eschatological than with the practical.

Here in N. America and elsewhere around

the globe, wheat prices are going up. Russia has banned wheat exports for the remainder of 2010. They are experiencing the worst heat wave on record. Heat and drought have brought massive forest fires. Worst on record.

The drought and heat may further stress forests, bring insect infestations that kill whole forests--inevitably leading to more fires, more drought, more heat. It's a feedback loop that can and will accelerate.

Oh, by the way, the wheat crop got hit hard by the same conditions. Some of it literally burned.

In Pakistan, always ripe for a disaster due to the poverty, population density, tribalism and corrupt government, the monsoon rains have been the worst on record. Self-sufficient communities in the north of the country have been completely wiped out, bereft of food, water, shelter, roads, bridges and the means to support themselves.

At last report yesterday, 12 million people were directly affected by the rains and floods. The only way to get in any relief was by helicopter--and yet more rains had made it too dangerous to fly.

So far, 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. Climate change deniers continue to deny. Response from the developed world, the part of the world with actual choices and actual power, has been far too meager to qualify as anything but an insult and a charade.

I sometimes think of it as ripping creation's gifts right out of God's hands and spitting back in his face.

In Luke's quotation from Hosea (Luke 23:30-31), Jesus follows it up with this observation:

For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?

People experience a snowy winter in one region of the US and use it to deny climate change, anthropogenic climate change, specifically. Never mind years of average temperatures for the whole planet, averages that have been trending up.

OK, so we can't completely make the case for global shifts out of the record heat in Russia or the record monsoons in Pakistan. But we can't fool the melting point of ice and the nearly universal retreat of the world's glacier systems.

So if the disasters in Russia and Pakistan are "normal" and not the result of changes wrought to the climate system by human activity, then you really wouldn't want to see what REAL CLIMATE CHANGE would produce, now would you?

What is REAL CLIMATE CHANGE? I define that as what even Republicans can't deny because it has cost them their homes, their land, their jobs, their drinking water, their food, their paycheck, their politcal power, their talk show, their tea party, their family members, their money.

I define is as when even Republicans are forced to ask the mountains and hills to bury them, to give them an escape from the consequences of thier actions. Or lack of it.

That goes for Democrats, too, and for all of us you's and me's out there.

If what we are seeing this year ain't the real stuff, then we surely don't want to see the real stuff.

Might be worth considering this: God does not recognize private property or private property rights. God gave and gives to the whole of creation and calls the whole of creation to steward for the good of the whole, aka to the glory of God.

Whatever else we believe, perhaps we could agree on this: Never has the planet been in the grand experiment of supporting nearly 7 billion of us. Seven billions warring and using and consuming like there is no tomorrow.

Time to get moving. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

And putting the finishing touches on the gilded invitations to the mountains and the hills... Not much God glory in that.

I like what Joseph Sittler wrote years ago. Talking about this is not stepping away from grave theological issues. It is stepping right into the middle of them.

Theology always lives between the rocks and the hard places. Otherwise, what good would it be? That's where all the God glory is.

Roger