Al Gore preaches up a storm

Last night Naomi and Alistair and I went to see the Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (check out the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUiP6dqPynE). It’s been billed as “the most terrifying film of the [northern] summer” and yeah, it’s a little concerning.

Aside from being shocked about how unhealthy we’ve made the planet it got me thinking about the issue of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Recently I’ve been praying for more rain, convinced in my Calvinism that ultimately it’s God’s sovereignty which will save us all from thirsty deaths, and it’s God’s sovereignty which led us to the position in the first instance. But Al Gore reminded me in no uncertain terms that the blame for our current situation can be placed quite squarely on human factors.

Now theologically I’m confident that I can reconcile this. For every action there is a divine and a non-divine agent, with the divine agent acting for holy and good reasons and the non-divine agent possibly acting with unholy motives (as hinted by Gen 50.20 and Acts 2.23). So our culpability in causing global warming is upheld, but God’s role in bringing it about can still be recognised without him being held guilty.

While I have applied this model to other natural phenomena, up until now I have not been particularly struck by the consequences of there being a human element in global warming. I knew that human activity was responsible for the situation, but my prayer in response to the crisis betrayed an overly theo-centric approach to the issue. The solution was to pray for God’s intervention, and to try and remember to start sorting my garbage every now and then. But the obvious human element involved in global warming has made me think that my prayers (and behaviour) should change. If I want the situation to improve, then shouldn’t repentance be a first step?

I know that by using the word ‘repentance’ it sounds as if contributing to global warming is a sin. Whether it is a sin is an interesting and important question, but this is not an avenue I wish to explore fully in this post. However, that global warming is our fault and that I want God to intervene suggests that some sort of repentance is called for, be it a moral repentance or merely a change from what is essentially a neutral behaviour. Either way, I do think that a recognition of our responsibility should be incorporated into our heavenly petitions. If God is not the only agent, then why have I prayed as if he is???

Does anyone have any clearer thoughts on this?
Is global warming a sin?
Is it possible to ‘repent’ from something which is not a sin? If so, how is this different to just ‘changing your mind’?

My Jesus my boyfriend...

A common complaint among us evangelicals is that many of our contemporary church songs sound too much like love ballads. I remember seeing a South Park episode where Cartman starts a Christian Band. He decides that this would be an easy thing to do because all that's required is to take an already existing love song and change the word 'baby' to 'Jesus' in the lyrics. But is there really that much of a problem with songs addressed to God which are so heartfelt that they lean towards a romantic expression of faith?

The image of the church being the bride of Christ is one worth considering. What is this metaphor trying to communicate? Is it merely another way of expressing the first commandment; that we as God's people are to be loyal to our creator as a bride is to be loyal to her husband? Is it speaking about how we are under Christ's headship as a bride is under the headship of her husband? Certainly the answer to these questions must be a "yes", but can we see more in the metaphor? It seems that from God's perspective, that he is "married" to his people gives rise to an emotive element within the relationship (eg Ezekiel 16). So as far as the divine to human perspective is concerned, the marriage between God and his people not only describes the functions of the relationship but the emotive aspects as well. As one fellow student asked in a lecture on the process of salvation: "Might God woo us?" Indeed he might! So if strong emotion flows from the divine to us, why do we baulk at letting it flow the other way? Why not allow ourselves to be 'wooed' like a bride might allow herself to be 'wooed' by her husband? Granted, when we sing three "I love you Lord" songs in a row at church, I do start to wish for a little more thought to be put into arranging the song order. But perhaps there is a stronger warrant for 'romantic' songs in church than we might sometimes care to admit.

Back again

Ah yes, back to the blog. I've been sidetracked by other things over the past month, and when starting this blog I promised myself that it wouldn't become an all devouring monster that sucked up all my time. So I guess its good to see that I've been able to be disciplined. However, last night at church Mark Stephens (who needs to start his own blog where he can write his thoughts and post his wonderful sermons) said "I checked out your blog last night, you haven't updated it in a while". Opps, yeah thats right...that blog thing... so my goal is a couple of posts a week. We'll see how we go.