People are searching high and low for the reasons behind the
oil spill in the Gulf. ; There are investigations, questions, defenses, etc. ; Yet, the answer was given long before the spill ever happened. ; In 1985, Jürgen Moltmann wrote
God in Creation. ; In it, he dealt with what he called the “Ecological Crisis.” ; The insights he offers has much to say regarding the cause of the recent oil spill and other ecological disasters.
The ecological crisis of the modern world has its starting point in the modern industrial countries. ; These grew up in the midst of civilizations which had been shaped by Christianity…
The crisis of the modern world is not due merely to the technologies for the exploitation of nature; nor can we put it down to the sciences which made human beings the lords of nature. ; It is based much more profoundly on the striving of human beings for power and domination…Unbridled striving for power was to make human beings like their God, ‘the Almighty’; so these human beings invoked God’s almighty power in order to furnish a religious justification for their own. ; The Christian belief in creation as it has been maintained in the European and American Christianity of the Western churches is therefore not guiltless of the crisis in the world today.
;In other words, Moltmann asserts that the Western church’s acquiescence to industrialization and “progress” as opposed to obeying God has caused this inconvenient truth. ; So, did the Western Church – by its apathy – cause the oil spill? ; Has the Western Church, through neglect, caused global warming? ; Is the Western Church responsible for the crisis that has led to the “ecological crisis?”
Everyone is trying to pin the blame on someone else. ; Democrats place it on Republicans. ; Republicans place it on Democrats. ; BP and Big Oil place blame on the Government. ; The Government places the blame on Big Oil. ; The people do not know who to blame. ; The reality is that no one is blaming themselves, and everyone should…for all of us has bought into the theology that the earth is ours to rape and pillage. ; It is no longer God’s, on loan to us. ; God has been robbed of His creation and we abuse it, looking over our shoulders hoping He does not return.
The answer to this crisis lies in our return to God. ; No stricter environmental regulations will save the earth. ; Rethinking offshore drilling is not what’s most important. ; The most important thing is that we correct our relationship to God. ; For, if that relationship is right then we will be able to see God in creation, and respect the earth and environment as His creation.
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