As an adult I realize that the burdens that my parents carried and often tried to shield me from are now mine to bear. As the writer of Ecclesiastes writes, “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” Now that I am growing older, the concerns of presidential leadership, gas, food, clothing, shelter, the future of my children, etc. are now the burdens that I deal with.
In the last few years with the emergence of record breaking prices in gas and crude oil, I realize that this may be the fortelling of what the environmental prophets spoke long ago. The concerns of the environmentalists have always called us to a place where we felt uncomfortable. We laughed and jeered at their demonstrations. We hurled insults at them like “tree-hugger”, “hippies”, ”slacker”. Surely you get the point. For Biblical scholars of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament scriptures, the words of a prophet are never easy to listen to or live with. Prophets like Ezekial, Isaiah, Hosea went through great lengths to warn their people of the impending doom that they were to face. They even held demonstrations to prove their point much like the enviormentalists that we have laughed at over the years. What makes the words of the prophet unbearable is that they speak to our weaknesses and even to our misdoings. To be blunt, prophets speak to the sins and the judgment of the people by God.
Now that the writing appears to be on the wall with soaring gas prices and greater tensions in the world, my question is what have we become? In the United States, we have become a nation that is selfish. We forgot about the oil shortage we faced in 1973. (Even though I wasn’t born, still something to think about) That was our moment to step up and do something about our dependency and even our arrogance of oil. Does anyone remember the cartoons that emerged from the 1970s-mid 1980s? I’m not talking about political satires that appear in the editorial section, but Saturday morning cartoons. You know, Justice League, GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Captain Planet, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, The X-Men. The list could continue, but these are just a few examples. Those cartoons depicted the Cold War and our dependency on oil as being evil. Instead of stepping up to make a change, we dropped the ball.
No when we are faced with whether or not we should buy food or buy gas, everyone wants jump and buy a hybrid. Yet, our lust for flashiness is marred by our greed for consumerism and the expense and exploitation of capitalism. What more can be said? What more can we do? The middle class is just the working poor. Those on the lower end of middle class have always been a pay check away from being homeless. Does anyone not care or are we so blinded by Fox News and the lies of a what has become a fallacy of the office of the President. We are headed towards an iceberg and everyone is still in the ballroom eating caviar and sipping champagne. Now that we are faced with a crisis that no one wants to talk about, what’s next for us? How do we feed the families who sacrifice paychecks to feed their children or drive to work? At this point, we are beyond partisan politics. We need leaders with real issues and who will have the compassion and strength to really do something for someone other than themselves and their friends.
What can we do? Is it too late to repent of our greed and lust for big cars and trucks? Is it too late to render a solution from the environmentalist prophets?
My two cents is that we begin to pray and begin to make some serious lifestyle changes. It’s time for us to stop being selfish and to stop thinking that we have control over everything. There are lots of smart people in the world that live in other countries. Why not use their expertise? I repent for laughing at the idea of recycling and for laughing at those environmentalist who used bicycles, veggie fuel, and even recycled. For those of us who call ourselves Christian, we should seriously consider repenting for we have heard the warnings and did not heed them. How many pastors do you know that preach about being a steward of the earth. I can count them on one hand.
Now that we are forced to face the music and to face the judgment for our sins, how will you respond? Will you become a contributor of the solution or continue to contribute to the problem. The choice is yours.
