11 16 11 Reclaiming the Life-as-Relationship Relationship

In Anchorage’s One People One Earth event last week, the panelists came from three different areas of expertise: Alaska Native Elders, Scientists and Interfaith Leaders. I googled the different participants and found out what an amazing mix of people gathered for this event. We all wrote short bios to be read at the event, and I will try to get it to include here. But some of the bios seemed more modest than I would have written for them.

As the event began, all of us were given a couple of minutes to introduce ourselves and to explain why we chose

to be involved with this event. Although I spoke more conversationally at the event, and perhaps more eloquently, this is the gist of what I said.

I am the Rev. Dr. Curtis Karns a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I currently serve as Executive Presbyter in this region, providing administration for the church from Barrow, to Anchorage, to St. Lawrence Island. I am also a person who grew up in Alaska, and I can see with my own eyes the drastic changes that climate change is causing in the North.

• My family has long had a cabin on Healy Lake. In my lifetime I have seen the islands and riverbanks near our cabin sink, because the so-called permanently frozen ice lenses on which they rested—ancient ice left from the Donnelly Glacier—have melted.
• I visit people in the communities where the Presbyterians have churches and they tell about hardships caused by climate change. As the polar ice cap melts walrus, and other ice dependent sea-life-food, are not coming anywhere near the villages. Robins and other southern birds are replacing some of the arctic coastal birds, as are southern animals replacing northern animals.
  
  
• Our Presbyterian Disaster Assistance people are finding themselves engaged in floods, coastal storm damage, and other disasters at an increasing rate. We are told that as the oceans warm, the frequency of destructive storms will increase. In fact, whole villages are being relocated at immense expense as a result of these storms.

I see what is happening here

As a Christian, it is my understanding that we live in a special time, an era begun when Jesus appeared on earth some 2000 years ago. This era is “directed toward the liberation of men and women, peace and nature, and the redemption of the community of human beings and nature from negative powers, and from the forces of death (Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, SCM, 1985, p. 5).” I can see the evidence of the negative power our modernist technological lifestyle is having on the earth itself. Future generations may have great difficulty living on this planet if we do not take seriously the threat we humans have brought to life on this planet. Christians always take seriously God’s call to be engaged in God’s ministry today. We therefore must be engaged in restoring creation, and I am here as a part of that work.

Second, all of us were asked to speak to why we were involved, and the to this question:

From your perspective as religious/indigenous/scientific people, what do you believe to be the root cause of climate change?

Here is the gist of the Christian response as I remember it. I will write the first part of our collective response today, and continue it tomorrow.

The Western worldview has contributed greatly to the situation in which we currently find ourselves. As Christians in the West, we have contributed to this problem by forgetting the essence of our own biblical roots. Christian faith is about restoring people to right relationships. Christians know that all people need to be restored to right relationship with God and with all of God’s creatures. These roots go right back to the biblical description of our origins.

Genesis begins with two different accounts of the creation of heaven and earth. The first tells of six days of creat ion and a day of Sabbath rest. The second tells of God breathing spirit-life into the first human creature and setting the human in the midst of God’s wonderful creation. Sandwiched between these two accounts is this verse:

⁴These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, (Genesis 2:4 KJV)…

The phrase, “These are the generations of…” is the same phrase used for genealogies in the Bible. The Bible says “These are the generations of Adam and Eve…,” or “These are the generations of Noah…” The Hebrew people who first received these scriptures were tribal people. For these tribal people the genealogies were important, because by listening to them the hearer learned who you were related to and what your responsibilities were in that relationship. For the Hebrew people out of whose culture this message comes, the phrase “These are the generations of…” would have a huge impact, and it should for us as well. It tells us that we are related to all of creation—that in some sense all God’s creatures are our relatives. [This point could use a little more explanation than I gave at the meeting. I will flesh this out a bit in my blog next week]

Now, we are in a panel with scientists, and scientist have been wonderfully helpful in showing us that none of us are just individuals in isolation; we are all involved in very complex systems. Individuals affect systems and systems affect individuals. However, systems thinking is scientific thinking, which tends to separate itself from being too passionate. In our training, Christians are taught to enter into relational thinking. Relational thinking is passionate thinking. We care deeply about what happens to our relatives. So, when we begin to grasp that God’s beloved creation is suffering it engenders a passionate response. This is why we are involved with this panel, today. We need to respond. Life on our planet is suffering.

For Christians recognizing where power and relationships are out of whack, and working to heal and restore them, is what we are about. We understand that we are restored to God, because God took action in Jesus to restore us to God—because the same sinfulness that causes us to damage relationships today puts our relationship with God in jeopardy. But we learn that because of Jesus’ faithful ministry, we are already restored to God. Now we need to join in what God is doing to restore all creation. Here are two New Testament Scriptures that point this out:

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10-NIV)

That is, Christians know that God worked in Christ Jesus to save us from being lost to God through sin and death, and having understood this,

Christians know that they are saved for the good works which God wishes us to do.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:22-NIV)

Right now, all of created life, including human life, is suffering. If we do not take action, our generation will increasingly feel the pain, but future generations will feel the pain so much more. This is an important moral issue—an essential work that our generation must address.

In the give-and-take that came out of comments from the floor, we addressed some other very important areas related to this. We also talked about some very practical things that people are doing, and can do, in response to this concern. I will share some of that over the next few days.

However one action we need to do together. Please sign our petition to President Obama. We would like to bring a long list of signatures from Alaskans to him, and to other governmental agencies, calling for the kind of response that only governmental action can pull together. Please go to this link and sign:

http://onepeopleoneearth.org