Is God Green?

via Moyers on America . Is God Green? | PBS.

Watch it via PBS

Just a bit of the problem that happens with “Bible Interpretation”. The text renders radically different responses,  based on the context.  Some will “filter” and create their own “CANON” of Scripture and ignore the more obvious , “inconvenient” passages that would otherwise cry out as a much more direct message.  Or they will take a completely diufferent angle and claim a different context,  or take a certain word (such as “dominion”,  and emphasize the authority of humanity to subjugate, use,  and strip what wherever,  and whenever,  for as long as it can continue to yield the product (and with new technology,  beyond what was previously considered “used up” ,  to more radical extractive measures (ie Mountain Top removal).

Richard  Cizik is prominently featured in this program.  Two conversions: To Jesus,  and to a British scientist Sir John Houghton,  who said “The fate of the earth may well depend on how evangelical Christians respond to the issue of climate change”.

GOP Senator James Imhofe:  “It’s a stroke of genius for the environmentalists to come ion and try to capture the Chrisitians;  the fundamental Christians”.   New for you, James,  it was The Bible that did the “capturing”.   This guy heads the House committee with jurisdiction over the environment.

Also featured is the guy behind “The Cornwall Declaration”,  which drew heavily on “science” from the various Oil industry (such as Exxon Mobil)  funded “Think tanks” to draft a document on “Environmental Stewardship”,  which I have seen scores of Evangeliscal Christians trot out as their “documentation” for their climate science skepticism and rejection.

This guy says that since the Bible doesn’t say anything about global warming is one of the reasons why he is taking the ANTI CGlobal Warming  , skeptic, “it’s a hoax”  position (which is typical ignorance of the impossibility of Biblical writings to have ANY IDEA WHATSOEVER about the technological heights to be reached once  the Industrial Revolution began the explosive, exponential growth of that technology). And of course,  he is a theological warrior for the “Dominion over creation” , anti-ecological , “Bible-believing” coaltion with the powers that be.   Except that it’s “Bible believing” is in an accomodating , importation of the values of the powers that be,  today ensconced in the global corporations,  and backed by the GOP (and increasingly,  the Democrats, who have ceased to be the “party of the People” in actual policy).

This guy,  as I listen to his responses to Moyers’ questions,  is the typical accommodator.  “Cost-benefit” analysis is focused on the profits of the extractors,  and not to any “Human cost”  (except that they would tout “jobs” as the “Human issue” ,  but ignore and resist the questions about the cost to the land, indigenous people,  neighboring settlements and neighborhoods (especially poorer ones).  This set of blinders is at the center of what Chris Hedges identifies as “The Sacrifice Zones” which huge corporations have determined are the “collateral damage” that results in a postive ledger in “Cost-Benefit analysis”.

“Anyone who believes WITH THE BIBLE that God is in control of this earth…..”    See that?  This is WHAT the Bible believes” (which is , in itself,  a clear indication of the complete disconnect they have with the idea that “what the Bible says” is a foregone conclusion and that WE impose our worldview upon that and conclude that it all points to ours. Typical example of what Duke McCall warned us about in 1980 at the “Heart of America Bible Conference” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:  “We must not confuse ‘God’s Word’ with our APPROPRIATION of it”.  The opening sentence of this paragraph is a glaring example of just that.