The Church vs. Held vs. Montana

Sixteen Montana youths have filed a case arguing that the state of Montana has denied their constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment.”

This is a pivotal moment for our state. I am originally from California, where environmentalism and church go hand-in-hand, so having creation care as a pillar of church is not new for me. But, it is new for many congregations.

To be fair, you would be hard-pressed to find scripture that directly supports the idea of creation care. When the earliest parts of the Bible were being written, there were only about 60 million people on Earth. That number grew to about 237 million people by the time the latest parts of the Bible were being written, an increase of about 180 million people over about 4,000 years.

But, the human population didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until about 1800 CE, and over the course of just 200 years, that number went up by 7 billion, to the roughly 8 billion people that we have living on the planet today.

These numbers are so large, that our human brains don’t really have the capacity to understand how much more 1 billion is than 1 million. If we convert these numbers into seconds, and then convert those seconds into days, then 1 million seconds would be roughly 11½ days. Now, if we convert 1 billion seconds into days, it would be 31.7 years. That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion, 11½ days versus 31.7 years. The amount of pressure that we as a species are exerting on the Earth today is larger by several orders of magnitude compared to what was going on during Biblical times.

If everyone on the planet lived the way that we do in the United States, it would require the resources of 4 Earths to sustain us.

During the time that the Bible was written, when there was less than a quarter of a billion people in the world, the Earth had no trouble supporting the human population. There were enough plants to convert our carbon dioxide back into oxygen, there was enough clean water for everyone who needed it, there weren’t thousands of species going extinct every year as a result of human activities. There wasn’t a need for the Biblical writers to say anything about climate change, or conserving water, or recycling. Those concepts just weren’t a part of their lives, and they would be hard pressed to even understand them.

But, just because we can’t quote direct scripture at these specific problems doesn’t mean that the Bible is silent about them. If we look at the overarching themes of the Bible, at the relationship that the Bible tells us to have with God and with each other, then creation care is really our only option.

One clear theme in the Bible is “the preferential option for the poor.”

This is a theological principle that states that God stands in solidarity with the poor and the powerless. If you pay attention to what God says, what Jesus says, and what the prophets say throughout the Bible, there’s a clear pattern of preference given to the poor and the powerless. Deuteronomy 15:11 says, “You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and the poor in your land.” Proverbs 21:13 says, “They who shut their ear to the cry of the poor will also cry and not be answered.” Luke 14:13 says, “When you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”

We know that the coming climate crisis will disproportionately impact those living in poverty. There are over 2 billion people living in poverty around the world right now, and left unchecked, climate change will add another 100 million people to that number by 2030.

The countries that are expected to be impacted the most by climate change are predominantly in the global south: Africa, South America, and the southern parts of Asia. Meanwhile, the countries who have contributed the most to climate change, and who have also benefitted the most, stand to be the least affected, so there’s less incentive for them to change. If we are going to prevent more people from falling into poverty, then we have to do something about climate change.

None of the other causes that we might care about, regardless of how important they are, will matter if we don’t have a planet to live on. All of the children of today, will not have a tomorrow if we don’t change how we live. God is calling us to action. God is calling us to take care of our neighbors.

So, take care of this planet that is our home, because it’s the only one that we’ve got.