Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us

Radbam November 29th, 2009

As the climate conscientious gather for this week’s Throttlin’  in Copenhagen (maybe Don King should have been involved?), the fervent on both sides are rallying to the barricades armed with the novel and the nutty.  Most recently, the schadenfreude-stricken critics of the British academic email scandal, tagged Climategate by the sound bite savvy, vie with progressives bearing Pentagon papers emphasizing the national security dangers of global warming in the hopes of a broader appeal to the hyper-vigilant, post-9/11 fearful.

Leaving it to the bloggersphere and punditocracy to hungrily pour and paw over the cultural carrion, I have been heartened by the substantive support of faith communities.  The usual suspects have come to the fore for flora and fauna: historically left-leaning, mainstream Protestants and Jews, and ideologically consistent Catholics whose absolutist passion for life encompasses the planetary conditions necessary to sustain life.  And in a transformation even the skeptical might deem miraculous, the next generation of conservative evangelicals have moved beyond the old guard’s dismissal of the environment as irrelevant to Jesus’ Triumphant Reunion Tour, focusing on Creation Care as a priority transcending even the Holy Trinity of fetuses, fornicators (especially the same-sex variety) and forced prayer.

And while this is definitely a welcome evolution in engagement and advocacy, it also reflects a deeper theological change.  Christian theology often seems to focus on the afterlife as resort destination, and thus the morality of our earthly sojourn is merely means to an everlasting end.  Judaism offers a definitively present-centered approach to embracing good and combating evil.  Heaven and Hell with small “h’s” are forged here and now through our actions and inactions rather than serving as cosmic carrots and sticks to sway and scare.  But concern for the present alone is insufficient.  More compellingly, we are cosmic debtors to a deity imbued with obvious power and infinite compassion, Who created the unnecessary-but-invaluable.  God didn’t need us.  Let’s be glad God wanted us.   The least we can do for this act of superfluous grace from the Ultimate LandLord is to live and care for our patrimony as grateful guardians of our generously subsidized housing.

This shift of emphasis on sacred stewardship as payment for proven debt rather than investment in uncertain reward possesses the power to unite disparate faith communities into a movement that is more than the fashion of the moment.  It is nothing less than a theological revolution, and, as with the best theology, the gateway to a change in consciousness.

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