Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Does Saving the Environment Have to Do With Salvation?

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

Want to join our 4-week Zoom Bible Study, "Are we living in the end times?" https://info.thecrossingchurch.com/zoom-online-bible-studies (Sign-up today). We start Friday April 3 from 12:00-12:30 with a 15-minute Q&A afterward. "We have narrowed salvation to focus only on our souls or only on individuals. And we have missed what God is doing on a cosmic level, what God is doing on a bigger level." When we think about salvation, we probably think about our souls, but it's way bigger than that. God cares about all of his creation, which includes animals and nature. We are called to be stewards of the earth and caretakers of the land. Most of us care about the environment, but we might not realize how important it is. Learn how we're supposed to care for the earth fromhttps://www.westmont.edu/people/sandra-richter-phd ( )https://www.westmont.edu/people/sandra-richter-phd (Dr. Sandra Richter), author ofhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4500735-the-epic-of-eden ( )https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4500735-the-epic-of-eden (The Epic of Eden) andhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50143309-stewards-of-eden ( )https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50143309-stewards-of-eden (Stewards of Eden), as she joinshttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ ( )https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) andhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ ( )https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick) to discuss how creation fits in with the Kingdom of God. Interested in more content like this? Scroll down to check out more resources and related episodes, includinghttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/does-genesis-contradict-science-a-guest-interview-with-dr-s-joshua-swamidass/ ( )https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/does-genesis-contradict-science-a-guest-interview-with-dr-s-joshua-swamidass/ (Can Evolution and Genesis Be Friends?). To learn more, visit ourhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ ( )https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us onhttps://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO ( )https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook),https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO ( )https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), andhttps://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo ( )https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Before the episode starts, I want to invite you to a special online-only event with Keith and I. We are going to be doing a lunch Bible study on Friday, April 3rd, from 12 to 1230. We're going to do this for four weeks, actually. And we're going to be asking the question, are we living in the end times? Right now I'm getting so many questions from people who,

were actually literally asking the question, you know, is coronavirus a sign of the times? Or they're just wondering, what does the Bible say about these kinds of things? There's a lot of questions, a lot of misconceptions. We're going to address those. Again, we're going to put a link to that online event right at the top of our show notes. Pause it right now. Click that link, sign up today, and you can join us on April 3rd from 12 to 1230 and a few weeks afterwards.

On today's episode, we are interviewing Sandra Richter. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Harvard. And she now teaches at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. She's the author of two books, The Epic of Eden, which is one of our favorite go-to books on the big story of the Bible. And she's the author of a new book, Stewards of Eden, what scripture says about the environment and why it matters. Thanks for being on the show, Sandra. Hey, it is great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. My wife would be very jealous to know that I'm talking to you right now. She is in a seminary class through Covenant Seminary and finished Epic of Eden recently and tries to drop knowledge on me all the time now that she's been trained by you. I was just at Southeastern Baptist a couple of months ago. You're a big deal around our house right now.

Now, you're in California, and the pandemic is having maybe bigger impact there right now than it is where we are. So what are you doing to socially distance? Well, we just got our shelter-in-place order last night. We're in Santa Barbara, which is for California is a bit more distant than the bigger urban centers. So San Francisco's been on lockdown for quite a while. And we just had our first, I think it was nine cases in our county. And one of them is from Santa Barbara Community College.

So last night the order came through, don't leave your house, basically. So all of our kids are out of school. All of our Westmont students are hither and yon. It's been enormously disruptive. I know in your book you don't really address sickness or disease, and yet I'm sure you've thought about it in light of the bigger story of the Bible. Have you been thinking about that lately? Is there anything that you would share with us from kind of a biblical perspective on sickness and disease? I don't think our coronavirus has a lot to do with environmental degradation, at least from what I'm understanding.

And granted, I am not a scientist. I, as you've announced, my degree is in Hebrew Bible. So I'm the kind of doctor who is no good at a car wreck. But I have had several people send me links to the articles coming out about Venice. Have you seen that? No. That in a mere, what, 10 days of them stopping boat traffic on the Venice canals, that dolphins are back in the Venice canals.

And there was some other form of wildlife that's returned, that for the first time in his living memory, the mayor is stating that the waters are clear. And again, dolphins are up playing in the canals. So 10 days of Adam holding back on his, I would say, abuse of the environment, and we've got dolphins back. That is very interesting. That is interesting. As I read your book, well, let me say it this way. I think of myself as just kind of the average Christian.

and I hadn't thought a lot. I'm going to guess your people don't. Well, average in this way. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the environment. I'm not against the environment. It's just not been a pressing issue in my life. It's not something that I've pursued a lot of information about. So when you talk to people at these conferences or just people who've approached you about your book,

what do you think the average Christian believes about the environment? I honestly think the average Christian loves the environment. I think the average Christian sees the glory of God in creation and intends to be a good steward. I just think, as you've said, the average Christian isn't necessarily thinking about the environment. And at least in the States, I think the average Christian is unaware of the impact that their lives, their community, their country is having on the environment. And part of that is because we're blessed with such amazing resources. We just don't see it. It almost feels like that some Christians have made a hostility toward their environment,

almost a mark of their faith. So I guess I'm pushing back against you a little bit, and you're saying that Christians love the environment, and I agree with that. And yet environmentalism, maybe that's what it is, the ism, that some Christians, not all, maybe not even a majority, maybe a small minority, I don't know, but have made kind of a hostility toward the environment a mark of their faith. Do you find that? Yeah, you're absolutely right.

The ism stirs up all sorts of issues. And when I speak and travel, I'm definitely crashing into that. I remember one event very clearly, it was almost 10 years ago now. I was in Omaha, Nebraska, and I had been asked to come speak to a pastoral conference. And in the conference, I spoke on the portion of my work that has to do with the animal husband And by the time I was done, you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. And somebody raised their hand coming from good cattle farming stock and pushback pretty hard. And it was one of those moments where I was learning about my bubble as an academic. And I'm not just an academic. I mean,

I'm involved in ministry as well, but we all have our bubbles. And here I was talking to a room full of people who had been raised on cattle farms. And I, city slicker, I'm talking about humane animal husbandry. And it was one of those moments where I think the Holy Spirit really helped me and help me in a very practical way. With the tension in the room, what I wound up saying in response was, gentlemen, let me say that I don't think any real farmer abuses as animals. And all of a sudden, all of the tension in the room dissipated.

and they were ready to listen. So yes, I do think there is a hostility regarding environmentalism, just like for any, the anthropologist to me is coming out, any subculture, which is what Christianity is in the United States, we tend to react against systems that seem to threaten our identity. So let me get back on track here. As I speak of an introduction of my book, I narrow the reaction that you're speaking of, within the Christian community to three zones. And I'm sure there are more. But a critical one is politics or our political alliances. And actually, according to Catherine Hayho, I don't know if you've seen her speak yet. She has an amazing TED talk. She's actually a climate scientist. And I stay away from climate science because it's not my expertise, but it is hers.

She states in her introduction that it is the most diagnostic issue is someone's political alliance. Where are they going to come down on the environmental question has to do with whether or not they pre-register as a Republican or Democrat, which I find fascinating. In my own experience, I have found that in the U.S., the traditional allies of the church are not the traditional allies of environmental concern. So if you are pro-life, it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. And if you're a Patriot, you supposedly also cannot be a conservationist. And first of all, I totally disagree with those categories because I myself am very pro-life and very much a patriot. And yet, I am very pro-environment. In our country, if you're a Republican, supposedly, you cannot also be an environmentalist.

And basically what's happened is environmental concern or admirable advocacy has been pigeonholed into a particular political profile and has become guilty by association. And I think for Christians who are scrambling to represent their Lord, the kingdom of God, hang on in the midst of a culture, which is often hostile to their value system and to their faith, they see political concern over in the liberal camp, and therefore environmentalism has become guilty by association. I think that's a really interesting and maybe even insightful challenge to anyone that we don't want to be over-allied to any political ideology. I find all this really interesting because I became a Christian when I was 19. And so the first thing I did is what any 19-year-old Christian who's an undergrad does.

I took a Bible class at my secular university. And so all of a sudden... That's the first thing you did. See, I burned my albums. Which album do you wish you hadn't burned? I know. I was a pretty conservative kid generally, but I had been told that my music was evil, so there was John Denver right out. Sorry, John Denver. So I'm taking this Old Testament class at the University of Missouri. And one of the first days of our class, we're talking about Genesis 1. We're starting right at the very beginning. And the author gets to Genesis 1, 26 through 28. And he explains to us that this passage,

when it calls humanity, or in our English translations, we have a calling to subdue and have dominion over the earth. And he said that in the original language, in the Hebrew, this was basically permission for humanity to rape and pillage the earth. And of course, his point is that this was a terribly immoral thing that's inside of the Bible and has caused all of our environmental degradation. But what I like about your book is that you're presenting a very different understanding, interpretation of what the Bible has to say about the environment. In fact, you seem to be saying that the environment, all of creation, that's actually a theme that runs through the whole of Scripture. So I think it would really help our listeners if you just walked through the story of the Bible

regarding creation and the environment. Well, let me start off by saying I'd really like to know who that profit is because that is interesting to me. I won't make you name names. And let me say as well that I totally agree with him that Genesis 1 and Genesis. Genesis 2 gives humanity dominion. In fact, I give you the Hebrew words in Stewards of Eden, if you ever want to argue back, Mashal and Radha are the two major verbs. Humanity definitely gets dominion over the wonders of creation. But as your professor would note, in that perfect week of Genesis chapter 1, there is an order of authority being presented. In fact, I would argue that Genesis 1 is answering the question, who goes where? It's answering the question,

who lives in what ecosystem, who has dominion over what sphere. And so we've got the birds in the air, we've got the fish in the sea, we've got the land animals on the dry land. And then on day six, which is this penultimate climax to the piece, we have all of this beautiful poetic language that communicates that humanity has been given sovereignty, has been given dominion over everything that comes before. And that, I think, is very clear in the book of Genesis and fully intentional. But day six is not the end of the week. Day seven is the end of the week. And on day seven, the Lord God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, is enthroned above all the previous six days. So humanity is being placed in a position of dominion, but he and she are being placed under the

sovereignty of the Almighty. So yes, they're being given dominion, but they're being given dominion under the ultimate suzerain of the universe. And his name, of course, is Yahweh. And that ultimate dominion becomes both a constraining force and a model for how humanity is supposed to exercise their dominion. We rule as we've been ruled. We are made in the image. And our job is to imitate the image. So much so that when you get to the new covenant, what is the ultimate command and promise that we are being conformed, I would even say reconformed, to the image of God the Son. So humanity has got no business defining dominion for themselves. That ultimately is the crime of the fall, that we've designed God in our own image

and we've designed sovereignty in our own image. We don't get that gig. For lots of reasons, it's not the least being, we don't have the ability to do that. We don't have that kind of agency. So if you were going to sum up the story of the environment in the Bible, and kind of a short, easy to digest form for people, because, again, we might think that, okay, the Bible says something about the environment in Genesis 1, but that's kind of the end of it. We move on to more important things afterwards. So what is that story? Well, if I could even jump in and just say, I think a lot of Christians think the world's going to burn. And so they have a misconception. of where all this is going. So maybe that factors in as you help us understand where

creation is headed, how that kind of pushes back against this world's going to burn. So who cares about the environment? Right. And earlier you would ask me about what makes many Christians, many Jesus loving, God-fearing, devoted Christians hostile toward environmentalism. And I've given you the political response. That is important. The second zone, as I say in the book, is very typical with Christians and issues of social justice. And that is that we just don't see the impact. And we can talk about that more later. But the third one is exactly what you're speaking of here. And I think is the most detrimental. And that's this theological perception that the created order is bound only for destruction. And therefore, it's ethically appropriate for the church to use up the earth's

resources as aggressively as possible in order to accomplish what really matters. matters. And as you've already hinted at, what really matters is the conversion of souls, because everything else is going to burn. I actually start a chapter in the book with a quotation from a beloved pastor who made that exact statement in 2016 in a sermon in Wheaton, Illinois. So the church, especially the evangelical wing of the church, has inadvertently dismissed the issue of environmental stewardship as peripheral or even alien to the field. psychological commitment to the Bible because of exactly what you're speaking up. So you want a synopsis. Let me see what I can do. When you do biblical theology, and I'll throw this one in there for free,

the great weakness of our theology as the evangelical wing of the church, as Christians, broader than evangelicalism as well, is that when we come up with our doctrinal positions, we don't consider the great story. We don't track things from Genesis to the New Jerusalem. We find ourselves a little proof text, we hang our hat on it and we move that forward so it becomes the great litmus test of whether or not your believer. I don't do theology that way. I think if I can't find an issue represented from Genesis through the book of Revelation, then I have not found a representation of the character of God. I have found a sidewater, an eddy. So with environmentalism, we start in the garden. We've already talked about that.

God's blueprint for creation is amazing, fabulous, overwhelming, gorgeous, and humanity is given a land grant. And if your readers have done my Epic of Eden, they know that I'm really big on covenant theology and the relationship between God and humanity as a suzeran and a vassal, basically a big king and a little king. And I didn't make that up. That's been a part of biblical theology for a very long time. I just might have newer language for it. Okay, so humanity is given a land grant in the Garden of Eden. They are told, I've given you this grant to care for your needs, to support and defend you, for you to steward responsibly, but keep in mind that it's mine. This is the creator speaking. It's mine. And you get to stay here as long as you submit to my authority. And as we all know, humanity said, no, thank you. I have a better plan. I think autonomy is a better approach to this situation. And thanks God. See you.

And so in that rebellion, we wind up with a fallout that destroys everything we know and love. And part of that fallout is the breach of humanity's relationship with creation. So creation was given to us to use in our need, but I would say not to abuse in our greed. Then comes Israel. Real quick, I'm going to pause you there because I think you're saying some really great stuff. But the big picture you're giving is that God has entrusted us land. He entrust Adam and Eve with a particular land. So in the same way that in our world, a trustee is not someone who is necessarily owning the trust or someone who's responsible for the trust. They're supposed to take care of the trust.

It's the same way they're supposed to take care of this land. That's not their land. It's God's land, but it's been entrusted to them. And of course, it sounds like what you're getting at is that humanity has failed in their calling as trustees of the land. They reject God's commands and say, you know, going to treat this like it's our own and we're going to do with it whatever we want. The fiduciary responsibility is what my attorney friends call it. What our 19-year-old listeners are thinking of is if they trash their dorm room. And if they trashed their dorm room, somebody's going to have to pay. And when you get your first apartment, if you don't leave it clean, if you don't take care of doing the self-clean on the oven, you're going to lose your security deposit.

And I mean, this is a very simplistic presentation, but this is what happens in the garden. we lose the garden. And when we circle forward to Israel, we have a very similar relationship. And often Christians will say, why is Israel's relationship important to me? You know, and this is an ongoing education for the church that God's relationship with Israel, first of all, still illustrates his character. And if we want to understand our God, we've got to understand his ongoing relationship with humanity. But the old covenant still speaks into our new covenant identity. For goodness sake, we are the heirs of Abraham, according to Galatians. So when Israel receives the land, they also receive a land grant. And they're so important because

they are the first example we have of a landed populace in a fallen world. So as your listeners will see in the book, environmental law becomes critical to Israel's civic and federal law. And may I remind us that if Deuteronomy is actually dated to the era it claims, we're looking at 1,200 B.C. And they actually have multiple laws in the Law Code of Deuteronomy between chapters 12 and 26, the or Deuteronomium for the academics among us, that these laws address sustainable agriculture, humane animal husbandry, the support and defense. of the wild creature. Deuteronomy has laws that forbid environmental terrorism. Can you believe it? And they require a regular season of fallow in order to create an environment of sustainable agriculture. So the overarching position in the covenant with Israel is that the land and its creatures once again don't belong to humanity, but they belong to God. And because of that, the citizens of

Israel are responsible to God. And the language is, if you want to live long in this land and prosper, you will care for the wild creature. You will treat your domestic animal humanely. You will slaughter humanely. And you will practice sustainable agriculture. I'll let you recap. So in a sense, Israel has a second chance. This is a rebooting the kingdom. And they commit the same mistakes, the same sins, the same rebellion that Adam and Eve did. Absolutely. So here we find out a little bit more, though, because the laws become more specific as the story progresses.

And we find that God cares a lot about creation. I mean, we might even be wrong saying environment, because environment is probably a subset of creation. God cares about animals. He cares about farming practices. He cares about land. He cares about the way we steward that. Now, Israel, we know, screws up, sins, and gets kicked out of the land into exile, and then

you might want to pick up from there and move forward. Yeah, and can I just emphasize that God's concern for the well-being of Israel's environment is largely because of his concern for Israel. So many of these environmental laws actually circle back to the marginalized. And this is another aspect that our current day believers miss. And we miss it partly because we live in a land of prosperity and abundance. We don't see what is happening to the Malagasy people in Madagascar because of 88% deforestation. We don't see that these people can no longer farm and fish and that the mortality rate of women delivering babies,

the most natural and beautiful act on this planet, their mortality rate right now is one out of 10. largely due to environmental degradation. So the laws in Israel echo these realities, that if Israel takes care of their land, their domestic creatures and their wild creatures, ultimately they're taking care of themselves. And of course, we know that the creator loves his people. So yes, Israel commits the same crimes.

We actually have prophets circling back in saying to Israel that one of the reasons for the exile is because Israel failed to fallow their ground. And for those who aren't farmers, following means allowing a field to lie dormant for one full year out of seven. And the agriculturists among us would be able to explain that when you allow a field to lie fallow for a year, two things happen.

One, the soil is regenerated so that the fertility of the land is rebooted and the nutrient capacity of what comes out of that land is expanded. But the other thing that's so interesting is that pests become resident in areas where they know they have a food source. So let's say you're growing tomatoes in your little backyard garden plot every year for 10 years. Well, every bug that loves tomatoes is going to come live in that little garden plot because they know that every year on schedule, tomatoes, are going to be produced and they're going to have a little festival for tomato bugs. If you take

one full year and stop raising tomatoes on that plot, all the pests that love tomatoes will have to pack up and go somewhere else. And their larvae will die and your garden plot will be more productive. So these are Israel's laws. And a new covenant person looks back on that and says, well, that's really lovely, but I'm part of the new covenant. And we no longer conquer the promised land. We don't strap swords to our side to expand the kingdom of God. We're now out there winning souls and we don't need to worry about such concrete matters as whether or not we muzzle our ox when he threshes the grain or what happens when we discover a wild bird on the side of the road sitting on our eggs. Both of these are laws addressed in Deuteronomy. So we move into the new covenant.

And what happens, as you've already intimated, is we have multiple passages that speak of how the world is going to burn. We have 2 Peter 3, 10 through 13. We have 1st Thessalonians 5. We have Revelation chapter 6, 12 through 14. All of these which seem to speak of a mass conflagration, a mass destruction of the current order. And so Christians look at that and say, it's all going to burn. So I'm going to get out there and I'm going to convert soul. and I'm not going to worry about the fecundity of the land or the well-being of domestic creatures

or the preservation of wild habitat because it's all going to burn. Yes, there are passages in the scriptures that would lead you to believe there's some sort of destruction of the earth coming, and yet we're the three of us are pretty sure that's not what the Bible teaches. Help us understand the context of those verses. Where does the story push forward to? So there are really two things we need to address. What is the positive? perspective of the new covenant regarding environmental stewardship and what is the negative. So I'll start with the negative. When we look at these passages, we need to realize that we're reading about the long-awaited day of judgment. In the Old Testament, this day of judgment is spoken

of as the day of Yahweh, or the Yom Yahweh, if you have any Hebrew listeners. And this day of judgment is scattered throughout the Old Testament, especially in the prophets. If you did a search in a Bible software for the day of Yahweh or the day of the Lord or the Yom Yahweh, you would find it's all over the prophets and it's even scattered throughout some of the historical books. Meredith Klein would make the argument that the first Yom Yawai is actually in Genesis 3. And that that passage that Yahweh was walking in the garden in the cool of the day is actually Yahweh was walking in judgment in the garden in the spirit of the day. Meredith Klein is a great reformed theologian.

Okay, so this Yom Yahweh is the day that Israel looks forward to throughout its experience because it is the day when Yahweh shows up and judges this fallen system as corrupt and steps back into our dimension and says, that's it. I am done with the last corrupt government, the last genocide, the last genocide, the last driving out of a refugee population. The Khmer Rouge, Hitler's Third Reich, were done. The last pedophile, the last drug lord, done. Justice is coming. And on that day of justice, we have a day of great judgment as well. And the prophets are always mourning Israel, make sure you're on the right side of the line when Yahweh shows up. Because this is going to be bloody. And although it will be a day

deliverance, it will also be a day of judgment. Okay, so the Yom Yahweh doesn't disappear in the Old Testament. It is actually carried forward into the New Testament where it is called the Second Coming. And the rider on the white horse that parts the heavens in the book of Revelation, is none other than Yahweh the sun. And these words that we are reading in 2 Peter, 1st Thessalonians in Revelation 6 that speak of fire, are these words of judgment to come out of the Yom Yahweh. So if we apply the right lexicon to those passages and realize that what we're dealing with is the second coming, we realize that we're not necessarily reading words of annihilation, we're reading words of judgment. And the question we want to ask is what does God do to this

planet when he judges his people? And we have answers for that. One of the things we like to say is that we need to make sure that we don't read our Bibles literally. We need to make sure that we read are Bibles literarily. And what we mean when we say that isn't that we don't take the Bible as true, it's that we need to let the Bible speak as the Bible is. It's a literary document. And what I hear you saying here is that in the prophets, the way that they describe this day of the Lord, the Yom Yahweh, the imagery they used to depict it was often imagery of fire. A way of showing judgment, and this surprises no one who's seen a fire in real life, is fire. And when the New Testament picks up this exact same concept of a day of the Lord, the day when God's going to set the world right by

bringing his justice, they use the same kind of imagery. They use fire to depict that act of judgment. And it's tempting for us because maybe we don't know our Old Testament very well to think that this is a literal image that literally the world is going to burn, whereas someone who's reading the Bible literally says, ah, this is imagery and I know it from my Old Testament. So when I see this imagery of burning, now I get it. It's talking about this moment when God's going to execute his justice on earth. Well, and the other image that is so helpful about fire is that fire purges, doesn't it? It cleanses. And there are many passages in our Bible where fire is a very positive force. And that's what he's up to. He's purging the earth of its evil. It's really the

exact same process of the flood under Noah. What he does is he washes the earth clean so that he can start again. But the idea that he's actually going to annihilate this planet in that purging is that biblical. That's the question we want to ask. So I would affirm, yes, absolutely, this world is going to be judged, but it's not going to be annihilated. And who am I, Sandy Richter, to make that statement? First of all, I don't get to declare that because I'm more comfortable with it. I'm not chasing culture here. I'm trying to chase the biblical text. Is it going to be annihilated? God's creation, as we know, was good. It was good. And I would argue that the entire story of redemption argues that his plans for its future are good as well. We have the model of the flood. It's humanity

that's wiped out. The animals are rescued. The earth is washed clean so that it can sprout again. I would make the argument that his ultimate plan for this world, for his world, is not to annihilate it, but to restore it, to redeem it, may I dare say to resurrected so that all of us can get back to doing the good work that was part of the blueprint in the first place. Now, how do I have the right to say that? Well, I'm going to hide behind Paul because Paul can handle himself. Thank you very much. And where Paul handles himself is in Romans chapter 8. And I've used Romans chapter 8 for 20 years, maybe 25 years of being in the classroom when I'm trying to explain to my students that salvation is not just about you. Because, of course, especially with my undergrads, but also with the average person in the pew, we think in terms of salvation as fire insurance.

I say yes, I go forward, I kneel at the altar, and I don't go to hell. Hallelujah. Now, I'm shouting hallelujah too, but reality is that Genesis 1 sets us up as students of the Bible as believers in God. to recognize the redemption is not just about us. When the cosmos are hit with the nuclear warhead of Adam and Eve's rebellion, the entire cosmos is flipped upside down. Adam's curses don't just involve his own body. They involve the soil and the animals and the planet itself.

Eve's curse does not just involve her own body. It involves the entire cosmic order. And so as we move forward with the great narrative of redemption, we see that the theme of redemption is constantly, how do I get Adam back in the garden? How do I get the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve such that their relationship with the Almighty is restored and they can be the residence of the New Jerusalem? How do I deliver them body and soul from the curse of death so that I, the creator, the father of the universe, can have them. them back. So Romans 8 picks this up, verses 18 through 25. Incredibly important. I should read the passage. So what does Romans 8, 18 through 25 say? It says, for I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be paired with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So Paul is busy talking

about the Eschaton. He's talking about the New Jerusalem for the anxious longing of the creation, waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. So guys, it's not just us that are waiting for the second coming. The anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility. Doug Mu would say frustration, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoptionist sons, the redemption of our body. So what that passage tells us is that it is the redemption of our body, that's a resurrection of our body that finishes the salvation process. And what it also tells us is that Paul, our great theologian, is putting the resurrection of the planet right next to the resurrection of the sons of Adam and the daughters of you. This planet is not destined for annihilation any more than you and I are.

It is destined for resurrection. This very planet healed of its scars and its diseases resurrected to become the new heavens and the new earth. That's what the Bible teaches. And so when the New Testament circles around and states in Colossians that this world was created for him, in him and with him, for by him all things were created, we've got to stand there as Christians and say that this planet and its creatures are not simply disposable. Okay, so this is fantastic stuff, Sandra. You're saying that we have narrowed salvation so that we have narrowed it to focus only on our souls or only on individuals. And we've missed what God is doing on a cosmic level and what God is doing on a bigger level. Yes, God is concerned about saving individuals. But he's up to something bigger than that. God is rescuing his whole creation. He's rescuing everything. all that which was declared good in Genesis 1 is now fallen in Genesis 3, and from there on out is being redeemed until we get to the last chapter of the Bible when the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven so that his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

And his throne is established here. He redeems and transforms, purifies through judgment and fire, purifies all of his creation so that we now now, reign under him, all believers will reign under him like we were originally designed to do back in the Garden of Eden. We will, by the power of the spirit, and by God's grace, reign underneath his authority like we were originally designed to do. And that opens up the Christian life to be a lot bigger than our own individual needs or saving souls. It, I think, makes the Christian life far more fascinating, interesting, challenging. It makes us salt. It makes us leaven. It makes us the force

that transforms this realm. Now, we know that we will not succeed transforming this realm under our own power, that the heavens are going to have to part. But this is our commission to be the wheat among the tears and to model the realities of another kingdom. And that really circles back to the first question you asked me, which politics do we as citizens of the kingdom of heaven adhere to? And we have always struggled from the first time anyone was called a Christian until this very day to live in a space between the kingdom of God and the empire. We've always struggled. And I think reality is for us as Americans in particular that our own history, the Massachusetts Bay Colony,

experiment, manifest destiny, the idea of religious freedom, but we're lulled into this perception that we actually can live at peace with the empire. I think what you're saying is that because Christianity has been accepted in our country for so long that Christians have confused the empire with their faith. And most Christians throughout history, most believers throughout history, would have understood the empire and their faith to be at odds a lot of times, and they had to live inside of that tension. So circling back to the political question, we know in the core of our beings that the politics we are supposed to submit to are the politics of the kingdom. That's why we live with a

different value system. That's why we are odd or peculiar, as the New Testament likes to call it. The argument I'm making is that our peculiarity, our oddity, does not only involve our relationship with humanity and the values that we impose on a world. When we stand up for a different sexual ethic, when we stand up for a different income ethic, when we give away our income to the marginalized, when we step into spaces where we know we're not going to be the most powerful in society. When our best and brightest choose to be elementary school teachers and work in the public school system or our best and brightest choose to go to Nigeria and work in a refugee camp, we do that because we're adhering to a different set of politics. And so what I'm calling on

the church to do is to let that set of politics influence their stance toward the garden, not just other humanity. I love what you're saying on this podcast. We We talked many, many times about the fact that Jesus is our king and that he's calling us to give him our allegiance. And that means that we have to somehow figure out in this life, what does it look like for me, in my case, to be an American and to be someone whose primary allegiance and primary fidelity, I give to a different king. I give to King Jesus.

That's my first and primary thing. And so we Christians, we have to actively think about what's it look like to live in that tension. And I really appreciate your challenge to say, maybe one of the things we have to do is not over a line with a particular political party and instead just continually be asking the question, what's King Jesus calling me to think about X? So Sandy, when I read your book, I just was taken by it. And my first response in my head was to think, well, she brings up a lot of issues that I don't know much about. And that especially is in the non-biblical things when it gets

into farming practices and other issues like that. So what I did, what we did, is just bought copies of your book and handed them to friends who are in this business, PhDs in animal science. I don't even know, kind of like yours, I can't quite explain what theirs are in either, people in these business fields, but who are serious Christians, people who are part of the church, people are trying to follow King Jesus. And so is it okay with you if we ask some of the questions that they gave us? Of course. Okay, so I know you've been around a lot of challenging atmospheres. You're not intimidated by any of this. You've thought this through. I get it. And I appreciate the, freedom to ask you some of these. So one thing they said is that when you cite examples of some of the

particularly bad practices. So for example, one was feeding pigs, their children. Did that ever happen? Absolutely, they would say. That happened one time in some dire circumstances, kind of almost a pig pandemic. They looked at your source. They said, well, that's the humane society. That is citing activists, not educators, not PhDs, not academics. So I have no idea. I have no dog in this fight. I just want to be able to... You mean pig in this fight? No pig in this fight. I just want to push back a little bit and say, help us understand why you picked the sources that you did. Do you feel like that they are more activist sources or more academic sources? Did you pick people like you in your field, you're an academic? Or did you pick the Joel Osteen?

of farming practices. Those are great questions. So my first response to the folks that you've been interacting with would be to counter with a question, which would be my data from the ancient Near East is based on activist material. No, you know that's not what they're saying. They're not challenging your biblical authority. They're not challenging your biblical credentials.

They're challenging the sources on factory farming, for example. There's nowhere in this book where I claim to be a natural scientist, and I want to make that absolutely clear. I am not a biologist. I am not any sort of natural scientist. I'm a theologian. And the argument that the church has made regarding its lack of involvement in the environmental crisis has been a theological argument. The argument that the church has made to not be involved has been a moral argument that it is more important to rescue the orphans of Darfur than it is to clean up their water sources or to address the agricultural practices that made them a refugee population in the first place. So I want to start off by saying, I know I'm not a biologist.

But I also want to challenge back. You will see in the footnotes that my work on Punjab, India, comes from the United Nations, that my research on the pig industry, which you have named, comes from the USDA and from the National Hog Farmer website documents, that my work on Operation Ranch Hand is coming from the U.S. Veterans Administration. So I know that these are black marks on these industries, and I know that they're not easy to embrace, just like it's not easy for me to listen to Joel Olstein on the television on the radio, but this is real data. I think one of the realities we have to deal with is that it is the activists and the whistleblowers that get this data out there for other people to engage. But I'm not embarrassed by the research. A quarter of

the book is footnotes. I would make the argument for sure that it is the activists that have made this information available to the general public, but the source material behind the activist literature is sound. So it feels like all of our choices have tradeoffs. If we want to have plentiful food for a growing population, and we want that to be at a price, a reasonable price, and I'm just defining reasonable price by what people in different places can afford, then it seems like that we have to practice agriculture or animal husbandry in certain ways. that we can modify that and be more free range, organic, or whatever, that you might encourage, but we are then going to have to say food is going to cost more of a person's disposable income,

or we're not going to have as plentiful food for a growing world population. Do you feel like your book adequately handled the tradeoffs that come with these decisions in a fallen world? Well, there definitely are tradeoffs. No question about that. And the resources that are offered at the end of the book, the final chapter is entitled Resources for the Responsive Christian, assume such trade-offs. And they also assume that we, the redeemed community, are not necessarily going to be able to fix these problems in their entirety.

I say this on a regular basis when I speak on this topic, and the audience feels often betrayed when I make this statement. We're not going to be able to fix these problems. problems in their entirety. Any more than we're going to be able to offer every orphan a home or every refugee safe shelter. We're not going to be able to do that. That's why the rider on the white horse has got to come. But the news is that we're Christians and the way we live our lives has got to reflect the value system of the kingdom. If the way we live our lives does not reflect the value system of the kingdom, then we are salt that has lost its saltiness. And there's no purpose for us

except to be cast out and trampled underfoot. Our job, according to the New Testament, is not to fix the fall, but it is to live our lives in such a fashion that we reflect the character and the value system of the kingdom. And so the question I would ask everyone who's listening to this podcast is, is the way that you buy your groceries, deal with your energy consumption, shop for your car, shop for your clothing, the way you deploy the resources that God has given you, is that reflecting the values of the kingdom? Or isn't it? We talk about tithing, we talk about being generous with world vision, et cetera, et cetera. what about this other end of the way we live our lives? We can do way better than we're doing right now.

For perspective, let me tell your audience that a couple of months ago, I was the London School of Theology offering their annual Lang lecture. And so this was a mixed group of academics and invested and informed laypeople. I'm in the UK. So I'm right there in England. These are our forefathers. We have a lot of cultural overlap for sure. And when I started talking about the American system of agriculture in particular, our posture toward mountain top removal, for example, our posture toward our water resources, they were stunned. Because you see the UK in Europe, they've already instituted almost all of the actions that I wind up calling for in this book.

So if any of your listeners have been to Europe or the UK recently, they will see that they paid a lot more. for their egg salad sandwich on the train north from London to Durham, then you and I would pay for our egg salad sandwich on the train from the north shore down into Boston. But you would also see that in the UK and in Europe, family farms still exist. They still exist. So you can visit their dairy country and actually see a real cow that is interacting with a real human. You won't find that in Minnesota anymore. You would also see that their farmers are solidly

middle-class citizens who make a decent wage and therefore can support their children. They're not like Jim Goodman, who's named in the book, who are busy selling off their family farm that they've owned for 40 successful years because the federal government in the UK and in Europe actually protects farmers and farms. Do you know that in the UK gestation crates in the pig industry were outlawed 20 years ago? We still haven't finished outlawing them. They're working on farrowing crates right now. Battery cages were outlawed decades ago. That's the poultry industry. And there are limits currently in the European Union as to how many animals can actually be housed on a farm. And you know what? they're still eating and they still have excellent education and they're still influencing the world

population. So if Europe and the UK can do it, how come the states can't do it? We have more land. We have more resources. And yet we can't do it. What is that about? I think that's all really great to think about just thinking about myself personally. This is something I've just been trying to think through my own life and my own spending and what God's entrusted me to be a steward over. And the reality for me is I am not a farmer nor am I a son of a farmer. And so it's easy for me to point at the farmers and say, well, I want you to do X, Y, and Z. And yet I know, personally, I don't know anything. But what I do have is money to go spend on food.

And when I was 19, I was barely scraping by. And I was thankful for cheap spaghetti at Walmart. But now that, you know, I'm a little more established, I've talked with my wife and said, okay, well, what does it look like for us to buy some eggs that are raised? on a free range farm that aren't using battery cages because we have the ability to do it. And I think that's part of our responsibility. Same thing with clothing. There's all different ways that this can apply.

Patrick, I think you're saying something really profound right there. And that is that instead of us being upset with other people, I think what God would probably have us to do. And I think what Sandy was pointing us to do there at the end is think about what role can we play? Because our natural reaction is to go, all these bad people are doing these bad things. Let's protest something. Let's tweet about something. we'd be better off saying, what is God called me to do?

I actually said that to the Westmont student body a few weeks ago. We had an Earth Day rally. And of course, these are undergraduates. So developmentally and in every other way, paint a sign, go to a protest, go to a march. And I actually challenge them. Yeah, you're feeling the angst here. And so your response is to paint a sign and go to a protest. Or your response is to write a tweet or a Facebook post and you're done with it.

Well, no, you're not done with it. I would say right back at you that the challenge here is not for us to go to our farmers. Our challenge is for us to go to ourselves. In fact, our farmers would point right back at us. And they'd say, as Jim Goodman says in that particular case study, we're not looking for handouts. We're looking for fair prices. We're working our tails off. Give us a fair income for what we're doing. Throw your value system behind us. And I think everyone listening to this podcast right now recognizes the value of the family farm on multiple levels. There is the nutrient base of our food sources. There is the beauty of our farms. There are the citizens of our country. So the value of the family farm, most people would

recognize. But what is it I'm doing that would support that? And that's just one aspect of what we're talking about in environmental concern. I'm rambling a bit at this point in time. What can we do? We can change our personal practices. We can get an energy audit on our house. We can decide not to buy yet another new car. We can address what we do, just like a Christian does in every other aspect of our lifestyle. We can vote with our pocketbook and we can vote with our actual vote. We can realize that this is a moral issue and that our brothers and sisters and sisters, around the planet are suffering due to our selfish, self-serving choices. And this is a new set of thoughts for the standard conservative Christian. Thank you, Sandy, for being with us. You've been great, learned a lot. And thanks for allowing us to ask some hard questions. You've not only been informative, but very kind and gracious. Stewards of Eden by Dr. Sandra L. Richter, what scripture says about the environment and why it matters. I've bought a few copies and been handing them out.

Maybe you would enjoy reading it. We're all quarantined anyway, right? So we might as well read something. This would be profitable. Take care. Thanks so much. Thank you. Great to be with you guys. Also, don't forget to sign up for our online Zoom Bible study Friday, April 3rd from 12 to 1230. Are we living in the end times? We're going to talk about questions people are asking right now and a lot of the misconceptions that come along with those things. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily.

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