Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1052: Christianity, Climate Change, and Environmental Care: Dr. Ben Lowe

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Ben and I talk about a Christian theology of Creation Care, the nature of the new creation, how to interpret 2 Pet 3, where it seems like God is going to destroy the earth. We then spend the bulk of our time looking at various environmental issues related to climate change, biodiversity, sustainable living, and how Christians can live reasonable and just lives that honor our task to care for creation. Ben is originally from Singapore and currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director at A Rocha International, a network of faith-based conservation organizations working in over twenty countries on five continents. His undergraduate training is in environmental biology from Wheaton College (IL) and he earned his PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida (USA). Ben is also an ordained Christian minister and has nearly two decades of experience engaging faith communities around social and environmental concerns, including being featured in media outlets ranging from Audubon Magazine and Christianity Today to The New York Times and The Wall Street

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Gold Level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in the Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Ben Lowe. Ben is originally from Singapore, currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director at Arasha International, a network of faith-based conservation organizations working

in over 20 countries. His undergrad degree is from Wheaton College, and his PhD is in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida. And we had a wonderful, enlightening conversation about all things related to the environment, ecology, climate change, and so on and so forth. So please welcome to the show, for the first time, the one and only Dr. Ben Lowe. All right. Hey, Ben. Thanks so much for being on Theology in a Raw. We got connected because my publisher, Michael Covington from BBC Cook, met you all back, reached out to me and said, dude, you got to get into this guy. And I get that a decent amount.

I'll just be honest. Like, you got to this guy. You got to, you know, talk to this person, talk to that person. And you get several of those a day. And it's like, I just, I can't add it all up. But to be totally honest, I immediately kind of looked you up and I was like, oh, wow, this, both your background and the work you're doing through Arosha just seems really fascinating. So anyway, that's the backstory of why we're here. So give us the background. Who is Ben Lowe and how did you get involved with Arosha?

And then I'll have you explain what that ministry does. Yeah. Thanks, Preston. It's great to be here with you. And thanks to Michael, I guess. I hope those aren't all coming from Michael, those suggestions, but he was very eager for us to connect. Yeah. So I'm originally from Singapore in Malaysia. I grew up there. My family moved to the country when I was in my teens and I got involved in Arasha, which is Portuguese for the rock. It's an organization. It's an international Christian nature conservation organization that works in over 20 countries on six continents. And it started in 1983. So the year before I was born. And I got involved while during my undergraduate at Wheaton College outside of Illinois. We had a student chapter there and I plugged in. I was studying the sciences at that point, the natural sciences and environmental sciences.

And then many years later and have had different roles with them and currently on staff at the international office. OK, wow. And where is the international office? It's based in the UK, but I'm based in Florida in the US. Okay. Okay. We have a remote team. What turns you on to, and I guess there's lots of different words we can use, creation care, environmental sciences, theology of creation, whatever. I imagine all of those are probably capturing an aspect, but what turned you on to that area? Yeah. Well, I grew up in Singaporeapore as i said which is is about 95

urbanized and so somehow within that context of a major world city i just was in love with nature and spent a lot of my time uh my time exploring the rainforest and things like that and the mud flats um and i was also in love with christ. And those two themes continued through much of my life, but they weren't really connected. And so it was only when I came to, when I went to Wheaton College and did my undergraduate degree, that the courses and the professors I studied with there connected those dots with me. And it came from both angles. So, and the theology courses that we get to take at a school like we being a Christian school, I was learning about the biblical and theological foundations for why we are called

to care for God's creation. And then once you start to see it, you start to realize it's everywhere throughout scripture. It's just sort of been a blind spot in many of our church spaces, including mine. And then the other end of it, of course, is in the science courses I was taking we were studying a lot of the major world crises of the day whether it's water pollution air pollution or climate change or biodiversity extinctions things like that and starting to realize that at the heart of a lot of the problems we're trying to grapple with together as a society it's it's environmental issues environmental causes and they require environmental solutions. And so they both kind of came together for me.

And I started to realize for the first time in my life that I could be called to follow Christ and to live for God by doing environmental work. Can you give us a, this might be a hard task, a two to four minute overview of your biblical theology of creation. Like when he said, when you looked at the scriptures, you saw that it was kind of, that God wants us to care for his creation is kind of everywhere. Like for somebody who's like,

well, I don't know. Is it though? How would you just give maybe a concise, your defense of that claim? Two to four minutes. That is going to be tough. Lots of us have written books on this at this point. Yeah, yeah.

But here's sort of what it comes down to for me. When I look at the Bible, you see it starts with creation and it goes to new creation or renewed creation. And everywhere in between it, you see it's not just God's relationship with us, but it's God's relationship with all of creation, the world that God made, which is literally the work of God's hands. We are, but so is everything else. And you see God's intention to redeem it and to restore it from the sin and the death and the brokenness that was introduced through the fall. And so we see, you know, and again, two to four minutes. So this is what I'm skipping over so much.

But you look at passages like Romans 8, where it writes about all creation groaning, waiting for the revelation of the children of God so that it can share in the liberation from sin and death along with us. And you read passages, the Apostle Paul writing in Colossians 1, where Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. And it goes on and it writes that through Christ, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on heaven or things on earth, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. So, we see that the Apostle Paul is clear there, and it's consistent with the rest of the testimony of Scripture that the cross is for all of the fall. So the same all

things that Christ creates are the same all things that Christ sustains and are the very same all things that Christ is reconciling to himself through his blood shed on the cross. And we get to be part of that ministry of reconciliation. In Genesis 1, it talks about humans being created distinct from the rest of creation and that we are the image bearers of God. And so we're called to represent God and God's mission and God's vision and God's kingdom and the world. And that's a call that we still get to carry as the church today. Here's what I would boil it down to, though.

When Jesus was asked what the most important thing was multiple times uh recorded he said love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and strength and the second most important thing is like the first is to love your neighbor as yourself i can't live faithfully in the world as it is today and love god without caring for the world that he made that he sustains and that is part of his purposes and the same is is true for the world that he made, that he sustains, and that is part of his purposes. And the same is true for the second. I can't claim to love my neighbor without caring for the environment and all the environmental problems that impact so many people in my community and around the world today. How's that? Is that within four minutes? I didn't have a stopwatch, but I think you came in just on, or maybe just over three minutes. That

was really good. I i mean i was hoping you were gonna yeah romans 8 to me was kind of like the lights came on when um when i really looked at that passage which doesn't take a long time to look at it's crystal clear but even there like the the redemption of creation is is compared is tethered to the redemption of our bodies so in as much as the resurrection of our bodies is a big theological theme, which it is kind of flows right from the resurrection of Jesus. It's just tethered to this resurrection of creation, if you will. Have you, here's a, here's a feel a lot. And then you see, I mean,

also all throughout the Psalms too, you know, it's just the worship of God is so tethered to creation, singing God's praises. You know, and it's like, I think it's more than just an annulment. Like, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's, I think he's, when he taps into themes of redemption, I think God just often has a really wide angle lens on what redemption looks like. What do you do? I'm curious if you work through kind of the 2 Peter 3 passage or, you know, the debate about, you know, will God renew this creation or destroy this creation and create a whole new world? I don't think at the end of the day, well, maybe it matters.

At the end of the day, he cares about creation, whether it's he's giving this one a facelift or creating a new one. Then even if the new one replaces the old, it's still rooted in this idea that the old creation was good and in need of redemption. But I've always been, I mean, that passage, some translations, and I know there's some translation difficulties there, but this is the one where God's going to dissolve the elements with fervent heat. Right. God's going to dissolve the elements with fervent heat. Right. It seems, I think that's where some Christians get this idea of, well, if you think creation's suffering now, what do we see what God does with it?

I don't know. I grew up with that kind of like God's the ultimate destroyer of creation, you know. But it's all rooted, I think, in that passage because I don't know where else they would get that idea from. But, you know, have you had to work through that? Yeah, absolutely. And I do hear that in some of the spaces that I work in worship. And it can be a very sincere question. What do we do with tough passages like this? It's certainly not the only tough passage in Scripture.

And you probably worked through a lot of the others. Well, in this case, I think it's really telling that if you step back from that particular passage, it includes the phrase, as in the days of Noah, when the earth was covered by the flood. And so we're comparing this burning of the earth to the flood in the days of Noah. And what was that? That was a cleansing of the earth. It has a very destructive element, absolutely.

But it was ultimately for the purposes of cleansing the earth. And through that, God preserved his creation in a very destructive element, absolutely. But it was ultimately for the purposes of cleansing the earth. And through that, God preserved his creation in a very dramatic fashion by having this family collect all these animals and carry them into the ark. And so, you know, this is not me inventing this. This is lots of great theologians throughout the history of the church who have written very persuasively about these passages, pointing to the fact that we should be understanding this fire that burns up the earth as a refining fire. Similarly, as you would take ore and put it into a furnace to burn away the impurities. So that's the image that we're being given here. Again, the idea is that God intends to refine his creation and redeem and restore his creation, not completely do away with it.

And we see that in Revelation, you know, the heaven and earth become one. Heaven comes down, the new Jerusalem comes down to earth and God's dwelling place once again becomes, joins with us. God lives among us once again, but it's on this earth. I don't know how to explain how that's going to happen, but that's the picture that we get. It's beautiful that the last two chapters of the Bible looks a lot like the first two chapters of the Bible. There's so many allusions to Eden and the way God originally intended things to be before sin entered the world. And so, yeah, you get this picture of redeeming and completing

um creation not doing away with it so so that so you would say even second peter three isn't talking about and you know destroying of this creation and bringing in of a new brand new one but but a cleansing of this present creation yeah it doesn't that's what it sounds like. issues, concerns, is it rooted in, you know, God's going to finalize this work in the end, but he's invited us to participate in that work now? Or how would you frame that? What does that do for you when you know God's going to ultimately cleanse the earth and fix things in the end? Well, the first thing it does for me is it gives me hope because these are really tough issues that are beyond any individual, even beyond any individual society's ability to address, right? So this is a huge, and they can be very overwhelming. And a lot of people who care

about the environment today struggle with despair and struggle with the grief of all that we are losing that is good from God's creation. And so it gives me hope. It gives me hope because as much as I care about my neighbors and the rest of God's world, I trust that God cares even more about it. God cares so much that God sent God's son down to the earth to save it. And so that gives me a lot of encouragement. And it allows me to see the work that I do, the work that Arasha, the organization I'm part of around the world is doing. It's not out of a sense of desperation, although often we are in very desperate situations

and we feel that pressure. But it's ultimately our work is worship. It's what we do to bring glory to God. It's what we do to bear witness to God's love for the whole world and to invite other people to join us in being part of God's work, which is a kind of mind-boggling invitation when you consider how much damage we're capable of most of the time, that God would still invite us to be part of this. And you could say that about every sort of ministry, of course. Sure, sure, sure. You mentioned in passing a few times now, you know, these environmental concerns, issues, problems.

And this might open up, we might take the rest of the podcast to kind of work through some of these. But what are some ones that immediately come to your mind, like really pressing environmental issues or problems that need to be addressed? Maybe it's ones that are particularly on your heart or ones that are just more pressing, you know, as a whole. Right. We could take the rest of the conversation up on this and it would be hard to narrow it down too quickly. But if I were, I would probably focus on the great extinction crisis that we're in, the loss of species and biodiversity around the world by some rough estimates it's really hard to get good estimates because there's so much that we we don't know that we've lost that we are losing uh but by some estimates in my lifetime alone

we've lost about half of life on earth that includes species but it includes also what's called the thinning of life so So decreasing populations of species that remain, loss of habitat, all those things. So that's an incredible thing to consider. About half of life on Earth we've lost in my lifetime alone. The second issue that I'd flag, of course, which is impossible to ignore these days, is global climate change. The fact that we've just so disrupted the climate system that our lives, our natural systems, but our human society and systems are designed around that we're experiencing increasingly dramatic changes that we're having to adapt to. So I would probably land on those two to start with. Since that's a hot one, so let's plant our flag here for a little bit. And I feel very confident

theologically that Christians should care for creation. To me, that's not really debated theologically, but I know hardly anything about the specifics of climate change. When I hear various voices, I just get more confused because I'm like, what? So, I guess let me start here. What are, are there anything, anything within the climate change debates that are widely, widely agreed upon that are not politicized, that are not some partisan whatever, but like, here's something where we can all agree on. And then what are some things that are more debated among good faith, maybe scientists? Yeah, that's a great question. And the science and our knowledge moves very quickly in this field. So, for instance, arguments that I grew up hearing in church as a teenager, from a science point of view, might have been legitimate questions at that time. But now, 20 years later, we know so much more. So here's some sort of the headlines on what's going on with global climate change. First of all, it's happening. We can measure the Earth has warmed a little bit over one degree Celsius since the industrial era.

The second is that humans are a driving cause of the majority of the warming that we've experienced. And scientists have been able to isolate different factors that can contribute to warming, as well as that can contribute to cooling, and then show that humans really are the defining factor here in the warming that we're experiencing. So you're saying that's not very debated anymore? I thought that was one of the more debated points. But again, I'm going on minimal knowledge. Right.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that was one of the more debated points. But again, I'm going on minimal. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's so that was one of the more debated points. And as the years have gone on, it's becoming increasingly clear. And so you see it tracking not in just the news you read or the textbooks that are taught or things like that, or the reports that come out. But you also see it in terms of the arguments of those who are opposing action to address climate change. So, you know, many years ago, it was, well, we thought, how do we know we're not cooling? How do we know we're warming? And then the argument shifted to, well, we might be warming, but humans aren't the problem. And so we really should focus on other issues. And now the great debates are happening about how much warming is going to happen, how quickly, and what do we do about it. So that's where a lot of the – I mean, there is still ongoing debate. But I'm very thankful that there is a much greater shared recognition of the problem and where we're at today, including things like the oceans have grown about a third more acidic than they were a few decades ago.

And so climate change affects everything. OK, not not just the temperature of the air or the earth, for instance. You know, if folks want to dig more into this, my research is more in the human or social dimensions of climate change. So I look at people's attitudes, beliefs, behaviors. the human or social dimensions of climate change so i look at people's attitudes beliefs behaviors but there is a friend of mine named dr catherine hayhoe who is out of texas tech university and um she is her husband's actually a pastor of an evangelical church down in texas and she is one of the leading experts in the climate science that we have in the U.S. today. And she's got lots of great resources and has been a very helpful guide for me.

When I hear questions about the science that I want to know the answers to, she's able to explain them in very helpful, clear ways. That's good. Okay, so 1% Celsius for the layperson like me over 150 years is like, that doesn't sound like that big of a deal. Can you help unpack what even small degrees in temperature change, what are the ramifications of that? Yeah, sure. Another great question. So 1 degree Celsius would be, and again, that was just a rough estimate I gave you. It's more than that, but it's not that much more yet. That amount of warming is a global average.

So some parts of the world are getting cooler. Some parts of the world are getting warmer. Some parts of the world are warming even faster. So we tend to warm faster at the poles. That leads to a melting of the snow and ice pack at the poles, which leads to some sea level rise depending on where it's melting and where it's flowing. It also leads to positive feedback loops where you have more dark surfaces exposed at the poles that were previously covered by snow and ice. But now that the land is being increasingly exposed, it heats up faster when the sun and that increases the warming and the melting. So it's a very complicated system.

And the fact that we're tweaking it, you know, in even small ways overall can lead to major implications in lots of other places, like where I live in Florida, where we know we, I'm not sure where we're at with understanding the relationship between climate change and the frequency of hurricane formation, but we have lots of good data showing that hurricanes today are forming on sea surface temperatures that are on sea surfaces that are much warmer than they ever used to be. And that's providing increased fuel to make these hurricanes much stronger and much bigger more often than they have been in the past. And that's providing increased fuel to make these hurricanes much stronger and much bigger more often than they have been in the past. And that's impacting my state. And you'll see it

because I'm starting to ramble, but let me try and land this one point and then we can go back to you. A lot of the climate debate is polarized on partisan lines. So you have the Democrats who are championing climate action more, and you have the Republicans who are opposing climate action more. That's a broad stereotype. There are lots of exceptions. I think it's changing, particularly now. We're seeing a huge amount of bipartisan openness towards these issues because they're impacting states like mine. It's a Republican state with a Republican governor who has made climate action part of his agenda, including strengthening our shoreline defenses in a lot of major cities and addressing a lot of the increased flooding that we're seeing in our major cities because of rising sea levels and vulnerability to storms.

So when it gets to that point, the problem with climate change is when it gets to this point, it's a bit late to prevent these impacts from happening. There's a lag. In other words, we're already committed or we're already baked in to a certain level of impact because of the warming that we're experiencing. And so we really have to be a little more proactive if we want to prevent worse impacts down the road. It's hard, though, to be proactive when you don't see it happening yet. Right. And so, I mean, this is probably such a stupid observation that, yeah, I just want to make it just to get clarity. So when you said, you know, in some parts of the world, it's warming, some parts are really warming, some parts may be cooling. That's why the phrase global warming is not accurate. Climate change is a better term. Yeah. It's not that not everywhere is all it's all just on a straight trajectory towards warming it's more

it's it's it's more radical changes that are happening right absolutely okay and that's why it's hard to understand this issue if you're not studying it it is very complicated and with all the voices out there it's hard to make sense of what's really going on. So global warming is a term that gets used because overall, the planet is warming. Okay. Overall. Okay. But a lot of people will use the term climate disruption or Catherine Hayhoe used to, Dr. Hayhoe used to refer to global weirding because it kind of helps point out that depending

on where you are, you might experience very different impacts or effects than someone in another part of the world or even someone in another part of your country. Some parts are getting drier, some parts are getting wetter. It's a very complicated interconnected system. And when you start to tweak with parts of it, then everything sort of starts to shuffle around. Got it. Going back to the human. So, so we're, and when I say there's consensus, of course, there's always going to be, you know, there's not, there's not consensus that the earth is round. Okay. So, I mean, obviously there's going to be somebody somewhere, but there's a large general consensus that humans are contributing on some level to climate change. What are some,

some of the top things humans have done that are contributing to climate change? Yeah, sure. Well, the leading cause of climate change right now is carbon dioxide gas. But methane, for instance, is another important greenhouse gas is what we call them. And we call them greenhouse gases because what they do is they rise. We emit them through human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. And then, of course, we also have a negative effect when we, for instance, cut down forests because forests suck up carbon and they produce oxygen. And so when we cut down forests, we're releasing carbon into the atmosphere as well. And so the total effect of all of this is to, the way it's often explained

is these gases play a really important role in the atmosphere by providing a blanket around the earth that keeps us at a happy, healthy temperature. And what we're doing by human activity, us at a happy, healthy temperature. And what we're doing by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and development, you know, construction, all these other activities, is that we're increasing the emissions into the atmosphere, reducing the amount that the earth sucks up, and thereby thickening the blanket that covers us, thus retaining heat and making us really hot. thus retaining heat and making us really hot okay okay yeah and that is that that's caused by like factories by cars by like if we if we got rid of every gas powered vehicle in the world would that drastically make a huge difference or would that not make a huge difference or like what what are the main things that are releasing carbon into the yeah that would make a very significant

difference i don't know if that's feasible i don't think I've not seen any serious proposals that we would stop people from driving cars. I have seen serious proposals about how we can electrify our vehicle fleets and then generate electricity from clean sources or cleaner sources so that they do produce less pollution. But the fact is, by living on this planet, we are going to have an impact on it. We consume resources, we produce waste. It's the rate at which we're doing that, that is unsustainable. And so we have to figure out how to do it better. But yeah, buildings, concrete roads, all of those things make a difference. Flying makes a difference. Cars and vehicles make a difference. And then now i'm starting to get into very shaky territory where i know general ideas and i'm out of my

particular research expertise yeah okay um so there is so that there is and this is where i yeah i've heard through just various interviews and podcasts and stuff differences of opinion on how much of a crisis this is and what is the best response and will humans um adapt i think is the the way i hear people talk about it that you know i think the one extreme view is like in 12 years the world's going to explode or you know all the way to like there's gonna be a slow gradual change over the next hundred years but we will slowly adapt like it's not like you know population will slowly move to places where are more inhabitable inhabitable inhabitable whatever like we'll we'll respond like we always do humans are resilient and stuff so um is that i mean am i

is that i'm just trying to draw on memory right now, if those are some of the debates. Yeah, absolutely. And the reality is we're already having to adapt and some places have to adapt more than others. And that's where this becomes a justice, an issue of biblical justice, because a lot of the people who are producing the most carbon pollution or climate pollution are the people who are being impacted the least or have the most resources to pay for the cost of adaptation. So when you have, for instance, millions of people in Bangladesh living on floodplains and floods are getting worse and increasing, they're not the ones producing most of the pollution, but they are bearing some very heavy impacts of it. And they don't have the research. They're already trying to get by day to day. They don't have the resources to up and move their communities. And so that becomes a real issue because it's not just about how much we will change, but as you alluded to, how fast some of these changes will happen. And we're already, the scientists are by and large, a very cautious,

skeptical bunch, because they're very careful. We never want to be proven wrong. And so we're very careful before we ever make any definitive claims. It takes forever. So science itself tends to be, when it's done right, it tends to be a pretty conservative enterprise. And so what we're seeing now overall is we're seeing things happening faster than many predictions had suggested in the past. And that's a cause for alarm, of course. This episode is sponsored by Abide. Okay, so there's two things true in my life. I love studying the Bible, and I'm constantly battling stress and lack of sleep. So that's why I'm excited about Abide. Abide is the number one Christian meditation app, and it has all kinds of features from meditations that read scripture to devotional thoughts and prayers to many different soothing

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stop by their booth and say hi. And hopefully they'll have some like candy and chocolate sitting out like they often do. So check out what they're all about. That's Rockbridge Seminary, One Million Home, David C. Cook and Denver Seminary. You can go to rockbridge.edu, denverseminary.edu, onemillionhome.com

or davidccook.org. pdu1millionhome.com or davidccook.org. I've heard that even if all the kind of developed countries, the developed world, recycled, drove electric vehicles, had laws against carbon emission, the developing world, or even places in China or Africa or maybe... No, india i think is actually i don't know um like is that is that is there something to that that some of the countries that are actually producing most of these emissions and are not you know they're still burning tires and doing stuff that's like they're not you know it's not like they're like conscious about environmental concerns is that is that it Is that a true assessment or is that an overstatement?

Yeah, Russia works in a number of these places. So, for instance, China is the world's largest polluter overall at the moment. But not too long ago, it was the U.S. for a long time was the world's largest polluter. When you look at it per capita, we are still larger polluters than China per capita. And America is the number two leading polluter in the world. So, you know, it's not that we don't have dirt on our hands. And really, before we look for the speck of dust in our neighbor's eye, maybe we should take Jesus's advice and try to find the plank in our own. vice and try to find the plank in our own. Because until we remove the plank from our own,

we won't even, I mean, nevermind the moral credibility, we won't even have the ability to see how to help the rest of the world remove the specks from their eyes. So one of the great challenges is we have developed by depleting a lot of resources around the world and producing a lot of pollution that we're paying for now as a global community. And we're developed and we've gotten ahead on the backs of a lot of our neighbors around the world. And to then turn around to them and say, oh, you can't develop likewise is pretty hypocritical. And I'm not sure as a Christian how I feel good about that. I think what we want to do is we want to say, OK, we developed this way. We didn't know the impacts of what we were doing, at least not all of them when we were doing them. But look, we know so much more now.

So how can we come together and help you develop in ways that are sustainable for your communities as well as for your human communities, as well as for our natural communities in the world but that's why these issues are why climate change is often a classic example of what academics refer to as a wicked problem where there's no one single source of the problem and there's no one straightforward solution to the problem it's so interconnected and diffuse that it takes a lot of work to sort through and like you said there's some real there's like realistic solutions and non-realistic like saying all right we're going to cancel air flight and sure gas powered cars like yeah but is that really are we really gonna be rowing boats around the world and like i just don't see that as a realistic solution and yeah i i i also don't

want to discount stuff just because well that's not realistic it's like well i don't know like it's a hard tension right but um i guess my here's my that wasn't even my question like what are some things that arasha or you just maybe other orgs have done where you're like hey this is making a difference if more people did x y, Y, and Z, this is realistic. It's actually, if more and more people did it, it would actually make a difference in human contribution to climate change. What are some of those things? Yeah. That's a big question. There's lots of things I could say here again. But maybe I'll start by stepping back and saying a lot of things aren't realistic until we do them. And then all of a sudden, they become realistic. And the pace of change is moving incredibly fast these days.

So for instance, the clean energy economy and clean energy technologies are far outpacing, are starting to become even more competitive than the old technologies that we had that were fossil fuel based. And so for me, from a big picture perspective, it's not so much will we get to an economy, a world where we're relying much more on clean energy than on forms of dirty energy. Yeah, we're going to get there. I mean, already, wind is more cost effective than wind and solar, more cost effective than coal and oil in a lot of places. The question is, how long will it take us to get there? How fast can we get there? And who stands to lose in that transition, including who are some of the people opposing

that transition because their business plans stand to lose from that transition? Smart energy companies right now are rebranding. And our rebranding is not oil companies or coal companies, but as energy companies, and they're investing in clean energy technology. So, okay, that's big picture stuff. We're going to get there. It's a matter of how quickly and what impacts do we face before we do or in the way to get there. On the more maybe local personal level, Arasha, we're not the ones who are going to save the world, but we follow the ones who are going to save the world, but we follow the God who is. And so really what it comes down to us is faithfulness.

How can we be faithful to God and loving the people and places where we live? And so for us, that looks a lot, in many places, it's hands-on conservation projects where we're protecting habitats, where we're providing for sustainable livelihoods for communities, like on the coast of Kenya, where a lot of deforestation is spurred because people then take the wood and turn it into charcoal to sell in order to provide school fees for their kids to go to school, which is a ticket out of poverty. And so what Arasha Kenya has been doing for a number of years now is it has created ecotourism opportunities that employ the local community so that now they're able to benefit from protecting the forest instead of having to, in a much longer term vision, instead of having to deforest today in order to provide for the kids tomorrow, but then running out of forest in the very near future. So that's one example. But like in the UK, another example comes from the outskirts of London, a neighborhood called South Hall, which had a big brownfield site in the middle,

which was basically a dumping ground in the middle of this urban neighborhood, which was largely populated by recent immigrants from South Asia and other parts of the world. And a group of Christians got together and they said, we want to bless our community and we want to talk to the neighbors and realize it'd be really nice if we had a green space in the middle of our community instead of a dumping ground. And so they worked together to restore that site. And it's now Minette Country Park. You can visit it. It's recorded over 100 species of birds. It's used for community events, environmental education events, running, walking, playing in the playgrounds. So it's showing the love of God and the good news of God

in the very places that we live. And of course, you could talk about individual change. I mean, we could just go on and on and on. There's so much we can do here. But I'll stop there for now. I can imagine each one of those seems like such a tiny, tiny dent in this huge problem. But I would imagine you would say, well, yeah, but if more and more people pursue those things, then it's no longer a tiny dent. It's a bigger dent and a bigger, you know. I just came to my mind right now. What are the role that plastics play in this i i never understood that is that unrelated to like in like

the greenhouse gases or is it somehow related is it yeah sure plastic is a petroleum product so yeah it uh it certainly plays a role and of course um as we know it it doesn't ever go away or it goes away so slowly that we'll never really see it go away when you throw it out. It just lasts for a long time. So no, plastic is a huge part of the problem. And it's a big part of what Arasha is working on through its marine conservation program. So, for instance, in the United States, in Florida and in Southern California, Arasha has a marine conservation work going on studying microplastics, both in terms of these little plastic pieces that wash up on beaches, but also

that get taken up in organisms and enter our food chains. And, you know, we end up consuming little bits of plastic. And so Arasha is helping to study the prevalence and effects of these plastics in some of these areas. Yeah, I was laughing when you asked about plastics because it's February 1st, which is plastic-free February. So you're onto something here. So I learned somewhere that there is a pile of plastic the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Is that? Yeah, it is. We've got a lot of this plastic gets washed out of, you know, surface runoff or sewer systems and on it. It ends up in the ocean and it swallows around. And because of the ocean

currents, it sort of collects in these jars and swallows around in these huge masses of waste. And I think about that when I think about landfills. And I think as God looks at the earth that God made that was good and that God blessed and invited to flourish, how does God feel about that? Yeah, because it's not just sitting there inert, right? It's leaching chemicals, but it's also becoming food for sea turtles and other things that then ingest them and and suffer and die and things like that as well so plastic's a huge problem wow i mean so are you a huge fan of i mean recycling i mean is that i would assume yes but i heard even somebody told me recently or an article I read that most of our – so we have a recycling bin.

We throw it out. We do our best. But then someone says, yeah, that doesn't actually end up doing much because people on the other end aren't really responsibly disposing of it or something. I don't know. I don't know. This is where i feel for anybody who wants to do what's right and struggles to know the right thing to do because these issues are far more complicated our systems are the way we run our societies and our lifestyles are not

sustainable and they were never designed to be sustainable and so you actually have to go out of your way to understand how to live faithfully in these contexts. Whereas what we really need to do is reform our systems so that they encourage sustainability, so that you actually have to go out of your way to not be sustainable. And that's where we'll actually, I think, get a lot further. Because yeah, recycling is ambiguous in terms of it takes energy, it costs money. Sometimes for some materials especially metals it's certainly worth it almost all the time other materials like plastic glass and paper it really depends is the answer that said i still recycle i still do it because stewardship is making the

best decisions with the best information you have at the moment. And so that's what I'm going to do. But that's why we have the mantra everybody knows, reduce, reuse, recycle. So first we reduce, then we reuse everything that we can, and only then do we go on to recycling. So if you focus on reduce and reuse, you're going to make a huge amount of progress. And then you don't feel as guilty about recycling. I would encourage people not to feel guilty regardless.

That's not a good motivation for this work. But there you go. You know what's funny is, I mean, you've lived in different parts of the world. American houses have the biggest trash cans. Like when we lived in the UK, we went to go visit other places. We were just in France for a couple months. And the tiniest, you have like a tiny little garbage can where all your garbage is supposed to fit then back in america we have these huge bins and we fill them

you know but it's just we can like you were saying we consume we just consume stuff right i mean is that it's and until you travel outside the u.s you don't realize it just refrigerators are smaller typically and meals are smaller and you're just not you're just not you just don't have as much garbage and you wonder like how this would never work in america and i don't know why it wouldn't work because we fill these huge bins every week you know yeah but one of the one of the best ways i've reduced my uh rubbish or trash um production here in the u.S. is by composting. And you can compost even without a yard. I have a small yard and I don't even compost very well.

In other words, I'm not tracking the levels of browns versus greens I'm putting in and I'm not mixing my pile up as much as I should. So my compost could be a lot more efficient. I could be getting a lot more soil out of it than I am, or at least a lot quicker. But here's why I do it. Because I find when I compost all of my produce waste and even things like eggshells and coffee grinds, things like that, I save so much from going to the landfill. And a lot of this stuff that will biodegrade in your backyard or in your you

know if you're in an apartment you can have these little worm composting bins that are great i have friends who use those or these little bins that you kind of turn they're on these rollers and you can kind of turn them um and if you you do that then you're just reducing all of that from going to landfills where they don't always biodegrade because they're sitting in environments without oxygen a lot of the time. And so they kind of become this soup and it's not always the easiest for them to degrade when they're in the landfill. Okay. So what's wrong with a landfill? Like, yeah, we have one here in Boise.

You go, you take all your garbage up there, mattresses, whatever, you know. Sure. you go you take all your garbage up there mattresses whatever you know and it just it gets kind of covered up in a big pile and sits there and i would assume most of it decomposes after a while maybe plastics a lot longer but then like so yeah so what so it's sitting out there in a big pile of dirt on the earth is that doing harm to the earth well a lot of it actually doesn't uh decompose and that's the tough thing we We have to design these landfills in ways that don't facilitate decomposition. Some of it's the materials themselves. There's a lot of plastic in there.

There's other things that take forever to biodegrade. But we also line them with very thick plastic layers and tarps and things to keep the leachate from. to keep the leachate from, so all the soup or the chemicals that collect from all this garbage that's thrown there from getting into the soil and the groundwater. A number of Superfund sites around the country, Superfund sites are sites, that's a name for sites that are particularly heavily polluted. A number of those sites are former landfill sites where the chemicals from the trash and the landfill have have either broken out of the linings or the linings um weren't very good and have fallen apart anyway they've gotten into the soils and they've gotten into our groundwater which is our drinking water supply and that of course leads to higher rates of cancer and places around these sites and other illnesses and so they're not

then you know that there's no a way on this earth god designed this earth to function to cycle and when we kind of break that cycle a lot of this stuff sits there and there are better ways to handle it that's for sure and some landfill sites have been converted to parks, for instance. But there's continuous monitoring. You'll see these wells drilled all around and these vents drilled all around so that, first of all, some of the gases that build up in the landfills can escape into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming, but at least gets it out of the landfill. But then the wells are drilled around so that they can monitor and make sure that the toxins in the dump aren't escaping into the local communities

that's good yeah it's like my learning curve is skyrocketing i didn't know any of that um and you're making me feel better about all the education i've had i'm like i actually learned stuff this is great well what about the whole okay here's one that i'm not sure it's been debunked or if it's still a thing like the the uh cows farting and releasing methane gas so that if you consume too much meat as a society like that's contributing to climate change because of you're keeping you're you're needing all these cows to exist to to do that is that is that true accurate yeah the the beef industry cattle ranching does produce significant amounts of um amounts of these gases really okay it is true but that's not all that's true and that's uh often not what i think of the most when i think of the beef industry and a lot of other problems that come from large-scale beef production

include things like deforestation amazon where large swaths of amazon rainforest are being cut down to make space for cattle ranching not just cattle ranching other agriculture but that has the effect of, you know, these are hugely biodiverse rich areas that we're losing. But it also brings in a lot of pollution, produces a lot of waste, and degrades that landscape for years to come. At the same time, of course, that we're removing that patch of forest from being able to suck up more of the carbon dioxide that's being produced. So it's kind of a double whammy in that sense. Interesting. Okay. And there are huge indigenous people's rights issues there too, with a lot of illegal ranching going on at the expense of local tribes and communities that are living on that land and

are being pushed out and persecuted very violently sometimes in order for these ranchers to take the land from them and use. So I'm curious, if you were going to create, like you just, somebody crowned you king over some big island or something, like you have a self-contained society, what would be a realistic, like, so don so don't like can't ban cars or whatever like just like what would be a realistic way in which a society could play a significant role in addressing i mean not just climate change but just being environmentally responsible like what are some big picture things like what would it be like you wouldn't be eating a lot of meat you wouldn't get rid of all cows but it would be like drastically reduced would you get rid of gas powered you know

cars or like what would what would a realistic society look like well realistically the first thing i would do is resign as king because i don't have that level of confidence in my ability to design the society that you just described. But we do have a lot of expertise out there. So, yeah, I think some of the things you mentioned, sure. I am not a vegetarian, but I do try to reduce and limit my meat consumption in line with the rest of the world. Or at least much of the rest of the world that I've come from and spent time in. And I drive a car that isn't an electric car right now, partly because

I am trying to use it for as long as I can before I get a new car. And that's often a much better environmental decision to make, to use what you have as long as you can before you replace it with something new that costs a lot of resources to produce. But yeah, I think it would be lovely to see if we can, if we're at the point where if we were to design a little community on a little island, we could just start with electric vehicles and start with solar panels and start with wind turbines, start with, it depends on the Island and what the, how much the sun shines, how much the wind blows or whether there are geothermal opportunities.

There are so many possibilities, but here's the first thing I would do. Well, let's hope the first thing I would do is pray, but here's once I got done praying, here's some of the first things I would do. I would set out to understand what lived on the island and how it flourished when I, you know, to start with, I would basically, I would build a relationship with the rest of creation around me and seek to understand it. Because as one of my other friends, I think this comes from Stephen Baumer Prediger puts it, we will not care for what we do not love and we will not love what we do not know. And so first, I would try to get to know and encourage us to get to know the place.

And then we would, as we got to know it, we'd try to figure out, all right, what's the best way to be image bearers of God in this setting? What would be the best way to live out God's values and bear witness to this kingdom of shalom, this kingdom of peace and flourishing and justice for all. And then I would set about trying to do that. But it can't happen. It's not a technical fix, you know, because it's not at the heart a technical problem. At the heart, I believe our environmental issues today are sin problems.

And therefore, what we're looking for is a solution to sin. And that's why I keep going back to Christ. Sin problem, like, I mean, overconsumption or profits over people. I mean, those kind of things. I mean, not caring about the other. Like, I mean, if you built a huge business or whatever, and yet that's negatively affecting maybe some other countries around the world for whatever reason, like that's not good. You know, even if you have a kind of veneer of even like a Christian kind of business, it's like, well,

what's, what's, what are the deep roots of your success? And is that, is that actually loving your neighbor? Um, I read a great book called everyday justice a long time ago. Yeah.

It just, it just, it kind of blew my mind about how just even our day-to-day choices are just so deeply rooted in our global economy, even, you know, and just at least being – and it was a greatly balanced book. It wasn't just a scolding book, but it was just like, you know, just being more aware of kind of our choices and how they impact the globe. Like what are some practical things that the average person can do that, again, are maybe realistic, but, you know, are just conscious of, you know, living a holistically just life? Sure. Again, lots I could say here. Maybe I would start by saying, well, maybe stop and pray. Ask God to show us the ways that we're impacting those around us, including God's creation. We all have an impact, both good and bad.

And then start to think about the ways that we can, some describe as shrink our environmental footprints or reduce the negative impacts we have. But then also think about ways we can increase our environmental handprint or increase the positive impacts that we have on the planet and the people who live on it. So think about it both ways. Get involved with a group like Arasha so that you're not doing this alone. So much of this is confusing, and it can be overwhelming, and it can be discouraging, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And it's much better to do with other people and with other people from the family of God. And when you do that along the way, you'll find people with great expertise in all manner of areas. So that whenever you think, oh, I do not understand that, what do I need to do? Or how do I do that? Then you'll be better able to know where to look for good answers,

not just, you know, answers from people with opinions, but answers from people who know and understand these things. The reason I called this a sin problem is one of the great definitions for sin that I lean on a lot is anything, sin is anything that violates God's shalom. So anything that violates the flourishing and the peace or biblically speaking, the right relationship that we are called to have with ourselves, with each other, with God, with the rest of creation. And so that's how I like to approach it. I think what are the ways I can have a healthier, a better, a more right relationship with God, the rest of creation, my neighbors, myself, and how can I be less of a curse and more

of a blessing, which is what we were created to be. So those are some of the ways I would start. One more thing maybe I would throw in there, because this is a, I really long for the day where the church in the United States in particular, and it's rapidly approaching, but we're not there yet, where caring for God's creation is no longer that biblical theological discipleship blind spot that it has become in the last 50 or 100 years, where we all understand that, no, this is part of what God has put us on this earth to do and be, and where we get on with figuring out how to do it together. I bet Satan just absolutely loves it that some of these have become political debates, loves it that some of these have become political debates so that Christians that are, you know,

nursing from a particular media outlet will find themselves, their allegiance to their political tribe drives their commitment either to or against certain climate change debates rather than starting with the foundation of what does God think and how can I live a holistically just life? You said getting involved with Arasha. What are some things? How can people get involved? What does that look like? Go ahead. Promote Arasha for a second.

Well, if you're in the United States, then Arasha has a national organization in the U.S. You can check out the website, arasha.us. Or if you're in another country, Arasha has also got a large presence in Canada, for instance. But if you're in another country or want to see what's going on around the world, just go to arasha.org, A-R-O-C-H-A.org, and you'll see a map and a drop-down menu with all the work that we're doing in all these different countries. And I'd encourage folks to do that anyway, because Arasha has always, even before I was on staff, so you could say, well, now I'm getting paid to say this. No, for years now, I have been so encouraged by the work that God is doing through the church around the

world and by the witness that Arasha has been able to have in some very tough places. And that's given me inspiration and creativity to think about my own yard, my own home, my own neighborhood, my own church. And in all of that, Arasha can come alongside and be part of that. We've got lots of resources, like a plastics toolbox for people who want to know how to deal with plastic, reduce plastic use, and also how to study microplastics and things like that. VBS curricula for churches. It's got three years now written and very, very popular with the churches that use it to help get their kids out into nature during the summer VBS season and could go on and on. In the UK, for instance, there's EcoChurch, which is, it's their kind of church creation care scheme. That's a weird word in the u.s and the uk it's used a lot it's a church program in the in the uk and uh over 5 000 churches across the uk are part of eco church so there's just so much depending on where people are at and what their what their spheres of

influence are that you can do through arasha do you guys have like internships and stuff that people can do or yeah yeah no I'm glad you said that. So there are different field centers around the world, Arasha communities, where people can go and live in Christian community and be part of conservation work around them. And so it's in places like Kenya, India, Portugal, France, Canada. So folks can go and volunteer and intern there. Arasha Canada has an extensive internship program. And in the US, they have a slightly newer internship program, but it's off to a great start and it runs in Florida. So if anyone really wants an excuse to spend much of a year down in Florida, that internship even comes with funding. So that's a paid one.

Wow. That's awesome. My daughter would absolutely, she's very environmentally conscious and loves learning about it. She wants to go into kind of videography. So she wants to tell stories about various causes and stuff. So yeah, I'll pass this. Yeah, I think she would.

Yeah, I think she'll definitely look into it. So hey, Ben, thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw, giving us so much to think about. And I love your heart. I love your humility and wisdom. And, man, yeah, you really provoked a lot of my own thinking. So thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. It's been great. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.