{"id":114,"date":"2015-01-01T21:12:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T21:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=114"},"modified":"2018-09-17T21:14:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T21:14:44","slug":"changing-the-climate-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/climate-change\/changing-the-climate-with-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the climate with love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. \u201cTeacher,\u201d he said, \u201cwhat must I do to inherit eternal life?\u201d He said to him, \u201cWhat is written in the law? What do you read there?\u201d He answered, \u201cYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.\u201d And he said to him, \u201cYou have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.\u201d But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, \u201cAnd who is my neighbor?\u201d (Luke 10:25-37).<\/em><\/p>\n

We all know how Jesus responded\u2014not with a direct, cut-and-dried answer, but with a story. The Parable of the Good Samaritan gently challenged Jesus\u2019 interrogator to take a step back, to question his deeply ingrained assumptions and prejudices, and ultimately to rise above his culture\u2019s ways of judging and dividing people.<\/p>\n

In telling this parable, Jesus was, in the modern-day language of clinical psychologist Mary Pipher, helping the lawyer to \u201cincrease his moral imagination.\u201d In The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture, Pipher describes moral imagination as \u201crespect for [another\u2019s] point of view.\u201d It is \u201csimilar to empathy, but more complex . . . slow to develop and longer lasting.\u201d It involves putting ourselves in others\u2019 shoes\u2014acknowledging the others\u2019 worth and the legitimacy of their viewpoints and concerns. Increasing our moral imagination helps us overcome traditional barriers between \u201cUs\u201d and \u201cThem\u201d and enables us to enlarge our \u201ccircle of caring\u201d to include more than just our families, friends, and like-minded people.<\/p>\n

As Brethren, we have been blessed with stunning examples of persons with uncommonly vast moral imaginations. Brother John Kline (during the Civil War) and Ted Studebaker (in Vietnam) refused to classify people into the \u201cfriend\u201d and \u201cenemy\u201d categories that their cultures promoted or even demanded. In both cases, their moral imaginations led them to respond with love and compassion to those whom they were expected to hate and kill. Likewise, we all stretch our moral imaginations when we pray not only for our brothers and sisters in the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN), the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, but also for their violent and murderous oppressors.<\/p>\n

Is stretching our moral imaginations easy or popular? Of course not. To our human brains, there\u2019s something deeply comforting about placing folks into tidy, clear-cut categories. In fact, we often succumb to \u201cconfirmation bias,\u201d paying attention only to information that aligns with our pre-existing ideas about the world. Media outlets, in their determination to present \u201cboth sides\u201d of stories, reinforce the idea that every issue has two opposing sides and that We and They naturally disagree about and debate them\u2014often nastily. Shared values and understandings are ignored and common ground is eroded away, often without us even noticing. We and They stay at each other\u2019s throats and no effective actions are taken.<\/p>\n

In the midst of this culture of politicization and polarization, is stretching our moral imaginations even possible? With the New Testament’s guidance and the help of the Holy Spirit, emphatically yes! It is not only possible, but it is vital to living out our calling as 21st-century Christians. What does it take? Patience, humility, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, a thirst for justice\u2014in short, the fruits of the Spirit and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Are such virtues countercultural? Absolutely! Fortunately, we Brethren have over three centuries of experience in the countercultural department.<\/p>\n

Stretching our moral imaginations also requires practice and self-awareness\u2014stopping to notice and analyze our unconscious reactions to words. When we hear \u201chealthcare reform,\u201d for example, let\u2019s step back and ask what emotions the words trigger. What \u201cUs vs. Them\u201d categories automatically come to our minds? What assumptions underlie those categories? How fair and valid are those assumptions? How is focusing on the political debate getting in our way of solving real problems? What common ground do We actually share with Them? How could this common ground be built upon, instead of eroded? How can we transform \u201cUs vs. Them\u201d into a single, bigger \u201cUs\u201d?<\/p>\n

When we hear (or read) \u201cclimate change,\u201d we must take the same step back and ask the same types of questions. What emotions does the phrase conjure up in us? Perhaps we feel fearful, uncertain, anxious, confused, angry, scornful, exasperated, powerless, paralyzed, grief-stricken, despairing, fed up . . . or some combination of these. What \u201cUs vs. Them\u201d categories come to mind? With which of these categories do we tend to identify ourselves? How is focusing on the political debate getting in our way? What is worth debating about climate change, and what isn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that 97 percent of climate scientists are in agreement that climate change is occurring and that humans are the major culprit. In fact, a number of major national and international scientific organizations have adopted statements acknowledging the human impact on the climate, including the American Chemical Society and the Geological Society of America\u2014both of which have members involved in the fossil-fuel industry. The genuine scientific debates that do exist focus on other issues\u2014for example, how much future warming and sea-level rise can be expected to occur under various scenarios.<\/p>\n

People are often interested to discover that the US military strongly acknowledges that climate change is happening and that it must be addressed. Back in 2007, during George W. Bush’s administration, the CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board\u2014a leading government-funded military research organization comprised of 11 retired senior military commanders\u2014 issued a report entitled “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.” In the introduction to this report, the board stated, \u201cThe nature and pace of climate changes being observed today and the consequences projected by the consensus scientific opinion are grave and pose equally grave implications for our national security.\u201d The military has already begun taking a number of steps to decrease its reliance on fossil fuels, to plan for rising sea levels at its coastal installations, and to prepare for emerging threats posed by freshwater shortages and other impacts of climate change. The insurance industry, likewise, accepts that humans are changing the climate in significant ways that can hurt its bottom line. In the New York Times, columnist Eduardo Porter reports, \u201cMost insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments . . . that climate change isn\u2019t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another cause of surprise for many people is that there is a wide variety of possible approaches to reining in climate change, not all of which involve increasing government regulations, jeopardizing the economy, and\/or interfering with free trade. The question of which approaches are most desirable is certainly worth debating. The more voices that join this debate, in a spirit of constructive problem-solving, the better. Our uniquely Brethren brand of resourceful pragmatism embodied by Dan West (and countless other unsung farmers and disaster-relief workers) could carry us far!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no denying it\u2014coming to terms with the reality of human-induced climate change is tough. Admitting that it\u2019s happening and that we\u2019re playing a leading role puts us firmly \u201con the hook\u201d for doing something about it. Yet, the problem feels too huge and abstract for us to fix. Individual actions seem pathetically unequal to the task, and government-based solutions often sound unappealing or unachievable. \u201cLife as usual\u201d goes on around us. Pushing climate change to the back of our minds is a constant temptation; we have enough other things to worry about. We have heard that the sooner and more boldly climate change is addressed, the better, but our society\u2019s norms and living patterns seem so deeply entrenched. How could we possibly hope to alter them?<\/p>\n

When the lawyer described in Luke 10 leaves Jesus, he leaves with a burden\u2014the burden of increasing his moral imagination, of working to change social norms, and of acting with love toward all. As Christians, we are called to carry the same burden today. By and large, the people who will bear (and are already bearing) the biggest brunt of climate change are those least responsible for causing it\u2014the poorest of the poor. Recognizing this, persons of many faiths, from Pope Francis to evangelicals, have called for action on climate change.<\/p>\n

In the upcoming articles in this series, we will examine how climate change is related to the core values of the Brethren faith. We will highlight reasons for hope and opportunities for loving our neighbors near and far, human and non-human, present and future\u2014peacefully, simply, and together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming to terms with the reality of human-induced climate change is tough. Admitting that it\u2019s happening and that we\u2019re playing a leading role puts us firmly \u201con the hook\u201d for doing something about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[17,16,15],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","tag-climate-change","tag-laura-white","tag-sharon-yohn"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}