Christians and the Environment

Have you ever seen one of those signs along the road declaring that a person or a community adopted that particular highway? Have you ever wondered what that meant? I used to wonder what it meant. As a youngster at that time, one could only imagine what went through my mind when I equated what I knew as adoption to a highway. Not far from where I lived, there was one of those signs that declared that Bear Creek Baptist Church had adopted that highway. I attended Bear Creek Baptist Church on a regular basis. My first summer there as a youth, I found out what it meant to adopt a highway. With orange vests, pointy sticks, big orange bags and lots of drinking water, we spent the entire day cleaning the trash and liter off the sides of the road. We did not stop there however; we continued on and cleaned up a few other roads. Amazingly, we enjoyed it. Every summer the Bear Creek Baptist Church Youth went out on this road, draped in orange, and cleaned our local environment.

According to the Department of Transportation, Americans burn two hundred million gallons of gasoline a day by driving our vehicles (Influences). Approximately seventy thousand people die early deaths caused by heart and lung related illnesses (The Light Party). Christians today should concern themselves with our environment locally and then expand our contributions and concerns worldwide.

How can one begin to help, restore, and preserve the world we live in? I believe that we, as Christians, can start with ourselves. For the smoker, how common and habitual is it to throw your cigarette butt out the window? When brushing your teeth, how long do you let the water run? How many empty water bottles have you thrown away or how many times have you scored jump shooting a ball of paper in the trash bin? How often do you choose plastic over paper at the super market? These are minor habits we each have in our daily lives that if we change them, we help the environment little by little. To save well over 2.5 billion plastic bags a year, approximately twenty-five percent of American families, Christian families included, would have to choose plastic ten times less and choose paper instead (Influences). For each ton of paper we choose to throw in the recycle bin rather than the garbage bin, we can help America save three hundred eighty gallons of oil. Contrary to popular belief, the butt end of a cigarette is not biodegradable. The white fibers in the end of the butt are not cotton but a form of plastic, which can last as long as other plastics in the environment (Cigarette Butt Liter). Furthermore, we, especially as Christians, need to learn not to waste what we use and use only what we need. “The more you conserve, the less you have to recycle.” (Clendennen).

I live relatively close to an ocean inlet where there resides a dock, a landing, and a lot of miniature crabs. I remember when I used to take strolls down to the landing to look out on the ocean. I remember I went down there once and discovered, as the tide was out, that beside the dock, there was an old, but very large tire in the water. Along side of the tire rested debris of sorts: empty glass beer bottles, tin cans, tangled fishing lines, a shoe, a mud soaked shirt, and a few other unnatural objects. On the surface of the water, if the light from the sun hit it just right, I could see engine fuel waste floating on top, purple and green in color. Fish and crabs, and a lot of other living creatures lived in that water. I had made a mental note one time of the stench that came from the landing area and one day I discovered why: a dead fish. A fish, a flounder, had wrapped itself in some of the tangled fishing line. When I found it, crabs were picking away at it. Although the sight and smell was horrid, I knew that that flounder wouldn’t have died, likely, if the debris hadn’t polluted the area. I later found out that toxic chemicals enter our waterways every year polluting the environment for wildlife and polluting our own drinking water (The Light Party).

Human waste is becoming a problem in our world. The United States alone, which is approximately five percent of the world’s total population, produces thirty percent of the waste in the world (Bicycle Greenway). In Australia, a shire implemented a plan to reduce or recycle human waste. The worm farm was built in 1997. Basically they use worms to eat human waste and turn it into fertilizer and then sell to those wishing to grow plants. The treatment plant receives eight thousand mega-liters of sewage a year. (About four thousand full sized swimming pools.) “The worm farm produces 200 cubic metres of worm castings per week, which is 10,400 cubic metres per year,” (Ian).

We as Christians know that there is a proper way to handle and treat God’s creation. God created the heavens and the earth and all that was in them and saw that they were good. It says in the Bible that God knows every fowl of the air and every creature of the ground. It also says in the Bible that God provides for His creation. When Jesus taught, for instance, that we shouldn’t worry about what we shall eat or what we shall wear because if God can take care of the smallest creature on earth, feeding it every day, He will take care of us, His beloved. Notice, in Genesis at creation, that when God gave man dominion over the earth, it didn’t mean for men to raze earth, but to raise it. When He created Adam, He put Adam in Eden and told him to take care of it. (Deem)

We as Christians should do the same thing with the world God has privileged us to live in. He created this world for us, to live in, be happy and fruitful. He never intended for us to pollute and destroy it. We need to begin small, locally, correcting what our earlier generations have done.

Works Cited

Cigarette Butt Litter. “Are cigarette butts biodegradable?” Clean Virginia Waterways. http://www.longwood.edu/CLEANVA/cigbuttbiodegradable.htm.

Clendennen, Andy. “Preserving the environment: energy- and cost-saving alternatives to recycling abound.” Washington University. http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/5375.html.

Deem, Rich. “Is Christianity anti-Environmental?” Evidence For God. Feb. 17, 2007. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/environment.html.

Human Influenced Facts. “Facts and Figures, Did you Know?” ThinkQuest.com. http://library.thinkquest.org/11353/facts.htm.

Ian and Luke. “Worm Farm.” The Redlands. http://www.virtualclassroom.org/99/vc_45/bsssenviron/Wormfarm.htm.

Light Party, The. “Environmental Facts.” The Light Party. 1996. http://www.lightparty.com/Economic/EnvironmentalFacts.html.

National Bicycle Greenway. “Environmental Facts.” Cycle America. http://www.bikeroute.com/EnvironmentalFacts.php.