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Environmental apathy
Environmental stewardship should not begin with a sense of duty, but rather a passionate love of nature that prevents apathy from setting in. Peter Illyn, recent chapel guest speaker from Restoring Eden emphasized that point as he stated that caring for nature “is not about recycling and turning down the thermostat or anything like that… it is about being in awe of God’s creation.”
Until recently I never related caring for God’s creation with my sporadic desires to be environmentally friendly. While growing up, I have gone through phases, which started in grade two when my teacher taught us about basic environmental stewardship, which spurred me to unplug things, turn off lights, recycle, and only flush the toilet occasionally — all at the expense of my mother’s sanity of course. Sometime afterwards, grade six maybe, I became apathetic, realizing that my actions did comparatively nothing unless I wanted to live in a grass hut with no electricity. I was destined to be a failure at conservation and stewardship; I was never doing enough as there was always more that I could do.
Often it seems like the big reason behind not caring for the environment, as Illyn urges, is that stewardship often “feels like a duty” and can create overload in our already busy and complicated lives. Being stewards of the environment means we have to be intentional with our actions, and frankly we do not know where to start or stop.
Our apathy is caused by the complexity of what defines environmental friendliness: the slow paces, complicated, and systematic nature of results; the cost of taking action is over-exaggerated and benefits under-exaggerated; and the fact that life gives us other priorities. In essence, caring for the environment becomes just one more thing pushed to the backburner.
But God made us to love nature and be stewards of it; so shouldn’t we take time to notice beauty in God’s creation? Whether the brilliance of a star-covered sky, the form of a tree, an animal grazing, the grandeur of everything that becomes apparent while atop a mountain, or even the spectrum of colors lacing through the sunset sky as you walk back from the library after a long afternoon of studying. With this nurtured love of nature, hopefully caring for creation will not be viewed as a chore but rather as a genuine desire
of the heart.
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:) Great read! And I totally agree. Went through life doing the motions, this year fell in love with God and seeing him in creation everywhere! Sunset is just like having coffee with God haha. On the other end, I feel pain when I put a piece of plastic in the bin knowing it damages the environment and good soil God gave us to tend and look after. Once apathetic, now I see the creation as central to my faith in everyway – my veg garden is where I connect with God (I used to laugh at creationists hehe). God works in marvelous ways.
Newsflash:
“God” doesn’t exist, just nature and a greedy, overpopulated species that’s fouling it in the name of perpetual “economic growth.”