A Sea of Troubles
Back in the mid-twentieth century you could buy pocket-sized booklets in the I Spy series. There were I Spy books for dogs, railways, countryside, seaside and many others. I think we could do with one for plastics - that bright orange caught on a bush must be a Sainsbury's bag, but that hint of green in the ditch could be M&S or Waitrose.
In a God-created world, humans in his image have dug and built, discovered and invented unprecedented, unimaginable new things - a maelstrom of new drugs, new communications, new galaxies, and plastic. John Stott talked of 'the painful ambiguity which attaches to everything human' - and to every human endeavour. Scientists work to find cures for disease, and to make cluster bombs more efficient. We build cathedrals and concentration camps. We develop wonderful new roses, and destroy ancient woodland. And we make plastic - cheap, efficient, light, flexible, indestructible, playing a major part in our prosperity and well-being.
Plastic is wonderful. But it is indestructible, not biodegradable; it simply breaks down into smaller pieces that are still plastic. It fills our landfill sites, floats over the landscape, enters the sea through our rivers, catches on coral reefs and blows across our streets. The oceans are full of it - not just the visible plastic mixed in with the seaweed on any beach, but the plastic 'sand', the tiny plastic polymers that won't go away. Plastic flotsam and jetsam become the 'food' of organisms that are eaten by fish that are eaten by people. Turtles die eating a plastic bag that looked like a jellyfish; a dead albatross chick has cigarette lighters and other garbage in its stomach.
This is not about global warming, nor is it about the other threat to our seas - the over fishing that has almost destroyed the blue fin tuna, and the cod. What can we do about plastic? What should we do? As individuals, as churches, as voters, as global Christians? The size of the problem makes it difficult to know just where to begin. It involves judgments about how far we should go in pressing the issue without becoming very boring; about the reasonable use of plastic, in church kitchens, in supermarket shopping; about local recycling facilities.
Believing that one day all will be transformed does not mean we can shrug our shoulders and wait for that day. We are called to bring Christ's redeeming transformation into our world now, in every way we can...
Margaret Killingray
Comments
An excellent article - and the penultimate paragraph raises some of the questions that the churches should be thinking about. But how do we get these ideas across in the context of church Sunday by Sunday? There are so many Christians who see 'green' issues as completely separate (and optional) from their faith and who are not actually very happy about bringing them into church (have these issues become too politicised?).Why is it so difficult (despite the wealth of relevant biblical material - Genesis through to Revelation) to get people really engaged with the need for personal and corporate change to tackle some of these things from the grassroots up?
That is good stuff. Interested to see what the mindless christian ostriches have to say against it.
This really needs saying Loud and clear to al Christian people. God created the world and all that in there is and God looked on the world and "GOD saw that it was good"Ge1 Every Chrisian must uphold Gods creative work and love it and care for it.We must show as much care as we can; refrain from extravagence; overuse of resources, and from Gluttony.God is in the midst of it all even the plastic sand
Date:
2010-03-20 10:45:58
Author:
mary quenby