Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who consider themselves wise and judge themselves clever.” Isaiah 5:20-21

Our thought for today: “Tell the truth when it come to caring for God’s creation.”

We’ve covered some tough subjects recently as we’ve continued to think Biblically about caring for our Father’s world. Just in the last ten days we’ve had difficult and complicated discussions about the use of fossil fuels, as well as the blessings and problems that come from our use of plastics, and what to do with the tons of waste we produce each year, and also about climate change. Yesterday we considered the great deception that is being promoted by the creators of “The Green New Deal”. I pointed out that their initiative is actually a Trojan Horse designed to deceitfully implement socialist economic policies in the guise of environmentalism.

However, on the other side of the coin, we’ve also considered the problem of “climate change deniers”. These are people (usually on the political right) who ignore the clear evidence of good science and instead insist that climate change isn’t real, that it’s a conspiracy being perpetrated by left-wing environmental extremists. I likened such people as being members of “The Flat Earth Society”. I also explained that if we as Christians join that crowd, it makes us appear silly and unserious in our thinking, and that diminishes our Christian witness as we try to share the truth of the Gospel with a lost world.

Whether you’re on the political left or right, whether you are liberal or conservative, it’s important to simply tell the truth. Don’t stretch it, don’t exaggerate or embellish, don’t deceive or manipulate. Like Sergeant Joe Friday from the old television series Dragnet was fond of saying, “The facts ma’am, just the facts.”

In Isaiah 5:20-21 the prophet was writing about those who lie, mislead, and deceive. They twist the facts to suit themselves and to promote their own agenda. Usually they begin with a kernel of truth, but then they exaggerate, embellish, and mislead people into believing that the truth is something other than what it really is. That could include trying to convince people that the situation is worse than it is, or that it is better than it is. It includes those who try to convince the rest of us that environmentally the sky is falling, when it isn’t. And it also includes those who try to convince us that there is no problem at all, when there clearly is.

Don’t let your emotions or political leanings distort your thinking or lead you to misrepresent the situation. Just tell the truth.

“The facts ma’am, just the facts”.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Whoever speaks the truth declares what is right, but a false witness speaks deceit … Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue, only a moment.” Proverbs 12:17;19 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “The Green New Deal is a Trojan Horse”

Do you remember the story of the Trojan Horse? It comes to us from Greek mythology. The Greeks had been in a long war with the Trojans for over ten years and it was at a stalemate. In order to win they needed to overrun the city of Troy, but the walls of the city were virtually impenetrable. So they built a huge wooden horse and wheeled it up to the gates of the city, presumably as a trophy for the Trojans for having successfully resisted the siege. The Greeks then pretended to sail away. The Trojans wheeled the horse into the city, accepting the trophy and thinking they had won the war. But hidden inside the horse was an elite group of Greek warriors. That night the warriors crept out of the horse, opened the gates of the city, and allowed the rest of the Greek army, which was hiding outside, to storm into the city and win the war.

Metaphorically the term “Trojan Horse” refers to any trick or strategy that fools someone into accepting what appears to be help from a foe, when in fact it is a trick to advance the foe’s agenda. A malicious computer program that fools you into running it, but which then allows a hacker access to your computer, is known as a Trojan Horse.

“The Green New Deal” currently being promoted by the far-left-wing of the Democratic party is a Trojan Horse. The term “New Deal” is a reference to the massive depression-era public works program implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt which was designed to pull the country out of the depression. The promoters of the Green New Deal want their program to be thought of like that. It’s being promoted as a revolutionary and inspired environmental package which will help to save our planet.

In truth it is more about socialism than it is about environmentalism. It does contain some environmental initiatives, but they are extreme and unrealistic. But also, it is packed full of socialist-themed pet projects that have little or nothing to do with the environment. It includes programs promoting universal healthcare, a universal income for everyone, a much higher minimum wage, various forms of income redistribution, and lots of other liberal goodies. It is a Trojan Horse. It plays on people’s concerns for the environment, and uses that to deceitfully slip-in large parts of the socialist economic agenda that they would never be able to get passed into law in any other manner. When confronted with this deception, the promoters of The Green New Deal make the spurious argument that those economic issues are tangentially related to the environment. But they offer no proof that they are.

It’s unfortunate that they had done this because as we have been learning this month, there are some legitimate environmental concerns that do need to be addressed. But the deception perpetrated by The Green New Deal only serves to raise suspicions and causes further distrust regarding the true motives of those on the political left.

Don’t be fooled. The Green New Deal is a modern-day Trojan Horse. It is not what its promoters pretend it is.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said: Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words?” Job 38:1-2 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Resign from the Flat Earth Society”

Okay, you knew it was coming eventually. Today we’re going to talk about climate change. It’s a subject that causes left-wing extremists to run around like Chicken Little insisting that the sky is falling, and it also causes right-wing extremists to sound like they belong to the Flat Earth Society as they insist that climate change is a hoax being perpetrated by a vast conspiracy.

The fact is that the climate is changing. It’s undeniable. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) constantly measures and records the earth’s temperature. The average surface temperature of the earth has been steadily creeping up for the last 100 years (a total of almost 2 full degrees) and it seems to have accelerated in the last 35 years. The six hottest years on record have occurred between 2010-2018. The average temperature of the oceans continues to rise, and global sea levels have risen about 8 inches. Numerous studies by NASA scientists, as well as others, have also confirmed all of this.

The question isn’t “if” climate change is happening, but “why” is it happening? To deny that it’s happening is just silly. It ignores the obvious facts. It makes us sound like conspiracy theorists who also believe in a flat earth and who deny that the moon landing really happened. And that diminishes our witness as Christians. If that’s a reflection of the depth and seriousness of our thinking, then how can our proclamation of the Gospel be taken seriously by unbelievers?

Good science demonstrates that the climate is changing, but good science also demonstrates that the earth is always in a state of climate change, and always has been. Climate patterns aren’t fixed they’re cyclical. Climate scientists and geologists can clearly document at least seven major cycles of warming and cooling over the course of the earth’s history, the most dramatic of which was “the ice age”, which was then followed by a warmer age that melted all that ice.

Most of the “climate change” the earth is currently experiencing is part of the normal cyclical pattern of historical climate change that is always occurring on earth. Are manmade causes also effecting the climate? Yes. Without question. Greenhouse gases; the urban temperature gradient that occurs from paving over vast areas of land; depletion of the ozone layer; and other manmade causes do contribute to the problem. But much of it is simply part of a natural cycle of climate change. And that, of course, is the inconvenient part of this discussion that the environmental extremists would prefer to avoid. To hear them tell it, climate change is all from manmade causes.

The primary point I wish to convey here this morning, and the one thing I hope you will take away from this, is that climate change is real and when we deny it, it makes us sound like members of the Flat Earth Society. We sound silly and poorly informed, and that hurts our witness as Christians.

The question is not “if” the climate has been changing, of course it has. The question is “why” has it been changing. And now you know. It’s mostly just a part of the normal cycle of climate change that is always slowly unfolding on earth, and part of it is manmade.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “You are to have a digging tool in your equipment: when you relieve yourself, dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.” Deuteronomy 23:13

Our thought for today: “Don’t foul the land”

I vividly remember a scene from a movie I saw almost forty years ago. The name of the movie was “Shogun”. It was about some British sailors in the 1600s who were shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. They were rescued and brought into a Japanese village to live. The Japanese were meticulously clean as part of their culture, but the sailors were filthy brutes who had disgusting personal habits. The houses they were given to live in soon became hovels filled with filth, and the Japanese were repulsed by it. One Japanese leader, looking at the disgusting mess, commented to another, “Even a bird doesn’t foul its own nest! What’s wrong with these men?”

In Deuteronomy 23:13 God instructed the people not to foul their own nests. He told them to poop outside of the camp and then bury it so nobody would see it or step in it. It was a matter of sanitation and good hygiene, but it was also about being clean and neat and taking proper care of the land the Lord had given them.

In our day, controlling all forms of pollution is a big deal. There are over six billion people on planet earth and together we produce a lot of waste. Not just human waste (although there is a lot of that!) but garbage waste, plastic waste, fuel emissions, spent nuclear by-products, and so on. We use an incredible amount of the earth’s resources and we produce a lot of waste in the process. Simply as a matter of being good stewards of our Father’s world we have to take steps to minimize and properly dispose of our waste.

And it’s not really that hard. Remember the story of my old Oldsmobile Delta 88 – that gas-guzzling gross-polluter I wrote about in an earlier devotional? Today my vehicles get much better gas mileage and they don’t belch smoke at all. Increased fuel efficiency and emission controls are a good thing! I know it costs money to develop that technology, and that then increases the price of our vehicles, but it’s a small price to pay for a cleaner environment.

Have you ever seen a picture of the air over Pittsburg, PA back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s? There was so much smog in the air from oil refineries and coal burning plants that it looked like thick fog. On most days the air was almost never safe to breath. Now Google a picture of Pittsburg today. The air is clear and clean and safe. That’s the result of advances in emissions control technology (such as Clean Coal Technology) and also the efforts of everyday people to create less pollution as they live their own lives.

As the people of God we have a responsibility to limit the amount of pollution we create. Not only is this our Father’s world, but it is also our home. Don’t foul your own nest.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.” Galatians 6:9 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Do your part and don’t give up”

Christians have a long and noble history of being change agents in society. In an effort to be salt and light, as Jesus commanded in The Sermon on the Mount, the followers of Christ have always been thought leaders on important issues, and agents of change where change needed to occur. That change always took time, often a lot of time, and it required tremendous effort and great sacrifice on the parts of those leading the effort.

William Wilberforce was a Christian politician in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He spent decades of his life working to abolish the slave trade in England. At first his fellow Christians opposed him, they thought his concerns were misplaced and his ideas were ridiculous. But Wilberforce never gave up, and slowly over time he began to help people see the wisdom and rightness of the cause. Eventually the slave trade was outlawed in England as a direct result of Christians doing the right thing and refusing to give up on the issue.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian leader who advocated for civil rights for blacks in America. He faced great opposition and tremendous obstacles. But his cause was right and it was Biblical. So he and his supporters leaned into it, slowly won people to their side, and kept pushing for change. Those efforts by Christians who refused to give up eventually changed the very fabric of our society.

Communism in Eastern Europe eventually fell thanks to the unrelenting pressure applied by the churches. The abortion issue in the USA is another example of Christians taking the lead on an important social issue and refusing to give up. There are fewer abortions performed today than at any time since it was legalized in 1973, and the Christian community is still fighting to have Roe v Wade overturned. We will not give up.

As I’ve been stressing all month in this series, environmental concerns were a Biblical issue long before they were a political issue. This issue belonged to us, the people of God, long before it belonged to left-wing environmental extremists. The problem is big and complex, and positive change will only occur in small steps over time. But since this is our Father’s world, and since this is a Biblical issue, we the people of God have got to be the leaders helping to bring about the needed change.

Caring for God’s creation is a vitally important issue. But it’s a difficult issue and change will come slowly. Don’t discouraged and don’t get overwhelmed. Just do your part and don’t give up. Tomorrow we will think about how we can help to minimize the impact of pollution on our Father’s world.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Mankind, he has told you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Just do your part”

In Micah 6:8 the people of God are given a simple and beautiful general principle with which to approach life. Essentially it says, “Just do your part”. “Act justly, be faithful, and walk humbly with God.” In other words, just be a good and decent person. Know the Word of God, live your life within Biblical boundaries, do your best to be a blessing to others and to honor God with your ways, and then just live life.

As we think about the huge, and complex, and politically-charged subject of environmental issues, it can seem overwhelming. When we think about a floating patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of the state of Texas (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch), what can one person in Crossville, TN do about that? Are the polar icecaps really melting? How would I know and what can I do about it? Does Al Gore really have an Olympic-sized heated indoor swimming pool in his home that uses six times as much electricity annually than one normal-sized home? How can I make him stop that? And can I come over for a swim?

The issues are big and complex and confusing, and it can seem as if there’s not much that any one individual can do about it. That’s true enough if you’re only looking at the big picture. But God isn’t calling on you to solve the whole problem. He’s only asking you (and me) to do our parts. It you’re the only one who decides to use a little less plastic, it won’t matter much. But if we all decide to use a little less plastic it will make a big difference. If one person stops throwing trash on the ground that would be nice. If everyone stops throwing trash on the ground our roadsides would look a lot nicer.

Big things are made up of little things. Big results come from lots of small efforts brought together for a common cause to achieve a worthwhile goal. I encourage you to just do your part. Lots of small individual efforts add up to big results.

Tomorrow we will consider some success stories which powerfully demonstrate that when Christians come together for a worthy cause, and when they don’t give-up, God often produces amazing results.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Your thinking about creation care should be formed by the Bible, not by the culture.”

In some respects, this has been a tough week in the world of daily devotionals. Lol. We’ve covered some difficult ground in our thinking about the use of oil, coal, and plastics. Next week we’re going to delve into the politically-charged topics of pollution controls, climate change, and the infamous “Green New Deal”. But before we do that, I think it would be helpful for us to circle back and revisit our reason for addressing this subject to begin with. Creation care was a Biblical issue long before it was a political issue. This is our Father’s world, and as His children we have a responsibility to take care of it for him. As Christians, caring for the earth was our concern long before the issue was highjacked by environmental extremists and became a pet project of the political left.

Therefore, our thinking about the matter needs to be formed by our Biblical worldview rather than by a kneejerk reaction that comes from our opposition to leftist politics. Ask yourself, when you think about the subject of environmental concerns, does your mind immediately go to what God says about it in the Bible, or are your thoughts more along the lines of “That’s a liberal issue and I reject it.”? Too often our thinking about this issue is formed by our opposition to the political left rather than by the instructions we have received from God in the Bible.

I encourage you to forget “them”, the liberal elites and environmental extremists who have highjacked this issue for their own political purposes. Don’t allow your thinking on this important Biblical issue to be determined by your feelings about them. It doesn’t matter what they say. It only matters what God says. Make sure your thinking about creation care is based upon Biblical truth and not on political sensitivities.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “I brought you to a fertile land to eat its fruit and bounty, but after you entered, you defiled my land, you made my inheritance detestable.” Jeremiah 2:7 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Paper or plastic?.”

In Jeremiah 2:7 we read of the people of God being accused of having defiled the beautiful and fruitful land God gave them. In one sense they defiled it spiritually by worshipping pagan idols on land the Lord had declared holy. But another way in which they defiled it was by not properly caring for the land itself. Their farming and grazing practices were careless, and they wasted resources. The region was renowned for its abundant crops and luxurious vegetation, but after being occupied by careless stewards it was quickly becoming a wasteland.

This past summer I was kayaking out in the Atlantic Ocean when I saw a plastic bottle floating in the water. It was only one, but it reminded me of what is known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. That is a floating patch of garbage in the ocean between Hawaii and California which is 600,000 square miles in size (twice the size of Texas). It includes approximately 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. The garbage is mostly from Asia and has mysteriously accumulated over two decades. It is an environmental disaster. It’s hard to know how much total plastic has accumulated in the oceans around the world, but scientists estimate that 10 million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year. There is much more than that in the landfills of the world.

Plastic is a man-made substance. It is made from a combination of synthetic and organic compounds. It is malleable and is easily formed into a wide variety of products. The blessing of plastic is its versatility and durability. The problem with plastic is its long life. The length of time it takes plastic to decompose depends on its composition. The more organic material used, the less durable the item is but the faster it decomposes. The more synthetic components it contains the stronger and more durable the item is, but the longer it takes to decompose. The most durable plastic items can take as long as 1000 years to decompose. Soft drink bottles require 450 years. The plastic bags you get at the supermarket take 10-20 years to decompose.

So, what does that mean for Christians who are committed to being good stewards of God’s Creation? Should we use plastic or not? Being manmade, plastic is not a natural part of God’s creation. It is something that humans introduced into God’s creation and it does cause an environmental dilemma, so what should we do?

Plastic is so much a part of everyday life that it would be impossible to stop using it altogether. But because there is so much of it, and because it does last for so long, it makes sense to reduce our use of it if we can. We should recycle our plastic when possible. If you have a choice between paper or plastic at the grocery store why not choose paper? If you can attach a filter to your water faucet to produce clean drinking water instead of using an endless supply of small plastic bottles, it makes sense to do so. If you have a choice between purchasing an item made from plastic, or from a more biodegradable product, perhaps the biodegradable product would be the better choice.

Again, reason and common sense prevail here. Plastics are a part of modern life and they do make life better in many ways. But we also need to be smart about our use of it. There are problems with plastic. As good stewards of God’s creation it makes sense to limit our use of it where we can.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Now the servants and the officials had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold.” John 18:18 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Coal is a gift from God too”

The use of coal as a source of energy is probably one of the most contentious environmental issues being discussed in our day. Coal is commonly thought to be a dirty source of energy that is responsible for a great deal of air pollution, and there is some truth to that argument. Of all the carbon-based fuels used today, coal is probably the most problematic. But does that mean it shouldn’t be used?

There is no reference to mineral coal in the Bible. There never have been coal deposits in that part of the world such as there are in Kentucky or West Virginia. The coal referred to in the Bible was charcoal and it was made by charring wood in a kiln. That process produced a substance that was slow-burning and which could be used for heating and cooking. Mineral coal, as we know it, was formed in the earth in a process similar to that of petroleum. Organic matter is trapped underground and subjected to great heat and pressure for long periods of time, resulting in the black sedimentary substance we know as coal.

Like petroleum, coal was formed in the earth by physical forces overseen by our sovereign God. It is part of His creation and it exists by His divine will. Also like petroleum, coal serves no useful function as long as it remains hidden deep underground. It’s only when it is mined, processed, and used by humans that it becomes functional and useful. God would not have given us coal if He didn’t intend for us to use it.

The question of course, as with all of God’s other resources, is how can we use it in the most responsible manner? There are many good reasons for us to continue using coal. For one thing, it’s an affordable source of energy. For another, the economies of entire communities depend on it. There are environmental concerns with the burning of coal to be sure, but there is also a very real human factor to consider, and we must balance both.

This is where modern technology becomes a blessing. Advances in environmental science have made it possible for coal to be burned in a much cleaner way. “Clean Coal Technology” is a process that removes much of the sulfur and carbon emissions from coal gases and greatly reduces the amount of pollution generated by burning coal.

In another devotional we’ll address the issue of emission controls and efforts to reduce pollution, but the point for today is that coal is a natural resource God has provided to us through His creation. Its only function is to provide a source of energy for us. God gave us this resource and we are free to use it; we simply have to do so in as responsible a manner as possible.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “He made him ride on the heights of the land and eat the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from flinty rock …” Deuteronomy 32:13 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Oil is given to us by God to be used in responsible ways.”

Oil was created by God. The creation of vast oceans of petroleum under the surface of the earth, as described in yesterday’s devotional, was by the will and the hand of God. But oil serves no useful purpose sitting underground in vast oceans. It is of no use at all until it is extracted from the ground, refined, and used by people. Then it serves multiple useful purposes, only one of which is as a fuel. It is also used to make plastics, rubber, asphalt, a wide variety of chemicals used in daily life, and it is also found in most synthetic products.

Petroleum is needed for more than just fuel. And since it is a non-renewable resource, and since it is needed for reasons other than just as a source of energy, as good stewards of the resources God has given us, we need to conserve it and to use it in responsible ways.

Although it is possible that more oil could yet be discovered, as was noted yesterday, current remaining oil reserves are about 1.5 trillion barrels and the world uses approximately 34 billion barrels of that each year. That being the case, at current rates of use, we will consume all 1.5 trillion barrels in about 50 years.  That would be a little inconvenient when it comes to oil as a source of energy and fuel because we would then have to rely on alternative sources. But the bigger concern with running out of petroleum oil is the multiple other important ways in which it is used and needed. Alternate sources will need to be found for those purposes as well.

What does this mean for Christians who are mindful of taking care of God’s creation and being good stewards of His resources? Should we stop using oil as an energy source? I don’t think so. Oil is a gift from God and it serves no useful purpose unless it is used. We simply need to continue to be good stewards of it. Don’t waste it. Let’s make it last as long as we can. Increased fuel efficiency is one way to help do that. Keeping the thermostat in your home set on reasonable temperatures conserves energy as well, and there are many other ways in which we can continue to use oil as a source of fuel and energy, but do so in an efficient and responsible way.

Oil is a gift from God. It is a useful resource that He has provided to help make our lives better. We are free to use it as long as it lasts, but we do have to use it responsibly.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim