Black and Green - Hear the Word of the Lord

The climate and environmental crisis and the injustice to black people have the same root.

God gave humankind a mandate to shepherd the earth, the whole Creation, with love like that which God has. We turned away and wanted to serve ourselves instead. God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ and Himself paid for our sin and rebellion, so that anyone who truly repents and allows the Holy Spirit of God complete access to their entire person, can gain eternal abundant life, grow into maturity to be like Christ, so that the Creation will once again rejoice [Romans 8]. This is the way our mandate may be fulfilled.

This is a three-dimentional Gospel of Christ and it brings blessing. Blessing at the level of the individual. Blessing also at the level of nations and people. When a whole people responds to this Gospel in their hearts, that people, that nation flourishes for a time. Not so that it can become proud and lazy but so that its people can take the Gospel of Christ, in all its dimensions, to the rest of the world. That is what history teaches us. Those prosperous nations then have a responsibility to live not for themselves but for Him Who died and rose again. That might explain why it is the white races that have become prosperous: they happen to be the ones in which a wide range of people, from leaders to people, have responded positively and heartfelt to the Gospel.

Yet when God's people misrepresent God, and live for themselves, they are warned then taken away. I believe, that is what is happening to the white races today. The white races have used the prosperity that resulted from the Gospel of Christ, to serve themselves, acting with cruelty to the black and other races, and plundering the Earth. The climate and environmental crisis and the injustice to black people have the same root. Both result from a heinous refusal of God-given responsibility.

"Those to whom much is given, from those much will be expected." So God holds the white affluent races as doubly culpable. Culpable for destroying the Earth and black and other peoples. And culpbable because they broke their trust, and did so deliberately and arrogantly. They were entrusted with the Gospel, for a season, to take salvation to the whole earth, all three dimensions of salvation, so that all peoples and the entire Creation may rejoice. But they used it for their own advantage and self-importance. We have not only failed in our responsibility, we have turned away from it. That has been true historically. And it is true today.

Unless the white races utterly repent - and I mean repentance without strings, repentance that involves being fully open to the possibility of making complete reperations - we will be taken away. The baton of the Gospel passes to others.

If this message is from the Lord God, may it spread. If not, may it not.

Amen!

Notes

So some black people on the programme rejected the message of the green movement, while others recognised some link.

In particular, the injustice was pointed out,

The Global North has most caused climate change
    yet suffers the least.
The Global South suffers the most from climate change
    yet has done least to cause it.

(That is why, a couple of years ago I prayed "Father God, it seems so unfair that it is the poor in the world who suffer most from climate and environmental destruction, while we who caused them suffer the least. It seems so unfair. Please will You do something to bring retribution onto the affluent peoples." Not long after that God allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to hit the affluent nations of the world. As a direct result of the wasteful, profligate, luxury-ridden lives of the affluent.)

I felt the programme did not see it right. In my view: 1. The two problems, the black and the green, have a common root. 2. There is a reason why the white races have been prosperous. 3. The white races have extra responsibility.

All three may be rooted in the revelation of God in the Bible.

• 1. Sin is the common problem, the sin of refusal of the mandate God gave people to image God to 'the others' - so the shape of the sin is refusal of responsibility, and is an attitude of "affluence, arrogance and unconnern."

• 2. The prosperity of the white races is not due to their prowess or superiority, but is a gift from God (or if you prefer, a spiritual cause-and-effect) because their people responded to the Gospel of Christ more wholeheartedly than others.

• 3. But, in such a state, the white races have extra responsibility, to image God to the rest of the world, to bring the Blessing that is the Gospel of Christ to the rest of the world.

That is why I went to prayer, and then wrote the above.

See "Hope in this Climate Emergency: Leviticus 26 - promises of national blessing or its opposite": Youtube; Web page with extra notes.

See also

• Some Verses Calling For Repentance Among Western Christians

• Why Hadn't They Started a Long Time Before? - a piece of doggerel about the tardiness of energy-intensive industries.

• Trying to Understand the Covid-19 Pandemic

• Competition, Rivalry and Status

• On some Theological Points Referred to Above
  • Consumers, Stewards - or Shepherds? - on our responsibility to the enter Creation.
  • Three Dimensions of Salvation
  • Romans 8 Revisited - a talk to a RCCG church.

• On the USA and its followers:
  • A 'Word' to America in February 2001
  • Why Did God Allow 9/11?
  • Trying to Gain God's Perspective on 9/11 (September 11th 2001)
  • 9/11 - Response and Aftermath in the light of ISIL
  • 9/11 - Ten Years On
  • 9/11 - Twenty Years On ...
  • Attitude of USA (and its followers!)

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Created: 18 October 2021, after hearing the Black and Green radio programme. Last updated: