Ep. 141 Steve Bouma-Prediger - Creation Care Discipleship

consequentialism. And why we ought not be consequentialist. Think that the moral worth of an action is found only in its consequences. We got to simply do the right thing. Follow Jesus follow all the saints who said to heck with the consequences, I'll leave those to God. And I'm simply going to do what God is calling me to do. And be a faithful disciple follower of Jesus as best I can.

It only tastes a second and it helps us find new listeners to the show. Just go to the Show page from the app that you're using and hit five stars. It really is that easy. Thank you so much. Previous guests on the show have included Lucy peviot, Chris Walken, and Justin Bailey. You can go back listen to those amazing episodes and more. But today's guest is Steve Ballmer

predator. He is the Leonard Marjorie, mass professor of Reformed theology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and the director of the Environmental Studies minor, a graduate of Hope College, his PhD is in religious studies from the University of Chicago. His most recent book is creation care discipleship, why Earth keeping is an essential Christian practice. When he is

not teaching. He is spending most of his time canoeing, or backpacking in his favorite places in North America, or simply hiking among the magnificent trees in southwest Michigan parks. Steve and I have a great discussion on creation, Earth keeping and our role in caring for the earth as disciples of Jesus. Since the Bible starts and ends with rivers and trees, our first mandate is to care for the earth and our vision of the future includes the earth we are now

living on. We have a role and responsibility in the way that we keep the earth care for it, and pattern our life. What are the things we could do in our everyday lives to be good Earthkeepers, who is working on the major problems of the Earth at the moment? How is social justice tied to ecological issues? We tackle these questions and more. So join us as we discover our role as Earthkeepers as disciples of Jesus. Here's my conversation with Steve Ballmer predator. Steve, welcome to the podcasts.

Thanks for joining me. I'm excited to have you on.

crime. CO instructors. We lead trips in the Front Range of the Rockies all over Michigan, Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness, one of our favorite paddling spots up in northeastern Minnesota, Adirondacks. So I sort of fell into it by love of creation by leading these trips all summer.

And then in graduate school, I took absolutely no courses on ecological issues or the intersection of theology and environment until I got to my doctoral work at University Chicago, and I focused my what my vocation as a teacher scholar, put that in harmony with my application as a backpacker, and canoeist and so

on. So my doctoral dissertation turned into my first book called The greening of theology, where I looked at three countries temporary Christian thinkers Rosemary Radford, Ruth Ruth Joseph Sittler, and Yogen moldman. and wrote a very long dissertation and a little bit shorter book on the intersection of Christian theology and ethics, and ecological issues.

This is back in the 90s. So And ever since then that's sort of been my trajectory as a scholar, I've got, I don't know, seven or eight books now all of them on ecological topics. Shameless. plug here, for my most recent book, creation care discipleship just came out by Earth keeping is an essential Christian practice. So for the last 30 or so years, I've been focusing as a teacher and scholar on ecological theology and ethics from a Christian point of view.

So again, my interest in being outdoors and backpacking, canoeing, the like, and my scholarly focus have more or less coincided, I've read all kinds of parts of the Bible that I did not know existed drying up

is in a Baptist churches. I've learned that the Bible begins and ends with rivers and trees, for example, the first two chapters of Genesis, the last few chapters of the book of Revelation, I've never heard sermon on I've preached those sermons, but I've never heard another, pointing out how the Bible begins with rivers and trees, and all these other wonderful texts in between the book of Genesis and the book of

Revelation. So that's the short version of how I got into this, this business of teaching and writing about God's creation in our care for it.

Aaronic blessing. From the Book of Numbers, the same Hebrew word is used in Genesis two were called to preserve and protect the world. That's our calling as humans, not just as Christians, but as humans, we often focus on were made in God's image called to have dominion, and, and rule and exercise dominion over the earth. That's Genesis one, but we forget about Genesis two, it's next to our neighbor, I think being called to have dominion means serving and protecting. So are we good at

that calling? No. Clearly, we're not given the various degradations of the Earth that we experience these days, whether it's polluted air, polluted water, species, extinction rates, etc. Nevertheless, our calling as humans is to care for creation. And again, unlike what I was taught, growing up, the Earth is not going to be destroyed and burned up to nothing. That's not what the Bible teaches. Those last two chapters in Revelation talk about the New Jerusalem

coming down to earth. And our eschatology, our view of the future is an earth affirming view, the earth will be purified

by that fire not destroyed. And second, Peter 310, another famous passage, often miss translated the earth and all the works upon it will not burn up to nothing, but they will be disclosed, discovered, literally, your earth isotype, there'll be found, we're not looking at the Earth burning up to nothing, we ought to care for it, because in God's good future, our good future will be in some sort of heaven and

earth, brought together. And that's the vision that's that's described in Revelation elsewhere in the New Testament. So our view of the future is of an earth affirming future. And, and so we don't, we can't use the Bible as an excuse or reason to say, it's all going to hell in a handbasket. We don't need to care for it. We are called to care for it and called to live out God's good future in our present life.

Well, and I think again, I appeal to my own I experienced growing up in a dispensationalist conservative Baptist church and being a proud evangelical traveling a lot and speaking to and with evangelical folk one we've ignored those passages too we have misinterpreted or misunderstood them. Again, I emphasized or talked about, are we focused on Genesis one being made in God's image called to rule and exercise dominion, we forgotten Genesis 215. Our eschatology, our view of the future has been

an escapist eschatology. We're going to escape the Earth, so I care for it. So that's one reason why in my writing, I focused on the Bible. That new book I showed you as a whole chapter on what we learn about the Bible. And I, as an Evangelical, I say, I basically meeting with evangelicals. So we say we take the Bible seriously as God's word. Well, let's take a look at some passages that maybe you're not familiar with.

What does the Bible say? And the Christian tradition itself, Roman Catholic, all forms of Protestant, each of them in their own way, have people not just like Francis of Assisi, it was his feast day just a few days ago. But other folks too, who you can point to who were Earth keepers in their own way. But we don't, not only do we not know well, what the Bible teaches, we don't know much about our own traditions, people, old and, and contemporary, who were Earthkeepers, again, in their

own way. And I'll add, the last part is, you know, we can't take care of something Well, unless we know how it works, whether it's the car, we drive, or the house we own or the yard, we mow, and I find among not just my students, but Sunday school classes, I just taught one the other day Sunday, that there's a high degree of ecological illiteracy, we don't know where our water comes from, or where our garbage goes, if we don't know those kinds of things, we're not going to be very well

prepared to take care of our home planet. One of the things I tried to do in my teaching and in writing is to try to increase ecological literacy. Where does your local water come from? And where does your garbage go? Where's the way we say we throw things away? There is no way there is no such place called away. It's the garbage dumped somewhere? Well, where's that

going? On much of its being recycled, etc. So we need to increase our our ecological literacy if we're going to responsibly care for our home planet.

as yourself. Well, a lot of our neighbors are struggling are hurting, because of not just social injustice is of various sorts racism, sexism, name, your ism, but because their water is polluted, their hair is polluted, because of various ecological degradation. So one way of caring for and loving our neighbor is to improve the

health of our home planet. So often, we see social justice issues separate, we consider those different from so called environmental or ecological issues, when in fact, you scratch one, you almost always

find another. And all the social justice issues I've ever worked on going back to seminary and Fuller Seminary 2530 years ago now, issues of homelessness of hunger, poverty, they're almost always related to the issue, so called environmental issues, and vice versa, again, scratched the surface about air pollution, which was a big issue and still is in Southern California. Water pollution. Where do you get your water that's also an issue in Southern California and lots of

other places on the planet. Not so much here in Michigan, where 20% that are surface freshwater is in the Great Lakes. We're not worried about water, but lots of other people on our planet are. So you find those issues, again, interconnected. And increasingly that's being realized or acknowledged by people, Christians of all sorts, including evangelicals. So caring for your neighbor includes caring for creation if you're going to take that Seriously. So

tail end of it. We have to go back and solve that as we are living in our neighborhoods as we're caring for our neighbors. What can we do just as a small group of people to actually invoke change and care for the earth?

you're not just one person. Just talk about this issue with your neighbors with the people at church. I mean, one of the biggest questions I get is precisely the one you just mentioned, what these problems are so huge, so seemingly intractable, what can little old me do? What can one person do? And my response, and Katherine's and lots of others is stop being one person, find your people, you're not the only person probably at church or at work, or in your neighborhood, who's

concerned about these issues. So join with at least one or two or eight or 10 other people, probably there's a local group of some sort dealing with one of these issues or both of them. Around here. It's the outdoor Discovery Center and maca Terrier, a greenway Community Action house, there are a variety of of organizations dealing with one or other of these issues in my local

community. In most other communities, there are such organizations, join them, again, stop being one person and stop thinking or being tempted to think that little old you can do nothing. So we need to realize that we're agents know we have agency we have power and ability to make changes, and will my you know, conserving water or picking up trash in my local neighborhood solve global

climate change? No. But those are small, little seemingly small things that I can do, and that lots of other people can do to make my part of God's good earth a little better. And yes, we need to work together globally to deal with those big

problems. But don't allow those large problems to what steal you from your agency from feeling like you can really do something because you can none of us know, you know, what little thing we might seemingly little thing we might do, might have huge consequences, positive consequences for good did Martin Luther King Jr. and all the folks back the beginning of the Civil Rights movement today, you know, think that if not going to back it up, refusing to go to the back, the boss was going to

change the world? I doubt it. But it did. You know, they they did the right thing by not going to the back of the bus, in this case of the civil rights movement. And look what happened. So do the right thing. Forget dealing with the consequences, thinking of the consequences are so minimal, I'm not going to do it. Leave the consequences to God. You never know what wild and crazy things God might do with some seemingly little thing we do, simply do

the right thing. Whether again, it's with respect to the so called social justice issues, or in this case, especially creation care issues. And again, Katherine Hayles, advice is sound, find your people find other Pete to stop being one person, join with other people in your local community, church, etc. who are interested in being Earthkeepers and doing the practical things that we can do that we don't need to wait for some large political organization while we're engaging in that kind of

activity. Nevertheless, we don't have to I don't have to wait until the Michigan State House or Senate passes some creation care law to pick up the trash and walk home tonight. Or turn the lights off in my office to eat don't use enough like as much electricity. There are lots of those little things we can do that don't require some politician somewhere, saying yes,

Because Jesus seemed to know how it works through His parables of the kingdom. And he's trying to illuminate something for us today. So how do these small little things, these small little seeds actually produce a large effects like Jesus is saying in his parables?

literate? Well, he's pointing to some of the things that I think are some of the basic learnings from from ecology, the study of the house in which we live, the loss of the oil costs, that's where eco comes from. Greek word, it means our our home planet, a couple of things come to mind. One is that we live on a finite planet, except for the light streaming in from our star, the Sun. There's only so

much stuff. And so we often live, at least we in the United States, as if there's an infinite supply of goods out there, whether it's food or clothing, or whatever. But that's simply not the case. And so acknowledging our finitude I think is an important start. But the Bible goes beyond that. We're not just finite, we're fallible. I mean, you know, from Genesis three on it's a story of sin and redemption, after this

narratives of creation. So we need to acknowledge and this is going beyond much of the environmental secular environmental world which acknowledges finitude, but we Christians need to acknowledge our fallibility, our sinfulness. The fact that we screw things up more often than we would like we disobey God in God's commandments to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourself. And so I think that's a good piece of it too.

Back to the ecology, well, things are finite, but they're also in this constant flow and flux, things change. That's another basic learning from ecology. There are ecological systems, all different scales, from the grass and the insects on your lawn to major, a large ecosystems. And some of that change is good, but some of it isn't. And partly because we're not doing as good a job as we should, as humans caring for creation, serving and protecting

it. So and, and the sense not just that all things are interconnected, but that they're interdependent, interrelated is one thing, but interdependent is something else, I mean, the oxygen in our lungs right now, comes from all those green things, I'm looking at some green new plants outside my office window here and looking at the Pine Grove in the middle

of our campus. So you know, all those green plants take in our waste, gas, carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen for us and all the other creatures that need it. So there's this interdependent, complex, interdependent system that we need to learn more about, again, if we're going to take better care of creation and be Earth

keeping Christians. So there's a whole bunch of just sort of basic science we need to learn in order to, again, whether I'm learning if I if I'm trying to, you know, repair my car, I need to know how it works, the transmission, the engine, it's cetera. Same thing when it comes to my neighborhood, the planet on which on which we live, we need to have a basic understanding of some of these central ecological principles.

we now know. So again, that means we can't just sit back and just let everything be No, we're called to serve protect, which means, especially since we screwed some things up, we need to again learn how things work in different ecosystems and work to make it healthier, a healthy ecosystem. And that means that prediction of some sorts, probably a good idea. Radiation is a natural feature of that particular part of the earth

map. Again, going back to Yellowstone, you take away the one of the top predators, all kinds of bad things happen, things that aren't meant to be in balance, again, that emphasizes our need to become ecologically literate about wherever we live, and learn about the different roles that we humans play, which again, goes against the grain of what kind of one of the main American traditions, which is wilderness, you just leave things be when we could get humans out of there?

Well, no, we humans need to need to serve and protect areas, which means often cases, we are intervening in certain ways. I mean, we have in fact intervened, whether knowingly or not, and so we need to figure out how we can do that better. And that means taking care of plants, animals, larger ecosystems, their home places in ways that will, as best we can discern, using our best science, what will make this place and all of its creatures flourish, that's huge tasks requires a lot

of collective effort. And again, knowledge of how the world works, as we take our God given mandate, be image bearers of God, serving as Jesus served for the greater good. As we take that mandate seriously, we need to know what we're doing. And often, in the past, we didn't know what we were doing, or we thought we could just do anything we wanted. And whatever happens, let it happen now, but so anyway, that's a really

important point. Take me up to mandate to be God's image bearers in ways that ensure the flourishing of all creation. One

ask for a show of hands. On a word association, what's the first word that comes to mind, when you hear the word stewardship? A vast majority, 80 90% of the people in these classes, say it's giving your time, talent and treasures to the church in terms of money. Typically, it's about offering on Sunday morning. And if it's not money, again, it's time or talent to give to the church. And some of that might have to do with earth keeping but most

of it doesn't. It's, you know, serving the church and all the other ways that we need to serve the church serving offices as elders and deacons, and so on. So the de facto understanding of stewardship and many evangelical churches especially I think, has nothing to do by merrily with caring for creation. For some

people it does. But again, some folks have written that we need to retire, the term stewardship, when it comes to talking about caring for creation, creation cares a better term, I think Earth keepings a better term because creation is pretty big. If we take that literally, I mean, if you mean just planet Earth, okay, but it creation literally means something much, much bigger than planet Earth.

And I don't think we're called as Earth Earth beings to care for what's going on in some other planet or solar system somewhere else. That's kind of crazy. It's not our job. Maybe there's some other creatures God created to take care of that part of the universe. So creation care seems a little too haughty to, you know, really creation where Earth is there's no doubt about what the earth is. And keeping it again is tying in or going back to that verb and Genesis 215. We are

called to avadh and Shamar. So it has that kind of biblical image on Earth keeping the term was invented way back in 1980. A book, co authored and edited by Lauren Wilkinson, a group of scholars who met together and that book is now came out in second edition about 10 or 1520 years ago now. So I didn't invent the term, but I'd liked it ever since I heard it because it is, I think a better alternative, more accurate alternative of an rendering of what the Bible teaches. It's not

care of all creation. But it's beyond simply giving money to the church. Both of those are important. But Earth keeping I think, captures that kind of biblical responsibility. We humans have to serve and protect, as best we can. The whole planet on which we live, our

broader sense. And where's your book, I just heard sigh Montgomery, who is currently now is working with the evangelical Environmental Network. Really good author, she's got about 30 books. This is one of her recent books of time and turtles, mending the world, shell by shattered shell, she was one of the plenary speakers at the biolog OS event. And she would be someone whose writings and podcasts and so on, as an evangelical Christian would

review want to follow. A lot of the folks who were involved 2030 years ago with the founding of E and have moved on, some of them are now dead. But that organization has been around, it's still has a website. And there are people in lots of states and cities who have connections to that coalition of evangelical Christians who want to focus on caring for creation. I'm part of some secular organizations, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, et cetera.

And again, it's one way of if you're a Christian and organization of a lot of people in those groups often think that Christians don't care about creation when they finally meet someone who does. It's a kind of evangelistic impulse without really trying very hard, right, you find out why do you care for creation? Because I'm a Christian, they kind of look at you funny, their jaw drops, and you say, didn't she know that

Christians care for creation? So there's a kind of missiological or even evangelical job for us to do in these secular organizations where the reputation of Christians being caretakers is pretty low. It's really they think Christian Earthkeepers an oxymoron. Like jumbo shrimp or, you know, other famous examples. So there's a lot of work to be done there. And again, local organizations. I'm involved with again, a couple here in Holland, not national but local

organizations. Often you find other other churchgoers, Roman Catholics and Protestants involved in those organizations, and it's a great way to meet people who otherwise wouldn't meet who like you share a passion for housekeeping because of their Christian faith.

afraid, we're fearful. We're like, I'm scared of what's happening. And so I it paralyzes us to actually engage because we're afraid, but what is giving you hope in the, in the place of Earth keeping? Even when we are rising in temperature the Earth seems to be growing at the moment.

future good. That's a kind of generic definition of hope I talked about this in one of my books, Earth keeping character where I focus on ecological virtue ethics from a Christian point of view, and hope is really an really important virtue because if we don't have hope, then we're gonna do nothing. The opposite of hope to contrary device is despair. Desperate, alright, absence of hope. Our motto here had hoped colleges Sparrow, and Dale, the Latin term again, is hope

Esperanza Spanish for hope. So hope is huge. We need to have some confidence in some good future. And as Christians, our hope does not rest in our human intelligence or our, you know, fancy technology, it rests in a faithful God, a God of hope, God who gives us hope, because God of the future, God's good future here is in God's hands and not in ours. If I believed it was in my or your our hands, I pretty despairing because we tend to

screw things up. So having having hope, because Jesus rose from the dead, and he's no longer a tomb. I mean, that's the ultimate basis of Christian hope is the resurrection and ascension of Jesus after his death, our hope is in God. And what gives me hope, is ultimately that, but I look around and I see a lot of 2030 Somethings that kids I teach at Hope College and elsewhere, who are who are hopeful because they're, they see reality, but they're, they're doing things.

There are the equivalent of the green team. That's what our nickname for the campus sustainability advisory committee here at Hope College, every campus I go, there's something equivalent to that. And courses I teach students 2018 to 25 year olds are pretty aware of global climate change because it's happening in their

community. All those hot temperatures and so on sources, things we've been experiencing last year, are they're very aware of but they're also getting involved in in organizations that are trying to fight climate change. And, and

they see real progress. So that gives them hope that the world isn't going to hell in a handbasket that enough, people are waking up and acknowledging the reality of the global climate emergency climate crisis, those are the words I've been hearing more and my looking at websites and being an email, chats and so on, is no longer a climate change its climate

crisis, climate emergency. And if there's any good that's come out of this last year of all these climate, but issues we've experienced is maybe that a larger group of people are waking up to the reality of what is indeed climate emergency, but

you know, they're waking up. So again, the younger crowd is, I think, way ahead of us older folk, in in many ways in recognizing the reality of this and realizing that they want to do something that do something to improve the world that we older folks have maybe left them I sent some some despair about, you know, what we older folks can do, you know, they say, well look at the Earth you've you've left for us get out of here and let us let us take over here so I think there's there's a lot of

room for hope and simply the awakening of a younger generation to acknowledge that the world is that they are inheriting from us needs their help and they can't just sit on their hands and do nothing nor

do they want to. And that's again see the apt in lots of in different ways, with different organizations and students participating in whether they're within your organization, not just participating in creation care, activism of various sorts, and a lot of organizations, again, by a Lagace being only one but many others are Russia, etc. Christian organizations in particular, who are appealing to

a lot of young people. And, and the young folks are, are finding their, their people in these groups, even if it's only released for starters, only online.

consequentialism. And why we ought not be consequentialist. Think that the moral worth of an action is found only in its consequences, we ought to simply do the right thing. Follow Jesus follow all the saints who said to heck with the consequences, I'll leave those to God. And I'm simply going to do what God is calling me to do. And be a faithful disciple follower of Jesus as best I can. I think that's the best advice to give is don't think, again that your actions are judged on potential

future consequences. None of us have have an eyeglass that can see the future. Again, some little thing we do might spur a huge positive change in our world that we had no idea about, before we did that seemingly stupid little thing.

My students really love this book, I use it number of classes, the wondrous workings of planet Earth, understanding our world, and its ecosystems and it just is full of these really eye catching art, drawings, all these different ecosystems, about our role on planet earth, all the different creatures I started using a couple years ago, and and I do my course evaluations to a student, everyone says, keep using this book to increase ecological literacy.

online at church. And, and when the sun rises on another beautiful day, that they'll feel like they're bearing witness to God's good future of shalom in their own little way, participating as a witness to God's kingdom here on earth, God's Will on Earth, done on earth as it is in heaven, and earth that and they can do that with other people and Bill, the creation care as part of their calling as a Christian.

Earth. So thank you for this and I really hope it inspires many people to take care of the earth do what they can to be a part of that and to point to God and give Him glory and I'm really excited that we do have a part to play in the new heaven and new earth that will will come. And it is not for not that we are doing this but there is going to be a future hope and reality that there is going to be all things made new in Christ. Some Thank you see for this conversation. Thank