Deep ecology. What? To most people who haven’t delved into philosophical journals this sounds like a made up thing. It is not. (If you missed part one of this series, click here). These proponents worship earth without knowing it, mostly. They propound that bacteria and bugs and fungus and grass are more important than your child, your spouse, yourself. They have been working tirelessly for years, mostly behind the scenes in the academic realm, and on Wall Street, on how to rid the world of people. Too many people are “hurting the earth.” Christians who truly love God and abide in His words know that we are stewards of this earth, and we are commanded to take care of it. Many Christians do not grow in knowledge and understanding of Scripture, and don’t think about stewardship much beyond giving a bit of something (for most this is less than 10%) into the offering plate. This is our sin, we ought to be called out on it–all Christians should be making choices that are good for people, and the planet; we should be taking care of our place of sojourning. This life, this planet, and all that God has created should be seen as good gifts that we enjoy and care for; we ought to “rule over” with goodness that the Holy Spirit will pour into us (Galatians 5).
Now, when we raise several generations in public education, without logic or reasoning as foundational studies, then we graduate students who base their opinions on feelings, and who really think truth is a social construct. Truth is whatever my friends let me get away with saying. They do not know if premises are valid or invalid; they do not know if an argument is sound. They do not know how to recognize objective truth, or whether to say the word “objective” does or does not exist.
Does this matter at all? Yes. The proponents of this philosophy have been at work for years, unknown to you, wondering how to rid the world of people. People wanting to destroy people. Now that we’ve properly educated generations in the public system to refrain from thinking, many young people are easily convinced that to solve the “climate crisis” they ought to vow that they will not have children. And they are vowing. See here. And here. At least 38% of childbearing age people believe that having no children would be a good solution.
This generation needs Chesterton’s Eugenics essay; they need Dicken’s Hard Times; they need Lewis’ Miracles, and Abolition of Man; and they need parents who care about education, truth, stewardship, reality, and the power of God’s Words. They need parents who do not wrangle about God’s words and who do not add in worldly cares and ideas. They need parents who love their children enough to teach them how to read, how to think, how to learn, and how to recognize a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Whether we send our children to public school, private school, or keep them home to educate them–all parents are required by God to teach and train children up in these ways. Teach them history–let them see how the climate has changed since historians and scientists began documenting. This is not the first warm up, cool down, warm up, cool down….cycle. The younger generations act in fear rather than knowledge; they act in haste when they could act desicively to bring about good results.
Fear can cause us to move too quickly toward bad solutions–we need to train our children to trust God even in fearful times. Are the results of a generation vowing to not have children and not be a family good? Is love more powerful than fear? Can love and knowledge and logic help? Can we train our children to ask better questions, search out facts, and be part of a logical, reasonable, truly good, solution? Can we raise young ones who will grow up to be lawmakers that help stop this nonsensical propagating of fear to line their pockets as they scratch backs with rich corperations? Or to lead the way in getting out sound scientific information to the public?
In the midst of all this, can we show our children that God created people in His image, created families, and that He draws His people into communities. Can we show them that people created in God’s image are the part of God’s creation that He’s most concerned about, and those ones created in His image are charged with caring for all the rest of His creation, while trusting God to be Sovereign over all of it, working in unseen ways. Most of us are called to lead a quiet life–will that life be pleasing to God, or to the deep ecologists? You cannot serve both.
A time of meditation on Romans 8:18-24, and 2 Peter 3:10-18 will help as you seek to have the mind of Christ in this. As Peter exhorts, let us have “holy conduct and godliness” in this–viewing the world, and our care of it, from God’s perspective, acting toward one another and the planet in holy conduct and godliness. We cannot hope to do that if we are making knee jerk responses apart from logic, or apart from God’s revealed will.