Right off the bat let me say that I am not in favor of trashing our world. We have far too much Styrofoam and plastic that fills our trash cans. I also hate seeing beer cans and Dixie cups and Twinkie wrappers floating in our streams. And I certainly don’t enjoy seeing our moving parking lots we call freeways and our asphalt jungles any more than anyone else. So I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as some kind of red-neck Bubba who doesn’t care about the world God has given us. I simply offer it as a disclaimer since I want to bring up the subject of whether or not Jesus is green.

Here’s what bothers me. I read the other day about a guy who wrote that he was sitting in a seminary class with one of his favorite professors who was pointing out that general and special revelation are “equally revelatory.” Now for those who might not understand the difference, general revelation is God revealing Himself through creation. You know, like in Psalm 19 where David writes, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” According to Romans 1, all of God’s creation tells mankind, in a general way, of the existence of God. Special revelation, on the other hand, is the specific written message in the Bible about the person and work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Without knowing anything else the seminary professor said, I would challenge the statement that general and special revelation are “equally revelatory.” They are not. General revelation gets us to God, but special revelation gets us to Christ. That is simple and straightforward.

But the prof’s next statement in this article raised my eyebrows. He said, “When we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to tearing a page out of the Bible.” I’m  sorry, but I hope that even if I were a first year seminary student in that class, I would have had a hard time not raising my hand on that one. “Excuse me, Dr. Professor Sir, are you saying that trimming my tree or driving my car is the same as cutting a page out of Scripture?! Is that what you are saying?” If he answered “yes,” I would find another seminary—fast.

The hype over “creation care” is getting to be a bit much. The young man who wrote this article said that he left the classroom that day knowing that he could not continue to live the way he had lived. Saying that we can do better with regard to the environment, he suggested that we must start by saying, “We have sinned.” We have sinned by allowing our air, water, and land to be polluted. And in order to do better, we must stop being governed by our politically “conservative” ideology rather than theology.

Wait. Stop a minute. Let’s ask a couple of theologically based questions about sin. Cutting a limb off a tree, or, God forbid, cutting down a tree, is certainly “destroying creation.” But is it a sin? Would it be considered a sin for someone to cut down a tree to provide fire to warm themselves or provide shelter? How about wearing polartec vs. wool? Polartec certainly involves more chemicals, but is it sin? Likewise, how about the young man writing the article I read on his computer? His computer and printer are certainly loaded with chemically based products that are much more unfriendly to the environment than a pencil and paper? Does that mean that using a computer is a sin? You can see where this goes. It gets utterly ridiculous. 

Sin is any violation of God’s revealed law. The primary word for sin in Scripture means “to miss the mark.” This refers to the mark that God has set for our behavior. One standard for this might be the Ten Commandments. Elsewhere we find words that describe sin as disobedience, transgression, fault, error, lawlessness, trespass, and iniquity. By these definitions, pride, gossip, hatred, anger, lust, lying, cheating, swearing, coveting, stealing, murder, rape, adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, and deceit are sins. Cutting down trees, driving a car, burning coal, working in a factory that produces smoke, buying things packaged in styrofoam or plastic, and using non “environmentally safe” light bulbs, are not sins. There might be some practical reasons for not doing them, but they are not on a par with biblical sin!

The writer of the article I read said that he was a “conservative” in ideology. Forgive me for being a bit caustic here, but that is a popular mantra today that is used when someone wants to make a statement that is “liberal” in ideology and baptize it by saying it is “theologically based.” I’m not arguing here for a position on cutting trees down. I’m not even arguing for a conservative or liberal position. I am arguing for understanding what is theological and what is not. Cutting trees down, or even contributing to the pollution of our air, water, and our land might not be good things to do, but these are not theological issues on a par with the revelation of the gospel. Pleease!!

To turn current political issues (as the environment clearly is) into theology represents a gross misunderstanding of theology. This is happening because certain politically liberal evangelicals are trying to gain traction with the broader evangelical community because they realize that evangelicals are energized by “social” issues like abortion and opposition to homosexuality, and they want a piece of the political pie too. Abortion and homosexuality can clearly be labeled as sin so they were theological issues before they became political. But politically liberal evangelicals, as well as some who claim conservative credentials, are now trying to reframe the political landscape by claiming a theological basis for what have traditionally been politically liberal issues. It’s a political shell game and theologically dishonest. 

And that’s a shame. In the process, what is actually revealed in Scripture is distorted. One Christian leader said that global warming was a component of the gospel. Another said that “creation care” is the most important issue facing the church today. These statements are nothing less than an attempt to bully Christians into a political position in the guise of theology. It is dressing political issues in theological clothes. It is putting lipstick on a pig.   

All I’m arguing for here is to keep political issues out of our theological discussion and vice/versa. Jesus is not green! If He were, He would not have built a fire to cook the fish for the disciples on the Sea of Galilee after His resurrection. After all, wouldn’t cutting up trees to burn them be “destroying God’s creation?” And isn’t that a sin? No, Jesus is not green, and we should not be fooled or intimidated by those who want to label issues like this as sin. Sin is much more serious than that.

Jon