Created as a collaboration between World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Ben Lee and Leo Burnett, “Space Monkey” carries a message about our planet, and features Ben Lee’s track, “Song for the Divine Mother of the Universe”.

This is a pretty interesting ad by the World WIldlife Fund that causes us to think about what the planet look like if we were to spend the next 65 years in space and then return…

Often times in the church our response to ads like this, or even a conversation about taking care of the planet is “This world is not my home, I’m just passin’ on through,” and we discard or disregard our communal responsibility to the resources that God has given us. Our poor theology has given us license to participate in the continual cycle of destroying the beauty within the world that God has created for us to enjoy.

Going green seems to be a new fad within our country (perhaps because evangelicalism has lost its grip on culture). In years past the month of April has been dedicated to celebrating green living by networks such as NBC by changing their logo green and doing more PSA’s to raise awareness of sustainable living within the world. But I wonder if it’s really changing the dialogue within our culture. I have the privilege of living in the second “greenest city” in the United States, San Francisco, just a smidgen behind Portland, Oregon as the greenest. Everywhere you turn there are recycling bins, compost bins, solar power, green spaces, rooftop gardens, etc… it’s at the forefront of conversation within our city. However, whenever I take a trip anywhere outside SF I find the conversation to be non-existent. Is “Earth Month” really doing much?

I think a lot of the challenge or resistance to this dialogue is as a result of our theology as a church (even though evangelicalism has lost its grip on culture, in a great majority of the country the reverberations of dominance are still being felt). This is a topic of conversation that the church should be leading the way in, yet our “evacuation theology”–this world is not my home, I’m just passing on through–causes us to be poor stewards of what God has gifted us and in turn push the conversation to the fringe as unimportant… If this conversation will gain any traction throughout the Church and if the Church is to lead the way, we must first move away from this “evacuation theology” narrative and towards the narrative of Scripture. We must move away from our understanding of the earth as resource to be used and abused because it’s going to be destroyed and begin to see it as a precious gift that God gave to us to reveal himself to us. I wonder what it would look like for us (the church) to change this conversation, to change our narrative and lead the way?

Something to think about: If God used General Revelation to communicate to us his presence and love (the use of nature and natural means outside of Scripture), then why would it not be a good thing to preserve this method of communication for future generations–not to mention ourselves?

Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
N.T. Wright

Harper Collins—Religion | Theology – Eschatology | Church Life
295 Pages

“Surprised By Hope is this generations Mere Christianity,” commented a fellow pastor here in the city of San Francisco. There has been a great deal of attention paid in the media to this work from a spot on Nightline and The Colbert Report to an article in TIME Magazine and an insightful interview by Brian Lowery in Preaching Today (among many others). Each article and interview seems to deal more with his conclusions rather than the framework by which he works to arrive at those conclusions (a good third to half of the book creates the framework through which his conclusions are derived.)

Wright concludes from his extensive New Testament research that our understanding of the afterlife is incomplete and because we fall short in our understanding we’ve constructed an after-life that is completely foreign to the understanding of the New Testament and early Christians. Instead of living out eternity in heaven (according to Colbert it entails getting a harp, drinking a mint julep and asking Ronald Reagan questions) singing songs to God all day while sitting on clouds, heaven is a mere step in the process before life after life after death occurs when the new heaven and the new earth are merged into one as described at the end of Revelation.

Therefore, the Christian response is to work towards new creation not sitting back to wait for the end of the world to occur. Perhaps what is most intriguing about this position is Wright alludes to and at several points calls out the fact that many Christians, including those in the United States are contributing more to the destruction of the world instead of new creation. We participate in this destruction with how we treat the environment (pollution, nuclear proliferation, destruction of rain forests and other environmental concerns) as well as how we treat others through economic slavery (the insurmountable debt we place upon third world countries, trade regulations, etc) and a slew of other ways. None of these hep to bring about new creation, but instead play into the systematic injustice of the worlds ruling structure.

Perhaps the most important thing to recognize about this book is the underlying thesis that your eschatological position truly does determine how you act and respond in the world. If you live as if “Left Behind” and the Rapture are to occur (Wright does a great job of de-bunking pop-theologies interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4) then there is no reason to give a rip about anything on this planet, from poverty and economics to war and violence and the only point become “saving souls” in a very gnostic understanding so that our spirit can enjoy life in the spiritual realm.

This is hands down the best book I have ever read. The call to action integrated with the amazing framework created by Wright for you to enjoy in Part 1 is a veritable playground for the mind.