edenism: take back the planet

what are we supposed to do?

is al gore our messiah?

after all, the environment is a hot topic right now [no pun intended] but how should a believer approach such an issue.

as with all things we need to look at something like this with both our hearts AND our minds.

is recycling enough? why has the church been so late to the party on this issue?

immersn purposefully avoids the use of paper as much as possible and uses very little electricity each week but does any of this really matter?

are we polishing brass on the titanic?

the great thing about the faith is that we are always called to believe that there is something that can be done. that the night is not everlasting. that evil does not need to win. that our destiny is a new creation and not destruction. with that in mind let us talk ever-so-briefly about edenism:

he-don-ism 

[heed-n-iz-uhm]–noun
1.
the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good.

ed-en-ism

[eed-n-iz-uh m]- noun
1. giving of our own time and energy to worship God by caring for creation

while films like an inconvenient truth are helpful in that the budgets and the science and the celebrity attached to them are incredibly useful to get the message out there is something else that a community of believers can add to the equation: love.

we need to take the idea that we could destroy this planet [which, at the risk of overstating the obvious is our home] we also need to see this planet as a profound work of art which sustains us and is a testament to how much we are loved.

therefore, edenism is not just an effort to combat pollution...it is an act of worship, penance if you will, and an apology to god for how we have treated this work of art granted to us by on high.

if we believe that what happens in our bodies impacts our souls then a night spent picking up garbage for god is a profoundly impacting evening given over to our lord. our souls take part in re-claiming god's work. as we scrape the crud and junk from the street [or the woods as in the case of this immersn] we also remove the crud and junk from ourselves. we see all the things that block us from the beautiful view of god that was [and is] ours by right. our souls are also polluted and from that pollution comes the lack of care for how we treat this world and the people in it.

tomorrow night let us, as jesus taught, "wash the feet of god" by cleaning up a small part of the creation so generously bestowed upon us.