The lament below comes from the Christian Post. It is written by a Southern Baptist professor who is a known conservative. I can only quote part of it, but I recommend that you read the full article. It is well worth reading. The author is Dr. Russell D. Moore, the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
I’ve left my hometown lots of times. But never like this.
Sure, I’ve teared up as I’ve left family and friends for a while, knowing I’d see them again the next time around. And, yes, I cried every day for almost a year in the aftermath of a hurricane that almost wiped my hometown off the map. But I’ve never left like this, wondering if I’ll ever see it again, if my children’s children will ever know what Biloxi was.
As I pass that sign on Highway 90 telling me I’m leaving Biloxi, I can look out behind the water’s horizon and know there’s a Pale Horse there. A massive rupture in the ocean’s floor is gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, with plumes of petroleum great enough to threaten to destroy the sea-life there for my lifetime, if not forever. Everything is endangered, from the seafood and tourism industries to the crabs and seagulls on the beach to the churches where I first heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is more than a threat to my hometown, and to our neighboring communities. It is a threat to national security greater than most Americans can even contemplate, because so few of them know how dependent they are on the eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico. This is, as one magazine put it recently, Katrina meets Chernobyl.
I am leaving this morning, but I am leaving changed.
Someone once described Roe vs. Wade as the “Pearl Harbor” of the evangelical pro-life conscience. Pearl Harbor is an apt metaphor. Before that date of infamy, foreign policy isolationism seemed to be a legitimate American option. The “America First” committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.
After Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was. After Roe, what seemed to be a “Catholic issue” now pierced through the consciences of evangelical Protestants who realized they’d not only been naive; they’d also missed a key aspect of Christian thought and mission.
For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.
We have had an inadequate view of human sin.
Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”
The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesn’t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.
Caesar’s sword is there, by God’s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.
We’ve seen the issue of so-called “environmental protection” as someone else’s issue. . .
My heart breaks as I watch the every more horrific news about the oil spill. I have a personal take on it as my mother lives on the shores of the Gulf in Alabama. I am not an oil expert, but it seems like there are things that have been done to collect oil from other spills that are not being done here. I have to wonder that if this were another place but the Gulf Coast if…..Sometimes it seems that the Gulf Coast is an afterthought. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida–the red headed step children of the states–and the people seen as rednecks and crusty old creoles and the not very educated, backward people of the USA instead of the salt of the earth that they truly are. There are some things that individuals cannot do and frankly to trust BP to do it is probably a huge mistake. I wish I had better answers but I have only questions and sighs.
Part of the problem is actually our expectations. We watch movies like Asteroid and see how the scientists always miraculously solve the problems, and all within a two hour period. Even when we watch movies in which the people talk about how science went beyond our capabilities to control the results, somehow the brave loner scientist figures out a fix.
We want someone to solve the problem of the oil spill. And, because we are Americans who watch movies, we have trouble admitting that, in this case, our technology has gone beyond our ability to fix it easily. In fact, whatever ends up being developed to fix the leak will end up probably being the future first line of defense for future spills of this type.
In the meantime, we want the Coast Guard to step in. I am not sure what they would do. In fact, why would the military have any particular knowledge in deep-sea oil platform solutions? More than that, as shown by the many videos on YouTube, we are convinced that there are simple solutions to the oil spill cleanup. Yet, no oil spill in our history has been easily cleaned up. To assume that it could be easily cleaned up would also be to claim that all previous oil spill cleanups were egregiously mishandled.
Finally, if there were easy solutions to deep-sea gushing pipes and to cleaning up floating oil spills, the oil companies would be using them. Why? Imagine the public relations coup to the oil companies if they could have an accident, but ensure the public that it would have little practical effect and be easy to clean up.
Again, our expectations are somewhat unrealistic because they are way too informed by both Hollywood and by our American cultural myths.
Part of the problem is actually our expectations. We watch movies like Asteroid and see how the scientists always miraculously solve the problems, and all within a two hour period.
Wesley Crusher (TM) always did it in one.
I suppose that I wish that things to deal with oil spills more effectively had been designed BEFORE we drilled such a deep well. If we in the health care professions decided AFTER some traumatic problem that was an outcome of our treatment what we should do, the patient would die and we would get sued. Not that I am saying that there are no unexpected outcomes, but if there are, we have the crash cart ready if needed.
Great post.