Just started preparing for this Sunday’s sermon for our “Jesus for President” series and we’re focusing on global warming. Going beyond the debate and statistics are these powerful words on individualism by the environmental and Christian author Bill McKibben, which he wrote a few years ago:
“Mandatory, too, because taking on climate change would mean taking on the central unchristian element of American culture: its wild individualism. More than anything else, fossil fuel has allowed us to stop being neighbors to each other, both literally—we move ever farther into ever emptier suburbs—and figuratively—we depend less and less on each other for anything real. (The SUV, with its almost invariably single passenger, is the symbol of this trend.) This is what makes the politics of real change so difficult. Politicians are not willing to ask anyone to change. Not when three quarters of American Christians tell pollsters that they think the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” can be found in the Bible. To break that spell, to wake us up to the love of neighbor demanded both by Jesus and by the physics and chemistry of our predicament, will take something shocking.”