Bearing witness to the Green Life

Earlier I was invited as a Greenpeace activist to give a short talk at an event in the Asian Theological Seminary entitled The Green Life, organized by a care group called Friends of Life.

As a Christian coming from an environmental organization I count myself blessed to be a part of that ceremony because it is a wonderful thing that is experienced rarely inside Christian churches.

I shared a bit about the Greenpeace core value of ‘bearing witness’ which I defined as an obligation to act according to our conscience –and it is my hope that the event would sow the seeds for more Christians to ‘bear witness’ to the need for a greener and peaceful future where life in its fullness is shared and enjoyed by all creatures great and small.


For those of you interested in the details of the talk I gave click here for the transcript

Evangelical Churches and Climate Change: A Call to Action

The brokenness of earth is the brokenness of God’s home.”

It has long been held that the environment is among the most pressing concerns of this generation. In this bygone age of technology and consumerism, ministry pertaining to the natural world of creation has taken a backseat in the teaching and preaching of Evangelical Christian churches in particular. While most Christians appreciate the beauty of nature, many don’t realize there is a strong Biblical basis for creation care, in fact many ethical values, fundamental to the development of a peaceful society, are particularly relevant to the ecological question.

In the Book of Genesis, where we find God’s first self-revelation to humanity (Gen.1-3), there is a recurring refrain: “And God saw that it was good.” [2] Mankind’s first home was Eden –paradise. The Earth was paradise, teaming with life, vegetation, and the wondrous landscape of skies, the land and the sea. Creation in God’s eyes was good, but at the same time entrusted it to the care of man and woman.
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Christmas in the midst of a climate crisis

The other day I watched a Youtube video of the World Council of Churches Christmas message, given by its General Secretary Rev. Samuel Kobia who in his reflection on the 1st chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians he lamented:

Christmas is a season to sing praises, yet in our time the reality of environmental destruction undermines the doxology of creation. The singing of the spheres is obscured by pollution and manufactured noise, the rhythms of the sea are disturbed by climate change, the beauty of many manifestations of life is disfigured by abusive practices rooted in greed. And as the earth suffers, so must its inhabitants. Already, the poor and other socially marginalized people find it ever more difficult to lift their voices in song. 1

Writing from a post-Copenhagen Summit state of mind I cannot do anything more than silently nod in agreement and whisper: “how true…”