Christian ethics and the environment
'throughout all generations'. This deep-rooted emphasis on the generations to come – concern for the future of the planet is seen as protecting the future of the covenant itself – would seem to provide a uniquely Christian justification for environmental ethics. However, many cultures feel an obligation to future generations without being Christian. A deeply held sense of duty to the planet could be bound up in the ethical belief that everyone – in both the present and the future – should have a right to profit from the environment in the same way. While Christians might accentuate the value of generations more greatly, it is clearly not sufficiently distinct for us to credit it as a unique environmental consideration. Finally, inherent to the Christian narrative are the ideas of spoiling and sin. Christians are told that they have sinned and 'trespassed' against God having spoiled the Garden of Eden with sin. Much imagery in the Old Testament, for example, focuses on the way that humans have failed to live in unity with God's creation and thus must be purged and suffer, e.g. the flood of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah. This imagery of humans polluting a once perfect world would seem to be very compatible with an environmental ethical consideration. That is, Christians must be ethically responsible for the environment because its evils and problems lie with their 'original sin'. This ethical principle of reparation for sin would seem to indicate a forceful Christian case for environmental ethics. The problem is that secularists (and those of other religions) also say that you are responsible for your transgression against the environment on the basis that you have chosen to commit 'harm' unnecessarily. While Christianity seems to form more specific justifications, it is not clear that their fundamental arguments are any different from non-Christians. Also, we might reasonably ask the role that self-interest plays in these Christian views of environmental ethics: if you genuinely believe in God, the need to compensate for sin is not just an ethical responsibility but a practical (and selfish) desire to enter Paradise. One might say the same thing of other humans in that they only protect the environment for the sake of their children. However, I think, given the atheist awareness of the fragility of human life, non-Christians are much more likely to appreciate the innate value of protecting the environment, particularly because they won't be around to benefit in any way from the consequences spiritually. We must most importantly recognize the great extent to which Christianity itself not only fails to form a distinctive environmental ethics but more crucially works in active contradiction to the basic principles of environmental ethics itself. In the first instance, Christianity's worldview is one that is fundamentally fatalist in its outlook. The belief in an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God would seem to generate a dangerous impulse to accept authority, as Hitchens argued 'it is the desire to be ruled'. In the gospels Jesus tells his follows to put faith in him alone and give 'no thought for the morrow'. This rejection of agency and reliance on the ultimate justice of God is deeply problematic when taking action in the urgent climate crisis, where the nature of tipping points mean we have about 8 years to avert permanent catastrophe. Jesus chastises Peter for betrayal for attempting to protect him and offers no refutation against his crucifixion. This short-termist 'no thought for the morrow', cowering to blind faith, is fundamentally at odds with an environmental ethics, as Christ’s followers are deprived of the option to take any morally justified action against those who commit environmental harms, such as excessive logging, fracking etc. Christians are taught at the heart of their ethics to wait for the judgement of God, but this allows environmental degradation to persist. This inaction is particularly awful as harms accumulate. That is to say, the number of people impacted by your small actions in the
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