"A New Vision" (Job 12:7-12; Genesis 1:26-28)

Last week, I was talking with someone who had just made the difficult decision to change careers. His new career is in a field that interests him more. It will allow him to use more of the creativity with which he has been blessed. It will be more fulfilling and less stressful. And, it will allow him to grow personally and professionally.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?

So what made the decision difficult? Well, he told me that he was worried what people would think, because the switch is causing him to take a salary cut. He said that he was worried, because society doesn’t value his new career as much as his old career.

Notice that he himself wasn’t worried so much about the money. He was quite willing to take a salary cut in order to have a more fulfilling career. But he was worried about what others would think of him, about how society would judge him. Society has a certain image, a certain vision, of what is good and successful, and moving from a higher-paying job to a lower-paying job is not a part of that vision. According to society’s vision, there must be something wrong with a person who makes such a move.

Which is why even his mother is now worried about him.

It’s something to which we can all relate, isn’t it? Society has a vision of the way things should be. And we want to appear good in society’s eyes, so we do what we can to fit in.

It’s not always a bad thing. Most people, I’m sure, would still follow most traffic laws, even if there were no penalty for breaking those laws. We know, for example, that there can be consequences even worse than a ticket or a fine for running a red light. Most people agree that traffic signals are good, and that it is good to stop at a red light. It delays your journey, but it is for the good of everyone involved.

And I’m all too willing to wear what society says I should wear. Just in case you are wondering, I don’t particularly like wearing ties, but to make a good impression, I wear a tie when I preach. The tie doesn’t make me a better preacher, but it’s what society expects of me. And because I want to make a good impression when I preach, and because I know that ties look nice and help make that good impression, I’m willing to wear one. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Some of society’s expectations are much more significant than the type of clothing one wears. Society’s vision plays out in so many ways, and many of them far more significant than even the rules society has set up to govern traffic flow. The vision cast by society influences people to be and do things that are not good for them … or for society as a whole.

A part of society’s vision is that we must consume. Along with earning as much money as we can, society tells us that we must spend that money. Influenced by society’s vision, we feel the need to have certain things, even though a year ago we didn’t even know those things existed … even though a year ago, we were perfectly happy without them.

A part of society’s vision is that, if you can afford it, then you deserve it. If the price of gas goes up, well, you can still buy that gas guzzler if you can afford it. If the price of water goes up, well, you can still overwater your lawn if you can afford it.

Unfortunately, in such cases, society’s vision is not good for us, and it’s not good for our planet. What we need is a new vision, a new way of living, one that is good for us and our planet.

We know that God’s concern is for all people. Most of us know that God’s concern is for the entire planet. We see this in our scriptures for today. We see it in the covenant God made after the flood, a covenant with Noah, his descendants, and even the earth itself. We see it in the psalms, where we are told that the earth belongs to God; everything in it is God’s, as well as all that lives upon it.

We are called to be stewards of the earth, to care for it; but we’ve been doing a lousy job. Rather than caring for what God has created, we’ve been destroying it. The list of how humans are negatively affecting the planet is endless, and I could talk about species lost, habitats destroyed, and ecosystems thrown out of whack. I could talk about what we’ve seen happening right here in California: pollution, drought, lengthening fire seasons, a snowpack that melts faster than it used to, and rainstorms that come less often, but which are more intense when they do come.

Instead, I’d like to talk about the vision. We need a new vision, a new way of living, and I think I’ve found one that might work. It’s not exactly a “new” vision; it’s been around a while. But like my friend who found it difficult to switch careers, many people find it hard to switch to this new vision, because it is so drastically different, and because it goes against the all-encompassing vision of our society which surrounds us and fills us like the air we breathe.

This new vision, this new way of living, is: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Taking care of the earth is an issue of justice. It is an issue of justice, because those who have the hardest time adjusting to a polluted world, a world with a changing climate, are almost always the most impoverished people of the earth. In Africa, water is becoming harder and harder to find, due to climate change. The Sahara Desert is expanding. In recent years, many thousands of refugees have fled to Lake Chad, a historically large lake that provides drinking water to 20 million people in four African nations. However, lake Chad has all but disappeared. Overgrazing, increased water use, and climate change have shrunk it down to nearly nothing. The UN Food and Agriculture Commission has labeled it an “ecological catastrophe.” One wonders what will happen to those 20 million people when the water runs out completely, as it is expected to do very soon.

Meanwhile, the entire island nation of Kiribati is preparing to move. The island is threatened by rising seas, and the government is making plans to relocate the entire population. They’ve brought in a marine contingent from New Orleans, a city that knows something about rising water levels, to help plan the relocation.

The biblical prophets have harsh words for those who use water from a stream, then trample their feet in it so that those further downstream have only muddy water. When we overuse and waste resources simply because we can, we deprive others of what they need to survive. That is not the way of people who seek justice.

Taking care of the earth is also an issue of loving our neighbors with kindness.

The loving-kindness referred to here comes from the ancient Hebrew word hesed. It is a love that is steadfast, a love that does what is right for others, even if it involves a personal sacrifice, even if it involves making, in some way, a sacred offering of your life.

Of course, it would be easier to do the right thing for our neighbors – not to mention actually loving our neighbors – if we actually knew our neighbors.

Have you been to a local farmer’s market lately? If not, there are so many reasons to go. The produce tastes better. It’s grown locally, which means a lot less carbon is thrown into the atmosphere to transport it. It is sold by the farmer, who gets up to 95 percent of what you pay; that keeps your money in or close to your community. Supermarket produce, on the other hand, passes through a lot of middlemen on it’s way to the store. Over half of what you pay goes to giant corporations, including the oil companies whose oil shipped that produce from across the continent or globe to the store.

But if that isn’t reason enough to buy your produce at a farmers market, consider this: sociologists did a study in which they followed shoppers who went to giant supermarkets, and shoppers who went to a local farmers’ market. I read about this in a new book by Bill McKibben. The sociologists discovered that farmers’ market shoppers engaged in ten times as many conversations with people as did the supermarket shoppers. So attending a farmer’s market really does help us know our neighbors better, and in knowing them, we find that it is easier to love them as well.

I think the same principle applies to caring for and loving nature. We can’t love creation if we aren’t even in touch with creation. That’s why I’m thankful for our church camp program, and our scouting program, and other programs as well that get our youth to give up their video games and iPods every once in a while, and discover for themselves the beauty of the earth and the glory of the skies, and the variety and diversity that exists in nature, and the difference between a Jeffrey pine, say, and a lodgepole pine, or a Douglas fir and a red fir; and to notice when the buds come on the trees and when the flowers appear in the hills.

Taking care of the earth is also an issue of walking humbly with God. When farmers don’t have enough water for their crops and endangered fish don’t have enough water to live and the centuries-old levees and canals in the delta from which we get half our water is just one earthquake away from collapse, it is nothing short of arrogance for people who live in a semi-arid climate to overwater their lawns to a point of lushness.

And when wars are being fought over oil, with many thousands of lives caught in the crossfire and global security at risk, it is nothing short of irresponsible arrogance for people to be satisfied with lower fuel mileage, to buy that bigger car just because they can, or to thumb their nose at cleaner ways of getting around. Our economy is based to a large degree on fossil fuels, and we’ve been piling up wealth while ignoring the finite nature of this resource. That, too, is arrogance.

And I haven’t even mentioned yet the pollution caused by the consumption of those fuels.

Well, who would take a bus or walk when they could drive? What kind of a person would bother to rip out their sprinklers and lawn and plant native, drought-tolerant plants instead? Who in their right mind would actually consume less in order to produce less waste and lower their negative impact on the earth?

Only a person who is living according to a new vision.

When I was in boy scouts and went backpacking, one of the first things I was taught was to leave a campsite in better shape than I found it. In the years since, I have realized that it’s also to important to leave the world in better shape than I found it. That involves a different way of living. But it’s what I feel I’ve been called to do.