Earlier today I was doing some online research for work, and came across some depressing news which I emailed out as follows:

From an article on sustainability and consumption:

I had the pleasure of being a keynote speaker with Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia at a "net impact" event late last year. He has done as much as any CEO to make sure that his company is respectful and protective of the environment. Yet in front of 100 net impacters, he said (I am paraphrasing), "I have talked to some serious scientists, and most of them believe we have passed the point of no return. We have no hope left to save the Earth."

Hopefully that is not 100% accurate. Unfortunately, it is actually possible that it could be true. The full article can be found here and presents a good case for reducing our consumption.

Feeling impossibly overwhelmed, I sent this out as an email to some of you (those on this blog who's emails I have in my EPG email account). Mom (Lakshmi) wrote back this response, pretty much capturing what I also was feeling:

What a challenge and it does look grim in a global economy down to our personal households. It seems our meager attempts, whatever they may be (vegetarian/vegan eating, recycling, shopping less...) are a little too late and certainly not nearly enough to address the issues of the 9 billion people arriving! We actually can't pat ourselves on the back---since even the most conscientious among us are still not doing much after all!

Coming home from work I got to process a bit, and here is how I would respond to my own hopelessness from earlier today. [Warning, significant God-talk and Bible references follow. This is my world-view with less translation than it sometimes receives and perhaps with a degree of assumed "kingdom theology." Hopefully the gist still comes across and if not I can add comments as needed.]

I think you are probably right - in the end it probably will take war(s) to really wake us up to the enormity of the problem and effect the significant change in our lifestyles as well as the very infrastructure of our society. Kira and I are wearing ourselves out just trying to get our edible landscape (garden) going, and while I think it is a good way to be spending our energy you are right, it is all a drop in the bucket compared to the magnitude of the problem. (I do however think we live in a democratic economy - how I spend my dollars is my economic vote. And, as we learned in Florida, every vote counts.... at least half! But I agree, my individual actions seem inconsequential in comparison to the overwhelmingly "obese" infrastructure I live in.)

It's funny, Kira and I were visiting this church yesterday and the pastor was preaching from Revelation, talking about these images of God's final, sovereign, good reign. The fullness of God's kingdom come. God's perfect reign of peace, wisdom, holiness, and love over all creation finally come to fulfillment. And his application was to topics of worry - worrying about your money, or your job, or whatever. The message was "God is in control." A fine message. But if you take the book of Revelation as a whole, it is speaking to the epic struggle of Good versus Evil. God versus Satan. Who will triumph? What is really happening in our world? To all appearances, God seems many times absent. But Revelation tells a different story. It tells a story of God's victory and paints a beautiful picture of God's final reign. The larger message of Revelation is not necessarily "God cares about your provisions, your dented car, your mortgage bill, etc." (though I believe God does care about those things). I think the larger message of Revelation is "People of God: when the story of the world around you looks desperately hopeless, remember that God is telling a different story. A story of hope and redemption and healing and God's kingdom come. And God's story is ultimately the one that will prevail." [Remember Revelation was written before Christianity was the religion of the empire, while Christians weren't exactly popular and the future for the people of God probably looked pretty hopeless.]

So I think it takes a Revelation perspective to look the enormous problem laid before us squarely in the eyes and say "This story of hopelessness is not going to determine my actions. I am going to live believing a different story from the one I see. Believing that God's kingdom will come, and that - ushered in through Jesus - God's kingdom is coming now, today." And because God's kingdom is coming now, today, we are free as the people of God to prophetically build gardens and serve the poor and research the cure for AIDS and build community and seek to help usher in any of the other bazillion facets of God's kingdom come.