Another Look at Global Warming

Hosea 4:1-3: "Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: 'There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.'"

Global warming is a hotly debated issue in our modern culture, with proponents and skeptics arguing its viability. Irrespective of the correlation/causation between the natural catastrophes that we are observing and global warming, there is one thing that I believe that we're noticeably missing in our reflective evaluations, namely the judgment of the One True God!

In the above cited passage, God communicates to His covenant people that the reason for the death of creation is the sinful behavior of people. In the eighth century BC, the Israelites were committing detestable acts before the Lord, and they did not concern themselves with the Divine consequences of such behavior. For example, they were sexually promiscuous. . . . they were taking advantage of others for their own benefit . . . they practiced a 'ritual religion' without substance . . . . and most egregiously they 'lacked (any) acknowledgement of God.' These people chose to forsake the Lord in favor of their wanton lusts, and did not care that they were treating with contempt the Sovereign God who created them and expected their submission to Him as Lord. They created a theology that supported their vain, selfish desires and refused to hear the prophets of God who attempted to warn them of coming judgment.

In turn, God enacted judgment upon the land in which the people lived. As He struck His creation with a curse, it began to "waste away." The land began to mourn as the stench of people's sin brought Divine judgment; and to this day, creation has been "groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Romans 8:22). We continue to see the Divine curse placed upon nature for the perpetuated sins of humanity.

Lest I be misunderstood, the sins to which I refer are not merely the physical abuses that humanity perpetrates in nature (i.e. contaminates injected into the environment from mass global industrialization). The sins to which I refer are the ones that are mentioned earlier and are noticeably absent from being addressed in our culture as acts of rebellion against the Lord: adultery, sexual immorality, cursing, lying, murder, thievery, abuse, lack of love for one's neighbor, lack of submission to the Lord, etc.

If we want to counter the ill effects of global warming, we would do more than simply changing our environmental consciousness, we would repent of our sins against God and surrender ourselves to Him as the Lord of our lives. Only God can correct the ill effects that our sinful behavior has brought upon our world.