by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS Ezekiel 34:15-31, Matthew 18:1-14
Transcribed from the sermon preached on APRIL 30, 2023
Degradation of ecosystems or the planet Earth is the biggest, most complex problem humans face today. One of the great contributors is population.
For thousands of years human population on the planet held mostly steady. When Jesus lived there were about 190 million people on the planet Earth. It took 1,700 years for that population to double twice and reach 600 million.
In 1959 the population of the Earth reached 3 billion, just fifteen years later in1975 it reached 4 billion, just twelve years later another billion had been added. 8 years later in 1999 another billion. 23 years later we now have 8 billion people living on the planet earth. The United Nations projected the population in 2050 will be 9.7 billion. So many of the things that helped humans stay alive, thrive, and reproduce are now problematic because there are so many of us.
Once quick aside: it would be helpful to the planet and other humans who have been born if mothers could choose when and how many children to give birth to.
One of the things I think it is important to acknowledge as we address environmental problems, or almost any problem is that the things that create the problem are often not sinful to begin with, or in and of themselves.
Who would say that village leaders helping to eliminate threats to their children and families and livestock and crops from snakes, wolves, lions, insects is a bad thing?
Who would say that gathering resources to build a house to protect your family from the cold, rain and sun is sinful?
Who would say that the discovery of germs and the practice of pooping away from water sources and living space, and washing hands after pooping and before eating is a sinful thing? This is the single greatest extender of human life and population.
Was the invention of antibiotics like penicillin done from a sinful attitude?
Was the creation of fertilizer to increase crop yield and feed more people a sinful thing?
Is the attempt to procure stable water resources for your village, area, nation sinful?
Is the attempt to prevent disastrous flooding from rivers a sinful thing?
Was the switch from wood and coal for heating and power to oil a sinful thing?
Were inventors sinful when they created the train, automobile, and airplane?
Was the ancient Mayan practice of slash and burn to clear jungle for growing corn a sinful thing?
The problem in most of these cases is not in the creation but in the impact, in the increase in the number of consumers and/or consumption. If there were only a few people benefiting, there would not be a problem. The scale creates the problem.
Money and private land ownership have been the great pressure on the Masai cattle herding culture of Kenya and Tanzania, but so has eco-tourism. The Masai have been displaced from large stretches of territory that have been designated as national parks and wildlife conservation reserves. How is this different from western Christians displacing the Sioux and Cherokee and asking them to give up their nomadic buffalo hunting culture for farming and school? And what is the difference between pushing the Sioux or the Maasai to give up their herding culture and pushing Texas cowboys to give up cattle culture? I only ask. I haven’t an answer to this question. But whoever the judge is in each case, they should beware of self-righteousness and know that they will likely cause some harm and be at least partially wrong, at least from the point of view of the Cherokee, Masai and the Texas cowboy,
A point I want to make as we consider the huge complex problem of degradation of the planet Earth is that many of the things that have contributed to the problem were not done out of greed or sin alone, and often to improve the lives of people. And in fact, they have improved the lives of many and increased the capacity for a greater number of people to survive and thrive. However, we discover that some of the thoughts and actions that seem good in the moment turn out to have unintended consequences, some of them negative, some of them very negative. Most of the things I mentioned would not be a problem at all if we didn’t have so many people on the planet. Improvements in technology and health which helped us live better and longer also helped create too many people consuming too much for the planet.
In the scripture today from Ezekiel 34 God says he will both be a shepherd and place a shepherd as governor over the people, and that he will remove the predator wolves and lions and regulate and judge the mean and selfish rams who butt their way around and pollute the water and destroy the fields.
Now as far as the wolves and lions go, that is fine as long as there is plenty of open wilderness without people or sheep for them to hunt and live. But as the number of shepherds and sheep grow, and along with it the land they occupy, sooner or later lions and wolves will be threatened with extinction. Now if we are talking about human lions and wolves, that may be a good thing, but some would argue, as God does at the end of the book of Job, that he hears the cries of the hungry lion cubs too. A good thing, keeping lions from eating your lambs and your family, when taken to extremes becomes a bad thing. The metaphor still works, we don’t have to eliminate the religion because God works to eliminate lions.
My wife Feliciana tells the story that when she was young, crabs and lobsters used to nibble at her toes in the river by her house. But now, the crabs and lobsters are gone. If you are a fisherman in her river back in 1970, you might go down to the river and catch enough fish to feed your family in an hour. But as the population grew and more people fished for crab in the river, fewer crabs were available to produce baby crabs. The obvious solution would have been for people to fish less so that the crab population could come back, and then to figure out how many crabs the community could catch and not deplete the crab population over time. As an individual, however, extracting from a common open and free resource, your logical conclusion is that you should now fish for two hours so you could get enough to feed your family. From a logical abstract point of view, fishing less means that people could fish indefinitely into the future and not cause the extinction of the crabs in the river. But from the individual’s point of view, they are trying to keep their family from going extinct right now today.
Now this same process is happening across the globe in all our oceans, forests, with fresh water and with the air.
Garret Hardin, in his famous 1968 article called this problem “In the Tragedy of the Commons, the Earth Gets Crucified.”
Pollution is the same problem in reverse. Rather than extracting something from the commons we put something in. We not only butt our way into drink the water, we stomp around and mess it up for others. Poop or sewage, chemicals or carbon or radioactive waste or plastic pollute common land, water, and air. Hardin writes: “The rational person finds that his share of the cost of the waste he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of “fouling our own nest,” so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free enterprisers.”
A couple Thanksgivings ago, my family and I decided to go to Yosemite to see beautiful awesome natural environment, breathe fresh air and see wild animals. But, as it turned out, so did a huge number of other people. So, we wound up trapped in a massive traffic jam and breathing car exhaust. It was so packed we just stopped for a few minutes and drove right back out. So many people were searching for a tase of a free and open nature that it was no longer free or natural.
Sometimes in order to retain freedom, we need to volunteer to allow a shepherd to restrict us.
I hear there is research and a possible discovery of how to reverse the process of aging. Now I haven’t ever heard anyone say that perhaps it might not be good for the planet earth if too many people live too long; the longer we live the more we consume. The longer we live the more health care we need, the more it costs to keep us alive. But just like the fishermen on the river, who among us wants to voluntarily limit our life span? Who among us wouldn’t jump at the chance to reverse aging for ourselves and those we love the most? Almost all of the debate around health care and insurance is around how to include more. I have never heard people talk of coming to an agreement of a basic level of care everyone should get equally, and then after those basic things, you are on your own. We as individuals always want whatever kind of care we need in the moment. If it doesn’t exist, we want it invented. If it does exist, we want it paid for. Life expectancy in the United States in 1900 was 40. It is now almost 80, and after just turning sixty, 80 seems too short for me. I have heard people say health care is a human right. But I have never heard people ask the question, how much health care or what health care.
Artificial intelligence will help greatly in increasing efficiency and thus decrease our destruction of the planet on which human life depends, but there are potential problems there too.
A short while back a group of computer geniuses wrote a letter asking for a pause on the development of Artificial Intelligence. They are afraid it will quickly get smarter than us and we will lose control. They want to think it through and set some ground rules. But it will be very difficult to get companies to slow down because they are afraid that if they slow down, others won’t. And government law makers are not only paid and elected by corporate money, they also don’t want to slow our own companies down and allow business of other nations to beat us. Whoever goes the fastest will win control of the market and slower companies and nations fear extinction. A tragedy of the commons.
In Matthew 18:7 Jesus says, “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes.”
Population growth has slowed in much of the world, though it is still growing. Environmental degradation is fed by three problems: over population, overconsumption, and excess pollution. The developed world has mostly stable or even declining birthrates and finds its increase in immigration from overpopulated and underdeveloped nations. Population pressures are creating conflict both within and between nations, creating strains on governments, infrastructure and ecosystems, and amplifying identity and cultural conflict.
On the one hand, stable governments or what we can called mutually agreed upon coercion curtails the selfish power of theft, monopoly, and corruption, provides for roads and schools, and hospitals, and this enables hope that extra work and saving will produce a positive outcome for oneself and one’s family. The greater likelihood of survival and prosperity of one’s children, the fewer children people have. But as those children become more successful, the more they consume. Consuming more, for most of the history of the world has been considered a positive. Very few people had the power to be serious gluttons. Most people for most of the history of the world didn’t have enough to thrive. Disease, war, injustice or poor organization to police injustice, and low productivity meant that many people would consume little and die young.
Of course, we hope and work for a greater efficiency, more calories for less extraction and pollution. While we are and will make great gains in efficiency in some areas, in others we will not, or the increase in efficiency will not erase the increase in number of consumers to decrease the damage on the planet to a sustainable level. Some things we don’t want to give the government power to do. For instance, we don’t want the government putting a limit on how long we live.
Also, as population pressure on governments increase to the point where the government can’t sustain peace and prosperity, governments will crumble and with them the ability to regulate and enforce regulation on consumption and pollution. People in nations with dysfunctional governments, without good shepherds, are more destructive on the environment and much less able to regulate sustainability.
As more stable governments have instituted labor and environmental laws, corporations have moved to countries whose governments are not good shepherds, they let the wolves and lions in. Moreover, some who would be good shepherds in their own country turn into wolves for other countries.
Sustaining the Shepherd of a stable democracy through which we mutually agree to allow regulation of the commons, and mutually agreed upon ground rules and checks and balances on the government, so the government itself doesn’t become the wolf, is the most important thing to establish and preserve in our effort toward sustainable human life on the planet.
Jesus says, if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire.
Feet and hands are good things. But if our feet take us to a married persons house so we can get our hands on them, then we have a problem. The solution: don’t walk by the house and don’t touch. In the same way, much of what has led us to this sin of destroying the planet earth on which human life depends was not or is not in and of itself a sin. But now that we see there is a problem, we are going to have to cut some things off.
If our stomach, cars, gardens, plane flights, and luxurious living contributes to the destruction of the environment, we have some adjustments to make. And we need good shepherds in government to help regulate the common good.
But know this, the shepherds we endow with the power to make the decisions to choose which hands and feet of the economy and the culture to cut off will cause real damage to life and culture, and there will be mistakes and unintended consequences along the way. Even as we try to accomplish this great task, we are no less likely to have sin and ignorance in our decision making than our ancestors were. But we must make the decisions and act as best we can.
And we can always hope. While there is tragedy, crucifixion, there is also resurrection. Population growth is no longer exponential. In many places rivers, air and animal life is improving. Rich people will drive electric cars. Unforeseen intentions can lead to solutions. Disputants can sometimes agree. By the grace of God people can change. We can consume less; we can recognize our responsibility to love and care for the whole creation. By Grace we have come thus far, and grace will lead us home.