October  16 – three weeks from this weekend – 4,000 delegates will gather in Cape Town South Africa from 200 countries around the world.  They will be convening the third Lausanne Consultation on World Evangelization.  These meetings happen approximately every 15 years, with the first being called by two of the great evangelical statesmen of our time, Billy Graham and John Stott, in Lausanne Switzerland (hence the name) in 1974.  I am honored – and a bit surprised – to be attending this conference both as a delegate and as a presenter.  I’ll be doing a seminar on (naturally!), ‘Mobilizing Your Church to Care for Creation’.

The Lausanne ‘movement’ has given the modern evangelical church several gifts.  Among these are the ‘Lausanne Covenant’, which has become a de facto “evangelical statement of faith”, a creed for a movement that tends to avoid such, and the Lausanne theme:  “The Whole Gospel from the Whole Church for the Whole World.”

You will not be surprised that my conviction is that creation care is – and must be! – a key component of the ‘whole gospel.’ I will be elaoborating on this conviction by posting a series of “Countdown to Cape Town” articles over the next three weeks.  Note that some of this material is excerpted (recycled!) from portions of my book, Our Father’s World – you can order the book here to get the whole argument in one convenient package.    Stay tuned and let me know what you think.

And of course, pray for these meetings.  We live in historic times.

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Countdown to Capetown I: Diagnosis Sin

I am personally committed to the task of mobilizing the church to respond to the environmental crisis for one reason:  I believe that God has called all of us to this task, and that it is a central part of our mission as Christians and as a world-wide church.  Let me put this in more theological terms:  I am convinced that God’s redemption brought to us in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross is more than human salvation.

For some of you, this is a bit of a stretch, so let me explain myself.

To understand my thinking, let me take you back to Genesis 3 – the story of our initial fall from grace and into sin.  You know how it starts – Eve and the Serpent, discussing the one and only command God has given his creatures:  ‘You may not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden…’  But she looked, she ate, she gave to him and he ate, and then…

We are told that they “heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the Garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God…” (Genesis 3:8)  They heard the sound of God in the Garden; what I hear is the sound of relationships shattering.  Like dominos, they fall one after another:

a) Their relationship with God was broken. Implicit in their relationship with God was his right to command them, and their obligation to obey.  Having dispensed with their side of the arrangement, they could not face him, and so they hid.  Separation.  Alienation.  Because they were created to live with – and within – God, disruption of this primary relationship led immediately to inner turmoil:

b) Their relationship with themselves was broken. Adam says to God, “I was afraid because I was naked…” (v. 10)   Pages have been written on this short phrase.  It could mean many things; at the very least, it shows that people who had been at peace with themselves are now filled with guilt and shame.  There’s an inner turmoil evident here that was absent before Adam disobeyed.  Adam, and Eve, is no longer at peace with himself – an inner relationship has been broken.

Because each of these sinners could not live with themselves, they could not live with each other:

c) Their relationship with each other was broken. It doesn’t take long for the first marital argument to break out:  “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (v. 12)  Whether the discord is between spouses, parents and children, neighbors on the street or heads of state about to go to war, it all started here.  Shattered community.

Being unable to live with each other, it is not surprising that they were no longer able to live in harmony with other members of God’s creation:

d) Their relationship with the rest of creation was broken. God pronounces his curse on the serpent, on the woman and on the man.  In pronouncing judgment on Adam, God says,

Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.It will produce thorns and thistles for you,and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food,
until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken;
For dust you are, and to dust you will return. (v.17-19)

This is presented as a criminal judgment, but Adam’s doom is also the logical outcome of what has gone before.  He was created by God to live in harmony with the rest of creation. That harmony depended on an ongoing relationship with the Creator.  He broke that relationship, and disharmony – disease, thorns, thistles – follows as surely as night follows day.

Thus begins our history in sin… and the story of our miserable race.

Thus also begins the story of our redemption…  [Stay Tuned.]

[Note: This article is excerpted and revised from my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation, chapter 4, “Diagnosis: Sin”.  Order the book here.]