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By Ragan Sutterfield
As oil spreads deeper into the marshes of the Louisiana coast and daily the map of the slick expands as a brown veil over the Gulf of Mexico, I can only think of the pride and hubris and complicity that brought us to this place. I can only pray that the God who notices even the fall of a sparrow will forgive us.
It has been said by the theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand that pride is "value blindness." Pride is what we see in the gulf. First there is the pride that says "drill here, drill now" for a few more cheap barrels of oil. Pride is the willingness to take the risk of environmental and economic devastation so that we can fuel our addict life no matter the destruction. Pride is the CEO of BP saying that the environmental damage from a spill that he couldn't predict and can't control will be minimal. Value-blindness is the effort to keep living in a counterfeit economy when that economy is clearly destructive to the commonwealth of creation.
We are all worshipers of the Economy, unwilling to take the steps necessary to turn away. I drive and fly and eat yogurt from plastic containers-all made possible by the oil now poisoning the gulf, the oil that fuels conflicts around the world and destroys the environments of people in Africa and the Middle East so regularly it isn't newsworthy.
I feel like now is a wake up call. We are like the people of Nineveh when Jonah came preaching. We have a choice-repent or kill the prophet and keep doing what we always have until we suffer inevitable judgment. The people of Nineveh chose repentance and they repented by fasting and mourning their participation in a system of worship and life that was opposed to the will of God. What would it look like for us to repent of our destruction of creation through oil?
It was surely mean more than driving a Prius and shopping at Whole Foods. It will mean a radical transformation of our lives- a transformation we must ask God for the grace to achieve. For now we need fasting - fasting from oil, fasting from the economy on which it is dependent. If we only keep the Sabbath one day we would take a long stride in achieving such a fast- no driving, no use of money, eating good food prepared at home, not forcing anyone to work on our behalf. So let's take a Sabbath in celebration of God's kingdom and repentance of the kingdom of our latest Baal, the Economy. We must all look at the oil along the coast and pray: Father we have sinned, we want to change, show us new life in the abundance of your creation.
Ragan Sutterfield writes and farms in his native Arkansas. He has written for a variety of publications about the environment and sustainability including Books & Culture, Sojourners, and Christianity Today.
As oil spreads deeper into the marshes of the Louisiana coast and daily the map of the slick expands as a brown veil over the Gulf of Mexico, I can only think of the pride and hubris and complicity that brought us to this place. I can only pray that the God who notices even the fall of a sparrow will forgive us.
It has been said by the theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand that pride is "value blindness." Pride is what we see in the gulf. First there is the pride that says "drill here, drill now" for a few more cheap barrels of oil. Pride is the willingness to take the risk of environmental and economic devastation so that we can fuel our addict life no matter the destruction. Pride is the CEO of BP saying that the environmental damage from a spill that he couldn't predict and can't control will be minimal. Value-blindness is the effort to keep living in a counterfeit economy when that economy is clearly destructive to the commonwealth of creation.
We are all worshipers of the Economy, unwilling to take the steps necessary to turn away. I drive and fly and eat yogurt from plastic containers-all made possible by the oil now poisoning the gulf, the oil that fuels conflicts around the world and destroys the environments of people in Africa and the Middle East so regularly it isn't newsworthy.
I feel like now is a wake up call. We are like the people of Nineveh when Jonah came preaching. We have a choice-repent or kill the prophet and keep doing what we always have until we suffer inevitable judgment. The people of Nineveh chose repentance and they repented by fasting and mourning their participation in a system of worship and life that was opposed to the will of God. What would it look like for us to repent of our destruction of creation through oil?
It was surely mean more than driving a Prius and shopping at Whole Foods. It will mean a radical transformation of our lives- a transformation we must ask God for the grace to achieve. For now we need fasting - fasting from oil, fasting from the economy on which it is dependent. If we only keep the Sabbath one day we would take a long stride in achieving such a fast- no driving, no use of money, eating good food prepared at home, not forcing anyone to work on our behalf. So let's take a Sabbath in celebration of God's kingdom and repentance of the kingdom of our latest Baal, the Economy. We must all look at the oil along the coast and pray: Father we have sinned, we want to change, show us new life in the abundance of your creation.
Ragan Sutterfield writes and farms in his native Arkansas. He has written for a variety of publications about the environment and sustainability including Books & Culture, Sojourners, and Christianity Today.
