We were so thankful for the leadership recognition service on the 30th of April – so why didn’t we post anything about it? Well, for those who know us well, we could just say “it’s May” (hence crazy busy) and that might be enough. But we were also trying to get the news out to our Support Team first, so hopefully many of you have already heard the news! If not, there is probably a letter on its way to you. 🙂
(left to right) Ezequiel, Esther, Viri, Oscar
Anyway, yes! On the 30th of April we had a special service to recognize the first national leaders of the Path of Life Bible Church Las Palmas (Iglesia Bíblica Sendero de Vida Las Palmas)! Ezequiel and Oscar have already been doing the work of elders, but this service was a time to specifically honour them and their wives, to talk about leadership in the church, and to lay hands on them and pray for them.
I (Jim) had the privilege of leading the music, with Nathanael as one of my fellow musicians, and all the songs were chosen by Oscar and Ezequiel. It was neat because the songs all emphasized their desire to look to the Lord and put Him first. In fact, every song except one was directly a prayer – and the one that wasn’t was instead a testimony. (I don’t know which songs have English versions, but you might recognize songs such as “Psalm 5 (Give Ear to My Words)” and “Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me”.)
Oscar shared a little bit about our friend Edgar, who passed away this past November. It was important to us that he be remembered in this service, because he had had a leadership role as well. We miss Edgar, but look forward to seeing him again soon.
Rod preached about the role of pastors in the church from 1 Peter 5, and other texts. Martín, pastor of the church in the community of Santa Barbara, gave the charge to the congregation.
Next the two couples were presented with various symbols representing different aspects of the ministry…
Shepherd’s staff, representing pastoral leadership (1 Peter 5:1-4).
Basin and towel, representing humble service (John 13:3-5).
“My house is your house” decorative plates, representing hospitality (Titus 1:7-8).
Framed verses – 2 Timothy 3:16-17, representing the Bible as our authority.
Shari and I presented the last one.
Then we laid on hands and prayed, along with other elders and pastors and their wives from the area.
Time of Prayer (photo courtesy Nathanael)
Of course, no special service would be complete without some food and a time of celebration! And some cakes! Maybe even some impromptu games!
A cake featuring 1 Timothy 3:1-7
No one really wanted to leave, so I think it was evening by the time everything wrapped up. 🙂
Thanks so much to everyone who was praying – and who is praying! We’re so thankful for these men and their families, and for many other men and women who are already helping with the ministry of this congregation. But the work of this young local church is only beginning – may God grant that it would be a light here in Ixtapaluca and around the world! Please continue to pray for this church, and especially these leaders, who are finding their way into the service of this growing congregation.
To close out our series on Biblical Anthropology, I’m going to try to pull everything together in just a few posts. But if you’re actually following the series, I encourage you to read it all, because there will be a lot more holes in this summary if you don’t!
If you have started at the beginning, you may remember how it all began:
About 3500 years ago, and old man begin to write. The first three words completely change our understanding of reality. The first seven words change our understanding of the cosmos. And with just a few phrases, our understanding of how the world works, who we are, the purpose of life and the concept of love is completely transformed. These words are so revolutionary, so surprising, so transforming, that we really cannot exaggerate their importance.
Do you remember what the words were?“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”(Genesis 1:1)
When I started the series in our church, I really had no idea just how important those words really were. And how important the first few chapters of Genesis really are.
Biblical Anthropology – the study of human beings from a biblical perspective. Who am I?
And everything began, everything must begin, with He who had no beginning. The eternal God.
Now, here’s the first exam question. In our first studies we emphasized three words. Do you remember what they were?
You cheated, you read this paragraph, didn’t you? Well, anyway, you’re correct. Truth, Dependence, and Purpose.
The Bible is a solid foundation for the truth, and that means all truth. Why? Because the Bible explains how it is possible for us to know anything at all.
How do we know that the laws of nature are consistent? Well, for example in Jeremiah 33 God explains that He has made a covenant with day and night, and the established laws of the heavens and the earth. A consistent and faithful God is the source and origin of all trust and loyalty.
If we’re here simply by chance, simply chemicals in bags of skin, how can we know any truth? But – what if a God of order wants us to know Him through His creation? God wants us to know truth, and so to know Him.
All logic and science comes from a Christian worldview.
Dependence. We depend on something outside of ourselves, and all things ultimately depend on God. We are limited – finite. God is unlimited and infinite. Without beginning or end, without cause, transcendent.
Purpose. Of course, a random cosmos with no God has no purpose or significance. What is – is. But in the real universe, all purpose comes from God, and the pattern of God’s creation.
The purpose of the earth…
For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the LORD, and there is no other…”
Isaiah 45:18
The purpose of humans…
…male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:27-28
The sexes, families, and much more – come from God’s Word.
But although there are many purposes, there is a principle one. “…our Lord and God…you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created…” (Revelation 4:11) The Son of God – “all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). “The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory” (Psalm 97:6).
What should be the response of all creation? “Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created” (Psalm 148:5).
But instead of praising the Creator, the man fell into sin. The man sinned, the woman sinned, I sinned, and you sinned. We “suppress the truth” in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). We do not want to depend on God (although, of course, every breath still comes from Him). We don’t want His purpose for our lives. We reject His truth.
Of course, there is no “other truth”. Just – the truth. And pay attention here – what happens when we reject God’s truth, and choose our own lies (which we call “truth”)? I’ll tell you – it turns into “my truth vs. your truth”.
And the strongest tyrant can force his “truth” on us. Rejecting God’s truth is the end of freedom. And we’re seeing this played out today.
Speaking for myself, one of the most important lessons in this study was how really horrible sin is. We use that word all the time in the church, “sin”, and we link it with the word “forgiveness”, and somehow through it all we forget that we really are responsible for our sinful actions.
We see how terrible sin is in the cross of Christ. The Holy and Pure Son of God suffered voluntarily the shame and punishment to show us just how far we had wandered.
Every sin, great or small, that sprouts in our hearts, is an ugly, disgusting, putrid offence to God. God hates sin, and is completely just to throw sinners into eternal hell.
But that leads us to “The Great Universal Project of Humanity” – do you remember what that is? It is the ongoing and impossible project of justifying ourselves.
We talked about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived a terrible persecution under communism. What was it he said?
If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us, and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.
We are responsible for our sin. We are responsible to change. But – “trying to change” never brings salvation.
But – there is salvation. “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That is, the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
That is the Creation, and the Fall. Or, as we said in the second section, Christ or Chaos. (I’m still going to talk about the origin of that phrase – stay tuned.)
That’s a quick look at the first two lessons – “The Beginning” and “Christ or Chaos”. Feel free to go back and look at them again. And in a bit we’ll continue our whirlwind summary…
Throughout our look at the environment, we’ve tried to build on the foundation of what Scripture has taught us, while adding more insights from God’s Word specifically about caring for our world.
We’re thankful for Christians and non-Christians alike who are working to care for the world in which we live. But we’ve also seen some things that I believe are concerning. For example, the fact that such a long chain of suppositions is simply assumed, without being examined. And the fact that so many unbiblical ideas are smuggled into the environmentalist movement being adopted by many leaders around the world.
We also talked about how the Christian’s way of caring for the planet is, in the end, very different.
Here are a few questions to help you think about what we’ve talked about:
What are some ways in which we can promote life and care for creation in our own homes and communities?
What is the difference between a biblical worldview and what the world typically tells us about the environment?
Why does the world mock God’s revelation about how the world will end (2 Peter 3:3-7)?
Why should we be taking local responsibility to care for the planet, instead of relying on countries and worldwide experts to take care of it?
We always must come back to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself as we discuss these topics. He is the Son of God, the Lord of the trees, the Lord of oil and gas, the Lord of your household, the Lord of babies, the Lord of science – the Lord of everything. To God, “who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15-16)
Additional resources…
This study very much built on all the studies before it, and I’ve linked to a few things along the way. It is helpful to keep thinking about secular humanism, and Got Questions has an article here: What is secular humanism?
Answers in Genesis has a lot of material about environmentalism and climate change. I’ve only read a small portion, but what I’ve read has been thought-provoking. You might start with this article, but take a look at some of their more specific discussions and videos about climate change: Environmentalism: A Biblical Perspective
It’s been a pretty crazy weak week or so. Not just for me. But I can talk from my perspective because it’s my blog post.
I was sick on Friday – sicker than I’ve been in years. Nothing contagious. I went to a meeting that evening – it’s kind of a blur. Then, I came home and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, I’m still recovering.
Somehow, I got up and preached on Sunday. It really is hard to believe, looking back. For the sermon time I felt pretty much normal, but before and after wasn’t so good. So I’m thankful for that brief moment! Maybe if anyone didn’t like the sermon, they’re not so thankful. But be that as it may.
Our friend Ezequiel was also sick on Sunday – he went to set up, and then realized that going to the service itself wasn’t going to happen!
It’s been busy because we’re getting ready for the leadership recognition service on Sunday. I know that we all would appreciate your prayers, because I know that it hasn’t been only Ezequiel and I that have faced some extra challenges this week. Pray especially for our two leaders and their families (Oscar and Ezequiel), and for us and our fellow missionaries Rod and Mayra Fry.
But yeah – anyway – talk about stream of consciousness – Sunday is a very special Sunday, as we recognize our first Mexican elders. We’re looking forward to a special time, and a whole bunch of special visitors, and a time of food and fellowship after the service. So we would appreciate your prayers.
For those of you on our Support Team, I will try to get a newsletter out to you next month ASAP with some details of the service.
Today I was working with the repairman, who was here yet again working on our hot water tank. As with many things, tanks and parts are getting more expensive and the quality is going down. So he’s been here twice – I think the second time we’ve had more success! However it is becoming kind of a running… er… joke… that we’re finally prioritizing getting certain things taken care of, and it turns out the issue is not really “fixed”.
Tonight is the Chronological Bible Study, so I’m looking forward to that. Hopefully it’s well attended – but, wow, looks like quite the storm is brewing! We’ll see if it actually turns into something.
Anyway, there is a lot happening, a lot coming up. So we appreciate your prayers as always, as discipleship, evangelism and general growth continues here in Ixtapaluca.
In our series on Biblical Anthropology we’ve been talking about the environment. My purpose last time was not to take a certain side in the many arguments about environmentalism, but simply to point out that there is more than one side to the story, and to show some of the reasons why that is.
Today we’re going to get specific and actually look at some of the policies that governments around the world are actually signing onto, from the United Nations. The particular document I used when we talked about this as a church, and which I will use here, is called “Principles for Ecosystem Restoration to Guide the United Nations Decade 2021-2030”.
In some ways, it’s time to pull together much of what we’ve learned in the whole entire series. For example, do you remember the “enemy’s headquarters” – the house in ruins that we talked about? Our illustration was a house in ruins – half-built – because the enemy always uses lies mixed with the truth. Lies are nothing, and that’s way the house is only half constructed. But then he uses it as a headquarters to attack us.
As with almost everything, we will see in this document the truth mixed with lies.
It’s laid out with “Ten Principles that Underpin Ecosystem Restoration”. Let’s just talk about four of the ten.
Principle 1: Global Contribution. Of course they’re talking about a global effort under the leadership of the United Nations. Principle 2: Broad Engagement. Everyone is involved, especially “under-represented” groups. Who decides who is most under-represented? You can guess, but they do give some examples: “local communities, Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, women, youth and LGBTIQ+ people”.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that we need everyone working together to care for the planet, right? But there’s more.
I listened to the interreligious panel that was held at COP26. And one of the panellists, from the Christian tradition, explained it like this.
“Our problem is that we have focused on personal responsibility. But often this doesn’t work, because people don’t have the ability. (Poor them.) And so, what we need to do is change the system, to have control from top down. Instead of focusing on personal responsibility, we should focus on social justice. For example, transfer funds from rich countries to people with a darker colour of skin. Et cetera.”
Of course, that was a rather loose paraphrase, but an accurate one. 🙂 So we’re back talking about “social justice”, from our discussion of justice. And now you’re going to hear the phrase “climate justice”, which actually is not biblical justice. In other words, the answer to our climate problem is not so much that you should drive your car less. The answer looks more like neo-marxism. It is the intelligent and powerful who decide who should get the money and how the systems should be set up.
Do you see how so much we’ve learned comes together here?
So how are we going to convince the common people of these things? Well, fear works. Terrible things will happen if you don’t listen to the “experts”. But should that kind of fear be our motivation, as Christians?
Principle 4: Benefits to Nature and People.“Ecosystem restoration aims to achieve and sustain the greatest net gain possible, given project- and programme-level goals, for biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation, and human health . . .”
Well, nice of them to throw “human health” in there at the very end.
It’s pretty common to give humanity a low priority here. Many people believe that the human population needs to be far lower than it is today. I’ve heard it preached that we should aim for between 500 million and 3 billion people in the world, and no more. Many base their estimates on the work of Paul Ehrlich from the University of Stanford.
And so birth control is promoted, and sterilization. The late David Graber, a biologist with the United States National Park Services, wrote in 1989: “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
And actually, quite a few people have said similar things, in perhaps unguarded moments. Normally, it’s kept a little more quiet. But the truth is, there are many people looking for ways to decrease the human population as soon as possible (actually, as I write this now, I heard a popular news broadcast this morning talking about that very thing!). Why? Because “we’re in a crisis”. But – how does this perspective fit with God’s Law?
One more. Principle 6: Knowledge Integration.“Ecosystem restoration should strive to integrate all types of knowledge – including, but not limited to, Indigenous, traditional, local and scientific ways of knowing – and practices in order to achieve greater kinship with nature, cooperation and effectiveness.”
Now, listen carefully. Because this is also very common. This does not mean that we need information from everyone, because you know things that I don’t. This doesn’t mean that we need different perspectives on a problem. I would agree with both of those ideas. No, this is saying that we need to introduce new ways of knowing.
In other words, we don’t need to use the scientific method, logic, or absolute truth. Science is only one possible thing on the list! Because there are many “ways of knowing”. Paganism is quite popular, for example. So, we’ll decide what to call “truth”. What way to follow. Or more accurately, what to follow in place of the truth.
Are there good things in this document? Sure. But what has been smuggled in along with the good things? Denying God’s truth, and bringing in your own ways of knowing. Shaking your fist at God’s law. Devaluing the importance of human life. Ensuring that certain very “wise” people are in control.
In 2014, Dr. Joe Boot wrote about the difference between a humanist worldview, or we could say a secular humanist worldview (which has been common to some extent since the serpent told the woman that she could be like God), and a Christian worldview.
In a Christian worldview, God limits government. All people and institutions should have limits, because we’re sinners. If we don’t have limits, if we have too much power, what happens? We take more. These limits come from God, Someone apart from the creation. The transcendent God.
Dr. Boot writes:
…the pagan philosophers and statesmen favored statism, emperor worship and tyranny. One reason for this, as we have noted, was that their humanistic worldview (as with all humanism and paganism today) posited an ultimate impersonalism in which man is conditioned by an impersonal environment and not by a personal God. Whilst claiming to be free, in the world of flux, man was seen as conditioned by the stars, his family, his fortunes, nature and the gods (also products of nature and natural forces), and so he became fatalistic in his thinking. As such, pagan thought requires a powerful and priestly state to save man from the environment all around him…
In other words, in the real world, a person is free because he or she is made in God’s image, and is responsible to Someone outside of the universe. But in secular humanism, the person is conditioned by his or her environment, a perspective leading to fatalism, so that true freedom is impossible. We must be coerced into action by the emperor-priest.
Listen to people talking about environmentalism. You will hear religious language. The end of the world, salvation, repentance, it’s all there. But – it’s not the true religion.
So the answer of the world to environmental issues is to create a system to put you in a smaller box. Don’t worry, you can have freedom in your box, but the government will limit you and take care of you as it wishes. And you must believe that the box makes sense, the box is all that there is, the box is the only thing that is important for you.
Beyond questions of world temperatures and snowfall and sea levels are issues that are even more concerning for believers – a host of ideas that are being imported under the guise of caring for the planet.
Many non-Christians are doing good things for the environment. Thank God! And sometimes we can work together. But always remember, Christ is the Lord of Creation. He is the truth. So – ask questions. Research. Don’t be afraid to be different. Take personal responsibility. And don’t be surprised if you end up doing something that the world hates. Jesus warned you.
We’ll take one more brief post to wrap up this discussion, before taking a look back over all 11 topics that we’ve covered.
We’ve been looking at some general principles from the Bible regarding the environment in our continuing Biblical Anthropology study. Yes, caring for the environment is a part of our Christian life, and out of that I’ve noticed four principles that God’s Word teaches:
We care for creation for the glory of God. That’s our ultimate purpose.
We care for creation to benefit people (quality and length of life).
We care for creation through local responsibility. In other words, our priority is our local area.
We care for creation through our general obedience to God. General obedience can be a blessing to the land, or God may directly bless the land when the people on it are obedient.
As we talked about before, it is possible to cooperate with unbelievers to care for the earth – we certainly should! But we also should not underestimate how drastically different our purposes and approaches may be.
So let’s talk about some of the ideas out in the world today.
When we were discussing this as a church, COP26 had just wrapped up. “COP” stands for Conference of the Parties, and it’s a conference that is held each year by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It’s interesting to look at their material, although the message from COP26 or COP27 is the same as what we’ve been hearing for many years. Here’s the introduction in the official brochure for the conference:
CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE GREATEST RISK FACING US ALL. Around the world storms, floods and wildfires are intensifying. Air pollution sadly affects the health of tens of millions of people and unpredictable weather causes untold damage to homes and livelihoods too. But while the impacts of climate change are devastating, advances in tackling it are leading to cleaner air, creating good jobs, restoring nature and at the same time unleashing economic growth.
Despite the opportunities we are not acting fast enough. To avert this crisis, countries need to join forces urgently.
We’re not going to take the time to analyze all the ins and outs of “global warming”. But it may be useful to at least take a look at some of the suppositions that are being made in this whole discussion, and at least point out that there’s another side to the story. Because we tend to hear only one side.
So what is the basic message? First, the earth is becoming warmer. Well, that’s true, but of course it all depends on the segment of time you’re measuring, where you’re measuring, and so on. It’s certainly warmer here than it was in January. Is it warmer than it was a year ago? Maybe. But many scientists and historians believe that the world was once quite a bit warmer than it is now.
Of course, quite often now we refer not to global warming, but simply “climate change”, a basically impossible-to-measure metric. But we’ll stick with warming for now, since that is still a common claim.
The second supposition is that this warming is because of humans and/or their specific activities.
The third supposition is that we can do something about this change in temperature. Well, there are quite a few scientists that would disagree here as well, or at least say that the changes we might make would make only a minute difference. In the United States, for example, thousands of scientists signed a petition with quite a different point of view. And that is by no means an isolated example.
Again, my point right now is not to defend one side or the other, but just to give a reminder that there are people – even scientists in the field – with different points of view. But we have some more suppositions:
The fourth supposition is that natural disasters are increasing. Now if you actually sit down and look at the statistics, you’ll see that … it depends. Again, what segment of time are you looking at? What criteria are you using? (I refer you to the old but useful book, How to Lie with Statistics.) It’s easy to find an unusual natural disaster here, or a time frame in which they’ve become worse. But in many cases they have actually decreased. But this is the general claim.
The fifth supposition. These disasters are specifically increasing because of climate change caused by human beings.
Finally, this is a CRISIS. An emergency. It’s almost too late – or may already be too late.
Why list all these suppositions? Because you may agree with some, and not others. In fact, you may agree with 1-5, and reject 6. This is very common with a lot of the narratives that are pushed on us. We just skip from the first supposition to the last and expect everyone to come along, and perhaps ignore one or two very weak links. It’s very useful to sit down and list exactly how we logically get from one to the other to the other.
Another common thing to check for: Are we commonly only hearing one side of the story? Is debate being shut down? That doesn’t prove that the other side is right, but it is cause to be on alert.
I remember many years ago when they started to install electric hot-air blowing hand dryers in public bathrooms. They would put little signs on them, explaining that they’re much better for the environment than using paper towels.
But I always thought – wait. In Canada, paper towels (at least at the time) were coming from sustainable forestry. That is, the trees were carefully farmed, replanted, and so on. So what about all the new complex electronic parts that we are now manufacturing for these much more sophisticated machines? Where does the metal come from? Where does the electricity come from? I bet these need a lot more repairs – which means tools, replacement parts, delivery, the driving of the repair person…
Things are not always as simple as they seem. As an interesting side note, some studies have shown that hand dryers actually mean more bacteria on your hands, which is why some researchers recommend for hospitals that they use – you guessed it – paper towels. 🙂
There are simply aspects of this whole story that you rarely if ever hear. You’ve heard a lot about CO2 – carbon dioxide. Sometimes media makes it sound like it’s a poison that we need to eradicate from the planet. But CO2 means more plant growth – a greener planet. Plants eat CO2 for breakfast – it’s part of the photosynthesis process that you learned about in school. This indeed seems to be happening – larger harvests, more available food. (Here’s a brief video from NASA on this – you may not agree with everything in the video, but it makes the basic point.)
Many are very concerned about “sustainable technologies”. For example, you may have heard a lot about wind power. In fact, you may have seen evidence of this technology rising from the landscape in your local area.
Wind power sounds like a great idea. But let’s think about the constant repairs that these huge machines require. The problems with the birds that are killed. The farmland that they take over. Sometimes forest areas are levelled to make room for them. Minerals are mined and parts are transported from around the world using – well, gasoline, in many cases!
As we were going over this topic at our church, plastics were a huge topic. Are plastics really pure evil? They have allowed us to transport food in a hygienic and easy way. Give our medicines. Protect ourselves from diseases. And now we know that it can be converted into a very clean fuel. Yes, like everything else, we should use plastics with wisdom. But plastic can be a huge benefit to the community.
There are many sides to every story. And if there is no public debate allowed, it’s a lot more difficult to find the truth. There are some complex issues here, but it doesn’t hurt to dig a little deeper and have a little discussion.
Now, all of this discussion of how warm the planet is and how much carbon dioxide is healthy and how we should use plastics is important – but there are some issues that are much more serious. We’re going to stay with materials from the United Nations next time, and take a closer look at some recommended responses to environmental issues.
