Saving the world
The Sydney Morning Herald is promoting one of its many secular religions:
On a bonny spring day, three generations of Sydneysiders numbering in their thousands marched to express their concerns about global warming.
Among them was six-year-old Thomas Dimech, who announced their collective aim: “I want to save the planet,” he said. (Source; text archive)
The eco-movement is full of the language of salvation and redemption, and not without reason. That's what is on offer, if you and I work hard enough to reduce, reuse and recycle. It's a problem that's much easier to deal with than the problem of sin in the human heart, and it doesn't require much in the way of repentance. It's idealism, censoriousness, moralism and a larger-than life cause all rolled into one.
A genuinely Christian response to this religion won't mean either blanket acceptance or blanket rejection of the morality it preaches. But we have some work ahead of us to uncover the toxic ideas that are feeding into it. Save the world? Not by this method!
Tim Challies makes some related observations here in a piece entitled ‘Environmentalism—A New Religion’.