I am writing a book entitled A New City of God: Faith in a Changing Climate. The book has seven chapters. They are:
Chapter 1 — The Author’s Apology
Chapter 2 — The City of Man
Chapter 3 — Hubris and Nemesis
Chapter 4 — Truth and Consequences
Chapter 5 — Predicaments and Responses
Chapter 6 — Theology
Chapter 7 — The Church’s Response
The current Table of Contents is available here. The first draft of Chapters 1 through 6 is available here for review.
Chapter 7 — The Church’s Response discusses how individuals of faith, and how the church as a whole can respond to the Age of Limits predicaments that we face. It has been a difficult chapter to write. I eventually realized that, in spite of everything that I had written in the first six chapters, I was still thinking in terms of our current paradigm, our current way of living and thinking. One of the themes of those chapters is that we need to leave the ‘Church of Progress’, but doing so is much harder than most of us realize. We have been raised in a consumer-based culture. We assume that, as long as we have sufficient money, we can expect to receive whatever we what. There are no physical limits when it comes to meeting our desires.
We also live in a “techno-fix” culture. We take it for granted that technology will continue to advance and that, faced with any kind of problem, “They will come up with something”. It is very difficult to grasp that those ways of thought no longer work. In fact, the real challenge is to understand that our actions have taken us to a point where there is no longer a response that will return us to Business as Usual.
As I reflected on how we are trapped in our way of thinking it became apparent that some of the old-fashioned language that we used to hear in churches seems to be increasingly relevant. For example,
We have used up the earth’s resources, we have fouled the environment and we have filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Therefore, we need to Repent for our Sins. We hope for Mercy for what we have done, and ask for Forgiveness from the young people who are entering the world that we have created. We may even use the word Hell to describe that world. And finally, we hope for Salvation.
Maybe reverting to the technology and life style of earlier times also means reverting to the words that they used in those times.