Global Warming

Unless your television has been broken for some time, you have heard significant talk on the subject of global warming over the past few months. At best, I am very skeptical of the scientific methods and suppositions that are being put forth by global warming proponents. When Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was nominated for its two Academy Awards this January, there was still waist-deep snow piled in my yard! You can understand my skepticism. If global warming is happening somewhere, it is not at my house! Global warming has been cited as the cause of maladies such as: melting ice caps, an increase in hurricanes, rising cases of malaria, increased frequency of blizzards, and the reason Europe’s mountains are getting taller. Recently the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon blamed the ethnic and religious violence in Darfur on global warming. It seems that global warming is the cause of most of mankind’s problems on earth.

You may be wondering why this seemingly political issue would be a topic on my blog. I have wondered the same thing as I have seen this issue discussed among Southern Baptists in recent days. In the past few months Baptist leaders including Rick Warren, have cited the need for Baptists to become urgently involved in combating the causes of global warming. Early in June, Dr. Russell Moore, Dean at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary testified before congress regarding global warming. Sermons on every side of this issue can currently be found online. At our Southern Baptist Convention this year, a resolution on global warming was debated and passed by a 60/40 margin. Global warming is a topic alive and well in Baptist churches.

My view on global warming is that it is not a topic that should be at the forefront of our convention or our churches. Certainly we should be good stewards of this earth that God has given us. (Gen. 1:26-28) But I also feel it can be a major distraction for the church, taking us away from the mission we have of leading people to salvation. Global warming is not mankind’s most pressing problem. The penalty of sin is. What would it profit us to save the world’s environment, yet lose much of its souls (Matt. 16:26)? We must be very careful to not be distracted from saving souls from the ultimate global warming that is promised in 2 Peter 3:10 - But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. (NKJ) Let’s seek to save the lost, not the doomed planet.