Climate Change

 

All photos courtesy of Unsplash

I’m sure you’ve noticed that commenters on weather conditions in the UK over the last few years increasingly include such words as ‘brightest, coldest, driest, dullest, hottest, stillest, wettest, or windiest’. Even the most sceptical among us must surely recognise that extremes of weather are unmistakably the order of the day. 

 

Most people put this climate change down to global warming – currently running at about 1.5 degrees Celsius per century. Over the same time scale as this so-far relentless increase in temperature, the global carbon dioxide level has risen by over 22% and is still increasing, in fact, accelerating! As this is due to human activity, the story would seem clear – carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas that causes a temperature increase and that, in turn, results in a disturbance of the earth’s weather systems. Really, something should be done about it. However, some people are still not convinced. 

 

Sir John Houghton is one of our generation's most distinguished climate scientists in the UK. He was Professor of atmospheric physics at Oxford University until 1983, when he became director general of the Meteorological Office. He even earned a Nobel Prize for his work in this area. He is a founder member of the International Society for Science and Religion. A committed Christian, Sir John has strongly advocated the global research effort into climate change. He has compared man’s stewardship of the Earth to Adam and Eve’s stewardship over the Garden of Eden as described in Genesis, the first book in the Bible. 

 

Through personal acquaintance, I know that Sir John also believes in sin and salvation, as explained in the New Testament - sin separates us from God, and salvation brings us back to God; for him, it’s as simple as that.

 

Warning that ‘something should be done’ has always been part of the Christian message. The apostle Paul told King Agrippa that his preaching had been to tell people that ‘they should repent and turn to God’. Repentance means a change of mind followed inevitably by a change of life. If repentance was connected with turning to God, then the implication was that the people he had been speaking to were facing the wrong direction. On another occasion to another audience, he reported that he had been teaching ‘repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ’. If this repentance was connected with faith towards Christ, then previously, they must have been putting their faith in the wrong thing or in the wrong person.

 

You might have strong views on climate change, but where do we stand on this question of repentance – ‘mind change’. In speaking to people who spent their whole life debating new things – the philosophers at Athens - Paul insisted that God had commanded all men everywhere to repent. Novelty was not the answer, but they did need a new mind on things, and that’s what he told them - have a new mind about God and His resurrected Son. If we want to argue that the long-term state of the earth is in human hands, then how much more important it is for each one of us to realise that our long-term individual eternal destiny depends on our attitude to repentance - ‘mind change’ - and faith in Christ as Saviour.

Written by a Guest Blogger