“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.”
Ephesians 4:18
According to the students at Union Theological Seminary, “we must birth new theology.” What would a new theology look like, you may ask. Well, in this case, praying to plants!
This is no joke. In a liturgical response to Climate Change, students gathered inside the school’s chapel to confess their sins to a varied assortment of potted plants. In a statement officially given on Twitter, the seminary explained, “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.” The thread further revealed, “What’s different is that we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right – not just something to be consumed. Because plants aren’t capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn’t engage with them?”
(Whoa! Someone might want to warn the powers that be at Union Theological Seminary: Lending identity to parts of the Creation that can’t speak might give credence to protecting the unborn! After all, the line has to be drawn somewhere as to what or who you grant the status of “created beings.”)
Of course, you don’t have to be in graduate studies to join this faith. Just weeks ago, young students – children – were marched into Washington DC for a climate summit, to showcase their fears and their collective anger at their parents and grandparents.
One girl yelled, “All of our futures are in jeopardy. We have only 11 years to rectify decades of damage that we have inflicted on our planet.” Yes, she believes in this ecological Armageddon. The good news is that she won’t have to worry about being forced off her parents’ insurance.
“When I first learned about climate change, I felt a wave of emotions. Fear, I was scared for the future that was being taken right in front of my face,” a boy confessed, while another girl explained, “We are here because our parents trashed the planet and it’s up to our generation to save it.”
Yet another young girl stated her cause: “I am here to speak for the trees. We are killing our planet.” (There’s your future seminary student!)
“Are you going to sit here and watch our planet die?” cried a different girl, while yet another child called out above the growing applause, “Rebel! Or die!”
Well kids, take heart! There are some adults who are joining your fray. At the 2019 Gastro Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, Professor of Economics (!), Dr. Magnus Söderlund, proposed that we all get used to the idea of eating human flesh… off dead bodies, of course! This is his solution to break humanity’s dependence on animals and plants for our sustenance, and to finally turn the tide in the battle against manmade Global Warming.
When asked afterwards, by Sweden’s TV4, if he’d be willing to try human flesh himself, he shirked, “I feel somewhat hesitant but, to not appear overly conservative, I’d have to say I’d be open to at least tasting it.” (Translation: He was simply proposing what we should do.)
I wonder, if this is what we’re going to allow to stand for normalcy, what might the new definition of insanity become? When is it time for polite adults to break the silence and tell all these manipulated children and their abusive Svengalis, “Enough is enough”? Our kids are being robbed, robbed of the knowledge of natural history and any understanding of the Creator.
What we’re witnessing is no climate crisis, but the development and growth of a new religion, a stilted faith that calls for repentance of any politically incorrect sins while offering absolution to those who would submit to the approved policies. The apostles and prophets of this corrupt doctrine populate the political class. The priests teach in our schools. And the evangelists are heavily scattered through the entertainment and corporate news industries. They commune around the sacrament of abortion, their means to control populations of what they see as the only invasive element in this world’s ecology: people.
And yet, what I worry more about are not the true believers, but the syncretism that is blending into the Christian faithful. Well intended people allow the culture to darken the attitudes of their minds, not realizing that so much of what they give away in the argument is God’s sovereignty and his promise.
This new religion is no new problem, however. The god of this age has always manipulated masses through ignorance. This is why the shared encouragement in the early church was a call to enlightenment: “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine his light on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)