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In March 2024, author Brian McLaren talked to Broadview about his latest book “Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart,” which discusses the Christian community’s relationship with the natural world.
Climate change is one of those topics that immediately causes stress. In his latest book, McLaren poses a complicated yet hopeful way of filtering through the chaos, according to Broadview. But to get to the hope means fighting through apathy, McLaren states. “As I was going deeper into my research, I noticed that one of my biggest problems is my own brain. It goes from one extreme to the other. The optimistic side says, ‘everything will be all right, technology will solve it, the human spirit will solve it,’ while the opposite side says, ‘it’s hopeless, it’s too big of a problem,'” McLaren told the outlet. (POLL: Should the Government Reduce Regulations on Businesses?)
“I realized I wasn’t necessarily seeing reality — I was seeing what my brain most easily gravitates towards. I became especially suspicious because both deep optimism and deep pessimism lead to the same result: apathy. Something in me said that’s probably a glitch in my brain, that it would be far wiser to look for agency in the middle of the climate emergency.”
What About God?
God and His plan for the Earth is often ignored when it comes to the climate change conversation, McLaren continued. “Unfortunately, I don’t think biblical texts shape anybody’s thinking as much as people claim they do. What happens is economic, political and social ideologies train people to use certain biblical texts to reinforce those ideologies,” he noted. Thankfully the information is in there. McLaren just needed to know where to look. He found his first answers in Genesis, where he found “God pronouncing the earth good.” (POLL: Is the Federal Minimum Wage Too Low?)
“There is inherent goodness in the world, apart from people and apart from religion. But I was always taught to look at one verse in that chapter that speaks of humans having dominion over the earth. And dominion was understood as a carte blanche to do to the earth whatever we want, for our benefit,” McLaren continued.
“What has happened to me, in the writing of this book, is I’ve gone back and done a survey of the whole Bible from beginning to end as an ecological text. What has become clear to me is that the Hebrew people, as the Bible was taking shape, were land-rooted people who were resisting being colonized by imperial powers around them. And as they were resisting empire, they were trying to hold on to deeper values that had to do with a deep connection to the land. It strikes me how much we need to restore not only our connection to the earth, but our very existence as part of the earth. We’re not just saying we need to value nature — we need to understand we are part of nature. We are nature caring for nature.”
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