Coach's Corner

What Global Warming Teaches Us About The Need For Faith

Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by markdoebler in Culture, Faith

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who simply can’t come to terms with the reality of God.  I look around me and I see the evidence everywhere I turn… in the intricacy of a flower, the strength of a tree, the beauty of the sky, the smile in a face, the variety in a snowflake, the words of scripture, and the confirmation in my own heart.  It all calls me to worship and give my life to a creator God.

But there are many that just can’t make peace with that.  And yet, everywhere you find mankind, you find him involved in some sort of worship.  In the absence of a God, that’s truly hard to explain, isn’t it?  What is it in the heart of a man that compels him to give himself to something larger…. something greater?  The simple answer is that it is the way God designed us.  We have a need to worship… we have a need to express our faith in something bigger than ourselves.

Those who deny the existence of God, will often scoff at the need to worship.  I can recall the ex-Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, proclaiming that religion is a “crutch” for weak people.  And yet in the end, we all worship something.  We all express faith in some way.  If not God, then we will redirect it toward something else.

To say that global warming science has taken a hit in the last few months would be an understatement.  A more appropriate assessment is that the wheels have fallen off the wagon.  Intentional fraud and cover-up has been revealed in a systemic fashion.  It’s not just the “leaked” emails anymore… it’s much broader than that.

All of which has brought many people to a new conclusion about the truth of global warming and a reassessment of our reaction to it over the last twenty years.  In a revealing article about this, Michael Barone made this fascinating observation:

The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a religious faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand.

Whatever your take on global warming may be at this point, you must confess that Barone’s observation is spot-on.  The global warming movement bears all the trappings of a religious commitment…. minus God.

Bob Dylan via last.fm

So what does all this mean?  Bob Dylan once advised us that “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”.  And in fact we will.  We are divinely designed and created by God to do so.  So, if you are a Christ-follower, I urge you to realize this simple truth, and let’s point people to a genuine faith… a life-changing faith… an eternal faith… worshiping and following a real God.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The End is Nigh: How the Religious Language of Global Warming is Failing (treehugger.com)
• Chris Wallace: ClimateGate an Example of How Global Warming Has Become a Religion (dakotavoice.com)

Tags: Al Gore, Bob Dylan, Climate change, Environment, Existence of God, Global warming, Jesse Ventura, religion