“So now what?” This is the question we asked ourselves in God and Nature II. It is relatively easy to believe that Christians should take care of creation but how we should go about doing that is much trickier. Should we look primarily to market-based solutions to deal with the ecological mess we’ve gotten ourselves into? Or, should we focus on being agents for change at the grassroots level? Is some kind of combination of both desirable? These are questions we wrestled with throughout the week.
Our discussions this week took place in the wake of our homestay with Mennonite friends in Barton Creek. We have a lot to learn from them, if we have the ears to hear and the eyes to see. For me (Courtnay), the “take-away” message from that experience is this: what the groaning earth needs is people who will live differently. We can’t trust in technology to save us; technology carries with it many unintended consequences. Nor can we trust in the market that turns greed into a virtue to save us. What the world needs is people who are peculiar, people who catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God in our midst and align their lives with that reality. The Mennonites in Barton Creek are just such a people. They help each other grow their own food, make their own lumber, build their own houses, sew their own clothes, and travel by horse and buggy. They are patient. They are a community in the truest sense of the world. Are they perfect? No. Should we all become Old Order Mennonites? No. But…don’t our single-family homes, with a two-car garage, and a TV in each bedroom seem hollow in comparison? Are we not dying in North America from loneliness and isolation due to a lack of community? As Shane Claiborne reminds us, the question we should be asking is not “is there life after death”, but rather, “is there life before death”.
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