Human Nature Spring 2002

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My career as a Christian environmental activist lasted about six hours. In a long hallway of the Buchanan building at the University of British Columbia one morning, I resisted the desire to check if anyone was watching and taped to the outside of my locker door the placard I had carefully lettered the previous night in a fit of evangelical inspiration. It read:

GOD'S ENVIRONMENTALISM: Hear the word of the Lord, you Canadians, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying." (Hos. 4:1b-3, New International Version)

I don't know if it was the references to deity or the use of Hosea's rather confrontational approach, but when I returned later in the day I found a wad of gum stuck in the middle of my oracle. This was third-rate heckling at best, but still enough to put my little soul on the retreat. I removed the poster and never again took revelation public.

My brief prophetic career didn't come out of nowhere. Only a few years earlier, I had asked a seminarian at my denominational student residence, "If it's all going to burn up anyway, why should we preserve it now?" I don't remember the details of his answer, only his calm attention and exemplary patience. Soon after that, I became convinced that it was important to cut the little plastic windows out of business envelopes before recycling them. Evil was newly defined for me as a styrofoam cup. Following a life-changing ...

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