Is God green?  Did Jesus have anything to say about the environment?  People are starting to ask these questions as we confront a new situation unique to our history - are we killing our planet?

 

Good questions for this new year actually come from the preface to the Green Bible. Highlighted in green ink are all the rich and varied passages which speak directly of God's creation and right living with all of creation. The passages selected show us how God and Jesus interact with, care for, and are intimately involved with all of creation; how earth, air, water, plants, animals and humans are interdependent; how nature responds to God and finally how we are called to care for creation.

 

Reading the bible through a green lens is likely to transform your thinking. It did mine. I found myself devouring 'green' passages, questioning why that got included and another left out (such as the earthquake at the resurrection in Matthew 28:2).  A consistent pattern emerges. Everything is God's and nature responds to His commands.  Whatever we 'own' is really entrusted to us by God, borrowed and used by us for a time, after which we must let go. One day we will be called to account for our stewardship of His creation.  Take that deeply on board and we start to live differently - with more compassion and reverence for the earth and all the creatures who inhabit this world with us.

 

The opening section contains a number of essays from people such as Desmond Tutu, Dave Bookless; Brian McClaren, Tom Wright, Pope John Paul II and Ellen Bernstein. These are just brilliant and very challenging. 

"Too often my environmentally concerned friends are right in thinking that Christians are part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Too often we put the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist capitalism and retain only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through." writes Brian McClaren.

 

Read the newspapers: we are in for a rough time and we have to live more simply and be more environmentally aware.  Read this bible and we have the fullest possible motivation for doing just that. 

We cannot be all that God wants us to be without caring about the earth.

Rick Warren, author of 'The Purpose Drive Life'

 

At £14.99 from Harper Collins (or just £9.99 if you get it through A Rocha) the Green Bible should be part of your survival kit - more indispensable than a wind up torch.

 

 

Anne Martin