Don’t blame it all on Rio
Imagine a man who is dangerously unhealthy. He has no fatal disease but drinks and smokes too much, lives on fast food and chocolate bars and takes too little exercise. Doctors warn him that such a lifestyle will lead to an early, squalid death. Their evidence is irrefutable, and there is plenty of it. Every day new research proves the multiple dangers to his health, and his mind becomes full of statistics and technical terms which he half understands. He makes tentative pledges to phase out his consumption of alcohol and to look into the possibilities of healthier eating, and so on, but the doctors remain unconvinced and baffled by his suicidal apathy. Of course it does not occur to any of these progressive materialists that physical health might by subordinate to spiritual health — that only when this man fully knows why he wants to live will he show a responsible attitude towards his body.
Though the analogy is imperfect, it helps to explain why the World Summit in Rio, and the Green awareness in general are not the potential salvation of the world. In the words of the great psychologist C G Jung:
‘The salvation of the world consists of the salvation of the soul’.
Environmental issues are very difficult for Christians of our generation to make sense of, for they are new — we can get no direct help on the matter from our favourite theologians of the past. The danger of the new movement is that it will make the concern of Christianity — the salvation of the individual soul — seem like irrelevant escapism. Yet anyone who takes Christianity seriously knows that it is anything but escapist, that it makes demands upon the believer far beyond going on rallies and organising petitions. At our age, and in this age, it is supremely important to hold on to the truth that Christ is the real issue not to be evaded.
Before he was even fully aware of his own faith, W H Auden wrote:
Distrust the man who says, ‘First things first! First let us raise the material standard of living among the Masses, and then we will see what we can do about the spiritual problems’.
In accomplishing the first without considering the second, he will have created an enormous industrial machine that cannot be altered without economic dislocation and ruin.
Earlier this century, Marxism was an issue like environmentalism is now. When any worldly issue is exalted into a pseudo-religion of its own and departs from the true religion of the individual soul, it inflicts useless confusion and pain on society. Certainly the environment is important, as is social equality — the danger lies in seeing either of these as supremely important. What should it profit a man if he gain an unpolluted world but lose his soul?
Modern society suffers from innumerable forms of pseudo-religion, about which it is necessary to be cynical. If it were not so sad it would be laughable how people seek to ‘find themselves’ through expensive meditation courses or dressing up as witches, or whatever. People will believe that any nonsense is the pursuit of Truth rather than face up to the fact that the Eternal Truth is still true, despite the ridiculous arrogance of twentieth-century man. Why will they do anything to evade the Christian truth? Because it is the learning of humility, which of all things is most difficult. Society has become so full of vanity disguised as virtue that only the Christian can begin to sort through the rubbish. And the danger to the world’s health tells us that our duty to do so is more urgent than ever. In short, don’t believe the hype!