A Frenchman named Pascal Bruckner wrote a recent book entitled "The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse -- Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings." Although Bruckner is himself a liberal, he criticizes the "Green" movement as being a secular religion. He points out that environmentalism revives a monastic mentality that wraps human guilt together with a call for humility, repentance and a discipline of abasement. His thesis has caused me to reflect on the religious aspects of environmentalism. Some of the religious features of environmentalism are as follows: 1) The preaching of apocalyptic doom. The earth will be destroyed by environmental disasters.
2) Man is the problem, having brought sin through technology and greed and a love of comfort. We must repent of our kilowatt usage. Repent and we shall be saved.
3) The Earth, or Mother Nature, is a god to be served. She gets angry at times and demonstrates her wrath through hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, intense heat, snowstorms, etc. We must pacify her by reducing our carbon footprint. To deny this correlation between climate change and human carbon emissions is an outrageous form of heresy that must be punished.
4) Mother Nature should have her own religious holiday -- Earth Day.
5) Children should be catechized and taught to honor Mother Nature – and they are, in public schools. Forget about the First Amendment prohibition of establishing a particular religion by the power of the state!
6) We must be careful to engage in good works, such as recycling and the buying of “green” products.
Thus, environmentalism contains all the basic features of a religion. Consequently, secularists are only pretending to be secular (or non-religious). The strident pronouncements against religion in schools and in the public arena is only a masquerade, disguising the fact that another religion has already been adopted and inculcated. It is Christianity, not religion, that is hated and opposed and must be erased from public life. This reminds me of Rom. 1:25-32:
“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” (Rom 1:25-32)
Man is a religious and worshiping creature. When he rejects the true God, he always chooses another. He will not exchange the real God for nothing. No, he will find someone or something else to worship and serve. Many in America today have chosen to embrace the earth God. As a consequence of our widespread idolatry, God is taking away the gift of sanity and giving us over to degrading passions like homosexuality. It is not a manifestation of enlightenment; it is a manifestation of darkness.
