Almighty Father, whose blessed Son before his passion prayed
for his disciples that they might be one, as you and he are one:
Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and
obedience to you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit,
that the world may believe in him whom you have sent, your
Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
From the Book of Common Prayer

There seems to be a little tiff going on right now in the Christian community. There are some brothers and sisters who love Jesus who also believe that there are other political issues aside from abortion and gay marriage. They have preached sermons, written books and blogged about poverty, social equality, being friendly to the earth, etc. This has rankled those who have been pushing abortion and gay marriage issues pretty hard and a lively discussion has ensued about what Christians should focus on.

Ok. Two things. First, all of this talk about what we should "focus" on and what the "important" issues are is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure we can multitask. For instance, my wife and I have an adopted baby (a demonstration of a pro-life ethic) and at the same time we manage to be avid recyclers. Yeah, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We're not even that special.

So I guess my credo starts, "I believe in the ability of Christ-followers to multitask". I also believe that all our work to spread the gospel is for naught if we can't be civil with each other because then we aren't promoting heaven on earth. To borrow Rob Bell's terminology, we're inviting Hell to earth. It's our job to show people how to live harmoniously. It's our job to show people that the love of Christ is so revolutionary that it keeps us from engaging in shallow power plays for political influence and instead shows that world that our lives have been revolutionized in to those of servants who give of ourselves (even if nobody notices, not even Washington) because Christ is calling us to a more robust and full life. Life abundantly, if you will.

I think you can be green and be a Christian. I don't see how you can't. It's not worshiping the earth, it's being the best steward possible toward the earth that God has blessed us with. And I'm pretty sure that we'll still have time to live out other Christ-like ethics as well.

Fair Dinkum