We’ve all seen the news stories of various individuals and groups that are driven by an overwhelming fear of climate change that has been preached to them and are driven to sit on highways blocking traffic for people trying to work or get to work or attempting to destroy works of art in museums. They have become convinced our time is so short to save the planet and thus these types of actions are justified. They have listened to the alarmists and do not know a very basic truth that is an antidote to this fear.
Even among evangelicals, we see a lot of back and forth about climate change and the thing I notice is it’s usually all about the science. I’m a lover of science, always have been, but I know there is no such thing as “THE science” on a lot of issues of our day. As “the latest thing” comes up, all the involved scientists don’t gather in a big conference room and come to a unanimous opinion and brand it “The Science”(TM). When mass media outlets tells me “scientists say…”, I put that right into the category of “9 out of 10 dentists recommend this toothpaste.” Pick any current social issue where “the science” is brought in and you can find large groups of true scientists on polar opposite sides if all sides are allowed to speak. Why? Well, there is the observed data but then there are different interpretations of what that data means – various hypotheses. I think most interpretation of causality is driven by the scientist’s worldview and the necessary presuppositions of that worldview and scientists with the same data can have polar opposite worldviews. Huge example is evolution (random time and chance) vs. intelligent design and creation; a huge example of presuppositions that will drive the interpretation of raw data.
But this is TheoThoughts and I’m not interested in diving into any data or the science here. The thing I find a bit disappointing in the climate change discussions among believers is you hear much about “The Science” but rarely “The Scripture”. We base our opinions on this group of scientists saying “X” or that group of scientists saying “Y” as relayed to us by our preferred media outlets, but what we as believers should be most concerned about is “What does our Creator God say about His creation?” It is almost as if we believe this is simply a science question, it is not a theology or salvific question, so the Bible would have no bearing on this – right?
Wrong.
There are so many verses across Scripture concerning God’s sovereignty and control over his creation and HIS direct control over its climate. This truth is that antidote to all the climate alarmism and fear. God promises that He will control things such that “cold and heat”, seedtime and harvest, and our seasons shall continue under his direct orders:
22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Gen 8:22 ESV.
We also know the following verses concerning Jesus’ complete control over His creation and how He could directly control its weather patterns:
24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
Matt 8:24-27 ESV
There are far more verses that establish the direct control of God over His creation with so many directly addressing His control over its climate. Let’s turn to the specific topic of “climate change” and answer a few questions.
Is climate change real and observed today? Yes, of course. The climate has changed in large ways throughout history and continues today. I don’t know of anyone denying that the climate changes.
What is the cause of climate change?
Man’s answer: Fossil fuels, CO2, cow flatulence.
God’s answer: Your sin and rebellion.
We’re too sophisticated today to believe this, but it is evident throughout scripture. The overall climate and weather are tools in the hand of our God that he uses for blessing or cursing, reward or punishment. We, even among evangelicals today, have lost this in our worldview. We believe the mass media when they tell us what scientists apparently all agree on based on their presuppositions, not our Bibles. I will refrain from documenting many of man’s failed climate predictions over the last 100 years (of which there are many) or our attempts to control the climate (cloud seeding, etc.) and its failures.
It is God who raises the temperature and can “scorch” the earth and its due to the land being defiled by its inhabitants in our rebellion against our Creator:
5 The earth lies defiled
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed the laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
6 Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,
and few men are left.
Isa 24:5-6 ESV
And again:
8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9 They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.
Rev 16:8-9 ESV
And here God gets into the specificity with which he can wield his tool of weather patterns to get people to repent:
6 “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
and lack of bread in all your places,
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the LORD.
7 “I also withheld the rain from you
when there were yet three months to the harvest;
I would send rain on one city,
and send no rain on another city;
one field would have rain,
and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
8 so two or three cities would wander to another city
to drink water, and would not be satisfied;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the LORD.
9 “I struck you with blight and mildew;
your many gardens and your vineyards,
your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the LORD.
13 For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind,
and declares to man what is his thought,
who makes the morning darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth—
the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name!
Amos 4:6-9, 13 ESV
And as God takes a people into a land “flowing with milk and honey”, they receive this warning. Climate patterns are a tool in God’s hand.
16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you.
Deut 11:16-17 ESV
Job chapters 38-41 should be regular required reading for all to remind us who our God is. Jesus is not our “buddy”, he is the one who speaks to Job in these chapters, designed to put us in our place. I also notice here the One who sets the shoreline. A few excerpts:
1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war?
24 What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?
25 “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
26 to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?
28 “Has the rain a father,
or who has begotten the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?
30 The waters become hard like stone,
and the face of the deep is frozen
Job 38:1-11, 22-30 ESV
In John Piper’s book titled “Providence”, he says on page 221, “The picture presented in the Bible, cover to cover, is not one of God creating the natural world to run on its own while he maintains his distance. What we find instead is a picture of God creating, sustaining, owning, and governing the world of nature. His providence is not, so to speak, by proxy, but present and hands-on – the kind of closeness that causes the biblical writers to say such things as “He makes grass grow on the hills” (Ps. 147:8), “God appointed a worm that attacked the plant” (Jonah 4:7), and “He brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (PS. 135:7). This chapter is about the close attentiveness – the pervasive involvement – of God’s providence in nature to make it a theater of wonders.“
A “theater of wonders”, that’s what we’ve lost in our scientific, technological age as we become functional Deists. As Piper continues on page 224, “It is a tragic fact of the modern world that most contemporary, scientifically minded people think it is more true and significant to speak of the technicalities of photosynthesis than to say, “God makes the grass grow.” This is not just a sentence for children. It is a sentence – a reality – desperately needed by the soul-shrunken modern man whose world has been reduced from a theater of wonders to a machine running mindlessly on mechanical laws.“
He goes on, “Of course, a God-entranced Christian may happily go about his scientific work on photosynthesis and put technical names on the ways of God. But woe to us if we follow the secular spirit of the age into a frame of mind where God is out of sight, out of mind, and out of our everyday conversations about the wonders of growing grass“, and I’d add – or climate change.
Yahweh uses climate patterns to reward righteousness and faithfulness or punish rebellion. As we continue to deepen our rebellion (and we are now making such rebellion official policy; the law of the land), he will use it to punish with a goal of bringing us to the end of ourselves and into repentance and turning back to him.
That is the only solution. It isn’t covering most of our land with solar panels, outlawing gasoline cars and leaf blowers, or implementing “degrowth” strategies and calling for a several million less people on the planet. It’s repentance.