What's so Good about the Good News?

I have recently spent quite a lot of time in Los Angeles area working and did some work in the Hollywood Hills setting tile. From the vantage point of that deck, I could look far across the valley to see the skyscrapers of Los Angeles in crystal clear skies. It brought back memories to the early 1980s when I was a student at “Lousy Area University”(La Sierra University for those who may not have recognized its “other” name). I well remember the dank blanket of amber smog that shrouded the entire Los Angeles basin in those days, that smell, even the taste in my mouth of the putrid airborne sludge. Today, it is a different story. 6 months ago I drove with a friend past La Sierra University on Highway 91, and I could see the top of Sierra Towers(the famous dorm that I lived in with Kevin Kalua my awesome roommate). I could clearly see the hill behind the towers all the way to the top. The smog situation is a different story than it once was. California has more drivers now than ever. Yes some manufacturing has been taken overseas by a number of “Benedict Arnolds” who are employing workers at a few dollars a day rather than the several hundred that American laborers would require. And one of the reasons why it is advantageous to take manufacturing to other parts of the world is that there are fewer environmental controls in those other places. And this trend may have improved the air quality somewhat. My point is that people cared about the smog problem, and were willing to do something about it. California has implemented tough controls, especially in So. Cal. and it is making a huge difference. Nearly all the freeways have carpool lanes that encourage people to reduce the number of single person vehicles on the highways. Many people are allowed to work from home which has reduced the number of commuters choking the arteries of the city. Mass transit is improving and has added some benefit, but much more emphasis is needed and more options available as they are in other large cities. Even though there is huge improvement in the fossil fuel emissions and their impact on the air quality, we need to cut way down on using fossil fuels. Why? Because even though in the short term there will be some costs, in the long term our planet is being destroyed, one smog-maker at a time. One extra long shower at a time, one garbage sack filled with recyclables that goes into the landfill at a time, one manufacturer with smokestacks belching pollutants in the atmosphere at a time, even if that is in Mexico or China.
I have specifically avoided the label Global Warming because Sarah Palin, certainly one of the greatest thinkers of our modern age, heaven help us all, doesn’t believe it is happening, and I wouldn’t want to offend her. In fact, it seems that there are more Christians who lean right than left and those who lean right seem to not be concerned with things such as pollution, environmental protection, or deforestation. I hear someone say, "God gave Adam and Eve dominion over our earth,” so we are using earth for the benefit of mankind. Yes we have taken dominion over earth just like some men have dominion over their spouses and children and beat the living tar out of them if they don’t comply with “daddy’s unctions!”
Christians ought to be leaders in protecting our earth. God gave Adam and Eve dominion but not to rape the earth and abuse it. He gave us the role of protecting, honoring, caring, and loving our earth with passion and great appreciation. But like a spoiled child who gets everything he wants generally appreciates nothing, so many Christians take the earth that God created and with no honor, integrity, or appreciation, carelessly go on their way, destroying this amazing creation of God’s hand. Shame on Christians for not being at the fore of calling for environmental regulations to protect our planet. Why is it that atheists and agnostics are more concerned for caring for the planet that they think happened by something other than special creation while Christians are too busy burning up fossil fuels running around the globe trying to convert the world to be Christians and hopefull teach these people in the far reaches of the globe to be fellow-rapers of our planet? Oh sorry…that was just “social gospel” speak! I guess Terry is just a socialist, anyway, right? Know what really makes me angry? It’s that if Sarah Palin or one of her ilk label something or someone, they think their little minions will stop thinking about the issues that would cut into their bank accounts. I don’t care if you are democratic or republican or independent or hate politics altogether. All I really wanted to say in this blurb is this…Christians ought to care about our planet that God has entrusted to us, and abusing as so many Christian people have, is unconscionable, and disobedient to the Spirit of the Law of God.

Hi wonderful friend of mine. It is cathartic to write, NO? I enjoyed reading your thoughts as I enjoy talking with you. Of course you do what you can to make a small energy footprint. Everyone doing a little is good. Everyone doing a lot is better. But being a CA resident and now OR you get this point also. Government exists as an agency to counter human greed, selfishness, etc. In the ideal, people would do the correct things. In an environment of kindness, love, generosity, righteousness, government would be self-government. The people screaming the loudest against government are the very ones that must be watched the most closely. A few years ago, businessmen thought nothing of having a few or hundreds of African slaves. Much of the prosperity of white America is the result of centuries of free labor, with no breaks, sunup to sundown in the fields of workers who would walk off the job at the cost of their own lives or a whipping that would send a message to all the other slaves. It took government and an incredibly bloody war to end slavery. Slaves were turned out, yet they had nothing. The poverty was horrific. They were no longer slaves, so their problems were solved? hardly! It took another hundred years for them to be taken seriously and it took government to make people behave with humanity and a great number of courageous Africans with a very few white people to demand that government believe that an African was a human being and not 3/5 of a white human being. A few years before that, a businessmen thought it was okay to travel across the Atlantic in search of India and discovered a new continent that is the most audacious and obviously arrogant statement ever made because there were people here when Columbus arrived. Real people, intelligent, honorable, that had their own system of society and culture. He called them savages because they were different. As humans usually do, they believe their way is superior to another’s. Columbus committed acts of barbarity against the people in the West Indies that would make Hitler blush. He and his men raped, ransacked, stole, and killed with bloodlust. Some call him a hero, I call him a villain and a fiend, and he was a businessman, right? Not even a century ago, there was no provision for people to have their medical needs taken care of when they retired, and those who were not fortunate enough to retire with savings lived in poverty or worked until they died because they couldn’t afford to not work. It was government that stepped in and created as socialized medical model with socialized social security that has relieved so much suffering. It was worked beautifully and the cost has been astronomical. No elderly person has zero income or has no access to healthcare. Now there is a move to bring this same value to every American because those who are young are just as valuable as the elderly. Our medical system should be leading the world, but it has become a monstrously huge business and human greed has found that people will pay just about anything to preserve their lives and well being. I know of one hospital that generates 1.2-1.5 million a month of profit to its owner, this after paying all personnel, overhead, and every other cost. 15 million a year profit, at just one hospital. Sarah Palin and so many like her want business left alone. This man makes 15 million a year on only one of his many hospitals and this profit comes at great cost, cost that trickles down to higher insurance premiums, costs to families who are struggling to make it, costs to an already struggling medicare program. If business was okay on its own, with no governmental regulation or oversight, there would not be a single bankruptcy in America for medical reasons, medicare would not be necessary, social security would not be necessary, and every American would be able to seek medical help just like doc in Little House on the Prairie always came to help the sick and afflicted and accepted what payment could be made. The sickness of our society is found in this simple comparison. The doctor lives in a house large enough for an army that overlooks the shack in which the teacher lives who helped him become a doctor. The first budgets that are cut when there is not enough money…schools and social services. Why? Because children and mentally or physically handicapped people don’t have the kind of money that amounts to enormous financial clout. Kris, I may sound negative, but truthfully I am not. I am thankful for our government, flawed yes, not running perfectly, true, but functioning and through the decades has created a vital check to human greed that has emancipated children, elderly, Africans, and Mexicans. And the emancipation has been from business, from business men and women who if left unchecked would be still committing atrocities against fellow human beings. But further work is needed because atrocities are still being committed every day. Christians ought to have a voice on the right side, the side that is for relief of suffering, regardless of the cost. That is my point. They ought to weigh in on issues regarding funding for schools and social services. I’ll get to the gospel eventually… Love ya Kris