I can celebrate and protect beauty even though I believe the world has an expiration date (Part 1)

Like non-Christians, Christians are confronted with difficult concepts, even seeming paradoxes. Here is one of the most glaring: Christians believe that there is an expiration date to this earth. We believe that there will one day be a world where fully loving people will live with God in complete harmony. 

We have differing opinions on where that place might be (or even if it is a "place" as you and I define "place"), but we do agree that there are going to be times of upheaval and destruction on this earth. You don't have to be a prophet to see this already happening all around us. (This isn't to say that the "end times are near." Despite what you might hear from some radio or TV personalities, most Christians hold firm in the belief that we don't know when those events are going to take place.)

It might seem easy to conclude that while I would not proactively want to take part in the destruction around me, there also really doesn't seem to be much of a reason to stop others from being destructive. It's just the course of the inevitable anyway. 

And yet, that's not how many Christians view the world and themselves in it.

So, yes, it's a paradox, not unlike the human experience that knows there is death at the end of life but still tries to prolong it in the most comfortable way with the means provided by medicine and loved ones.

Christians believe that this earth, our habitat, is ours to take care of. Aside from forces that are not within human control—such as large natural or cosmic events (like earthquakes or a collision with an astronomical object)—Christians believe that we are put into place to maintain the earth, to become caretakers of the earth.

"Well, wait!" you (and many others) might say. "Really? Many of the Christian churches I know are not particularly known for their environmental causes. And neither are the people who attend there." 

And you'd be right. Overall, the church hasn't shown its greatest strength when it comes to this topic, certainly not here in the US.  

I think there are two reasons for that. 

The first is that it's simply a failure of many local churches and Christians to give this part of their Christian commitment the proper weight. And this is likely connected with another failure—the politicization of many churches, with the environment kidnapped as a political issue rather than what it really is: taking care of our home. Especially (and ironically), urban churches and Christians tend to place greater value on preserving the world they live in, but there are fewer than there should be. And that's the failure part.

There is another reason behind why churches are typically not in the forefront of causes like protecting the environment. Churches are not interest-based (as we already discussed). Christians understand churches to be a representation or reflection of Jesus on earth. And while this might sound a little obscure, the point is that churches are supposed to represent the whole of God and not a part. Taking care of the earth is a very important and unfortunately much-overlooked component of that charge, but it still can't be the only cause the church pursues. 

But this book is not so much about the church and its failures as it is about why there is an "advantage" to being a Christian, including how we relate to the natural world around us.