Fast food continent

Recently, I saw this ad—one of several from the Acton Institute, a conservative think tank that advocates, among other things, the use of free market economics to help fight poverty:

I respect the Acton Institute. I think they have several good ideas about fighting poverty. Some of their other ads advocate things like microloans for the poor and access to global markets for developing countries so they can trade their goods freely.

But in the case of this particular ad, there’s another perspective worth considering. What if 30 grams of fat is not, in fact, good for the world’s poor? What if the Big Mac represents the kind of consumerism that can hurt the poor by damaging their environment?

Consider this example from Matthew Sleeth’s book Serve God, Save the Planet (which I blogged about last month):

To obtain billions of hamburger patties for a few cents each, America’s fast-food restaurants buy much of their meat from Central and South American farmers. These farmers clear-cut forests, often starting a cattle-raising process that can be sustained for only a few short years. The loss of rain forests in South America means that the clouds they once made no longer blow across the Atlantic to drop their water on Africa. As a result, the Sahara grows by thousands of acres a year. What is the bottom line for Africans? More starvation. And the bottom line for Americans? Cheap burgers and growing waistlines.

South American rain forests generate the clouds that deposit rain on African farmlands. As these life-giving forests disappear, children starve.

Incidentally, those working in places like East Africa confirm that the frequency and severity of droughts has increased significantly. Unfortunately, most of the mainstream media is too obsessed with the latest drunken celebrity incarceration story to cover the plight of the rural African farmer.

Meanwhile, these farmers report more and more difficulty as their climate changes for the worse. The Sahara is pushing southward, and the rains that once fell with some measure of predictability are becoming scarce.

In a world where children starve so I can scarf down a $4.00 value meal (one that will probably shorten my life span as well), can we really argue that unbridled consumerism is good in all its forms? Adam Smith, the father of free market economics, envisioned an invisible hand—the idea that a person who is free to pursue their own economic well-being will unwittingly contribute to the common good.

But what happens when consumerism reaches epic proportions? What happens when our appetite for more stuff—including things which, like the Big Mac, have no redeeming value—grows out of control? What happens when we embrace capitalism without restraint, without accountability, and without responsibility for those who are impacted by the choices we make?

Is it possible that we’ve bound the invisible hand? That the connection between self-interest and the common good has been broken by our unrestrained (and unrecognized) greed?

Is it possible that our choice of what and where to eat is really a choice of whether or not we will love our neighbors (including those who live on the other side of the planet)?

It may be that fast food is not only hazardous to our health. It may be that our addiction to fast food is hazardous to Africa’s health.

Dobson and global warming (part 2)

Earlier this month, Newsweek wrote about Dobson’s call for Richard Cizik to resign from the NAE over his comments on global warming. Then Tom Minnery, a senior vp at Focus on the Family, responded. (You have to scroll down a bit to get to Minnery’s letter to the editor.)

And Christianity Today’s weblog weighed in last week as well. Their post is well worth reading.

More to come (eventually)…

Dobson and global warming (updated)

James Dobson has a new enemy. Someone he believes is trying to shift emphasis “away from the great moral issues of our time.” Someone who, in his opinion, is engaging in a “dangerous and divisive” conversation.

The culprit is Richard Cizik, vice president of the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals). His crime? Calling on evangelicals to articulate a public theology of creation care.

In an open letter to the NAE, Dobson and several others recently called on Cizik to resign, saying that his “disturbing views seem to be contributing to the growing confusion about the very term ‘evangelical.’” Ouch.

I’m not a scientist. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of global warming. Still… I am troubled (though not surprised) by tone and content of Dobson’s letter.

Caring about the earth is not the exclusive domain of tree-huggers and pantheists. Environmental issues are not just for one political party or ideology. Cizik, a self-described “pro-Bush conservative,” is proof of that.

Whatever one believes about global warming—whether it’s real, whether its causes are human or natural (or both), and what (if anything) should be done about it—one thing seems clear: creation care is important to God.

It’s so important to God, in fact, that it was one of the very first commands he gave us: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28, TNIV)

To subdue the earth is to harness its natural resources for our benefit—but it is to do so in ways that are responsible and sustainable. (In other words, being pro-environment should not mean being anti-agriculture, anti-forestry, or anti-industry.)

One of the distinctives of ancient Jewish thought was the idea that humans ought to work with the land, not against it. You can see it in Jewish architecture. Its humble simplicity is a stark contrast to the mountain-leveling construction projects of the Greeks and the Romans.

In fact, creation care is part of the reason we are here: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15, TNIV).

Creation care (or environmentalism or whatever you choose to call it) is about stewardship. It’s about realizing that we are made from the same stuff that the earth is—that we are connected to the earth because we’re all made by the same creator.

It’s about realizing that how you treat something reflects how you truly feel about its creator.

Let me illustrate. Several years ago, I was at my grandmother’s house when I found a drawer, tucked away on the third floor, crammed with papers. My grandmother had kept every letter, every card, every picture I had sent her when I was little.

Some of the letters and drawings were pretty comical. (Apparently, when I was five, I though grandmothers appreciated pictures of things like dinosaurs pooping.)

Why did she keep all those drawings (even the pooping t-rex)? She cherished them because she cherished the person who made them.

The same is true for us and God’s creation. Our success or failure to care for what God has entrusted to us will reveal how we really feel about the one who made this world.

Sincere Christians will disagree on how we should go about caring for our environment, how we go about obeying the spirit of Genesis 1:28.

The point is that we need to be having the conversation. Christians ought to be wrestling with things like creation care, global warming, etc. We need to acknowledge that if creation care is important to God, then contrary to what Dr. Dobson thinks, it may well be “one of the great moral issues of our day.”

More to come on the open letter and a theology of creation care…

[Update: Click here to read Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. You can also view the list of signatories to this statement.]