I like the recycling story! That’s a great example where values won over incentives.

And that’s just small potatoes. Buying solar panels costs tens of thousands of dollars. So perhaps people consider fiscal responsibility before environmental responsibility? But I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.

I was reading a statistical graphic yesterday that said some 2% of the world owns a computer, and 8% have money in the bank. A sobering statistic. Jesus would definitely be compassionately loving on, healing, and helping those in great need. Thanks for the reminder, JR.

What about the demand side of the equation? Wealthy humans demand these objects and essentially treat the laborer humans who assemble these objects as objects. Isn’t there some spiritual battle for the demand objects of such esoteric objects? If Jesus were alive coud he afford his own an iPad? Or would He be the one assembling the iPad?

JR

I think you have hit the nail on the head with your statement, “What may be needed is a complete re-conception of the system itself.”

I would like to know if you would be interested in doing what you have described above: “a living systems improvement approach would require deep thinking and reconfiguration. It would mean asking a lot of hard questions and examining every cog in the church, comparing it to known kingdom values, and removing or changing those parts that don’t conform. That process can be quite jarring, but I think it’s worth it if it means healthier, more Christ-centered disciples.”

With the Lord, I am putting together a team of thinkers across America whose purpose is to re-evaluate the way Christianity is organized. The goal is to conceptualize a “living systems approach,” as you have so aptly termed it, that would fulfill our responsibility to “create the best environment possible in our churches with what we’re given.” Basically, it’s our job to do church as effectively as we can, recognizing that our current system is, at best, insufficient for adequate growth and revival in American Christianity.

I found your article through a blog search and believe that this team might be a good fit for you. If you are interested in dialoguing more about a concrete application for church reconfiguration, I would love to talk with you further. The basic proposal as it stands now is located here: https://sites.google.com/site/usmissionsproposal

The U.S. Missions Proposal recognizes that American Christianity is a missions effort and that our systems have got to be deliberately redesigned according to the most effective missions model for our cultural climate. In other words, we can become intentional and even, as you put it, “scientific” about how we are using the massive resources God has given us in the miraculous system of American Christianity. It is critical that we implement a Biblical strategy from God before these resources dwindle further.

You believe that it is worth the time and effort that it will take to come up with a better blueprint for discipleship. The good news is that the U.S. Missions Proposal has already examined the major “cogs” that we’re dealing with and put reform into a concrete but fertile context. It sounds unbelievable, and I can only say that something this important can only and must only be from the Lord. It is simple yet complex, as the issues are, and covers (ironically, as per the title of your post) how heath care and education interact with church reform as well as the development of Christian Intentional Community and Internet Systems.

Please ask God if you are one of the people he will use to “jar” our nation to life by getting this proposal off the ground. We would love to have the support of your blog. Your readers are, of course, invited to read the Proposal and contact me as well.

Thanks, Sara
1cor27@gmail.com

The Communist/China example is certainly intriguing. I was reading a National Geographic article that talked about C02 emissions in cities versus the rest of the country, and almost all cities emit less C02 per capita than the other parts of the country…EXCEPT places like Beijing, where it was reversed! So there’s definitely something going on there, and I’ve definitely seen on small scales where lack of explicit ownership leads to poor care of items–if it doesn’t belong to me, why should I care? I’m thinking there has to be some sort of middle ground, or a way to both take ownership and responsibility for that which is within our care.

Just as a quick exercise, I did a quick Google search on Cuba (population 11 million) and Portugal (population 10 million), and their respective carbon emissions. In 2009, Cuba (Communist) emitted 0.75 metric tons of carbon, versus Portugal (Democracy) with about 1.5 metric tons of carbon. Is there anything to that? Not sure. I want to dig in a little bit more into that, but I’d be curious to see if there’s any long-standing data on something like that.

And whoa, guano blankets. Sounds intense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts–you’ve definitely got me thinking even more!

My take is that what the market/science have done is enable survival of much larger numbers of people. For that given number of people living, markets tend to minimize environmental damage, particularly where more things are owned. Lack of explicit ownership leads to problems. The proof of this is in comparing the environmental record of market oriented society versus the communist/socialist countries. A very current example is modern China. I saw a story today that compared living in Beijing to being equivalent to living downwind from a forest fire!

And of course, science just extends the power of people to do more of what they would do otherwise. Pre-scientific societies often followed paths (like slash and burn agriculture) that so degraded their environments that whole civilizations would have to get up and move to find someplace their crops would grow. It’s also instructive to look at the effects of purely natural forces on environments. For example, before they were hunted to extinction, passenger pigeons were so prolific that flocks of them could take days to pass overhead and when they picked a place to land, their guano would blanket the area, killing all plants in the area by the time they left.

Like I said, complex (and interesting) question.