earth day: reflections on doubting thomas

Today is Earth Day. It’s the day when Christians and non-Christians can get together, drive down the highway and throw their fast-food bag and leftover fries to the side of the road and no one will care. Wait. What? No, that is the one day when we come together not to do that. Earth Day is a day, or a week in some communities, to clean up the messes we have made in parks and roadsides. Earth Day does seem to bring Christians and non-Christians together. Everyone agrees, at least, that the trash on the side of the road doesn’t look good.

On every other day though it seems that just like with politics, morals, and so on there is a deep divide between Christians and non-Christians on the environment. Just look at global warming. As most non-Christians take global warming to be a fact, still many Christians find it to be a hoax, unimportant, and total boo-hockey.

The gospel lesson from this week was about Doubting Thomas which can be found in John chapter 20. As my pastor pointed out this Sunday, Thomas gets a bad rap. He gets a bad rap because Thomas doubted. His faith was bent on seeing and not just believing. Thomas will forever be seen in a bad light as Doubting Thomas. Thomas has something in common with the majority of Christians today. Just like Thomas had to see and touch to believe, so do Christians have to see and touch to believe that there is global warming. It’s a kind of sad irony. With all the cold weather and snow this winter it seems to make doubting that much easier and believing that much harder.

Yet, Earth Day was not founded because of global warming and neither was this argument. Caring for creation isn’t just about global warming. It’s about caring for earth and all of God’s good creation. What does it say when we destroy something God has created? What does it say about resurrection hope, that like the disciples a week after Jesus rose, when we don’t care about creation?