“It’s not personal.”
This was the comment made by a well-intentioned young woman in a parish bible study I led about the Exodus story of the plagues.
She was grappling with the dissonance she felt between her belief in an all-loving God and God’s annihilation of Egypt’s first-born sons.
The Egyptians shouldn’t hold a grudge, she reasoned, because God didn’t direct the deaths of those beloved children personally at those mom and dads, brothers and sisters.
Because it wasn’t personal, the boys were unfortunate collateral damage in the epic struggle to push Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.
The Egyptians ought to understand that, and God was in the clear she concluded.
While I don’t subscribe to this particular explanation, It’s not personal is a handy excuse to reconcile the cognitive and affective dissonance between someone’s character and actions.
For example, when Christians profess to love their neighbors like themselves, but don’t wear a mask to protect others from a deadly virus that could kill them: It’s not personal.
They don’t intend to infect or kill others. It’s this simple: the virus isn’t a real or credible threat to them.
Because the virus isn’t personal, neither is the need to prevent it for others.
Data and science—facts—are not changing their minds.
Nor are the mounting volumes of personal stories—those heart-rending confessions from people literally on their death-beds confessing that the virus wasn’t real, so it wasn’t personal…until it very, very much was.
It’s Not Personal Enough—Yet
If this pandemic hasn’t been enough to show people that we have to work together to reverse this universal yet invisible threat, how are we going to work together to reverse our universal, invisible threat of climate change?
Human beings are hard-wired to respond to immediate threats while scanning the environment for potential ones, and data just isn’t enough to focus our attention.
Facts don’t move our personal threat level from “yellow” to “red.”
The immediate threat caused by climate change is less personal to more of us than the pandemic.
Unless we’re personally connected to, for example, people who live on the Marshall Islands[1] who are facing the very difficult and expensive decision to elevate their island home and relocate 55,000 people to higher ground because of the actual rising sea levels they face—they will be, I hate to confess, collateral damage for the rest of us because we aren’t as personally affected yet.
Unless we’re personally connected to one of the tens of thousands of agricultural workers[2] across dozens of small towns in Western California affected by the water cutbacks in response to the decreasing amount of water in the Colorado River—their economic survival is collateral damage for the rest of us because we aren’t as personally affected yet.
Unless we’re personally connected to one of the 173,000 people[3] in the U.S. each year whose deaths are attributable to temperature extremes (usually due to heart and breathing issues, drowning, and even homicide[4])—they are collateral damage for the rest of us because we aren’t as personally affected yet.
This reality raises the cognitive and affective dissonance of what we proclaim—love of neighbor as ourselves—versus our actions: do nothing and accept “collateral damage.”
If the Body of Christ is One Thing, It’s Personal
There ought to be no such thing as collateral damage. Because if the Body of Christ is one thing, it’s personal.
Fortunately, we preachers have a new resource to help us preach the gospel into the personal effects of climate change on those we are called to love.
New Resource!
Backstory Preaching’s friend The Rev’d Dr. Leah Schade has partnered with The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development to develop a new free resource called EcoPreacher 1-2-3.
Here’s a quick description from the website (emphasis mine):
God’s Creation needs good preaching! Good preaching needs God’s Creation!
• Discover a new perspective for engaging the Bible that deepens and expands your faith.
• Learn how we can proclaim justice for God’s Creation in the face of climate change and other environmental issues.
• Be equipped with the knowledge and tools you need to make your preaching relevant, courageous, and creative.
• Be inspired to make a difference for our planet, your community, and our future.In an effort to encourage clergy to preach and teach on Christian ecology at least once a month, the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development and the Rev. Dr. Leah Schade have partnered to develop a new free resource called EcoPreacher 1-2-3. Drawing from Eco Bible, a Jewish ecological commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures, Dr. Schade, author of Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015), provides sermon preparation for preaching about caring for God’s Creation that is short, accessible, and based on a solid biblical foundation.
EcoPreacher 1-2-3 offers a brief “eco-exegesis” for interpreting a Hebrew text from the Revised Common Lectionary for that Sunday. This is followed by one “eco idea” for the basis of the sermon, two “eco questions” to go deeper, and three “eco actions” to choose from to help a congregation put their faith into action. With this resource, preachers can use the sermon ideas in their own context and make it relevant for their congregation.
• Adaptable to your preaching context
• Sparks ideas for sermon preparation
• Inspirational
• Ecumenical
• Providing knowledge and tools to make your preaching courageous and creative
Sign up to receive EcoPreacher 1-2-3 resources here.
I encourage you to access this new, free, and valuable resource, because this Earth God made to sustain us is very personal to us all.
[1]Letman, Jon. (2018, November 19). Rising seas give island nation a stark choice: relocate or elevate. National Geographic. www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/rising-seas-force-marshall-islands-relocate-elevate-artificial-islands
[2]Sommer, Lauren. (2021, June 9). The Drought In The Western U.S. Is Getting Bad. Climate Change Is Making It Worse. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1003424717/the-drought-in-the-western-u-s-is-getting-bad-climate-change-is-making-it-worse
[3]Woodruff Health Sciences Center. (2021, July 8). Global study: 5 million deaths a year linked to temperature changes. Emory. https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/07/climate_change_heat_related_deaths/index.html
[4]Christensen, Jen. (2021, August 19.) Study finds 'very concerning' 74% increase in deaths associated with extreme heat brought on by the climate crisis. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/health/heat-deaths-concerning-study/index.html