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By: The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Sacramento
Texts:
“Noah was a good man, a man of integrity among his contemporaries and he walked with God.”
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”
Last Sunday after church I drove to San Francisco. Just before the tunnel that leads to the Golden Gate Bridge I saw what to me what was a first. I saw a waterfall of fog racing down the mountainsides. It was incredibly beautiful and awe inspiring. Then we plunged into the tunnel and came out the other side into a wall of fog. The Golden Gate Bridge was covered with fog so that I had to take the bridge on faith because I could see no supports. Amazing!
Gary Cox and I were talking about the power of nature recently and he said:
“Earthquakes are very exciting to experience, providing they don’t kill you!”
Nature is enormously powerful. Consider this:
An article from the associated press of the 12th of July 06 asks us to imagine an ancient cataclysmic event: “ Picture an ice dam 30 miles wide, forming a lake 2000 feet deep and 200 miles long stretching from the Idaho panhandle into Western Montana, containing more water than Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined.
Now picture that dam giving way, the water thundering out in 48 hours, through four states, across Washington and into the Pacific.
These cataclysmic events, called the Missoula floods, took place when the world was warming at the end of the last ice age, 14,000 years ago. The biggest scientifically documented floods ever, they left canyons, valleys, lakes and ridges that still dominate the terrain today, some so dramatic they can be seen from space.”
Biblical scholars tell us that the Noah flood story began its life as the Gilgamesh Sumerian flood story of Utnapishtim. In this story the Gods decided to send a flood upon earth. But the God Ea decided to save his favorite Utnapishtim who he commissioned to build a boat which he entered with his family and a number of animals. The storm raged for six days and all human beings were destroyed. On the seventh day Utnapishtim sent out three birds. The first two, a dove and a swallow returned to him but the third, a raven, did not. Whereupon Utnapishtim released the animals and departed the ship making a sacrifice to the Gods who smelled the goodly savor.
Scholars think that this is the story that the godly Yahwist writer known as J inherited. We have J’s account and a priestly account fused together in Genesis chapter six.
What interests me about the Biblical narrative is what the Biblical writers do with it. To them it is not a story of capricious gods deciding to flood the earth. J thinks that the problem behind the flood is human caused. For him it is the problem of human violence.
Human beings wickedness has affected the whole of creation and for better or worse the destiny of the animals is now associated with that of human beings.
Scholars further think that the Biblical flood story was a refection of an historical event or events. There is evidence in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris of massive inundation around 7000 BCE. Tradition enlarged these inundations to that of a world wide flood. In a BBC documentary called Noah’s Flood the fact of the Black sea being inundated is recorded. The Black sea flood has remarkable parallels with the Gilgamesh flood epic. William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University argue that the Mediterranean sea had dried up and filled up a dozen times in a million years. It is 16,000 feet deep in parts and in dry periods was probably a desert floor. They see at Gibraltar a prehistoric waterfall with a volume of 100 Victoria Falls or a thousand Niagaras lasting for 100 years. The Black Sea used to be a fresh water lake. At 110 meters down in the Black Sea today we can see ancient beaches of the former fresh water lake.
When I study this information and see a movie like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth which talks about the break up of the last ice age due to warming and the present melting of the ice caps in the artic and Greenland or read a great book like The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, I become aware of the power of nature and how fragile our existence here is. The melting of the polar ice caps and the loss of the Greenland sheet will devastate the earth.
For the last ten thousand years we have experienced a period of stability on Earth. I personally think that this has come about due to the climate ameliorating affect of plants. I think that there is a lot to the James Lovelock thesis of Gaia.
Some of you will know that I studied the British Industrial revolution’s impact on the British landscape. I did so from theological perspectives to see what ethics drove that revolution.
Back then there was tremendous optimism, a belief that the resources of the planet were endless, that human beings were to conquer and exploit nature for our own good. Human beings were central and we dominated the planet with our values. I heard very little about stewardship and a lot about development, progress, dominating nature and making nature serve us as the pan dominant species. “Where there is muck there is money” was a phrase. In London street sweepers would sweep up the soot, which fell like snow every night. The Thames had so much sewage in it that the birds could walk across it on the sewage and the stench was so bad that the Houses of Parliament hung sheets soaked in lye at the windows to cut down on the odor. Sunshine days in London were incredibly few because of the smog. Fish entering the Thames had difficulty surviving passing over the cyanide lying at the mouth of this great river.
I am not out today to list the calamities that we face as a planet. You can do that homework better than I. But I am concerned that I find things in common both in the Noah story and Global warming of the planet and the value system of the British Industrial Revolution, a value system adopted almost throughout the world today under the doctrine of development and progress.
Let me begin with the Noah story. The J writer sees that human behavior has affected the whole of creation and the destiny of humans and animals are linked together. The Global warming climate change thesis does exactly the same thing. The climate change we are experiencing is human caused due to the massive burning of fossil fuels. The carbon we emit is long lasting. The carbon we emitted in the Industrial revolution is still with us. By 2030 experts estimate there will be 70% more carbon emitted than there is today which will last for centuries in the environment…
In the Noah story the writer charts a way out of the catastrophe. Noah is to build an ark to save himself and all the animals. Noah is pictured as a good man, a man of integrity among his contemporaries, someone who walked with God. Noah labors to build this ark because he knows that this is God’s will. Noah knows that God is displeased with the level of violence on earth. The only thing Noah can do is build an ark. He cannot get through to his contemporaries and get them to stop their violence. Jesus comments on Noah’s problem when he says that “in those days before the flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands, right up to the day when Noah went into the ark, and they suspected nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.”
This is the Noah problem. He can see the way forward, he can see the dangers but no one believes him until it is too late.
Before the Second World War very few people in England believed Churchill when he talked about the menace of Nazi Germany. For years he was in the wilderness and publicly and continually vilified.
But when Hitler began to invade the rest of Europe suddenly Churchill was the only man to turn to as a leader.
I believe that we are watching something very similar in America with Al Gore. Gore is ‘on mission’ he says about climate change. He has been on this subject for a long time before he ran for the Presidency of the United States. In this aspect there is a similarity between Al Gore and Noah. Noah was about to experience catastrophe. Nobody believed him. Al Gore has had the same experience of rejection and so he has gone on a mission to try to build an ark in the form of a movie documentary. He has built well. Scientists have said that he has the science right in his movie. What is the ark we need to build today?
For me the ark we need to build is to embrace reality as it is on this planet. It is to believe the science and act accordingly.
If the Old Testament writer known as J were around today he would deplore the violence we have on this planet. He would not be amused with what is happening in the Middle East. Not only are we violent with each other in war after war, act of terror after act of terror, we are also violent with the earth herself. I read a heart warming story this week from China where hydro engineers were abducted by villagers because they were surveying an area to inundate a large beautiful valley for hydro electric power. The villagers were all to lose their homes that had been theirs for generations. The villagers through this bold tactic got the Chinese government to delay the project. But as China seeks more electric power that is clean, the project at Tiger Leaping Gorge will become justified as a necessity. It is likely to be the same the world over, project by project we will keep on developing the world with the same values of ‘progress’ believed in since the Industrial revolution.
Because of those values, because of human greed, because of special interest, because we say it will cost too much, because we will not limit human population, because we will not cap green house emissions, because we are exploring for more oil and fossil fuels, because we think that the world is just for human beings, we are likely to continue with business as usual. As it was in the days of Noah before the flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands right up to the day that Noah went into the ark and they suspected nothing till the flood came and swept them all away…
I am hopeful that I am sounding a lot like Noah. What I want to say is this; Climate change is coming and it will be devastating. What do we do about this?
Build an ark. Here are the building materials:
1) Scientific information. We need to support our climate scientists in every way possible.
2) The problem of violence across our world is preoccupying us and blinding us and removing the resources we will need to save the planet. Global warming is far more important than the war on terror in terms of its consequences. Terror is closer to a police action rather than an exercise in military might. We must become peace makers as Jesus said. Pre-occupying ourselves with the war on terror when it is not our major problem will be disastrous.
3) We must overhaul the value system behind our development models. To do this we must listen to the earth and find out what values will really sustain the planet. That is why we need our scientists and environmentalists and our ethicists. They must become our leaders.
4) According to Tim Flannery we must commit ourselves to the following goals:
* Eliminate household emissions from electricity,
* Install a solar hot water system (up to 30% reduction in household emissions),
* Install solar panels,
* Use energy efficient appliances ( up to 50% reduction in household emissions),
* Use a triple A rated showerhead ( up to 12% reduction in household emissions),
* Use energy efficient light bulbs ( up to 10% reduction in household emissions),
* Make your next car a hybrid ( up to 70% reduction in transport emissions),
* Walk cycle or take public transport,
* Calculate your carbon footprint,
* Suggest a carbon workplace audit ( up to 30% reduction in emissions),
* Write to a politician asking about their personal carbon emission reductions.
* Politically we must achieve decarbonizing of the Power grid. This is the single most important area with transport next.
* We must use the wind and the sun and geothermal power.
Iceland is leading the way for zero carbon emission because its government has this as a policy and because they are into the development of the hydrogen fuel cell and have abundant geothermal and hydro energy to create hydrogen with. Iceland intends to power all vehicles and her fleet with hydrogen.
Denmark has taken wind power generation up to 20% of their electrical generation. We can do the same or more. We need to avoid nuclear power until the following problems are solved: What to do about the waste, the costs of over two billion for each reactor, fifteen years to construct them, the problem of terrorism and bombs.
If the Biblical writer J was around today he would deplore our violence. As I was listening to NPR this week with the reports from Gaza someone said to me: “It is just horrible. There seems to be no way to get it stopped short of a catastrophe.” I heard in those words an echo from J. In the text with which we began we read that every imagination of the thoughts of human beings was only evil continually. The word in Hebrew for imagination is yecer. It is used with this meaning in only five places in the Old Testament. The Rabbis have picked up on this and there is extensive commentary on the word yecer. The Jews thought that the origin of evil in creation came from human beings. The problem lies in our imagination. It is often argued that this beautiful planet would be just fine without us. Nature would be in balance and coping well with the stressors that strike the planet. If the Hebrews were right what is it about us that is flawed? Its our imagination. Sin is the result of us fixing our imaginations on ourselves or some other person or thing short of God. In Isaiah 26 the word yecer is used again in the verse “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace (meaning unharmed and in well being) whose mind (yecer) is stayed on Thee, because he trusts in thee.”
The problem behind all our problems is a failure to trust deeply in the God who made us all. We need to take our imaginations off ourselves and focus them on God who is revealed to us as love. Love of ourselves, our neighbor and of all creation would preserve the earth for future generations. This is the only concept ark that will sail the seas of the future. It is the absolute opposite of violence that will lead inexorably to catastrophe.
What hope is there that we can build this ark? That is not the question. It is a moral imperative that we try. Millions of people are projected to die unnecessarily particularly along the coastal areas of the world where most people live as sea levels rise and climate becomes ever more violent. But if we build a reality ark of values that will sustain the earth we will perhaps with God’s help be able to save creation. And one day we will open the window and the dove will fly back to us with a green branch in its mouth…
