“For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

“Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

“In public testimony he said, ‘after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

– Bill Moyers, after winning the fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

Funny that the first thing I think of when reading this text is the Lorax from Dr. Seuss, one of the best books ever written about environmental degradation and oppression… “Perhaps, if you plant this seed, and protect it from axes that hack, the Lorax and all his friends will come back…”

And here are people that believe that Christ requires the kind of strife that is happening in Iraq and in Jerusalem for the final day when he will come back and claim the chosen. Can we take the gospel of John so literally that we design our environmental policy and our social policy in our nation based on a belief that all civilization must come to ruin before Christ will come again? Is that what Christ came to preach?

The Christ that I believe walked the earth, as God’s arm down to the oppressed and the weary, the downtrodden and the sinners, sat with lepers and with tax collectors, came to say that even those who have nothing, who are destroyed and broken… even they have God…

And Martin Luther suffered in his time for saying that we needn’t pay for God, for redemption, for grace. God is with us, Emmanuel. This is the Christmas season, and yet we cling to destruction, we cling to the passion, and not the birth. We cling to the resurrection and not the human God among us.

What should we see in this new year? Should we eat McDonalds every day, and buy more stuff, and build houses and buy cars, and teach our children to love violence and hate our enemies… is this the preparation for the kingdom?

I am a Christian, and I use the bible as my guide, in my beliefs in social justice and in my personal values. But I do not believe in the bible as the incarnate word of God on paper. I do not believe in the literal ‘truth’ of these words. I believe in God, and I believe in the teachings of the words that are written there on the pages of my bible. I believe in Christ as Emmanuel, God with us, and I believe in the teachings of Emmanuel, the parables, the stories, the life he led among us.

There is a gospel song that I love the sound of, but I would never sing: “Are you afraid to Die.” This song’s words are: “Are you afraid, are you unsaved, are you afraid to die…” This is not my theology. I don’t believe in a theology of fear. I believe in a God of hope, of grace, and of compassion. When I see hatred in the world, I think of Lazarus, and of Jesus sitting by his tomb and weeping.

I don’ t believe that God wants us to destroy our environment, and support the aggressions in Jerusalem and in Iraq. Climate change is not a sign of the Second Coming.

In a brilliant passage in his book, Lars Clausen, my new favorite author, in his book, One Wheel, Many Spokes, http://www.onewheel.org, writes about a religious service he took part in at the Grand Canyon, where the preacher talked about how God was a lighthouse. Lars writes about how crazy it is, so far away from any water, from any shore where a lighthouse would be needed, to compare Christ to a lighthouse, when Christ was in every rock, in every river, every dry bush in that huge and wondrous canyon.

So many people are blinded by their own false reality. The television tells them the way to believe. They home-school their kids, they buy special books that tell a different history, and special textbooks that shield their kids from geology and biology because of the word ‘evolution.’

Let’s open up our eyes today to the great presence of God around us, in the trees, or in the fields, or in the people we meet.