recycle in remembrance of me...

Sustainable is a word that gets thrown around ad infinitum (especially in the world of design), and I always cringe when I hear it. The whole idea of being sustainable has mutated into some ungrounded check- list of disparate parts. The idea that you could place a bike rack in front of your shop and some how are being sustainable is so far off the mark. Hybrid cars are a great example. Where it is true that they get better gas mileage than a non-hybrid cars they still rely on petroleum for their propulsion. We could all drive hybrids and still be in the same boat we are now. Since when has sustainable come to mean “try to prolong the inevitable”?

The whole idea of being sustainable is that one is able to propagate life with out end. The root, sustain, means to keep in existence and sustainable speaks to the actions of sustaining. But what do we as Christians do with this idea?

It is true that the world was created (we can argue about to what degree or method), but that it had a start. It is also true that the world will have an end (again to what degree or method is debatable), but the problem is that we are not privy that climatic information. So what do we do in the mean time?

For me a great way to look at sustainability is the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This act was instituted by Christ himself and we are called to maintain it/us by doing ‘in remembrance of him’. We do not know when he will return but we are called to partake as long as we need to. To apply this to sustainability, we know not when our earth will no longer be needed, but until that time we are called to use is to maintain ourselves.

Just as 1 Corinthians calls us not to abuse the sacrament we are called by Genesis 2:15 to “tend and keep it”. The last part is what I would deem as our call to sustain the earth. The term ‘keep it’ can also be translated as ‘guard’ as in Genesis 3:24. It is this that charge that gets at the root of sustainability. We are to ensure that the planet is capable to sustain us until it is no longer is needed. We are called to partake in the Lord’s Supper until the time when we will no longer need to ‘remember’ Him.

As a side note I think the call to be fruitful and multiply falls directly in the command to keep the land.

So what does this mean in a practical way? I think it means we should not do anything that endangers our ability to survive. We should not pollute or waste our waters or air. We should guard our natural resources as if they were birth rights to our children. We should ‘stock pile’ land as investments into the future. We should recycle anything and everything we can. We should reduce our energy consumption or find renewable means of energy. We should foster communities that are compact and readily accessible to all, not just those with access to automobiles. We should compost our organics and reduce our plastics. We should build with permanence and dwell intentionally.