Dave is Director of Theology for A Rocha International, where he works to embed creation care into international Christian organizations, theological institutions, and mission movements. His past roles with A Rocha include being an International Trustee and the co-founder of A Rocha UK (with his wife Anne). He has a PhD from Cambridge University on biblical theology and biodiversity conservation, and has contributed to many books and articles, including Planetwise, available in six languages. Born and raised in India, Dave has a love for Indian food, Indian culture and Indian Christianity. Dave is also a qualified bird-ringer and loves birding, islands, running and mountains.
Pentecostalism and the work of the Holy Spirit have featured little in the growing Creation Care and Ecotheology movements. However, if we turn to the Bible, we see that the Holy Spirit is intimately connected to all God’s work from the start of creation to the completion of the new creation.
Extinction Rebellion’ (XR) has been getting plenty of media coverage recently. It’s a new nonviolent, direct-action movement aiming to provoke discussion and transform the climate change agenda. In over 80 cities across 33 countries, XR has closed bridges and roads, protested outside fossil fuel companies, and seen hundreds of people arrested. When interviewed, most XR activists have spoken of their fear or eco-anxiety for the future, and their anger at the lack of action.
How do you feel about environmental problems? In the environmental movement and in natural sciences, people usually ask ‘What do you think?’, but we have reached a time when more attention should be given to emotional resilience, the ways in which we might survive psychologically in the midst of rapidly changing environmental conditions.
When I was a young lad, Church Mission Society (CMS) had a young adults’ newsletter which I read avidly. The title of one article has stuck with me ever since: ‘Has God called you to stay where you are?’
At the time my family lived in a quiet Midlands village with a somewhat sleepy church, so the idea that mission meant travelling the world and seeing exciting, exotic places appealed greatly. By the time I reached my 30s I’d lived in over 20 different places, visited lots of countries, and God was saying something rather different to me.
How do you imagine the places we do not know much about, such as the deepest trenches of the oceans? Dark, scary, full of ugly creatures with teeth made for ripping flesh? Unknown monsters lurking in a dark soup? How do you feel about these being damaged by human activity, such as deep-sea mining, changing ocean acidity and temperature, and bottom trawling?
At the launch of our book, Low Carbon and Loving It, I was asked a difficult question: ‘Flights go everyday from Sydney to Johannesburg. Whether or not I book a ticket and get on that plane, it will go. So what difference does it make if I fly or not?’
She wakes up. She knows she is ready. Ready for her big day. The sun has never been brighter. The sky has never been bluer. This is the day she’s been waiting for all her life. This is the day she has been working so hard to get everything ready for.
We live in a moment of history in which our way of living is characterized by shrill advertising, rampant over-consumption and wanton waste – all with disastrous consequences for the ecological communities we are part of and upon which we depend on for our very survival. And yet, there is an alternative narrative.
We join the many thousands of others who are grieving the loss of Eugene Peterson, who was a dearly-loved teacher and guide to so many of us in the A Rocha family around the world.
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” has been helpful in adopting wiser ways to consume. For Christians, however, living more sustainably has to be understood in terms of our relationship to the creator God as well. I want to suggest a new motto: “Relish, Redeem, Rest”.
