Resistance is Christ Like

Satan tempted Christ three times in the wilderness. First he challenged Jesus to turn stones to bread in order to satisfy his hunger. Second he took Christ to the top of a temple tower and challenged him to leap so that angles would break his fall. Third he took Jesus to a mountain top where they surveyed all the great Kingdoms of the world and offered them to him if he would worship and venerate Satan. In these temptations we find a metaphor for our relationship with creation.
Temptation I: Turn stones to bread.
In our extraction/exploitation economy we have reached the point where we have harvested the “low hanging fruit” in terms of natural resources. This is especially true of fossil fuels. We have gotten everything that is easy and we are now forced to resort to more radical techniques in order to extract enough supply to meet demand. Some of these techniques are truly mind boggling in their brutality to the environment. In short, environmentally speaking, we are now trying to get blood from a turnip, or turn stones to bread.
In the North Eastern United States they have resorted to “fracking” to extract natural gas from rock. Water and chemicals are injected under high pressure into subterranean rock formations, literally pulverizing them in order to free the gas. The extent of the damage caused by this procedure is unknown but many experts see dire threats to ground water and wells with contamination. This process goes on nearly unchecked by cash strapped local governments seduced by the revenue produced. It seems we have sold ourselves for manna from below.
In the great northern forests of Canada, petroleum is extracted from tar sands. This is done by clear cutting the forest then injecting superheated steam into the earth that literally melts the oil and forces it to the surface. What is leftover is nothing short of an environmental apocalypse; A land naked and poisoned.
In Appalachia, coal is mined with a technique known as “mountain top removal”. This is done by literally bulldozing an entire mountain top into the valley below. In the process, streams and forests are obliterated and all manner of harmful by products and metals are released into the watershed. What is left is an ugly and scarred wasteland that is of no use to anybody. People both indigenous and non-indigenous who have made their way on fishing and tourism for generations are suddenly left without livelihood. The process is highly automated so that very few locals are employed in the extraction.
In the bible, Jesus resisted this temptation and said that man does not live by bread alone. Obviously, our culture is imperfect and falls short of the glory of God. We rose to Satan’s bait and have severely wounded God’s gift of nature in the process and, as is always the case when one cavorts with the Devil, the end result is tragic: the loss of beautiful and valuable natural resources as well as the displacement of a great many people.

Temptation II: Satan challenges Jesus to throw himself from the tower.
Creation is the Temple of the Lord.
As a son of the American West, I have walked the meadows and forests of the High Sierra. I have scrambled among the great rocks of the South Western deserts. I have meditated with the old and venerable Redwoods of California’s North Coast. In all of these places I have been awestruck by the powerful presence of the creator.
When Satan challenged Christ to leap from the tower so that Angles may break his fall, Christ replied “Thou shalt not put the lord your God to the test.
When we so brazenly and arrogantly rape and pillage the temple of the Lord, are we not truly testing the Lords patience? We rely on the earth for sustenance, water and the air we breathe. How long can the planet possibly support us under the weight of such abuse? For every tree felled and every river fouled, we put God to the test. How much can the temple withstand before it collapses completely. Every eco-system, every species represents a brick in the structure. Every time we lose one or the other, a brick is removed. At what point will we remove one brick too many and bring the whole structure down around our ears. With every crime we commit against the environment we tempt fate, and faith.

Temptation III: Satan promised all the great kingdoms if Jesus would worship him.
When Satan offered magnificent kingdoms to Jesus if he would prostrate himself and worship him Jesus replied: “The Lord your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve”
The industrial extraction/exploitation economy offers us many material temptations. We are promised happiness and fulfillment through material things in a continual barrage of marketing and advertising through every medium imaginable. It has become almost a heroic struggle to remember God at all. The saddest part is this it is a promise that Satan cannot keep. The more we get the more we want and the emptier we feel. We become so embroiled in the pursuit of career and wealth, the kingdoms promised by Satan, that we forget our neighbors, our families and our communities. Riches become the object of our worship and our planet suffers for it. We destroy the environment, exploit our brothers and sisters and even distort the word of God to justify our behavior. Again we fall short of Christ’s example. We have not told Satan to be gone, but have invited him into our hearts by buying into the corporate illusion of “prosperity”. The lust for riches has embroiled us in war, steeped us in greed and has taken us further and further from the kingdom of heaven. This lust has imperiled our very existence on earth with the threat of environmental collapse and nuclear war.
Whether you call it temptations of Satan or just the dark side of human nature, the danger exists. If we don’t start acting for the common good with an eye to the future, we are in great danger. The time has come to start acting out of love for the planet and the human family. We must conduct ourselves with an eye to the future and an orientation of sustainability. We must endeavor to be Christ like.

This is also posted at www.jesusradicals.com