Saving or seeking?

We’re going to have to do a lot more than switch from plastic to paper grocery bags to save the earth. I was very annoyed, and still am, when many months ago my usual grocery chain, Fred Meyer, suddenly switched to paper bags. Plastic bags are stretchy and have strong handles, and a strong guy like myself could leave the shopping cart in the store and tow the contents three or four bags in each hand, out to my waiting car. With brown paper bags, all that changed. Now I have to push a cart full of paper bags out to the parking lot, unload it, and then when I get home make three trips to and from the car instead of one, to bring the groceries in.

What a complainer I am! I should be happy to make this little sacrifice to save the earth. To make things worse, even my other major source of food, WinCo, finally switched to paper bags, because the Oregon law now demands full compliance. The last stop this morning to do my weekly shopping was my local Vietnamese grocery. They are still using plastic bags—and God bless ‘em—but what if that gets them in trouble? All the Asian markets around here use plastic grocery bags and after they fill them they make a neat knotted handle to keep them closed and easy to lug around. (By the way, only the Asian markets have good green onions at this time of year!)

Yes, we’re going to have to do a lot more to save the earth, as if we could. The earth never lacks an abundance of busybodies with time on their hands and knuckleheads avid to defend her, but what is more important, to save the earth, or to save the people who inhabit it?

Of course, the answer is to save both, or rather, to save the earth so that people can live in a healthy world, and to save the people so that they will understand why they have been given the earth in the first place. ‘Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it’ (Genesis 2:15).

Don’t shrug this off and say, ‘It’s just a story.’ Whether or not you believe in a literal Adam and Eve, or even if you don’t believe in the Bible story at all, everybody still knows that it’s true—we are here to cultivate and take care of the earth. That’s why the idea of ‘saving the earth’ does make good sense, even if we don’t agree on how to do it. But banning plastic bags!

I suppose we have to start somewhere, but take a look in any trash can, recycling dumpster, or ‘sanitary’ landfill and be horrified. If it’s true that we are what we eat, then what does it make the earth, that ‘eats’ our leftovers? Nasty, I say, nasty! It doesn’t surprise me that John the Revelator saw all this over nineteen centuries ago and wrote about it, saying of these last days, ‘The time has come to destroy those who are destroying the earth’ (Revelation 11:18).

The world focuses its attention on fly specks, while the suffering and pillage of both earth and mankind is written large across our field of vision if we only look, and not far away, but in our own back yards. The ‘earthaders’ gather round any cause which allows them to feel righteous while remaining rebels against the truth.

What truth? That it’s not the earth that’s in trouble, but human beings, people, the man, woman, or child next door, or passing you on the street, or even you yourself. That’s an uncomfortable truth, and one that we can’t bring ourselves to accept. Yes, too close for comfort. So, we hide ourselves and cover our nakedness as best we can. Yes, fig leaves will do. That way, we can say we’re being ‘green.’

Why do we always seek first the easy way out? Why do we always seek to justify our sins instead of seeking justification of the sinners that we are? This is not just a religious slant imposed on life so as to funnel us into church services and activities. This is a pre-existing condition, a reality that we find ourselves burdened with that we can’t remember choosing. Since we didn’t choose our predicament, we can’t be held responsible for it. Since we can’t change it, let’s do what we can to at least enjoy it. We think, ‘There’s no escape…’

Legislating righteousness. How shallow can we be not to see this has been done many times before, always without success? So the state of Oregon forbids us to use a very convenient product, so that the earth can be saved. Who cares how many human beings it inconveniences. ‘They’ll just have to buy shopping bags with handles if they want to carry their groceries that way.’

Just over the border in the state of Washington, I stop on the way home after work to buy something I just remembered I am out of. Fred Meyer has just about everything you need. Their jingle is ‘What’s on your list today?’ I respond inwardly, ‘You don’t wanna know.’ The cashier asks, ‘Find everything you need?’ With a smile I tease, ‘Nope, I never do.’ Then the big question, ‘Do you have a Rewards card?’ And once more, with a slight chuckle, ‘No, I don’t deserve one.’

The cashier loads my purchases into a plastic bag with handles, an illegal action in my home state, and I take it away. Backwards Washington hasn’t yet caught up to progressive Oregon in ecological responsibility. When I get home I empty the bag and stow it away under the kitchen sink. I recycle these plastic bags as liners in my trash can instead of buying garbage bags. Where they go after the ‘Waste Management’ truck empties my garbage, I dunno.

How simple, though, real life really is. All these fetters which we hang from our costumes to make ourselves look cool are such a cheat, and busy bondage as well. We would lose them, and gratefully, if we only could bring ourselves to believe what we have heard before, heard without listening. The truth is all around us, but if we can’t see or hear it in daily life, then at least let’s hear and listen where it can be found in plain sight, in black and white,

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.
Matthew 6:33