|
|
|
|
|
The "Green" Patriarch
Photo Credit Nikolaos Manginas
|
Climate Change and Social Justice
"If human beings were to treat one another’s personal property the way they treat the natural environment, we would view that behavior as anti-social and illegal. We would expect legal sanctions and even compensation. When will we learn that to commit a crime against the natural world is also a sin?" "The way we respond to the natural environment is directly reflects the way we treat human beings. The willingness to exploit the environment is revealed in the willingness to permit avoidable human suffering. So the survival of the natural environment is also the survival of ourselves. When we will understand that a crime against nature is a crime against ourselves and sin against God?" |
|
Sacrament and Sin
"We have traditionally regarded sin as being merely what people do to other people. Yet, for human beings to destroy the biological diversity in God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by contributing to climate change, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, land and air – all of these are sins." "We are treating our planet in an inhuman, godless manner precisely because we fail to see it as a gift inherited from above. Our original sin with regard to the natural environment lies in our refusal to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and neighbor on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that divine and human meet in the slightest detail contained in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust." |
|
Photos by Nikolaos Manginas
"As Orthodox Christians, we use the Greek word kairos to describe a moment in time, often a brief moment in time, which has eternal significance. For the human race as a whole, there is now a kairos, a decisive time in our relationship with God’s creation. We will either act in time to protect life on earth from the worst consequences of human folly, or we will fail to act. May God grant us the wisdom to act in time. Amen."
Important Statements
(click on links below)
(click on links below)
What is our relationship with God's Creation
|
|
|
What do the saints and theologians say?
|
"Tragically... we appear to be caught up in selfish lifestyles that repeatedly ignore the constraints of nature, which are neither deniable nor negotiable. There will unfortunately be some things we learn about our planet's capacity for survival which we will discover only when things are beyond the point of no return."
Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis |
"Once when a visiting philosopher asked how such a learned man as he got along in the desert without books. Anthony replied, 'My book is the nature of created things, and as often as I have a mind to read the words of God, they are at my hand.' "
St. Anthony the Great |
"In practice the contemporary Orthodox Church, particularly in the West, is far from a strong, consistent and effective witness for the preservation and restoration of God's much-suffering... creation, much less its transfiguration."
Vincent Rossi |
"...surely we ought to show kindness and gentleness to animals for many reasons, and chiefly because they are of the same origin as ourselves."
St. John Chrysostom |
