What does it mean to be green? How does your worldview fit with that description?
For me the key tenants of greenness that most accurately fits with my worldview are stewardship, efficiency and gratitude.
Stewardship because God has placed man in charge of the earth’s care.
Efficiency because God has given each man a purpose but not quite enough time to accomplish it.
Gratitude because as Jesus gave his life for mine I am compelled do the same for others (and this means a lot more than going to Africa with a Bible in hand)!
With that here are 3 great tips to embracing such a green-biblical lifestyle.
- Multi-task in ways which actually allow you to produce more with the same amount of time. Multitasking usually doesn’t work. Writing a blog, writing programming code for work, and answering emails actually slows every task down when the overhead involved for your brain to switch tasks is accounted for. Finding tasks which can be done at the same time may not only save you time, but effort as well. And reduced effort/work/energy is a key tenant for greenness. For example: instead of driving to work, ride to work on the bus. While riding catch up on reading, email or if you get motion sick try getting to know your fellow passengers (or as a last resort be extremely rude and talk loudly on your cell phone).
- Plan ahead. Spur of the moment decisions are good when a.) running from bears b.) romancing a (wo)man. Although intuition sees things that reason often doesn’t, when it comes to making the most of your life on earth forethought is required. With a little forethought and pre-planning not only will more be achieved through enhanced multitasking and work reduction but the end result will be increased available time and options (freedom!). Usually forethought produces the most elegant, efficient and useful solution…and that’s really green!
- Use and ReUse, never waste. It is estimated that if no food were thrown away the reduction in CO2 emissions would be equivalent to taking every 5th car off the road (not to mention the number of hungry people it could feed)! For every new solar panel that’s installed it takes 15 years to pay back it’s cost. However for every piece of construction material picked up from the recycled materials yard the payback is nearly instant! Sadly, we live in a throw-away-culture[1] which thrives on replacing items and not repairing them…and so… nothing gets fully used. So start a trend, thank God for your blessings, use those things which you have been blessed with, and when you can use them no more pass them on to someone else who can!
- Compost! Okay I said 3 but seriously… you cannot be green unless you compost! Composting is God’s way of helping us differentiate ourselves from pigs… we don’t have to wallow in our own refuse and excrement!
- Rest! Okay 5 tips… If we take 2 steps forward and 1 step back, we’ll always be moving 1 step forward. Is it any wonder then that on average we’re awake 16 hours and asleep 8 (A ratio of 2:1 might I point out)? In green-biblical living the motto isn’t “Work hard play hard” it should be “Work/Play hard, rest hard”. Alright! Now get out there and take a nap, walk your dogs, read to your kids, drink some wine and cuddle with your spouse!
What do you think, what does it mean to be green? How does your worldview compel you to act?
- Does it not seem absurd to anyone else that we spend so much effort to get materials from the ground, shape them into something useful, use them once or twice, and then put them back into the ground? [↩]
