GOD AND BUBBLES: What God and science say about climate change, environmental catastrophe and how to be prepared

The theme of this blog came to me following an inspired exchange with a friend (who happens to be a God-fearing and sensitive Muslim) about the fact most people go about in their own little bubbles, unaware of and largely unconcerned about what is going on in the world around them. The context of our conversation was the consequences of gross social and political injustice and environmental disaster, two items that have been highlighted during this time of lockdown and remain at the forefront of the news through issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the time, I felt inspired to comment that if you think about it, the whole time we are in our mother’s womb, we are in a bubble, protected in “the secret place, where [I was] woven together in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139: 15). As we are born and continue our journey through to adulthood, most of us tend to remain in this same self-oriented bubble, generally only aware of or concerned about our immediate spheres, e.g. our own lives and circumstances, or perhaps we may extend our bubble to include our family, friends, churches, immediate communities or our individual nations. Very few of us, it seems, deeply or daily consider the lives and needs of other individuals and communities around the world, or are aware of how our individual and collective actions as a nation affect others — including the approximately one million species presently at risk of extinction, largely as a result of human activity — who share space on our planet. And yet we know our Father is constantly aware of and attentive to even the death of one single sparrow (Matthew 10:29). Shouldn’t we be likewise attuned? And where is the church’s voice in all of this?

This is what I hope to address in this blog — to understand what God has to say about the kinds of ‘bubbles’ He provides by looking at the promises indicated by Psalm 91 and reflecting on how Jesus read these, as well as to consider His call to us as Christians to imitate His Son, who as we know left the comfortable ‘bubble’ of Heaven to come to Earth, because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” John 3:16) — in which case this may mean breaking out of our own bubbles of self- and/or immediate-bubble absorption in order to make a loving, positive, just and lasting impact on our world.

Media: ‘fake’ news, bad news and selective inputs

It seems implausible we could still be so entrenched in our own worlds and positions, and remain largely unaware of what is happening elsewhere in the world when the resources we have available today through commercial travel and technology have truly made us all global citizens. While it might make sense if, as in past centuries, we still lived in remote, unconnected communities and were dependent on messages being delivered by horseback or carrier pigeon, that is hardly the case now.

Ever since Alexander Graham Bell first dreamed the telephone into existence, the revolution in communication has continued apace — now, even in emerging economies such as Indonesia, Brazil or Nigeria, up to 83% own a mobile (cell)phone, 60% use the internet (World Wide Web) and 49% use social media (2018 statistics); and now even the harshest and most remote continent, Antarctica, is being opened up for touristic exploration. Surely, if anything, we should be all too aware of what is happening outside of our own bubbles rather than remaining ignorant?

Unfortunately, being bombarded constantly with an excess of information — which, with the proliferation of ‘alternative’ digital news sources such as various social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, You Tube, etc), is unavoidable these days, unless you live in a desert with no Wi-Fi access — can have the effect of causing people to feel unbearably overwhelmed. Along with the tandem development of an increase in ‘fake news’, unsubstantiated rumours and non-fact-checked reports circulated both via unreliable news sources as well as on social media, many people elect to switch off entirely — or worse, only tune in to those channels that promote views and coverage of things that confirm their own biases, fears or prejudices. The facility for critical thinking, informed praying and general awareness is thus further harmed, often having the opposite effect of enforcing and even narrowing our bubbles to the point of irrelevance.

Yet the plain and uncomfortable fact is some of the things we have access to daily information and updates on — e.g. the impacts of climate change — have the potential to affect all lives on the planet drastically in a very short timeframe indeed, even within our own life span. We can try to tune it out, as many news channels appear determined to do, with frivolous information on celebrities’ lives or other less-challenging titbits, but we certainly cannot claim we didn’t have the ability to access the information and so become aware of what is happening, because we do. It is available 24/7, any time we desire to find out, on the Internet.

Of course, there are also those on the other end of the spectrum, for whom awareness of climate and other emergencies is indeed very real, and whose sense of rage, despair and helplessness to alter the world’s current trajectory is a very real thing. They are the ones actually reading the increasingly frequent scientific and other reports warning of impending climatic doom, and becoming activists (or, as some would have it, anarchists). To most people, they undoubtedly sound like Noah, constantly banging on with the negative news of potential flooding from massive sea-level rises due to melting polar ice caps. But on the whole, they remain a small minority, especially within the church. How is that? Surely if such things are indeed coming, we would all be hearing from God about it?   

But… perhaps He is speaking, even via these ‘negative’ scientific or secular reports, and we are simply not listening? Perhaps our personal theology or churches encourage a convenient climate denialism — or we believe that once things get near the point of no return (as, in fact, we are by most accounts already reaching), God will somehow intervene and rapture us out? Or for those who aren’t sold on the idea of a supernatural ‘beaming up’ of God’s people, surely our leaders will ensure underground bunkers will be available on the Earth when we need them, or perhaps scientists will yet figure out how small colonies of earthlings can restart on Mars or other habitable planets? After all, didn’t He give Noah enough warning so he could build a boat and rescue enough genetic material through the pairs of species he crammed on the ark to restart life on Earth after the Flood?

God’s terrarium

In thinking further about the womb / bubble analogy, we can easily extend this concept and apply it to our planet as a whole. We know from science and Nasa pictures that our Earth itself is enrobed in a protective bubble, the atmosphere. This atmospheric bubble is what makes life possible on our planet; without it, we would not survive.

Our planet is the only known planet within our solar system with an oxygen-rich atmosphere that is capable of sustaining life. Whether you believe life exists on other planets, galaxies or solar systems (outer space), or perhaps once existed on other moons within our own solar system, there is nothing presently to substantiate the existence of life anywhere else but here on Earth. It remains unique, and we as beings who are capable of having a relationship with God are also unique.

With all of the other amazing diversity of flora, fauna, terrains, microclimates and elements on our planet, this marvellous biome we inhabit is effectively God’s terrarium — as we are told in Isaiah 40:22: “He sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”

On further consideration of the unique properties of our planet’s design, we can clearly see the very precise handprint of God in many other aspects. Astonishingly, life on Earth would not exist at all without a series of very exact conditions — for example, our sun is stable and its position in relation to other stars and forces in the galaxy renders it safe from other hazardous forces in the galaxy such as gravitational pulls, collapsing stars (supernovae) and gamma-ray bursts.

Also, Earth’s position in relation to the sun allows it to receive just enough energy to allow water to exist as a liquid on the surface; any closer and the liquid would evaporate, any further and it would turn to ice. But it is specifically thanks to our planet’s particular bubble — its fantastic, life-protecting atmosphere — that Earth is shielded from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, meteors and other space debris. Our atmosphere absorbs heat from the sun by using gases to trap the heat (a natural phenomenon known as ‘the greenhouse effect’), thereby helping to regulate its temperatures to the exact degrees possible to sustain life — just as you would ensure tropical plants survive in your own greenhouse.

Further, there are six layers of protective gases that comprise our atmosphere — roughly 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 0.93% argon and 0.04% carbon dioxide, along with other smaller trace elements of neon, methane, helium, krypton, hydrogen and water vapour. These make up our relatively thin atmosphere (the thicker part of it is 300 miles; some of the higher bands extend further, but most of it — specifically, the ozone — is only ca. 15–20 miles from the planet’s surface). These six layers are:

1. the troposphere, which is the air we breathe; this is the layer closest to the Earth’s surface;
2. the stratosphere, where planes fly and where the ozone region lies;
3. the mesosphere, which begins about 50km from the surface;
4. the thermosphere, which is where the aurora occur, and where the International Space Station (ISS) and other space shuttles and satellites circle the Earth;
5. the exosphere, which is the upper limit of our atmosphere, which extends halfway to the Moon or further into outer space; and
6. the ionosphere — a dynamic, fluid region of electrons and ionised atoms critical to Sun–Earth interactions, which also makes radio communications possible.  

According to scientists, the high-altitude (roughly 15–35km above the Earth) ozone layer that floats within the stratosphere came into being through early plant-like organisms that emitted oxygen into the atmosphere. Typically, ozone is created when ultraviolet (UV) light strikes ordinary oxygen molecules and causes them to split into two oxygen atoms (O₂); the O₂ atoms then combine with unbroken oxygen to create ozone (O₃). The ozone atoms then create a layer of UV ray-screening gas, which acts as a kind of blanket around the Earth, shielding us from harmful, cancer-causing UV radiation. The thickness of the ozone layer over the Earth fluctuates with the seasons and latitudes, with higher concentrations typically in the northern latitudes.

Therefore, we can see that even in the intelligent design of our home, God foresaw the need for a protective bubble to shield us from the impact of the sun — and without it, we cannot survive. The bubble He designed to protect us is secure and stable, and yet….

Holes in Earth’s bubble: warnings of warming

Sadly, this very unique bubble (atmosphere) that protects life on Earth is now seriously under threat — and even more sadly, from the very beings it was designed to protect.

The first prediction of global warming due to excesses of carbon dioxide in the stratosphere — and thus negatively impacting the protective blanket of ozone — was actually made as far back as 1896 by Nobel prize-winning Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius, who used the principles of basic chemistry to estimate the extent to which increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raise the Earth’s surface temperature. Arrhenius proved that even the slightest raises in carbon dioxide levels could upset the delicate balances our Creator set to control the atmosphere and temperatures on Earth, thereby causing a negative ‘greenhouse effect’ of heat-trapping gases and water vapour that could potentially redirect harmful radiation back to the Earth and result in an unstable and non-life-sustainable warming of the Earth’s global mean temperature.

This theory was picked up again in the 1960s, when American scientist David Keeling recorded a progressive build-up of levels of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. He noted that carbon dioxide had become higher in modern times than at any other time in recorded human history, and was the first to make the connection between human-caused (anthropogenic) warming of the Earth’s atmosphere through the influx of manmade carbon dioxide-emitting instruments such as cars, airplanes and factories. Scientists agree that since the 1880s — after the Industrial Revolution had been in effect for several decades —Earth’s average surface temperature had already increased by 2°F/1°C, and that human-caused increases of carbon dioxide and releases of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere were the likely culprits.

But the excess of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions is not the only worrying chemical culprit in the global-warming scenario.

Since the 1970s, scientists have observed a steady depletion in the amount of ozone (O₃) in the stratosphere, along with some sizeable pockets (ozone holes) of thinning ozone layers, specifically around the Earth’s polar regions. Although a certain amount of ozone depletion in the atmosphere occurs naturally as a result of sunspots, latitudes and seasonal fluctuations, scientific evidence has confirmed that the ozone shield is being depleted well beyond natural levels. This ozone depletion occurs because of the interaction of chlorine and bromine atoms with ozone atoms; one chlorine atom is able to destroy 100,000 ozone molecules.

Most of the chlorine in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is a result of human activities, as the human-produced halocarbons frequently used in refrigeration, aerosols and cleaning chemicals — such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) —are not breaking down chemically in the lower atmosphere so ascending to the stratosphere, where they destroy ozone atoms, thereby letting in more UV radiation to the Earth.

While God did give man dominion over the Earth and all its creatures (Genesis 1:26), He did not give man dominion over the heavens. We may have discovered ways to launch planes, rockets and satellites into the atmosphere, thus disrupting what He intended to serve as our protective bubble, but this is precisely without His express direction — and, as we are now aware, there are grave consequences as a result of man’s careless interference with the atmosphere and perhaps through his attempts to gain dominion over it through space exploration, the impacts of which on contributing to our ozone holes are as yet unknown. We may have rattled God’s terrarium in seeking to be gods ourselves, but arguably this is now being reflected back to us now as a warning we have overstepped our bounds (or bubble).

Unfortunately, as ozone can be depleted much more rapidly than it can be created naturally, this has led to the increasing size of the ozone holes over the arctic regions. These are not really ‘holes’, but rather a large area of the stratosphere with very low amounts of ozone. Since 1985, the large gap or ‘hole’ of ozone-rich content over the continent of Antarctica has been observed getting gradually larger and deeper each springtime, with a corresponding increase in ozone depletion over the Arctic and more densely populated regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The thinning ozone, combined with the presence of carbon dioxide-loaded air pollution in this region, is letting in greater degrees of UV radiation, which is in turn accelerating the Earth’s warming and adding record heat waves in previously frozen northern areas.

Trials by wildfires

The traditionally frozen regions of Siberia saw a record heatwave on 17 June 2020, with temperatures reaching 100.4°F/38°C, sparking worldwide alarm among scientists and others. Simultaneously, the prevalence of forest fires in the region saw an unprecedented threefold increase, with a whopping 4.3 million hectares destroyed by out-of-control blazes in 2019.

Along the nine million square miles / over 23 million square kilometres of Arctic landmass, the rapid acceleration of climate change is radically altering the landscape and lifestyles of indigenous peoples. Animals such as beavers that previously lived in warmer climates are suddenly flocking to this newly warming and more habitable land. While scientists might have expected the tundra to thaw gradually, the fact is that it is thawing almost literally overnight — and the entire Arctic region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Not only is this abrupt change to a radically different climate profile truly alarming, but it signals the development of other problems, which are in fact all linked to global warming’s vicious cycle.

As more trees burn and the previously frozen areas of tundra in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, Scandinavia, Canada and other Arctic regions begin to melt, more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. This phenomenon is not only occurring in polar regions, but across the world, as wildfires due to global heating are on the rise — in recent summers, much of California on the US West Coast has been on fire, and the Amazon rainforests has suffered some of the worst fire ravages, with 4.6 million acres of irreplaceable carbon sink destroyed in 2019 alone.

These wildfires not only destroy the trees that act as the Earth’s natural filters for removing carbon dioxide and ensure we have cleaner air to breathe, but the carbon dioxide released through the fires also unleashes other harmful greenhouse gases which, in addition to further carbon dioxide, continue to warm the planet. And as a warmer Earth is also a drier Earth, this contributes to the escalation of further forest fires — thus becoming a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction.

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But the worst may still be yet to come. The wildfires and thawing frozen ground are exposing wide swathes of long-dead ancient matter such as frozen plants and animals, some of them remnants of the last Ice Age that have lain buried under the permafrost for millennia (or perhaps longer). As these hit the warming air and begin to thaw and then decompose, they release other destructive, climate-warming gases, including methane. Tundra is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks; it has effectively trapped huge bubbles of methane gas under its permafrost, which scientists warn further warming and thawing could unleash as much as 240 billion tons / 243.85 billion tonnes of carbon, or 1,400 gigatons, into the atmosphere.

What’s more, many as-yet-undetermined pathogens and bacteria also lie dormant under the permafrost — if we thought the Covid-19 pandemic was alarming, we likely haven’t seen anything yet.

What is certain is that if these harmful gases continue to escape into our atmosphere, they will accelerate warming to an uninhabitable degree for man and the other creatures on Earth. Our planet could ultimately become like Venus — at 900°F / 465°C, it is the hottest planet in our solar system, with a runaway greenhouse effect caused by clouds that trap the heat in a dense atmosphere composed mostly (96%) of carbon dioxide, with nitrogen, carbon monoxide, sulfuric acids and other gases, and only trace amounts of water — although some scientists consider it may at one point have been habitable. However, if you were looking for a literal manifestation of the Biblical descriptions of Hell, Venus would surely fit that!

Is global warming how God will judge the world by fire?

We know that God, through His promises, which cannot be broken, made a covenant with Noah after the flood, assuring him that “Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the Earth. I will put my rainbow in the sky as a sign to you and every living creature of my promise, which will last forever” (Genesis 9:11–12).

He also promised that “As long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Gen. 8:22) — so even during any of the former ice ages and times of global heating, there will still be seasonal fluctuations in temperatures on the surface of the Earth, as these are regulated by Earth tilting on its access at an angle of approximately 23.4 degrees (note: Earth’s tilt may vary slightly every 40,000 years; it is possible some variation in climate conditions affecting glacial rebound and land mass may affect this further).  

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If we choose to take God at His word, that means even with scientists claiming that climate change is melting ice caps and raising sea levels that could ultimately swamp low-lying coastal regions, flood cities and wipe out many islands across the world (and God only knows what will happen or be released when the 400+ lakes or “springs of the great deep” [Gen. 7:11] hidden on the frozen continent of Antarctica, and under the Ross Ice Shelf and Thwaites Glacier are released), that isn’t going to happen — at least not as the final judgement / apocalypse that will wipe out the Earth. Instead, 2 Peter 3:7 makes it clear that “By the same word, the present heavens and Earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men”. So those of us who know and believe in God and the revelation of His word know that when God decides to judge the Earth, it will be destroyed by fire rather than by flooding.

I confess that, having grown up in the US at a time when the collective fear of nuclear bombs wiping us all out featured heavily in the news and in popular culture, and was being circulated as yet another excuse for yet another war, it seemed a given this would likely be the way the world would end. To quote a line from the Kingston trio’s ‘The Merry Minuet’, “And we know for certain that some lovely day, someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.” Perhaps more relevant to today’s growing recognition of the impacts of climate change are the last lines of the son, which go on to say, “What nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our fellow man.”

When I later became a Christian, I considered the Earth’s destruction by nuclear war was clearly what was meant by the passage in 2 Peter 3:10 that says, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the Earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” Although the threat of a human-caused nuclear apocalypse is objectively still very real (apparently nine countries — China, India, the US, Israel, France, the UK, Russia and North Korea —now have a combined 16,000 nuclear warheads, which is enough to destroy our planet several times over), the pace with which the Earth is heating and the impact on the ozone in our polar regions is happening so rapidly, this seems to be a far more likely cause of our planet’s fiery demise.

If the present thinning ozone around the poles — those gaps in our protective atmospheric bubble — continue to increase, the chances of Earth being struck by a meteor or other space debris, or burned up through intense UV radiation heat and noxious gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, are very high indeed.

Man and nature: a warning about stewardship

As the lines of the Kingston Trio song cited above indicate, while we may be experiencing a temporary hiatus from the kind of man-made disasters that can obliterate the planet, nature — or God through nature, if you will — is doing plenty to us at present: we have increasingly unstable weather patterns, a rapidly changing climate, an increase in devastating hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, and, of course, our current global pandemic crisis.

Make no mistake about the coronavirus pandemic: there is an exact correlation between our out-of-control killing, eating, exploiting and abusing of wild animals, and the pandemic we are now experiencing, along with others that may soon head our way, which are typically zoonotic in origin (e.g. spread to humans through wild animals). Studies have shown coronavirus is linked to one of the most commonly illegally trafficked animals, the pangolin.

A frequent victim of the so-called ‘wet markets’ in Asia, where they are sold for meat and their scales for use in traditional ‘medicine’, this shy, scale-covered creature — a primitive form of anteater, but in fact their own taxonomic order — is now among the world’s most endangered animals, with all eight species variations (four in Asia, four in Africa) on the red list, and two on the critical list. And if all of them go, there will be nothing like them left on the Earth.

Surely our God, who created all of the wonderfully unique and fantastic diversity of species such as the pangolin, cares about the fact a full one million of His creatures are now threatened with extinction (some estimates put this at one-quarter of all species), with several of His most beautiful, unique and oldest animals on the critically endangered list? And surely, He will also hold us accountable for the death and decimation of these creatures at our hands?

Before the Fall, man was only allowed to eat from fruit-bearing trees in the garden (Earth) God had commanded man to look after and tend (Gen. 2:15­16). Yet post-Fall and Flood, God gave dominion over all creatures to man, and all creatures were now allowed to be eaten for food. As God told Noah in Genesis 9:2–3, “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”

Most Bible commentaries suggest Genesis 9:4–5 (“But you must not eat meat that has its life blood still in it”) means we are to respect the fact that it was only because of sin that He now allowed animal meat consumption, but we were still to ensure that no animal was consumed alive or cruelly, and to respect the soul of the animal that was contained in its blood — so as not to partake of its flesh lightly.

Despite the above, there is no Biblical indication that man has ever been excepted from the work of looking after God’s creation, including all of the animals that share the Earth with humans. As the ‘Second Adam’ and as our Redeemer and model of being free from the curse of sin and death that was set in motion by the Fall, Jesus told His disciples that “not one single sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing about it” (Matthew 10:29). While Jesus then goes on to speak of how God has numbered every human hair, this does not in any way detract from the previous statement’s revelation of His care for every single tiny sparrow. Therefore, we must believe that God cares for every single animal, bird, fish and insect on Earth — and He expects us to do so also.

As others have suggested, the presence of pandemics such as coronavirus may well be nature’s — or at least the threatened pangolins’ — revenge against humans for taking animals’ lives cruelly and with their blood still intact, as in the wet markets where they are sold and often consumed alive. If we humans have broken this law, and have so grossly failed in our calling to be stewards of the Earth, it stands to reason that all of the other laws on which our Earth depends for its stability may also be shaken — and we know that God has promised in several places in both the Old and New Testaments, most notably in Hebrews 12:26 and Haggai 2:6, that He will “yet once more shake both the heavens and the Earth”.

Therefore, it seems our present situation, along with all the other radical climatic changes taking place on our planet, are in fact God’s messengers shouting at us to wake up before it is too late — before the bubble of His protection is removed and the Earth enters into the time of His final judgement.

Christians and God’s protective bubble

In view of all these things, how should believers — those who know Jesus, are redeemed by His blood, and are part of the Bride Jesus said He will be coming back for — supposed to respond in the face of such imminent potential catastrophes? Should we simply believe in and trust in God’s protection and ultimate redemption, and get on with the business of living our lives as faithful witnesses? Or should we remain informed, watchful, praying and actively preaching and witnessing, trying to wake others up to prepare them for potential hardships and hopefully to lead them to repentance and a saving knowledge of Christ?

Although there are many passages in the Bible that speak of God’s supernatural protection and deliverance in times of trial, Psalm 91 is perhaps one of the best-known and most relevant, particularly during this current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic:

3"Surely he will save you
    from the fowler’s snare
    and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
    nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
    and see the punishment of the wicked.
9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent."

As the psalm states above, God does indeed promise to protect His faithful flock from plague and pestilence — defined in Collins dictionary as “any disease that spreads quickly and kills large numbers of people” such as Covid-19. This passage assures us that if we look to God in faith, and take refuge under the protective ‘bubble’ of His wings, He will protect us; the plague will bypass us and not even come near us, even if scores of people around us become infected and die, as we are aware is presently happening all around the world.

As wonderful and reassuring as this is, it does not mean that Christians should become complacent about God’s protection, which shows a deep lack of respect or proper fear (as in awe) of God — or is even foolhardy. Considering some American right-wing evangelicals have reportedly died after refusing to wear masks or personal protective equipment (PPE) because they claim they are covered by the blood of Jesus, this has only given the world yet another occasion to mock God because of what some unwise followers do or advocate doing.

Yet Jesus Himself, when He was being tempted in the wilderness by Satan whispering the above passage in Psalm 91 and trying to incite Him to prove God’s word by jumping off a high temple, responded by quoting back the commandment, “Do not tempt [or: put to test] the Lord your God” (Matthew 4:6–7). This demonstrates that along with the need to use common-sense precautions, it is offensive to God if we arrogantly presume on or recklessly test His provisions, including His protection.

Furthermore, we are exhorted to exercise prudence, caution and wisdom, be alert to dangers coming, and to anticipate and be fully prepared in advance for any coming disasters. Both Proverbs 22: 3 and Proverbs 27:12 state plainly that: “The prudent [or wise, sensible, shrewd] see danger coming and take refuge [hide themselves], but the naive [simple, thoughtless, fools, the inexperienced] proceed [pass on, go ahead, keep on going – presumably in the same faulty direction they were heading] and suffer the consequences.”

In other words, in order not to be caught out when danger and disasters come, and to ensure we can truly avail of His divine bubble of protection, we need to be alert and watchful — because in fact, if the wise man wasn’t occupied with looking ahead down the road, he wouldn’t see the danger approaching on the horizon and so be able to avoid it. Therefore, God does indeed promise to protect us if we trust in Him, but He also expects us to do our part by being alert and watchful, and by being prepared.

In terms of the dramatic climate change our planet is already experiencing — which anyone can easily observe if they are not too involved in their own little bubbles of work, church and family life — God is giving us very clear signs that we are indeed entering into a period of great tribulation. Whether or not we as Christians will also go through the Tribulation first or be raptured out before it transpires, we still need to be ready and prepared to cope with either eventuality. This requires both remaining steadfast in our faith and keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, as well as being aware of and prepared for all of the effects climate change will bring.

Unfortunately, as most of the worst effects of climate change will disproportionately hit poorer and ethnic minority communities around the world the hardest — as highlighted in a recent UN report, among other sources — we should certainly as agents of God’s compassion focus on how we can help others who have less resources to deal with these.

As we know, Jesus Himself commended the wise and faithful servant who was busy doing his Father’s will — which we know from John 3:16 is that no one should perish but come to a saving faith in Jesus, so that means continuing to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every tribe and tongue and nation”(Matthew 28:16–20), as well as reaching out in compassion to meet the needs of the poor and oppressed. Therefore, we should be not only concerned about ensuring our own relationship with God is solid and we are ready to meet Him, but we should also actively seek to reach others, particularly to help them prepare with the trials and tribulations a dramatically changing climate will bring.

Moving the church out of its bubble

Sadly, except for the typically small minority who respond to the call to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every tribe and tongue and nation”(Matthew 28:16–20), and those who actively work for social justice for the poor, it seems most individual Christians and churches are still ensconced in their own local or national bubble, remaining either unintentionally (or perhaps even intentionally, considering those who are resistant to becoming involved in anything remotely political, which might appear contentious or controversial) unaware of the looming environmental emergency. In effect, most Christians are either vastly unaware or vastly unprepared — or both.

Worse, some may even be in complete climate denialism, or unwittingly supporting fossil fuel industries that are destroying many poorer communities around through their investment portfolios. On an encouraging note, Pope Francis has urged churches to divest from fossil fuels, and at least 20 churches and Christian organisations in the UK have agreed to divest at the start of 2020). Yet in terms of the scale and acceleration of climate change we are presently witnessing, this is effectively a drop in the ocean.

While we know God’s heart extends to all peoples and all of His creation, including the now-feared one-quarter of all species currently threatened with extinction due to man’s activities on the planet, there seems to be little active response from the church in terms of our calling to be stewards of God’s creation. Apart from a handful of radical Christian environmental activists and Christian environmental groups (Operation Noah, Green Christian, A Rocha, Pray and Fast for the Climate, European Christian Environmental Network, Catholic Climate Movement Global and Extinction Rebellion’s Christian Climate Action, among others), compassionate Christian actions or activism is rarely ever mentioned in the news — although other faith leaders have spoken out boldly, even risking arrest (such as Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Newman) for their convictions.

However, as groups such as Extinction Rebellion are now more actively highlighting the intense spiritual crisis that comes with climate anxiety and awareness, surely this represents a massive opportunity for Christians to become involved and address this climate anxiety with God’s message.

One thing is certain: in view of the times we are in (and even if this is out of Biblical context), we must take Jesus’s words to heart: “Whatever you do, do it quickly” (John 13:27). Because if we fail to act now, the door of the ark may soon slam shut, and we will miss our narrow window for redemption.