Well, The Earth Died Screaming, While I Lay Dreaming

But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child';

For you will go to all whom I send you, and you will speak whatever I command you."

"Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to protect you."

-Jeremiah 1: 7-8

By now you have probably experienced the moral Rorshach test that is Greta Thunberg.  She is the sixteen year old Swedish girl who started going on strike because of our abuse of the environment.  She also has Asperger's which is now technically classified on the Autism spectrum.  Greta sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a solar powered boat to address the UN in New York City on the subject of climate change.  She is quite frankly pissed off, and I for one do not blame her one little bit.  I sometimes wonder why my children aren't more angry about what we have been doing to the planet they will have to live on.

My political leanings are primarily motivated by an interest in two main pillars: the first is human rights, the foundation for this is my understanding of the Gospel imperative to love your neighbor.  I am not so much interested in left/right, liberal/conservative, platforms as I am pursuing a just society that upholds the dignity and commonwealth of all humanity.  Both political parties routinely let me down on this front.  The other pillar is environmental stewardship, which while it certainly does have a Gospel component of loving neighbors, goes even further back, to the very beginning when God created us to be caretakers and stewards of a good creation.  This is primarily the reason why, in the middle of the George W. Bush era, I switched my registration from R to D.  Because climate change denial was becoming frankly insane.  We were starting to see the effects, the science was mounting up.  If you attach the label "conservative" to yourself you should be interesting in "conservation." The party had plenty of cover and reasons to get on the right side of the environmental debates, they have overwhelming support among outdoor types (there is overlap with gun rights) and farmers, whose very livelihood is tied to care for our living biosphere.  This should never have become a left/right battle, but there is this little thing called capitalism that means money rules, and fossil fuel companies have a lot of it.

I could go on for a rather long time with details of how our addiction to burning things for energy has corrupted us.  The disastrous politics of the Middle East, human rights catastrophes and even the more moderate estimations of the long term effects of climate change should inspire any actual conservative to the same kind of anger that Ms. Thunberg demonstrated in the UN when she glared at world leaders and said, "HOW DARE YOU!"

We need to listen to Greta, she has no reason to lie to us, and her personality and disposition means she has no interest in being anybody's sweet little eco-princess.  Yet, again we choose up sides and start sniffing armpits and a bunch of full grown people with pretty solid educations decide that this little girl, sorry young woman, is somehow a threat to them, and they go on the attack.  That's because she's a prophet.  I have no idea if she's religious, probably not, but she's a prophet.  I talk a lot about prophets in this blog because I think they're important, and because we don't have enough of them.  Prophets don't have to have the solution to the problem (though sometimes they do), they don't have to be the perfect messenger, they can be broken and faulty people themselves, all they have to do is speak what the Lord gives them to speak.

I believe that whether Greta knows or believes it or not, The Lord has given her that message, "HOW DARE YOU!" She is not a puppet or some kind of apparition ginned up by the lefty tree huggers.  Tomi Lahren is what happens when a political ideology manifests in a well decorated incarnation.  Greta is what happens when the Spirit of a Loving Creator decides to speak through a human being.  God never picks the "perfect" messenger.  Abram and Sarai were too old, Moses stuttered, David was an adulterer, Jeremiah was too young and a bit off (sort of like Greta), Amos gave zero junk, Hosea married a prostitute, Jesus was from Nazareth, you get the idea.

Listen, you that have ears.  Observe the reaction from the system, you that have eyes.  No matter what happens from here on out, a message has been delivered concerning our performance as stewards of God's creation, and it is an angry voice saying, "HOW DARE YOU!"