Midlands Voices: Heed ‘nudges from God' and tackle global warming

The writer, of Lincoln, is executive director of Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light, a religious organization that aims to mobilize the religious voice on global warming and other energy issues. Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light welcomes people of all political leanings into faith and currently consists of the Central Presbytery of Nebraska, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nebraska, the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Nebraska Synod, the Homestead Presbytery of Nebraska, the Society of Friends, the United Church of Christ of Nebraska and the United Methodist Conference of Nebraska.

Tuvalu is a tiny Pacific island, halfway between Hawaii and Australia. It is expected to be underwater by 2050 and unlivable within a decade due to rising sea levels from global warming.

The president of the Maldives, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, is preparing for the worst by buying land for his people elsewhere, saying “we do not want to leave the Maldives but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.”

The half-million residents of Bangladesh's Bhola Island were displaced in 1995.

(Australia refused to accept requests to resettle the residents of Tuvalu. New Zealand agreed to take all 11,000.)

So, lest we sing too high the chorus of “life as we know it will come to an end if the cap-and-trade bill passes,” let us quiet a moment to hear another song.

In “Anyway,” Martina McBride invites us to value our acting on faith:

You can chase a dream

That seems so out of reach

And you know it might not ever come your way

Dream it anyway.

In his Sunday sermon on June 28, the Rev. David Lux of St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Lincoln reflected on McBride's song to ponder “ ‘anyway' faith” — actions that arise from ‘nudges from God,' inner calls to take action with uncertain outcomes, risk and our comfort zones behind.”

Lux added, “We don't know if everything is going to work out in the end, but we do it anyway because we have faith that God is able to do something within the process of ‘anyway,' some kind of good that is beyond our human understanding that is God's dream for this world.”

“ ‘Nudges from God' are recognizable. If the act builds people up, it's probably has something to do with God. If it helps or empowers others, involves humility, it probably has something to do with God. We may get blisters before we get calluses, but if it has something to do with God, do it anyway.”

Consider some additional lyrics of “Anyway” by McBride:

God is great. But sometimes life ain't good

And when I pray

It doesn't always turn out like I think it should

But I do it anyway,

I do it anyway.

So, we should respond to climate change with “ ‘anyway' faith.” As Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman noted in his June 29 column in the New York Times, we are “facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself.” He likened the thinking of climate change deniers to “treason against the planet.”

In that column, Krugman wrote: “If you watched the debate (in the House) . . . you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it. . . . The deniers (of climate change) are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is.”

Here's more from McBride's “Anyway”:

This world's gone crazy

It's hard to believe

That tomorrow will be better than today

Believe it anyway.

Taking Earth under our wing is not strange country. We pay right now for goods and services in which the rising cost of coal, natural gas and oil is embedded in the price of everything we purchase. Life will be warmer, quieter, less expensive and better once we've insulated ourselves from what we're paying to waste it.

And aren't we old hands at cleaning up after ourselves? We should be grateful to live in times when people no longer dispose of their waste by heaving it from an upstairs window onto the street below. We happily pay about $300 a year for garbage service and another $350 for sewer and water, so it's not foreign to consider a dumping fee for energy waste.

So, as we begin to hum a different tune about climate change, please remember the people of Tuvalu and God's dream for this world, expressed by McBride:

You can love someone with all your heart

For all the right reasons

In a moment they can choose to walk away

Love 'em anyway.

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