Readers Write
Essay 4/18/14: Just Outside the Gate
Anne Primavesi, Newbury, West Berkshire, UK: I have long benefited from your astringent biblical commentaries and thank you for them. In your "Just Outside the Gate" essay you make salient points about our role in climate change and our attitudes to Earth. My most recent book, "Exploring Earthiness: The Reality and Perception of Being Human Today," (Cascade Books) focuses on those attitudes and some of their present outcomes -- particularly what I call the "monetization of Earth." I'd like you to know you are not alone in your desire and continuing attempts to address these issues. And thank you for reassuring me that I, too, am not alone.
Patricia O'Hara, Santa Rosa, CA:
In your essay ("Just Outside The Gate") you ask why preachers do not use their sermons to bring moral pressure on the powers-that-be to do something about climate change. In my career as a chemical engineer focusing on helping corporations understand the environmental impact of their operations, production facilities, and products, I worked with a team to create tools for engineers to use to really understand the relative impacts of the choices they made, on both the environment and their costs. Until the powers-that-be understand the total cost of the choices they make, taking into consideration the entire life-cycle of the product or production operation being considered, and put true numbers in for the cost of water and other starting materials, they have no reason to change what they are doing, as they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to create as much profit as possible this side of the law. Exerting moral pressure has not worked in our capitalist system, only showing them the true bottom line. I am now retired, but the work for making the business case for environmental sustainability is still being carried out by Anthony Veltri at the University of Oregon.
Tom Hall, Foster, RI:
A telling exegesis of the Lukan parable. One of your best pieces.
Norma Sanford, Glencoe, IL:
How appropriate to publish an essay about the poor as Jews have been observing their legendary deliverance in the Passover rite and Christians their own in Easter rites. Now to make the connection with those just outside the gate. Your writing is brilliant and to the point. Thank you so much.
Josephine A. Kelsey, Ann Arbor, MI:
Bravo! Well done! One of your best. Keep going on this theme, please.
Bob & Kathleen Rogers Storen, Royal Oak, MI:
Thank you for this beautiful yet disturbing message and for the assigned readings. We send our gratitude for these reminders of what the gospel is all about.
Rosalind McGregor, Cambridge, MA:
I will take your essay "Just Outside the Gate" to church today, it being Good Friday. I think it is a perfect message for a day that has to do with suffering. I hope what I hear the rector say will be a quarter as good as what you wrote.
John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA:
Of course -- stating the obvious -- if global warming continues to heat up at its present rate, the consequences will be both Dives and Lazarus will eventually end up in hell. I always thought of all the blessings according Lazarus in the end, the greatest of those was not having to spend eternity with the likes of Dives.
Harry Dyke, Elkhart, IN:
What an incredibly gifted mind and interpretation in that essay! One could wish that masses within the church would read and reflect on the same. Connecting the environmental issue to the story of Dives and Lazarus is truly a theological bull's eye in stimulating preachers to address issues that are ultimate in importance. You have given all readers reason to acknowledge the catastrophe we are inevitably going to witness if we don't take the evidence seriously.
George Martindale, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia:
When I went to the seminary -- probably around the same time you did - homiletics was learning how to speak in pear-shaped tones. Nobody taught us to make the kind of connection you made between the Dives/Lazarus parable and real-life issues. I can tell from other things you've written that you had Dr. George Buttrick for homiletics. It shows. He'd be proud of you, I'm sure.
Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:
Thank you for a powerful piece on the perils we face due to the climate changes brought about by human profligacy, especially here in the wealthiest nation on earth. It is not just fact-denying Republicans and congregant-fearing preachers that refuse to face the ugly truth of our ongoing damage to the environment. It is every one of us who refuses to make disciplined changes in daily life and demand the industrial and governmental policies necessary to ward off environmental disaster.
Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, NJ:
Great essay, but pearls before the swine! The people who read and at least partially heed your essays already have some concern and compassion for fellow humans. However and sadly, religious leaders are as politicized to the right and as self-seeking as their friends and fellow travelers, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and the vast chorus of right-wing cheerleaders who praise the wealthy for their wealth, and simultaneously demean and condemn the countless Lazaruses amongst us. We might be saved from our worship of Mammon (unbridled capitalism) by the "blessing" of a global depression. The rich, of course, would survive rather well, thank you; while the non-rich will be further ground into the dust of deprivation. That might arouse our ignorant and indifferent population to man the barricades and declare a second American Revolution. But I dare add that such action would be much too inconvenient!
Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, CA: I can only assume the motive for those who deny climate change is fending off helplessness. The illusion of great wealth sponsors is the ability to escape the fate of lesser beings. I have no idea whether we have the ability to turn aside the catastrophe we already see underway, but I would vote for a huge increase in public spending, both to develop energy equivalents to burning fossil fuel, and for relief for those already undergoing terrible suffering. But I am not one who controls a significant percentage of the world's wealth. With the exception (possibly) of Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and perhaps a few others, obscene wealth seems to blind people to the reality that we either all succeed, or we all go down. No exceptions. What would it have taken to help Dives understand he was poisoning his own water? What would it take to persuade the Koch brothers?
Hershey Julien, Sunnyvale, CA: I am glad to see you calling attention to the environmental crisis in your essay of April 18. The best way to reduce the harmful emissions of CO2 that are the primary cause of global warming is to replace burning fossil fuels (like coal in electrical power plants) with energy from liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR). Second, it will help get LFTRs operational for the Congress to pass a bill introduced in the Senate, S.R 2006, the "National Rare Earth Cooperative Act of 2014." So, tell your readers to ask their senators to support this legislation. Once small, modular LFTR units are supplying power for electrical generating plants all over the country, long, expensive transmission lines with their loss of power will no longer be needed to distribute electricity from big power plants. The abundant, economical, safe power provided by these units can heat homes and commercial buildings; power factories; drive trains, buses, ships, and private cars. With gratitude for your thoughtful essays.
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