Journal Time
With Ray Waddle

Weary of the war news from Iraq, I stepped outside to plunge into my usual mode of noisy relaxation: Mowing the lawn. The sky was glorious, the grass was high. I pulled out the rickety little push mower and set to work, eager to beautify a piece of west Nashville and forget the troubled world.

Not so fast. The mower, I discovered, was out of gas.

I fetched my trusty smelly gas can and headed to the closest station, taking leave of the sweet May fragrance of honeysuckle. Within minutes I was surrounded by the usual crowd of SUVs, trucks, and sedans like mine, paying $1.80 a gallon. My bubble of escape was burst. As much as any off-road Detroit monster, my modest mower’s tiny tank depends on a jittery world’s thirst for oil.

Consider this statistic: The amount of energy consumed daily by one American is equal to that used by three Germans, 14 Chinese or 168 Bangladeshi. (source: Utne Reader, Jan-Feb. 2003) Here’s one more: Our dependence on foreign oil is rising. Last year, the US imported 61% of its oil. In 1975, it was 33%.

You could argue this consumption pattern is a suicidal case of national folly, political naiveté, ecological arrogance and moral recklessness—all rolled into one.

But we Christians aren’t sure how to feel about it. Some of us are ashamed, true enough. Many others, though, are rather proud of it. They argue: I work hard for the money; I deserve the biggest car I can get.

“What would Jesus drive?” The question isn’t helpful. Though everyone professes belief in the same Christ, theological politics divides us as fast as you can say, “Fox News.” One side says: I live in a country specially blessed by God. Consumption is our due. God is on our side, not on the side of the world’s poor. God made us the only superpower for a reason.

The other side says: God is insulted and alarmed by our wasteful habits. God is dishonored. God is ignored. Jesus is on everybody’s lips these days, but the example of Jesus is not.

Back in the 70’s, an energy crisis jolted people into serious talk about alternative energy sources, mass transit, solar panels and windmill technology. Then something happened. In the 1980’s, reports of oil glut brought relief. We never thought about it again. “Conservation” became a code word for weakness, timidity, malaise, extremism, behavior unbecoming of an empire.

After the cold war ended, we made peace in our hearts with three new ideas, and churches by and large did not challenge them: 1) We decided it’s OK to become more dependent on unpredictable foreign oil. 2) We decided we would go to war to keep the gas supply flowing cheaply. 3) We decided we would do these things without any debate, public or private, about the wisdom of our consumption habits, the high cost (ecologically, militarily) of cheap oil.

So we liberated Kuwait in 1991 and invaded Iraq in 2003—to keep gas under $2 a gallon. We know little about the oil industry and the economics of oil production—and don’t want to know. The 11-mile-a-gallon Hummer perfectly embodies a petrol-warrior mentality that simply didn’t exist before Gulf War I. Even in the current climate of war and war dead, no politician dares any talk of conservation or sacrifice.

In 130 years or so, we’ll be out of petroleum. The oil wars, which are only now beginning, should be over by then. Much of earth will perhaps be a smoking ruin, an economic mess, but life will eventually return to normal, the way it was before 1900, before the big oil reserves were discovered. People will walk to church again, not such a bad thing. What will the survivors and witnesses, our grandchildren’s grandchildren, think of us as they file in at worship in their brave new world? Unless we start caring about a theology of stewardship, and about alternative energy supplies, the world we leave them will be a cold, dark place. And they will despise their ancestors—us—for who we were.

This is what I was thinking about as I made round after round on the lawn with my old mower and its sloshing half-pint gas tank, newly filled with 61% foreign petroleum. My attempted escape from worries about war had failed me.

So did my memory of the prayer from Proverbs that I tried to call up amid the fumes and matted grass on a beautiful spring day. I looked it up when I got back inside:

“Two things I ask of you; do not deny them to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of the Lord.”

(Proverbs 30:7-9)