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Most of us know, because we have at least seen the movie "Ten Commandments," that God has said, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
His Words on the matter, delivered by Moses, are written in both the book of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy.
Israel was infatuated with "other gods" at various times. The Old Testament records many of those times.
New Testament Christians have also been instructed to have "no other gods before me" but have also been drawn to "other gods"---false religions.
Perhaps never more than today.
Be informed, not misled.
Climate Change has become a religion with many in today's enlightened "Christian" culture.
So has progressivism, the LGBTQ agenda, humanism, and atheism---even abortion advocates have created a religion according to Webster's definition of "religion" calling it women's health care.
Keep in mind Webster defines "religion" as:
- "a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices."
- "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith."
Recycling has also become a religion. It too is a false religion, but it serves as a great illustration.
Recycling is garbage and it has become a religion with many evangelists.
For decades we've been told to recycle to save the planet. There's always been resistance to new religions by people usually considered not to be "progressive" or simply "old school."
Many years ago John Tierney who was then Science Editor for the New York Times, wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine titled, "Recycle is Garbage." Tierney is not known to be "old school."
His article begins with this:
AS THEY PUT ON PLASTIC GLOVES FOR THEIR first litter hunt, the third graders knew what to expect. They knew their garbage. It was part of their science curriculum at Bridges Elementary, a public school on West 17th Street in Manhattan. They had learned the Three R's -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle -- and discussed how to stop their parents from using paper plates. For Earth Day they had read a Scholastic science publication, "Inside the World of Trash." For homework, they had kept garbage diaries and drawn color-coded charts of their families' trash. So they were primed for the field experiment on this May afternoon.
"We have to help the earth," Natasha Newman explained as she and her classmates dashed around the school collecting specimens. Their science teacher, Linnette Aponte, mediated disputes -- "I saw that gum wrapper first!" -- and supervised the subsequent analysis of data back in the classroom. The students gathered around to watch her dump out their bags on the floor.
Do you see any pattern as I'm emptying it?" Miss Aponte asked.
"Yeah, it stinks."
"Everybody's chewing Winterfresh."
"A lot of paper napkins."
"It's disgusting."
"They're throwing away a folder. That's a perfectly good folder!"
And then this:
Miss Aponte finished emptying the last bag. "We've been learning about the need to reduce, reuse and recycle," she said, and pointed at the pile. "How does all this make you feel?"
"Baaaad," the students moaned.
Miss Aponte separated out two bottles, the only items in the pile that could be recycled.
Without realizing it, the third graders had beautifully reproduced the results of a grand national experiment begun in 1987 -- the year they were born, back when the Three R's had nothing to do with garbage.
There's more.
But the New York Magazine got more hate mail about this article than any other article in their history.
Recycling teaches the parallel themes that previous generations of schoolchildren learned from books like "The Pilgrim's Progress."
Today's schoolchildren, though, might be confused by one character encountered on Bunyan's road to salvation: a man, the source of our word "muckraker," who is busy raking together a compost pile. This recycler of household waste isn't presented as a role model for the pilgrim. He's a symbol of moral blindness because, instead of looking up to see the heavenly rewards awaiting him, he "could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand." In Bunyan's time, it would have been hard to imagine that pilgrims would one day be taught to search for salvation right down there in the muck.
Still searching in the muck.
John Stossel wrote an article yesterday in which he said, "The ugly truth is that many 'recyclables' sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.
Even Greenpeace now says, "Plastic recycling is a dead-end street."
Stossel has produced a documentary on this subject. He has included John Tierney in the documentary. You should check it out. It's worth the time.
Here are a few of the revelations from it;
It's even more true today," says Tierney in the new video. "Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less."
It would be smarter to just dump our garbage in landfills.
People think landfills are horrible polluters. But they're not. Regulations (occasionally, government regulations are actually useful) make sure today's landfills have protective barriers so they don't leak.
Eventually, landfills are turned into good things: ski hills, parks, and golf courses.
But aren't we running out of landfill space? For years, alarmist media said we were. But that's not true.
America has more space than we will ever need. Sometimes states and businesses even compete to get our garbage.
"If you think of the United States as a football field," says Tierney, "all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1,000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one-inch line."
Putting garbage in landfills is often much cheaper than recycling. My town would save $340 million a year if it just stopped recycling.
But they won't, "because people demand it," says Tierney. "It's a sacrament of the green religion."
The religion's commandments are complex. New York City orders me to: "Place recyclables at the curb between 4 PM and midnight ... Rinse plastic containers ... Separate paper from plastic, metal, and glass." The paper must be tied "with twine into bundles no taller than 18 inches," and so on.
"That's one reason recycling fails," says Tierney. "It's so complicated; people never learn the rules."
Plastic is not evil. Recycling is no climate savior. When Los Angeles mandated it, they added 400 big noisy garbage trucks.
That creates lots of pollution.
But environmentalists still demand we do things like pick through our trash, and switch from plastic to paper bags that rip. California even banned small plastic shampoo bottles
"Some of these rules are just so arbitrary and silly," complains Tierney. "It's simply a way for greens and for some politicians to pretend that they're saving the planet."
Takeaway
I hope this has given you some insight regarding the extremism in the green movement. It has become a religion for many of our kids. So has humanism, progressivism, atheism, transgenderism, the LGBTQ movement, and other social movements.
My concern is that America is not necessarily turning away from God, in the sense of outright rejecting Him and His Word, but rather weaving God and His Word into the many new religions being created to advance social and political issues.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has, over the past 20 years, either simply made up "Scriptures" or twisted Scripture to support her agenda. Example: "The Bible says addressing climate change is a form of worship."
The Bible says mankind has been given dominion [responsibility] over the environment. Stewardship. Not stupidity.
And Paul, writing to the Romans (1:25) said this about those who "have other gods:"
"Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."
Don't get lost in the noise.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.