Sustainability in the Realm of God

Sustainability is a very popular word these days – and for good reason. Traditionally, businesses and other organizations have tried to evaluate themselves by isolating themselves from their larger context and by arguing that whatever happens outside of their perimeters doesn’t concern them. The classic example is the business that points to a healthy “bottom line” of profits. Every related cost that can be “externalized” improves the look of their profit statement. That approach can work only if the external environment has a virtually infinite capacity to absorb those “externalized” costs. An example might help here: Let’s say an oil company secures (or assumes) the right to drill in the jungles of South America. The company makes huge amounts of money until the wells run dry and then they leave. The resulting disruption to the local culture, the toxic sludge left behind, the environmental impact of building roads and pipelines, and the increased pollution generated by burning the oil are costs that must be borne by someone, but that never show up on the oil company’s balance sheet.

Eventually, the externalized costs begin to overwhelm the larger system, because it turns out that the larger system does not, in fact, have an infinite capacity to absorb them. We now have a system that is not sustainable. It cannot sustain its current behavior without undermining its own health and the health of the wider system.

I have given an economic example, but there are readily available examples in the realm of religion, too. For a long time, the separation of church and state meant that churches were only supposed to be concerned with the eternal soul of the individual, and that all other consequences of human behavior were out of bounds. So what happens to the externalized costs of the company CEO who makes generous contributions to the church, and makes a religious confession to insure an eternal address in the heavenly high rent district, but who continues the policies that are harmful to the world, especially to the poor and disenfranchised? In this case, the religious institution that promotes private salvation is an indirect contributor to the unsustainability of the wider system.

Those who promote concerns for sustainability in the design of all systems and organizations want us to realize that we are all connected, and “whatever we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.” (attributed to Chief Seattle)

This is not a new idea. It is another version of “The Golden Rule”. It is certainly possible to think of the Golden Rule as an economic principle as well as an ethical one. “Externalized costs” must be paid by someone, and when they get massive enough, as they have in our present world, we, our children, and our children’s children (“to the seventh generation”) are required to pay up.

Jesus’ central teachings focused on healthy relationships and on the quality of community. The early church was remarkable because people within that community derived their sense of security from the quality of their caring for one another. “The powers that be” tend to resist and undermine the creation of sustainable systems because the values of sustainability limit their ability to feed their greed. In a truly sustainable system, people put into the system at least as much as they take out. In our present system, we are taught to take out as much as we can and to externalize whatever costs we can. Ultimately this approach can only result in the kind of environmental and social bankruptcy that are rampant today.

Bringing the argument down to the local level, many churches and other religious institutions today are trying to figure out how to survive in the present socio-economic system. Sometimes they look at themselves only in terms of how they can persuade people to join so the institution can survive. This makes congregants little more than consumers. I believe that spiritual communities can survive only if they learn to apply the principles of sustainability to themselves. A sustainable spiritual community is one that has found and developed a relationship of mutuality with the surrounding community. To that end, we at Park Church are trying to discover what the surrounding environment needs us to be. I’m not talking about chasing social and religious fads here. I am saying that in the sustainable Realm of God, we learn to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The love we make available in relationship is the love that makes the system sustainable for all. Any system whose central value is expressed in loving relationship will be a manifestation of the Realm of God.

I believe that is the task that Jesus has given us.

What do you think?

Wayne Gustafson
Interim Minister, The Park Church

“Our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking isn’t.”
The United Church___of Christ