"With hurricanes, tornados [sic], fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and
with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a
good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?" - Jay Leno
This
showed up among a collection of other inspirational messages in an
email from a family friend entitled 'Sayings to think about.' I know
they mean well and it doesn't offend me or enrage me enough to call
them up and give them my two cents. But it does make me wonder how,
when they send these emails (forwards typically, I average about dozen
a week) trying to persuade us heathens to believe in God, as if a
belief is something you could 'try harder' to have, how the glaring
circularity of the messages doesn't occur to them.
I saw this the other day, and my instantaneous willingness to get behind it made me wonder if I was being a hypocrite.
Four years ago Mr. Ball,
the executive director of the nonprofit Evangelical Environmental
Network, and his wife, Kara, drove thePrius from Texas east across the
Bible Belt in a provocative stunt that, in keeping with the core
mission of his organization, awakened evangelical churches to the
threat of global warming. It also awakened Americans to the existence
of the human hybrid known as a Green Evangelical.
But
upon further reflection, I don't think my support is hypocritical, I
haven't changed my position on Christianity or global warming. I just
like that people are getting excited enough about the environment and
the pri -i(?) to make a difference, however that inspiration manifests.
These people are doing more good for the ultimate beneficiaries than a
lot of athiest vegan activists I know.
It
turns out that Jim and Kara Ball spend a lot of time thinking not just
about what Jesus would drive, but also about how his people should wash
their clothes, light their bathrooms, clean their windows, shop for
groceries and furnish their living rooms — the day-to-day elements of
what some Christian environmentalists call “creation care.”
“We
like to buy used — we do that intentionally,” Mr. Ball said, surveying
a desk, television cabinet, dining room table and end tables that the
couple bought at their favorite thrift shop in rural Maryland, run by a
Navy veteran named Bill. “Our stuff doesn’t necessarily match, but it goes enough.”
At
the nonprofit I worked with a few years ago, we thought of ourselves as
non-elitist quasi-purists and were well aware that our dedication and
passion was not shared by everyone. Or by very many people at all. We
were surrounded by groups (and sometimes legislators) both more and
less liberal than we were who picked every battle, refusing to
compromise, figuring one win would outweigh the damage to themselves
and their cause wreked by what many viewed to be irrational stubbornness
or extremist tactics. Our observations of these litigious, costly, and
ultimately unproductive dealings taught us that it's often a good idea
to keep bridges intact, even if those bridges lead to a place you would
never ever go.
For example - we were an environmental group
and often found our interests aligned with those of hunting
enthusiasts. While there is not much in this world that I consider more
grotesque and inhumane than hunting, the fact that uniting with an
enemy would increase the chances of defeating a 3d party enemy was
undeniable. Damage to reputation is also a consideration, but we
weren't an animal rights group, we were working for the same thing
which was conservation.
Another example - a certain dean of a
certain public law school embarked a few years ago on a fundraising
campaign that was initially unpopular because it entailed securing significiant
amounts of private funding for a school that purports to be very
protective of its reputation as being public interest-oriented. But
today I don't see any of the students complaining about the new library
or Aeron chairs.
I'd like to now share some advice one of my wise colleagues
was once good enough to share with me, and that is: "Fuck 'em." This
advice applies in many contexts but here I suppose "'em" would be those
who would question your loyalty and passion when really you're just
doing whatever it takes to get what you want. There may be a fine line
between compromise and being a pushover or a sell-out. But I think
there is a line.
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