Emma Sleeth - Its Easy Being Green. A Teens Guide to Serving God and Saving the Planet

E verything in life suddenly seems funnier when you have seventeen people sitting on top of you.

A few years ago a student in one of my moms English classesmy moms a teacherstarted a by teens, for teens worship service. Every weekend we met at Jamies church on Sunday afternoon to sing, hear the Word, pray, and fellowship together. Jamie always planned some kind of activity to illustrate each of his mini-sermons: We played thumb wars, lit matches, did push-ups (okay, tried to do push-ups, in my case), and put together puzzles. But by far the most outrageousand funactivity Jamie ever had us do was musical chairs, love-your-neighbor style.

Jamie told each of us to grab a folding chair, and we set them all up in a circle. One of the girls from the praise band got her guitar. It was just like when we used to play musical chairs at birthday parties in elementary school. Every time Brittany stopped playing, we would stop circling the chairs and sit heavily in the closest one. Then a chair would be taken away, and wed do it again. There was only one catch: In this version of the game, nobody ever got out. Each time a chair was taken out of the circle, one more person would have to share a seat with a friend.

At first it wasnt bad: My best friend, Hannah, and I would take a chair together, or Geoff, Jamies seven-year-old brother, would sit on his big brothers lap. But as more and more chairs were taken away, the seating arrangements got less and less normal. Strangers began cramming together, four to a chair. Then we got down to two chairs. When Brittany resumed her song, Jamie folded up one more chair. We all laughed, not really expecting hed have us all try to fit onto one chair. But then the guitar music stopped. We all bolted to the one chair instinctively, piling football player on top of computer genius, drama kid on top of math-team captain.

When we all toppled off one another, still laughing, Jamie explained the point of the game: When Jesus was asked what the most important things to do were, he answered that we should love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

What did this have to do with being crushed like a very small ant under a very heavy bowling ball?

First, it means we need to really have hearts and minds and souls and strengthwe need the chairs and the music and all of you guys who showed up today in order to play this game. We also need to know who our neighbors are: as you just found out, thats every single person here. But most importantly, we have to have lovewe need to laugh and have fun and appreciate the blessings weve been given.

In a similar sense, I believe that the only way we can protect our environment is by following Jesus teachings. Preserving creation is about honoring the Creator and putting the well-being of others before our own desires.

Following Jesus two greatest commandments begins with our hearts. We must have compassion for those who are suffering, whether they be Kenyan children who are starving while we Americans throw away an average of 470 pounds of food per person per year, Honduran elders who are dying of cancer because of the toxic pesticides used on coffee plantations, or kids in Thailand whose lungs are being filled with pollution released into the air by factories that produce our school binders.

We hear so much about environmental concerns that sometimes our hearts can harden. I remember when my best friend, Hannah, cut off a foot of her hair. I thought Id never get used to it. For the next month, every time I saw her I was once again surprised to see gentle waves of brown curling about her ears, no longer able to reach into her customary ponytail. But after awhile Hannahs short hair began to seem normal. Now I have a hard time picturing Hannah with long hair. The same thing can happen to us regarding the environment. The first time we read an article about the declining state of the ecosystem, we can immediately commit to recycling everything, picking up trash by the side of the road, and carpooling more. But then we can lose our enthusiasm. Soon pollution again seems normal, greenhouse gases and curbside litter unavoidable. Loss of zeal really means loss of heart. To make a difference, we must care about the people a polluted environment is affectingand the God who calls us to do something about it.

But its not just about our hearts. To protect the environment effectively, we must also have minds. We must educate ourselves about the state of the planet and where it will be heading in the very near future if we do nothing to intervene. We must have knowledge about Gods biblical demand to care for nature.

Remember when you were a young kid playing outside and you somehow didnt hear your mom calling you for dinner? Sorry, Mom, I didnt hear you screaming at the top of your lungs those, er, twenty-five times seemed like a sorry excuse when she glared at you with one eyebrow raised and her hands on her hips. Dont worry, the God of the universe hasnt borrowed your mothers floral apron, but he is going to hold us accountable for what we do or dont do to steward his creation. With massive climate changes, a plethora of available information about how we are destroying the planet, and hundreds of Bible verses all pointing to our need to care for Gods earth, saying we didnt know to God isnt going to cut it.