Discernment Test

We've had other discernment tests on this blog and here is one more.

This prayer was plucked from Brian Mclaren's blog. Brian was mentioned in Sunday's adult education hour by our speaker as someone to watch. He is a popular author and Christian leader. I will let you read this and decide for yourselves whether his prayer lines up with scripture.

A Prayer for the Earth (Longer form)

Most gracious God, creator of all good things, we thank you for the precious gift of life, for the intricate cycles and the beautiful balances that sustain it, and for the unfolding story of planet earth and all creatures that share it.
We thank you for all earth’s people. You have inspired us to do much that is good and beautiful and true, but we have also chosen to act in ways that are destructive, selfish, ugly and false. Through ignorance and carelessness we have poisoned clean air and pure water.

For monetary gain we have reduced verdant forests to barren wastes. In our craving for more we have plundered your beloved creation and driven many of our fellow creatures to extinction. Only recently have we begun to realize the dangerous future into which our current patterns of consumption and waste are driving us, especially in relation to earth’s climate. Only recently have we begun to see our need to find a wiser and better way of life in the future, before it is too late and our choices are limited by the consequences of inaction.

We who join in prayer today believe the time has come, Lord. Please guide us now, our God, at this critical moment in history, to better fulfill our role as stewards of this fragile planet. Inspire us and empower us to turn from thoughtless consumption and greedy destruction, to embrace and choose instead lives of caring protection and sacred regeneration. Help us discover again a wholesome and sustainable way of life that reflects your wisdom, your compassion, your justice, and your love. Help us reject the lie that there is no alternative to greed and careless exploitation, and help us believe your truth -- that true prosperity, life in all its fullness, can only come from wise stewardship, mutual responsibility, and mutual care.

Guide the leaders of nations who (will) gather in Copenhagen (on December 6). Give them courage to set noble goals that reach beyond short-range political expediency, short-term economic profit, and short-sighted self-interest. Grant them foresight into a troubled future characterized by rising sea levels, spreading droughts and deserts, melting glaciers, suffering families and displaced populations, ravaging diseases, and catastrophic famines. Move them to choose a better future. Impress upon their conscience our sacred duty to bequeath to our children and grandchildren a healthy and thriving environment rather than a world in climate crisis.

If our leaders fail, Lord, if they fail to take the necessary action, they will violate both our trust and your calling to use their power for the common good. If they fail, every person will be affected, including generations not yet born. Please, God of justice and compassion, do not let the poorest and youngest among us, who have done the least to create this crisis, suffer the unchecked consequences of the reckless greed and arrogant complacency of the wealthiest and most comfortable. Instead, move the prosperous nations to bear their fair share of the solution, in just proportion to their contribution to the problem. Rouse us all to action for we are all woven together in the fabric of creation.

This is the moment, God, when a great turning of hearts must begin. So through this prayer, we of many traditions who follow Christ -- joined by friends and neighbors of many faiths – unite our hearts in a cry for change. At first a few of us, and then hundreds, and then many thousands, join together as one to pray to you on behalf of our leaders, in solidarity with the poor, in strong hope for the healing of this beautiful world, your creation and our home. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We pray in the name of Christ, through whom you have given yourself to the whole world in incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Amen.

Hmmm....Does scripture tell us to snatch souls from the fire or to snatch earth from the fire?

Let's remember that Jesus, Paul and others told us to watch for wolves in sheep's clothing.