Do you wait for God to wash your behind, too?

I had lunch with a good friend the other day who prides himself on constantly listening to conservative talk shows every minute that he spends in his car. We had a great lunch and caught up on everything since we last had the pleasure of each other’s company.

As he took a sip out of his second beer, my friend could not resist some polite ridicule: “I’ve been reading your op-eds in the papers, Rick. Don’t you think you are beating a dead horse with all this climate change and fossil fuels gibberish?”

I replied to the negative – and asked him if he thought anything I had written was not factual.

“Oh, I believe the seas are rising and the climate is changing, but you’re not going to stop the money, Rick. The money rules. I believe in God – and that He wants us to be prosperous – and that He will sort everything out.”

“I believe in God, too,” I said. “But let me ask you a question. Did you wash your (butt) this morning? Did you take yesterday’s trash to the dumpster? Did you pay your water bill last month. Or did you wait for God to do it?”

I then picked up the tab and emphasized my need to get back to work.

If you believe in God, then you take His word (the Bible) to heart. In that book, God calls for us to take care of our environment in numerous passages. You can’t put money ahead of God’s word now, can you?

Our “one nation under God” (indivisible?) is now being led by a person who has issues about such priorities. His decisions to roll back environmental protections in favor of unbridled industry and development got some icing on the cake when he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord – which put us in the stellar company of Nicaragua and Syria as the only nations in the world not signed on to this agreement.

What’s worse is the political party which I have voted with for most of my adult life has morphed into an outfit which fails to recognize any synergy between the words conservation and conservative. All the way down to the state and local level, the natural world is under political attack.

It is as if they believe that saying the seas are not rising will change the fact that they are, or calling climate change “a hoax” often enough will make the issue go away. Or that new technology is not good for the environment and economy.

I asked my friend if he didn’t think that leaving the natural world in such shambles for our grandchildren was a very irresponsible and selfish proposition.

“It is what it is,” he said. “I believe that this world will not be here for our grandchildren.”

Our political leaders are doing everything in their power to make sure that statement comes true.

This story was originally published June 12, 2017 at 7:29 AM with the headline "Do you wait for God to wash your behind, too?."