Okay so there isn’t much of a secret about how I feel about environmental issues, I think especially Christians should be concerned with how we care for creation. We have a responsibility to take care of what God left in our stewardship, this is why Emily and I do some of the things we do like eat local organic food when possible, buy fair trade clothes and coffee, try to conserve on water, recycle our trash and ride bikes a lot.
Now I know that we have a far way to go to living on our 2/3’s of an acre (the amount of space that each person in the world could have if we were going to divide it up equally), but I try to think in terms of “baby steps.” I have a long way to go, but I am working at it one step at a time. I also know that people who care about the creation tend to get pegged as a) “flaming” liberals; b) wacko’s or c) self-righteous people who hang out and drink tea on their high horses. Well I don’t consider myself a “liberal” or a “wacko” (these are not synonymous) though some people may beg to differ, that means that if you’d like to dismiss what I’ve said about being a good steward with the earth your best bet is to write me off as “self-righteous.” The real reason why we try to live this way is because we really believe this is the kind of lifestyle Jesus exemplified. Yes it is true some people who are committed to following Jesus care about these issues because they follow Jesus.
Okay well all that is to basically justify what I am about to tell you. I can’t stand [click here].
![[click here]](http://static.flickr.com/40/91638002_b15fb11251.jpg?v=0){kind=link}
These vehicles seem to epitomize to me the greed, pride and self-indulgent attitudes of Americans – they show that we could care less about our impact on others (or are just ignorant of those effects) and are more concerned with our own luxuries. When I see these specific big trucks, I fantasize about doing bad things to them. I don’t! I just wish sometimes there was a world where it would be completely proper and acceptable to slash tires every once in a while. Well I didn’t slash any body’s tires, nor would I ever do such a thing, but I did decide to write a little note on one of those huge trucks I saw parked out by the school the other day. I have a bunch of these velorucion stickers for “bike activism” I bought from this website so I wrote a friendly little note on the back and slid it under the windshield wiper. I don’t normally do this kind of these, I am pretty timid when it comes to this stuff, but I felt justified when I saw their “staff” sticker for our school. I go to a seminary so I used that commonality to appeal to a higher authority.
I don’t think that by doing this I will necessarily change this person’s mind and that they will “downgrade” to something that more environmentally friendly. I do hope that a note like that shocked that person out of a slumber. Hopefully they realized that people do watch and pay attention to the things they do and participate in, and that they are effected by it. And maybe, hopefully, with that realization change can slowly take hold.
Here are the pictures.
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Steve, this is a wonderful point and alas the weakness to the whole thing that I did.
There is one thing I regret about what I did, and its that I did it annoymously. I was wrong to not open myself up for dialogue. I don’t like it when people post annonymously on my blog, and so I don’t know why I would do the say to someone’s truck.
Finally, because I believe that real ethics happen within communities of people, evem had I left my name there would be difficulty in expecting any kind of healthy interchange being that I don’t have strong connections to this person. Though we do share the same employer.
In other words, I think if we are going to do something like that it only works best when we do it with people we already know and have some kind of relationship with.
I’m not saying that we can’t do what I did from time to time, because we ought to stir up conversations about this stuff where ever we go, but I am not really sure how useful we can hope for those interchanges to be.
Thanks for you comment and hitting the nail and on the head.
Wess,
There’s also the ’small’ matter of your having fantasized about slashing tires, which speaks of a significant amount of anger for which there seems no justification. Had it not been for that one comment, I might never have said anything at all.
And don’t forget that by putting those pictures on your blog you potentially exposed that Hummer owner up to public ridicule (not to mention your violent fantasy), since it shouldn’t be too difficult for people in your personal circles to identify background scenery and window decals. That is very much something to think about, and again, the main reason I responded.
John
John,
Thanks again for the dialogue and all of this has certainly caused me to think more carefully about the whole thing.
Please understand that I recognize that my “thoughts of slashing tires” are wrong thoughts and that is why I didn’t act on them and won’t act on them. It isn’t right for anyone, let alone someone who is himself a pascifst to respond that way. This is why in my original post I was emphatic about pointing that I’ve never done such a thing. I recognize that it would not be Jesus-like to do that.
Have you ever thought of doing something you shouldn’t, and rejected the temptation? Slashing tires for me is not even a terribly hard temptation – the thought has only come into my head a couple times as a blantantly bad way to handle a situation (something of an alter ego) and furthermore I don’t and never carry the kinds of “tools” it would take to do such a crime.
My putting that statement in there was a hyperbole – in poor tast I admit – but that’s what it was. Because you latched onto that you’ve pegged my character as essentially different than what it really is – I am much less confrontational than this one event makes me out to be.
In fact, this is why I posted it – it was the very first time I’ve ever done such a thing and I wanted feedback about my action – I wanted either a) an amen! or b) a reproof. I got a little of both which tends to be the natural way of things.
In keeping this site I open myself to reproof and amens – as you saw from the epic battle of theology on the other post…I am open to thinking differently about things as well. My last comment in response to Steve should show you I am serious about this.
As far as public humiliation goes I carefully wrote my post without major proper nouns so that it wouldn’t get picked up in google (even down to naming my link for the post itself) – and I keep a close watch on who visits my blog.
I am fairly confident that if this person found my blog and read the post along with all the comments he/she would realize I had a change of heart about how I did what I did. And in person I would be willing to say the same. Though I haven’t had a change of heart about what I believe on the issue.
In fact I will remove the last picture from my in favor of more anonymity so that it will be aparent that humiliation is my last desire from all this.
[...] So where does this leave us? One major implication is to understand that modern morality as such gives us little room to say anything convincing because it is so overwhelmed by individualism and our own personal preferences about what we think ought to be done about this or that. Within this understanding then, we recognize the extreme importance it is to embody what it is we are pointing to. This was the main problem with one of my earlier protests. [...]
[...] One other “controversy” was over a post I wrote about some “activism” I participated in. The Comments on this post were some of the highest I’ve had on this site. [...]