Explainer
Belief
Climate
Comment
Sustainability
7 min read

Living sustainably doesn’t have to be a burden, here’s the case for action

How not to get hot and bothered about climate change.

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A protester holds up a green sign reading: 'It's hard to be green. Kermit'.
Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

The fundamental tenets of Christianity show why Christians are called to love not just one another but all created things. 

1. God is love. 

2. God created everything. 

Therefore, God loves everything he created.  

3. God appointed humanity as the guardians of creation. 

Therefore, a fundamental part of our identity and calling as human beings is to protect and sustain all that God created. 

This lies at the basis of everything Christians believe and do. But a case can be made that is more basic still because it appeals, not to anything distinctively Christian, but to natural human wisdom. The climate crisis is not a Christian crisis. It’s a crisis for everyone who cares about their future and that of our planet. The climate crisis may be something unprecedented in the history of humanity, but the principles that are needed to resolve it are not new at all. Sustainability is not a new or particularly abstruse idea. It is something everyone understands as basic common sense. If I cut down trees faster than they can grow, I won’t be able to do that forever. One day I will cut down the last tree and then there won’t be any more trees, ever again. If I catch fish faster than they can reproduce, then one day I will catch the last fish and then won’t be able to catch any more ever again.  

But it’s not only about foresters and fishermen. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been living sustainably – wisely preserving resources and using only what we can replace, so that we and our descendants can continue to live. This applies to everyone regardless of their profession. All of us, if we spend more money than we earn, are living in a way that cannot last for long. If we use resources at a faster rate than we can replenish them, we will run into trouble at some point in the future. Every person possessed of reason and common sense knows this intuitively without having to be taught it. Only someone seriously deluded, foolish, or with some kind of mental health problem fails to understand the need for sustainability in order to have any kind of future at all, let alone a pleasant future. 

The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are... 

Email updates

We are burning fossil fuels at hundreds of times the rate they can be produced. We are producing plastics that cannot be recycled, meaning we have to dump them in landfills that are growing all the time. We are pouring carbon dioxide into the air faster than anyone can take it out. All of these things mean that there is a time limit on the kind of lifestyles we are all leading now. If we carry on in this way, then one day we will cross a line from which there is no returning. As Mark Scarlata has pointed out, the solution cannot be technological. Even if we find a way to balance carbon outputs with inputs, we are only kicking the can further down the road. Our inability to live within our means will simply resurface somewhere else later on. The problem is spiritual, not technical.  

Everyone understands this at some level even if it’s the kind of truth from which we prefer to avert our eyes. The harder problem is to understand why this basic common sense isn’t proving effective. Why are we living collectively in a way that only a foolish or insane person would live, when most of us taken by ourselves are neither foolish or insane? 

The problem, at least in part, is that we are all entangled in systems that make it very hard for us to live sustainably. If I am an ordinary Brit living in an ordinary town or city, and I need to buy toothbrushes or nappies or cucumbers or strawberries, I go to the local supermarket: and the only options available are made of plastic or wrapped in plastic that will not decompose for 500 years, and often brought here from the other side of the world using huge amounts of carbon emissions. Most of us are busy people with limited financial resources. We don’t have the time to find sustainable alternatives and often they are too expensive even if we can find them. The societal structures that we live in limit the choices we have. The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are, but also an inability to see how we could be doing more given all the pressures, needs and constraints on our time and money. 

Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means. 

We are all culprits in part, since we all contribute to non-sustainable living. But we are also partly victims of forces beyond our control, large cultural forces that shape and determine our actions more than we can imagine. We have very little power over those structural forces and currently things do not look good. Common sense principles aren’t working. The climate crisis is only getting worse. So, what do we do?  

It is at this point that Christianity has something special to offer to the problem. 

First, Christians are never called to be defeatist or to throw in the towel. This is because we are called to an enormous hope, a hope that surpasses understanding, a hope that the world cannot understand because it stands over against all the odds and all the possibilities. This hope is rooted in the conviction that our God is God Almighty, that he has not abandoned his creation, and that he has power to save. He is a saviour. He is the God of our salvation. This is the God we believe in. The climate crisis may look bleak right now, but Christians need never despair or become indifferent. If we do our small part, we can trust that God is in control of what is out of our control.  

Secondly, Christians believe that every human being is a free agent with the capacity to choose how he or she will act. Our freedom may be limited by the societal structures that shape and constrain our choices, but it is not destroyed. We can still make choices within those limits to buy and live more sustainably – anything from choosing a holiday destination within driving distance, to giving up beef (by far the worst food for carbon emissions). There is something all of us can do.  

Thirdly, Christians believe in a God who transforms hearts and lives, winning them to the power of the gospel and to a new way of living that is free of the shackles that this world – the structures of society – puts on us. This transformation is slow – slower than we would like it to be sometimes. We feel the shackles still gripping us at times. We are not expected to change everything all at once, to become holy overnight. Nevertheless, God gives us the power to change our lives, and to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The way towards sustainable living is not to try to change everything at once, but to ask: what one thing can I change in my daily lifestyle that would make it more sustainable? And then once we’ve mastered that and integrated it so we no longer even think about it and it’s just a default, then we can ask: what’s the next thing I can do? All of a sudden what looks like an unimaginable height of transformation, when it is broken down, becomes a series of manageable steps.    

Even if we do everything in our power, we cannot by ourselves avert a possible catastrophe. We are small players in a big game. Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means. Hope means the opposite: that we continue to fight to avert climate disaster even when it seems hopeless. Christians are called to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. We are called to live in such a way that, if catastrophe comes, it won’t be because of us – to live in hope that our actions are meaningful and worthwhile and that we are in the hands of a God who is far more powerful than the most powerful forces in this world. 

Article
Comment
Freedom of Belief
1 min read

These stubborn stories of Nigeria’s killing fields are still lodged in my head

Last year’s victims are joined by many more

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A burnt out motor cycle and car stand amid charred debris in a dusty compound.
Burned vehicles after Good Friday raid on April 7, 2023, in Ngban, Benue state, Nigeria.
Justice, Development, and Peace Commission.

Last summer, I spent some time in Northern Nigeria.  

I went there because terror is having its way and nobody seems to be talking about it. I said it last year, and it still seems to be the case now - the violence that is being carried inflicted is out of sight and, therefore, tragically out of mind. 

While there, I met many people that had their lives violently turned upside down - their families torn apart, their villages burnt to the ground, their homes and livelihoods pulled out from underneath them, their loved ones ‘butchered’ before their eyes. The people I met were targeted, it seems, largely because of their Christian identities.  

I wrote about them for Seen and Unseen this time last year, feeling the pull to memorialise their stories; to point toward them, to look their tragedy in the eye for a little longer. 

Every person that I met has had a lasting impact on me, how could they not? Before I met them, the only reference point I had for such violence was apocalyptic movies. A year on, my brain still resists accepting what my ears have heard and my eyes have seen. I dwell on it all, the whole experience, often.  

But there are two stories that have gotten stubbornly lodged in my mind, taking up slightly more real-estate in my thoughts. They’re the stories of two girls, one around my own age and one much younger. I’d like to re-point you to their stories now.  

The first woman, she was incredibly gentle and kind, and told her story with a composure that’s hard to fathom. She was working on her land along with her husband and mother-in-law, a totally run-of-the-mill day. They were so engrossed with the task at hand, they didn’t notice that their village was being attacked by armed ‘Fulani’ militants (the majority of the violence being carried out in Northern Nigeria is at the hands of Islamic extremist groups such as Fulani militants, Boko Haram and ISWAP - Islamic State in West African Province). She looked up to find herself face-to-face with two attackers and despite their command for her to surrender to them, she ran, as did her husband and mother-in-law. While she was running, she could hear bullets flying past her head and the screams of her mother-in-law. Making it to a neighbouring village, she gathered help and eventually went back to find her husband and mother-in-law. Both of whom were stabbed and killed that day.   

The Fulani militants now have control over her village, and she told us how she’s been praying that she would be able to forgive these men for what they’d done, as she is now forced to live alongside them. And so, she felt proud because she had recently been able to respond to one of the men as they greeted her.     

The other story, that of a heart-wrenchingly-young girl told us how, while she sleeping – she was awoken by her father who told her that they needed to run, they were under attack. She ran, hand in hand with her father, while her mother carried her younger brother. While they were fleeing, her dad was shot and killed. Her mother pried her hand out of her father’s and buried both her and her brother in sand, instructing them to stay hidden. The next day, they found that their house, their crops, their entire village had been burnt down.   

This rampant violence is not caught in a freeze-frame, it’s not last year’s story, it is still happening. Despite Nigeria having greater religious freedoms than other countries, it is still the seventh most dangerous country in the world for Christians to live, it is still the case that more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined.    

2025 has seen wave after wave of attacks, some of which were prompted by outrage over the testimony of Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, who spoke of the horror and terror being inflicted on Christian communities in front of the US Congress. As a result of Bishop Wilfred’s words, his Nigerian diocese was subject to mass shootings, killing forty people. So, people’s voices, their pleas for help - or even simply recognition of the violence - brings a threat to their lives.  

Just weeks later, 24 members of a Methodist church were shot in the middle of the night, days later nine further people were killed while mourning those who had already been shot dead. 

In the month of June alone, 218 Christians were killed, and a further 6,000 were displaced after a spate of attacks carried out on mostly Christian villages. Open Doors note that ‘dozens of Christians are said to be trapped in forests and mountain hideouts, unable to escape as the militants continue to roam through the villages’.  

And in July, Pastor Emmanuel Na’allah, a Christian pastor and convert from Islam, was shot and killed during a worship service. A friend of his, Samaila Gidan Taro, was also shot, and a woman was abducted.   

Again, Open Doors explains that ‘These murders and abductions are sadly increasingly common in Nigeria… large-scale attacks are the most visible. Attacks such as this one occur daily, so frequently that they do not make the headlines. It is clear that Christians are suffering a relentless onslaught, with government agencies, international bodies and official observers struggling to even document each incident.’ 

As I wrote last year, while we are not seeing this violence, the people of Nigeria are not seeing an end to it.    

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief