I love Sunday now (actually I love all the days but Sunday is special) and today I was at Church online once again. The You-Tube service is fabulous. Sometimes the connection is lost or poor but just a quick intervention and back again. As a child I loved Sunday, the activity of going to Church then to Sunday School and even back to Evening Service as I grew older became part of my being. I was a very ecumenical person as a child when it was just becoming the new way. Our (Anglican) priest used to exchange pulpits with the Roman Catholic priest from Holy Rosary Catholic Church nearby us. It changed how I thought about the Roman Catholic Church for sure. I no longer saw it as something strange and different but rather a Church very like my own. I attended a Bible Study at Bethel Chapel (Pentecostal I think but I am not very knowledgeable on Protestant Churches) in the pre teen years. When I stayed with my grandmother, aunt and uncle we went to the United Church. But I would say I was always Anglican in my outlook and thinking. But I liked to hear how other people thought about God and Jesus.
Reading still for the next Bible Study day and we are now into the Missionary Migration. When I first saw the title I was not keen. I no longer think the Christian Church should be actively interfering in other religions that are held by people. Medical missionaries can be an essential part of the health care system of poor countries and talking about God and Jesus as they see it can provide an academic understanding of Christianity. But I no longer believe we should actively try to displace religions that already exist in a culture. No one should; people have a right to their beliefs without interference unless it is a danger to themselves or their children. But the author brought back memories of my mother who was an environmentalist when I was a child in the fifties. She never wasted in my memory; everything had a place where it could be reused and she did that.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, petroleum products have a great use in our society that is beneficial but the burning of fossil fuels is a waste. This precious product should still be here for centuries to come not burned up in huge car and truck engines that roar around the streets. Our next car will be electric I hope if we can afford it. Now retired we are limited in what we can buy for sure. Gas guzzlers are much cheaper for that very reason; there is a gain for the wealthy to continue the burning of fossil fuels; they made their wealth that way and they will continue to do so. Am I free of that; no my few investments probably are dependent on that to a certain extent although I hope that some of that investment return is from wind and solar energy.
We have a duty to the environment; God told us we have dominion over the earth and all that is in it. But what does dominion mean. I think it means that we must protect the earth and everything in it and not waste it. I think that the Church must move to protection of the environment which Pope Francis has done; it is scary to think of alienating wealthy people from the Church but to survive as a people then we must do that. Pope John Paul II attracted me to the Roman Catholic Church but Pope Francis has convinced me that a Church can bring about great change if they wish to move in that direction.
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