mbjones

I finished Serve God, Save the Planet by Matthew Sleeth tonight. My initial thoughts are good not great. It’s a practical book about creation care (Christianese for environmental activism). I’ll talk about the good first. The chapter answering typical Christian excuses for a lack of any creation care ethic was quite good, answering so-called objections scripturally and thoroughly. I also thought that this chapter did well in pointing out our own selfishness (in regards to issues of dominion and our own consumption, particularly). The practical steps it details are also mostly quite good. I really appreciated its approach to change lifestyles slowly, in stride, while consistently seeking out the will of God. All of these things make this a good book.

The not great part comes into play in some of the overtly “preachy” chapters that seem to stretch and prooftext a bit more than I necessarily like. The parenting chapters and population control chapter immediately jump to mind. And even in some of the more practical chapters I agreed with wholeheartedly, the prooftexting felt a bit much.

Overall — It made for an interesting read. So far its the best environmentalist-from-Christian-perspective book that I’ve read (it’s also the first). If you are at all frustrated at our society’s rate of consumption and use of natural resources, this would likely be a good starting point. And some of the practical steps lined in the chapters are worth exploring more as well. I’ll try to get to them on here at somepoint (I don’t know when though).