We now live in a global community. No longer can we consider our own nation as its own household. There are at least as big if not bigger transnationals, whose economic priorities can (and often do) override the best interests of our own nation. We have to learn to live as part of a new global community, in which decisions taken in one region can have repercussions around the world. The global financial crash of 2008 is often attributed to Japan as its source by those who would prefer to divert attention from the overselling of subprime mortgages in North America or a too-rapid fiscal expansion of the European Union. We are in this together—but what we should note is that all these contributory factors took place in westernized, northern hemisphere regions. Westernized Australasia may have been implicated in the recession but was not to blame for the crash. But what is more frightening is to realize that one billion-plus nations of India and China also cannot be held responsible for the 2008 crash. Neither can the poorer southern hemisphere nations, meaning that over half the world’s peoples had no say in what could destroy their economies. They have no real control over the north’s effects upon them. It is as though the prophetic challenge of the 1980 Brandt Report9 never happened.
There is a helpful Greek word, oikos, which means either “house” or “household” depending upon its attendant verbs or adjectives. It is from this Greek root that English speakers gain three important words: “economical,” “ecological,” and “ecumenical.” Those words gain an even more “life-giving” significance when considering the future of our planet. The interrelationship of economic, ecological, and ecumenical factors help us reflect upon, then ask, the necessary questions needed to act decisively and live together for the sake of this single small planet.
Christians and those from other faith communities have a distinct worldview, which is neither nihilist nor fatalistic but realistic about the future. We have to acknowledge that particularly non-believers but often ourselves find it hard to accept that “God envisions church and world as they currently are not.”10 More about the church, later. For now—if the classical “faith views” of God can be accepted as a premise—then that same God has a purpose for the creation, which does not mean its self-destruction but a different culmination. The Bible repeatedly uses the word oikos in its expansion of the divine purpose for the world.
A Small Planet?
The contracts for this book were signed just weeks before NASA’s planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler, had located a “cousin” to Earth, now called Kepler 425b. This new (to us) planet is in the Cygnus constellation, some 1,400 light years away from Earth. Kepler 425b is what is known as an exo-planet, which circles a “sun-like star” in 385 days—similar to Earth’s orbit of 365 days. Kepler 425b is about one and a half times the size of Earth, giving it a mass of five times Earth’s. These facts place it in the “Goldilocks zone,” meaning Kepler 425b may be inhabitable (and even inhabited), sustaining surface water and equable temperatures, if its surface is rocky (scientific projection suggests 60 percent probability), rather than a “gaseous surface,” like Neptune. Neither I nor my publishers claim any monopoly on prophetic wisdom, but the very presence of such a world as Kepler 425b does mean that Earth is truly the “Small Planet” of this book’s subtitle.
The ecology of this “new” planet will take generations, if not light years, to discover. Whether we as homo sapiens ever get that opportunity will be determined by our survival beyond mere subsistence existence. What it will take will be globally shared priorities both economically and ecumenically if ecologically wise policies are to prevail to ensure humanity does not curtail planet Earth’s future. Philosophers may take a que sera sera approach, accepting global annihilation or mutually assured destruction or survival with a logical, even reasoned equanimity. However theologians, of whatever faith, must argue from a Godward dimension.
As this book goes into its final production phase, in September 2016, Harvard University sources confirmed the existence of another large planet, Proxima b, close to Proxima Centauri, which also has the capability to sustain human life. During all this, scientific confirmation of the existence of “running water” on Mars continues to beg the question, “Is there life on Mars?” Scientific investigation of Kepler 425b, Proxima b, and Mars reminds us that Earth is still a small planet in comparison to these others.
God’s big word
To understand that economical, ecological, and ecumenical interrelationship, as a theologian and/or as a Christian disciple or simply an inquisitive bystander, means that all the developing debate can have a Godward dimension. God’s oikos vision in the Bible is of Earth as a “household.” In our homes, to live harmoniously within our means, we must live within our economic constraints, within the nature and sustaining of our neighborhood’s environment, sharing peaceably with the human community around us. Why should that set of constraints and questions be any different, except in scale, when we consider what it means to live in this part of God’s household—Earth? Therefore oikos is God’s big word for a small planet.
God’s purpose for humanity is to share fully in creation together. The biblical allegories of creation in Genesis, with the placing of humanity in the garden of Eden (Gen 2) were just that. Adam wrecked that by taking the apple from Eve. When ongoing humanity failed to live “ecumenically” with one another, many Middle Eastern narratives tell of a divinely inspired flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley to prophetically begin again good living together within creation.11 The story of Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream tells of both stewardship and “economic” planning so that resources could be justly shared in future days of famine, drought, and privation. God’s invitation to the Hebrews to accept wilderness wandering was on the basis that future generations, forty years hence, would enjoy “a land flowing with milk and honey.” For many contemporary Jewish believers, the promises of God, their praise in the Psalms and the biblical prophets of past centuries, found their fulfilment in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel—the promised homeland—oikos within God’s creation. When I have been a guest of Galilean kibbutzim, having been well fed on homegrown vegetables and local lamb, sitting in good company, drinking local arak as the sun went down, this betokened a Jewish theology of oikos—dwelling well within God’s creation.
I recently edited a book about UK housing, in which I used the life and teaching of Jesus to help readers construct a coherent theology of housing.12 We need only think of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus or Peter’s mother-in-law or Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, or consider the Parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, to realize how important “dwelling well” within God’s creation is for Jesus, and his ministry and mission. The Christian New Testament is woven through with both greetings and references to household ministries. The Greek-language New Testament uses oikos 114 times with its differing emphases; fifty-five of those instances are within Luke-Acts, which majors upon the “household” imagery surrounding God’s people and their Jesus-shaped mission. Oikos must be at the heart of every reasoned Christian theology if it was so much a part of Jesus’ life and legacy.
As a radical Christian from the Anabaptist tradition, I believe Jesus’ life and teaching provide the exemplar for all human discipleship—both individually and in community.13 I have had a blessed life journey, visiting four continents of Earth, have never been homeless or starving, spending half of my life as a Christian pastor working within communities and local neighborhoods for change. Some of the detailed theology of that Jesus-ethic, green politics, and lifestyle changes will become apparent in the coming pages. But all these have gradually contributed to an oikos theology—that God is calling all people to live within a new economic order and ecological lifestyle for the sake of the planet and for all my sisters and brothers who share life upon it, both now and in the future. As I have preached on Sundays and led
