We are not the ‘co-creators’

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To the Editor:

Last week’s MV Times, Page 15, devotes an entire page to a planned ecumenical service entitled ”It isn’t easy being green.” Eight or nine local churches were mentioned as participants, and it is disappointing that there was not one mention of God’s love, Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement, redemption, forgiveness, and salvation from sin or any scriptural reference.

Instead we hear about social justice, diversity, environmental responsibility, empowerment, civil rights, and equality. I can understand the Universalist Unitarian group not referencing God, but the other churches presumably believe in the trinity, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the great commission to save souls. Some will respond that this shared church service is about civic community and not the authority of God, but one would think that somewhere close on their lips would be a mention of what they supposedly are all about. Disappointing, to say the least.

I don’t know what the hermeneutics of your respective churches are, nor do I know your mission and vision, but it ought to be something other than social justice. These churches are ostensibly ambassadors for the triune God and his sovereign dominion over creation and all these secular concerns will never come to fruition unless and until their parishioners learn to worship the creator not the creation. You are not ”co-creators” of the universe and your prime responsibility, one thinks, is to spread the gospel. By all means indulge in ”works,” but remember it is our sinful nature that needs fixing, as a first line of defense. We must be careful to enter the world of ideas with intellectual humility and a constant dependence upon our inheritance of Christian truth.

Andrew EngelmanVineyard Haven