RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/climate-change-faith-nbc-solicits-climate-confessions/

We are religious creatures. The desire to worship — something, anything — persists, even as our objects of veneration change. That religious impulse can be led easily astray in an age where traditional religious institutions appear impotent, unwilling to defend their claims against the rising tides of universalism and ecumenism. If you’re not careful, you’ll worship something unfit for your devotion. Worse, you might end up confessing your sins to NBC News.

As a certain type of person found themselves doing yesterday.

The network announced that it is soliciting “climate confessions,” admissions of public and private sins against the natural environment and the climate.  The sacrament, far from the ornate wooden lairs of Catholic lore, occurs on one sordidly animated webpage, where your transgressions against Gaea are plastered for all to see, in a communal ritual of denunciation. Atop the site is a promise to uphold the seal of the confessional, assuring penitents that their “confessions” will be kept anonymous.

“Tell us,” NBC insists with ecclesial verve, “Where do you fall short in preventing climate change?” It even provides an examination of conscience in miniature: “Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week?”

Contrite sinners were all too happy to admit their faults: “I compost at home, but not at work,” reads the confession of one offender; “I want to install solar panels but am waiting for state/federal incentives to do so!” grieves another. Like any good religion, there were apostates; one heretic nailed this to the digital door: “I run my AC 24/7. I’m not going to sweat to appease this climate religion.” Another wrote, “I eat meat every day. And won’t stop, because it’s good.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-idolatry-of-environmental-extremism/

A bizarre incident at Union Theological Seminary illustrates why many Christians believe that internal forces, not external ones, represent the greatest threat to the church.

Students at this seminary prayed to a collection of plants in its chapel, which triggered a raft of criticism on Twitter. The school defiantly defended its action in a series of tweets.

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,” the school tweeted. “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

Some Twitter respondents observed that the seminary and its students have lost their minds, but I think it’s worse than that. Insanity might mitigate this sacrilege, but deliberately perverting theology is another matter.

Pastor Greg Locke tweeted, “This is utter nonsense. Absolute theological bankruptcy in every way. Your Seminary is a cemetery.” Another Twitter user quipped, “What kind of penance did the plants give after the ‘confession?'”

What possesses this misguided institution to refer to plants as “beings”? What gross theological error leads them to pray to and encourage others to pray to them? Idolatry is no trifling matter, which is underscored by at least two of the Ten Commandments and the entirety of Scripture.