I’ve been meaning to write about it since someone mentioned it, but it’s getting away from me now.  There’s this common claim that if you hold to a doomsday eschatology, you have no reason to take care of the earth, because it’s all going to get destroyed by fire at the end of the world anyway.  But if you hold to the shining star of postmillennial eschatology, then you have to take care of the earth, because the stands of trees that we plant and the mountains that we don’t destroy today are the forests and mountains we will have in the kingdom of God.  The chief culprits of the planet-destroying eschatology are, of course, dispensationalists.

Now I’m no dispensationalist, but I grew up among them, and you know what?  I learned about taking care of the world around me from those same dispensationalists.  So I’m here calling out this claim that dispensational eschatology results in wanton destruction of the environment a strawman, if not just plain bulls***, because if it was true, more dispies would indeed have the attitude, “Why yes, I can dump mercury in the river and destroy every green thing on earth, because Jesus will do that anyway!”  And unless I’m wrong, most of them don’t think that way.

Why?  Because in my experience, the ones I was raised by still believed they were stewards of all God had given them.  Also, they almost all believed that it was quite possible the Rapture wouldn’t happen in their lifetimes, so their children might appreciate having potable water and breathable air.

Is my experience atypical?  Are most dispensationalists completely ambivalent about things like hazardous waste, sewage treatment, and forest management?  Or is this recent trend of argument because evangelicals tend to vote Republican, and part of Republican party platform is apparently to take any and every step necessary to destroy the planet?