Found this today via Boing Boing:

Earlier this month, blogged Max Blumenthal from the Huffington Post took a camera to the Christians United for Israel Summit in Washington. It's an interesting video, that illustrates well the point that I try to make about eschatological beliefs and how we should really let God worry about that kind of stuff and focus on today and what what God have us do in the here and now. The church (at least a part of it) has been poisoned by the idea that it will be defeated in this world. Check it out. Are you looking forward to Armageddon?
Speaking of doom and gloom, the most recent series at Mars Hill has been the first one that I've had any kind of trouble with. They're doing a series of messages called God is Green. I don't know why it's so hard to get into that. When I was in high school, I certainly was into environmental causes. I used to refuse to eat McDonalds because of their use of styrfoam over paper for Big Macs. We used to have McDonalds pretty much every week for youth group, so I skipped it a lot. In high school, they didn't use real trays in the lunchroom, they used these styrofoam trays. It was a huge waste. We used to make a point out of just putting our food on napkins (easy when you're only eating pizza every day). But as the environmentalist movement went farther and farther into way left ideas, I left it behind. Bono makes a great point in the recently released to YouTube videos of him speaking with Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels about why he thinks the church has been so slow to get on board the ending extreme poverty bandwagon (sidenote: you MUST see those.. they're great). It's because the church is wary of being used. The church has been used to do some really heinous things in the past, so it likes to just wait and see what happens. These extremist groups have taken over environmental causes, even one of the founders of Greenpeace felt that way about his own group, which was started in a church.

Rob does say that we really shouldn't be for stewarding the earth because of some kind of impending doom, but that we should be doing so because God commands us to. Which brings me to global warming. I'm sure some of you will think that I'm some crackpot for saying this, but I don't buy into the doom and gloom predictions about global warming in the media. We just aren't as smart as we think we are. I don't deny that the climate is changing. But there was never any contract with the earth somewhere that it wouldn't. I just don't believe that we could stop it if we wanted to, or that we have a huge amount of influence over it. After all in the late 70's scientists were freaking out over a new ice age coming.

That said, we do live a wasteful lifestyle, the American way of life where we build up an area, let it go downhill and then move to a new area and do the same thing just isn't sustainable forever, and all of this building rings of suburbs outside of the city and then driving an hour into work each way is crazy too.

It's definitely given me something to think about, but I don't know that I'm ready to do what one of their guest speaker advocates, cut energy consumption down to next to nothing. I really do love my HDTV and my computers (I have 3 of them running in the house right now and my iPhone, etc. This whole carbon neutral idea is a joke.. you can't counteract your overindulgence by doing just as much in the opposite direction. The idea reminds me of the old Catholic church practice of selling indulgences.