In my adolesence I was troubled by a strong religious guilt. I don’t know where it originated; I don’t remember a childhood imbued with doctrinal teaching on damnation or sin either at home or the church my family attended. And yet, during middle school and high school it somehow manifested.
In retrospect, I believe that I had become wrapped up in a larger cultural movement in the 1990s-early 2000s where youth were exploring Christianity largely through youth groups, large “Christian music” festivals and of course, a hugely successful consumer movement. But that note of explanation does not address the matter of the guilt itself. I will try to provide a very brief explanation.
The guilt I felt was founded in the belief of my own sinfulness and depravity. I feared God’s judgment and power and what I saw as the flawed nature of my humanity. I held myself to a strict legalistic code I was never able to uphold. During my sophomore year of college, this belief strengthened and became highly irrational, and resulted in what I believe were legitimate ‘numinous’ experiences. I suddenly felt as if I was conscious of the power of God, and was threatened by it. And because of my sin, I believed that if God chose to strike me down with his power, he would be right to do so.
That same year, Dostoevsky and Luther saved me. I found my irrational, paralyzing fear to be exercised and exhausted through Dostoevsky’s underground man, Luther’s accounts of his struggles of faith, and acted out through the madness of Ivan and grace of Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Each showed me different ways to understand grace. After this I began to relax, and my guilt was eased. Since that time, I have not experienced such guilt, or felt the weight of my sin, and my religious views and understanding have changed considerably.
That is, until recently. But now, the guilt I feel is not entirely religious. I would call it environmental guilt.
As part of my graduate studies, a year ago I took a class on energy and the environment. The books I read for that class detailed the ecological errors (read: sins) of the last century and their consequences. I began to believe that the most pressing social issues of our time are connected to the use of our environment, and that environmentalism is not simply the domain of the World Wildlife Fund’s efforts to protect pandas and the like, honorable as that may be. Global climate change, natural resource management, energy policy–all of these things are connected and have direct consequences not only for plants and animals, but for human societies as well.
The problem with believing this way is that simply by participating in modern society and its conveniences such as typing on this computer (which in my area uses electricity made by burning coal, then posting this blog on a server, which uses electricity, which you will in turn read somewhere and must use electricity to do so), I am complicit in the incremental damage caused every moment to the environment by fossil fuels. If I purchase a plastic bottle of water, I may be considered wasteful. If I purchase a burger from the Burger King across from my office, I am supporting unsustainable agricultural practices. And on and on into minutiae. How can someone atone for an implicit environmental ‘sin’ when the very infrastructure of America is founded upon it? I am still trying to figure that out, and each day am trying to find a way to relieve my environmental guilt. Should I feel guilty when I use a paper towel? When I oversleep and have to drive instead of taking the bus and train? When I don’t reuse paper at my desk?
I am aware that I am not the only person arriving in this mental place right now. A clear indication of that is the dearth of products that have become available in the past few years catering to people like me who wish to lessen their impact on the earth. And there is likely much good that comes from having these products on the market. However, I am beginning to see the parallels between ‘green’ consumer products and ‘Christian’ consumer products–they each cater to a niche segment of the population that seeks to isolate itself, or at least set itself apart from others and be identified by the products they purchase instead of more meaningful actions. Too often we as Americans seem dependent on the thought that some new thing is what will help us in correcting our thoughts and actions, when all that is really necessary is a change of attitude and perspective, and the willingness to change the way we live.
To be honest, I don’t know whether the consumerism I explored in the last paragraph has anything to do with my guilt, other than that my guilt compels me to participate in it when necessary.
As a final thought, I believe something a professor mentioned in a recent class spreads some light on how my guilt may have shifted from being religiously-focused to environmentally-focused. A scholar by the name of Peter Hay has put forth a theory that the wellsprings of environmental commitments are pre-rational, meaning that for many or most people with environmental concerns intuitively feel a consternation with the environmental destruction that has occurred in the past century. I believe that I would fall into this category of persons with a pre-rational consternation about our current state, and given my personal faith history is very likely pre-rational as well, it is likely that my feeling of guilt could be transferred to the environment. Although my philosophical and religious views, as well as my environmental views, have been heavily scrutinized, I seem unable to shake the initial inclinations of either.
I suppose I come to environmental studies with the zeal and ignorance of a neophyte, and the recent convert of any cause is overly passionate.
Posted by theshortestverse 
