for future generations

I started paying attention to the words about halfway through the first verse. I was surprised to hear the lyrics:

‘Cause mother earth can’t take much more
The hammer’s gonna fall

This was, after all, a contemporary Christian song, For Future Generations by 4Him.

It seems to me that most contemporary Christian music has an otherworldly focus to the point of ignoring the world in which we live. But hearing these lyrics I thought, Have Christian musicians finally realized the importance of taking care of our planet?

But the next verse dispelled that notion entirely:

So nature has its needs, that’s a lesson learned
But it appears to me there are greater concerns

And yet, despite 4Him's assertion, it's not an either/or proposition. In fact, with the accelerated damage we are causing the earth it's a both/and imperative. We don't care about future generations if we don't care about giving them a habitable climate in which to live. We're not going to save any lives if we turn our farmland into a desert.

Unfortunately, it is the "Christian" United States that lags furthest behind in efforts to preserve the world for future generations.

When God finished the creation, he looked at the world and said it was very good. The Psalms tell of how much God loves his creation. Jesus spoke of God's care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.

And we, for the sake of short-term material comfort and an ideal of economic growth, are ruining this wonderful place that God gave us. We use up limited natural resources, we pollute the air and the water, we destroy natural habitats to build shopping centers and sports arenas.

The delicate ecosystems God put into place are faltering under our assault. The world is growing warmer. We don't yet know how much irreversible damage we have caused to our climate, or how much of a mess we are leaving for future generations to clean up.