In my early years as a Christian, environmental issues were never discussed… not even in the secular media.  Little by little, however, more was said about the environment.  But even then, my assumption (and that of most professing Christians around the globe) was that such things were a special interest of political fanatics whom we called “Greenies”. 

In recent years, however, I have come to see that environmental issues and, in particular, the freegan philosophy are a natural progression from the teachings of Jesus.

Freeganism, for those who have never heard of it, is a movement that encourages people to look for ways that they can feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain themselves without spending money.  The philosophy goes farther than that, but that is enough of an explanation for now.  The media has shown special interest in how these people (like ourselves) have been able to feed themselves (quite luxuriously much of the time) just from stuff that is thrown out by a wasteful society.  

In this article, I will explain how the fregan message and environmental issues fit in with the essence of both the teachings of Jesus, and the spirit of Bible prophecy.  In fact, I think that our Christian beliefs add to and enhance the relevance of the freegan message as well.

What we discovered before we had ever heard of freeganism was that Jesus fundamentally challenged the world’s addiction to money.  He saw the ultimate spiritual battle to be one between faith in God and faith and money. (Matthew 6:24)  He compared it to the eyes and their relation to the rest of the body, i.e. if you get something in your eye, your whole body becomes unable to function.  You not only cannot see where to walk, but every muscle in the body reacts to get the offending speck out, because it is so painful.  (Matthew 6:22-23)  This was just another way of saying that the love of money is the root of all evil.  If you don’t get it right, you will never be able to make anything else work in a lasting and universal way.

This addiction to money has grown over the centuries until we now have a world so wealthy that the so-called "poor" people in a large portion of the world are plagued by an epidemic of obesity!  While much of the rest of the world is suffering from serious malnutrition, the West (e.g. Australia, America, and the United Kingdom) continues to reach out for more and more money, with which to buy more and more junk.  This obsession with money and the stuff it can buy is gobbling up the earth's resources at an alarming rate, and it has created a situation where we in the West are ploughing literally millions of tons of perfectly good food into landfill year after year while much of the world goes to bed hungry.

Even the people speaking out in protest against all of this continue to buy and continue to seek after more money.  This happens because they tend to treat symptoms and not the root cause of all the problems.

Take the micro-banks, for example.  They actually condemn charity, asking their investors to simply lower their expectations about how much more profit they can suck out of the villages of the Third World.  Money is loaned (not given) to extremely poor people to purchase some tiny item (a sewing machine, battery charger, typewriter, bicycle, or whatever) to get them started in a tiny local business.  This enables them to start selling their goods and services to their equally poor neighbours, extracting enough from them to (a) repay the loan; and (b) give a little something extra (called interest) to the nice people from the micro-bank who made it possible for them to join the money-making rat race to begin with.

We should be doing everything in our power to boycott EVERYTHING that is being sold in the West, knowing as we do that it is being taken out of the mouths of the world's starving masses.  Even the non-food items that we are buying by the ton had to be produced somewhere.  Land that could have been used to produce food for the locals has been used to grow cotton, rubber trees, woodpulp, and other non-essentials like tobacco, tea, coffee, and even spices that we waste by the ton in the West.

Jesus told us to stop chasing after money, and to let God give us what we need.  The prosperity teachers translate this to mean that God wants us to end up even richer than the other guys in the rich countries, and that it will happen if we give enough money to these abominably rich people instead of giving it to the poor.  

In fact, what God would most like to give us is contentment.  We can actually be HAPPY with food and clothing and a roof over our heads if we stop listening to the marketing lies that surround us.  The whole world needs to accept the truth in that, if we are to become a part of the kingdom that Jesus was building.  

Can you see how a serious attempt to obey the teachings of Jesus starts to come together with what is needed to solve the problems of the poor in today's world?

Jesus said for us to share what we have with the poor.  (Luke 12:33)

One way is to sell what we have and to give the proceeds (money) to them.  But as the world economy has developed, we have reached a point where money alone will not produce crops in countries suffering from droughts and exploitation.  They need food (and clothes and shelter and clean water) not money.  

Money could be a start, if we would give them enough to enable them to import those things from us.  Or perhaps we could just stop taking their crops for our own use, and then they would be able to grow enough to feed themselves.  Until we are ready to do that, all that talk about teaching them how to fish is just a very bad joke.  They already know how to fish (or farm or raise livestock), but the multi-nationals have taken their catch.  We need to reverse it with some seriously sacrificial charity.

Like Jesus said, "Sell what you have and give to the poor.  Forsake all, if you want to be my disciples.”  (Luke 14:33)

"But how will WE survive, if we do that?" everyone asks.  For starters, many of us Endtime Survivors are surviving (and even growing fat) right now by eating mountains of food that we find in the huge bins behind supermarkets.  If everyone did it, the waste would stop, and then we would need to look elsewhere.  But the point is that there IS enough for everyone, if we would just stop wasting what is out there.  I’m not talking about decadent luxury for everyone; not obscene waste; not ostentatious and useless trinkets; but enough of what we really need.

The world can see the problem right now, but almost no one is willing to take the drastic steps that are needed to right the wrongs.  And those steps can be found in the teachings of Jesus.

Then there is Bible prophecy... the mark of the beast, in particular.  It fits right in.  The Bible says that this horrific disease called greed is going to lead to a significant change in the economy, where people will be given a microchip implant under the skin on their right hands, that they must use to do all of their buying and selling.  It will be oh, so efficient!  But the Bible says that it will be a precursor to the greatest suffering that the world has ever known. Suffering that will be even worse than what is happening right now.

When America is destroyed as God's punishment on that country for its greed, the replacement government will be even worse.  Traditional freegan philosophy has little grasp of this, because it has left the Bible out.  But the Bible fills in some of the missing pieces.  Prophecy fits perfectly with what Jesus said and with what we see happening in the world today.  Only those people who have learned how to survive WITHOUT the present economic system will be able to escape God's judgment on that system.  

The Bible says of the last days that "God will destroy those who destroy the earth.”  (Revelation 11:18)  How perfectly environmental!  It was all there 2,000 years ago, before the word “environmental” even existed: A description of the verichip, a prediction that the end will be related to the human race "destroying the earth", and a description of the solution, (which is to drop out of the rat race and live by faith and love now).  We can build a whole new world with a whole new lifestyle.

Sadly, the prophecies say that this new lifestyle will be hated by those who are not prepared to let go of their addiction to money and all that it can buy; but we have further assurance that there is going to be an unbelievable divine intervention just before the end, and God will set up this new government supernaturally.