By Vijay Jayaraj

Suffering demands a response. When we see devastation, whether from a flood in North Carolina or a drought in Africa, the heart breaks. Our Father in Heaven does not delight in evil, and as His children, we are commanded to extend compassion — not just through sentiment, but through action.

But the biblical concept of stewardship I recognize is being rapidly supplanted. Compassion divorced from truth becomes sentimentality dressed in moral clothing. A recent column I read in the Global Sisters Report, titled “I see Christ’s face all around me: those who suffer chaos of climate change,” exemplifies this dangerous drift. The author resorts to emotional mysticism and dubious science.

She posits that every weather event is a judgment on human consumption and that seeing the victims of natural disasters is akin to seeing the suffering Christ, crushed by our carbon footprints. While her sentiment appears pious, the theology is flawed, and the science is demonstrably false. This is a classic case of combining a counterfeit spirituality with a distorted view of climatology to impose a moral obligation that God never ordained.

The Science Part: What’s True and What’s Not

Yes, climate change is true and has been a feature of our planet since the times of Adam and Eve. The Christian Church has existed through changing climate for two millennia. We have weathered the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, warm as or warmer than today, and the Little Ice Age, much colder.

No fossil fuels drove those warm and cool spells. They were the product of natural variability, the sun, and ocean cycles — forces ordained by God, not controlled by human activity. Even the current warming trend began in the 18th century, well before the industrial era boom in fossil fuel CO₂ emissions. To attribute every rise in the thermometer solely to human activity is to ignore the complex, oscillating history of our planet.

Then you may ask the question about modern day deaths from extreme weather events! Again, sensational doomsday claims crumble like a badly made amateur apple pie in front of the vast scientific evidence.

The author mentions South Asia, citing villages submerged in flooding as evidence of climate catastrophe. Yet the actual history of Bangladesh — a country infamous for regular flooding — helps us understand reality. In 1970, Cyclone Bhola struck Bangladesh, claiming around 500,000 lives, and was rightly classified as the “world’s deadliest ever.” But in recent decades, the flood-related death toll has dropped precipitously. Category 5 storms in Bangladesh today cause a tiny fraction of what they were even during the 1980s and 1990s. Bangladesh, like it’s neighbor India, has become resilient.

In fact, deaths from natural disasters are falling globally, not rising. In the early 20th century, it was common to witness years when the global death toll from disasters reached into the millions. Today, despite a massive increase in global population and extremely poor city planning in Asia that aggravates flooding probabilities, disaster-related deaths have plummeted to historic lows.

The Hubris of Doomsday Prediction vs Biblical Stewardship

We must also confront the arrogance of the scientific claims being made. The idea that we can fine-tune the global temperature by adjusting our lifestyle is a tower of Babel for the modern age. It presumes a level of knowledge and control that we simply do not possess.

As Dr. Calvin Beisner says, “concerns about climate change are exaggerated. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change actually revealed that … in its third assessment report in 2001. It explained that because the earth’s climate system is a coupled non-linear fluid dynamic system, it is, therefore, ‘impossible’ – in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s own words – to predict future global temperatures.”

If the very body responsible for the alarmism admits that long-term prediction is impossible due to the chaotic nature of the system, on what rock does the church build its case for radical economic overhaul? It builds on sand.

Not Merely a Policy Stance, But a Lifeline of Modern Economy

When addressing environmental concerns, prudent stewardship responds first to firmly established problems through methods that deliver proven benefit. It remains cautious about politicized science and media-driven hype. Christians should demand honesty about energy poverty, acknowledge the actual history of how fossil fuels lifted billions from poverty, and resist policies that would deny similar development paths to the very same nations the author mentions.

Policies such as mandatory reductions in emissions, carbon taxes, and the forced retreat from hydrocarbons are not merely expensive, they are socially destructive. Pope Leo, Benedict, and Francis have all, in various ways, supported these. But embracing these will make the poor, whom the church is called to serve, suffer first and suffer longest.

It is time for Christians to stop viewing the carbon atom — the building block of life — as a mark of Cain. We must reject the pseudo-religious guilt that paralyzes our reason. God has given us a world of abundance and the ingenuity to use it. Let us do so with gratitude, not fear and confusion. Let us serve the poor by empowering them, not by sacrificing their carbon dioxide-intensive energy future on the altar of a green ideology that offers no salvation.

Vijay Jayaraj is Research Associate for Developing Countries with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition. He holds a M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, postgraduate degree in Energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a B.S. in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research assistant at University of British Columbia’s Changing Oceans Research Unit in Canada.