Our Unsustainability

Blurb

I laboured for more than three decades on poverty and sustainability in Asia and Africa as a scientist and development aid professional, with questionable success.

Over time it became clearer that I was seeing and approaching poverty and sustainability in a distorted way. This writing is a testimony to that. Through a Biblical lens the experiences are now beginning to make sense. Believing is seeing.

We are unsustainable in nature. We were made by God for eternal life with Him in Paradise, but we were tempted into following the devil’s selfish lie and lead instead. We turned away from God believing we could play the god in our own lives. We were corrupted from within and got separated from God. Sin became our inner poverty, our inborn, innate unsustainability.

Human self-effort, will, pride, ingenuity, plans, projects, grand claims, or clever talk will never overcome this corruptness or save the world and ourselves. We need to be saved from our sinful selves. We need the ultimate sustainability: salvation.

But instead of turning to God, we have become experts at turning good things into idols (false gods) that we hope can sustain and save us. There are, however, no science, technology, money, AI, or other man-derived poverty and sustainability fixes. And AI is only artificial intelligence, not divine wisdom.

We need to turn back to God, acknowledge and repent of our sinfulness, believing and hoping in Him first and foremost. He, and only He, upholds and sustains.

Love God and neighbour. Act in faith and gratitude. That is anti-poverty and sustainable. His grace is more than sufficient. Start there.

”The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.”
(Psalm 23:1-3)