The latest "Climate Bible Study" for Climate Intercessors,
by Lowell Bliss
What is currently happening in West Antarctica with its potential for devastating sea-level rise, highlights a new term which may be new to those unfamiliar with glaciology, but also new to those just learning about spiritual practices that can help us in times of crisis. “Grounding” is important not only to the Thwaites Glacier but also to our own emotionally-unsettled souls.
A recent article in New Scientist has a headline poised to unsettle its readers: “Antarctica's 'doomsday glacier' collapse may be worse than we thought.” They write:
Antarctica is melting and one of its largest glaciers is collapsing from underneath. This is Thwaites glacier, sometimes called the doomsday glacier – and for good reason. If it destabilises, it could trigger a wider collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, raising sea levels by up to 5 metres. Scientists believe we may be approaching a tipping point that could completely redraw the world’s coastlines, putting cities such as Kolkata, New York and London at risk of severe flooding, displacing millions of people.
The article primarily introduces a 27:37 video on YouTube that I highly recommend. The science is exacting and the presentation is compelling, and the main point seems to be that the Thwaites glacier juts out over the ocean where water temperatures (now above 0°C/32°F freezing) are melting the glacier from below. The glacier rests on the rock of the Antarctic continental shelf. It is “grounded.” Part of the problem, however, is that this rock bed, because of the weight of the ice over geologic ages, is itself a basin. Ocean water isn’t simply lapping at an above-water sloping of land; it is pouring deeper down, exposing even more ice to warmer water. The “grounding line” refers to that point where the Thwaites glacier rests on the rock. Since the 1990s, that grounding line has receded 14 kilometers.
The narrator in the video, and the scientists on assignment that they interview, eventually come to the question, “Can We Still Stop It?” They mention the idea of geo-engineering solutions, including one idea of an 80-km long curtain draped in front of the underwater face of the glacier. But they quickly dismiss all “solutions” except one: the world must greatly and rapidly reduce its level of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right. These glaciologists didn’t discover anything in Antarctica that the rest of us haven’t already understood about the great need of the moment. The receding grounding line of the Thwaites glacier is not as big a problem as the way the world’s “grounding” in TRUTH—scientific truth, for sure; but biblical truth as well—has receded since the 1990s revelations by James Hansen about global warming, or the Rio Earth Summit and the founding of the UNFCCC and the IPCC.
If you do a word study on “truth” in the gospels, you’ll immediately make a discovery of your own. Matthew, Mark, and Luke—what we call the “Synoptic Gospels”—only have one or two occurrences of the word “truth” and mostly in the mouths of “spies” sent by the Pharisees, much like how climate-denying political movements think they are guardians of the truth (Luke 20:21). The Gospel of John is a surprise: 23 occurrences of the word “truth” and our exclusive testament to what Jesus of Nazareth wanted to teach on the subject. To find the next time occurrences of “truth” appear in the New Testament that total in the double-digits, you’ll have to go past Paul’s epistles until you arrive at 1 John. I find this intriguing: Luke, for example, was a medical physician and a self-identified historian. He may be more inclined to write about the empirical events of Jesus’s life. John, theologians tell us, will write more often about the “cosmological Christ,” that portion of Jesus, which like the bedrock under Antarctica, isn’t automatically visible to the eye. And John is insistent: if you truly want to know the truth and live in it, you will find it in the person of Jesus Christ. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus declared (John 14:6).
Right-wing political movements seem fond of declaring to us Jesus’s words from John 8:32:
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” and yet they miss the context of this verse:
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:31-36).
There is no “truth” to pedigrees or national exceptionalisms. There is certainly the truth of humanity’s slavery to sin (including to greed, consumerism, violence, etc.) It is only the truth that will set you free, and in John 8:36, Jesus identifies himself as that truth that sets free: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” I’m not saying that Jesus is the fount of whatever “truths” the scientists are uncovering in Antarctica, though of course that cosmological case could be made. I am saying that however much we are grounded in the truth that is Christ Jesus, will determine whether we even care that the grounding line of the Thwaites glacier has receded and that meters worth of sea-level will cause unimaginable suffering on those people Christ came to love, and that he calls us to love too. John 4:23: “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
Grounding ourselves not only to scientific truth but to spiritual truth is our only hope of reducing the causes of the collapse of the “Doomsday glacier.” Nonetheless, these same scientists are saying (half-explicitly, and half-intimating) that there is already much melting and ice-shelf collapse already irreversibly “baked into the system.” As Christians, as Christian leaders, as students of the Bible, we are now being called to do more than just preach: “Hey sinner, ground yourself in the Truth.” We must begin to develop and broadly offer new practical pastoral practices that help our flocks, friends, children, and families prepare to endure these inevitable sufferings. One such practice is even called “grounding.” Often dismissed as “new age,” “mindfulness mediation,” or “pop psychology,” more and more Christian spiritual directors—like my wife—are offering training that has long been valued by therapists and psychologists. As one helpful health website explains; “Grounding exercises help you refocus on the present to relieve feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, or PTSD” and then offers you a good place to begin exploring this: “30 Grounding Techniques to Quiet Distressing Thoughts.”I am someone who is immersed on a daily basis in stories like the Thwaites glacier, and I use the “5-4-3-2-1 Method” all the time. However, while the website advises, by way of example, “Make an effort to notice the little things you might not always pay attention to, such as the color of the flecks in the carpet or the hum of your computer,” my advice is “go outside” for the fullest experience of grounding.
