Christian Contradictions

Sometimes the Christian life seems full of contradictions.

For instance, I care about the environment. I care about it for biblical reasons. When Scripture says that God made and gave us this world to steward, cultivate, and take care of, part of that, I think, means taking care of the environment.

I also believe in being financially generous. Again, I believe that for biblical reasons. When Scripture says that everything belongs to God and that God merely “loans” us some of God’s resources during our time here on earth, I take that to mean that we need to be generous toward others with the resources God has given us.

We’ve made some recent decisions in our family that we hope reflect those biblical values.

Among other things, we’ve decided that camping will be our primary form of vacationing from now on, in part because camping seems to get at both of those biblical values. First, it allows us to be outdoors in God’s creation, enjoying the natural world God has made. Second, it costs less than some other forms of vacationing, and the money we save will allow us to be more generous toward others.

The only problem is that in order to make camping our primary way of vacationing, we’ve had to make some other decisions that seem to contradict those values.

First, to accommodate our growing family, we recently decided to upgrade to a bigger camper.

That cost money.

Then, like the cascading events in If You Give A Mouse a Cookie, because we got a bigger camper, we also had to get a bigger, more fuel-inefficient vehicle.

That also cost money.

And it’s worse for the environment.

We’re currently living with the inconsistency, the cognitive dissonance of trying to pursue good, gospel-focused things for what we believe are good, gospel-focused reasons while at the same time making some decisions that seem less good and gospel-focused than the good, gospel-focused things they’re enabling.

That’s led me to wonder a bit.

Do the ends justify the means? Is it the thought that counts? What kind of long-term effects eventually outweigh short-term consequences?

To be honest, I’m not sure.

The only thing I think I’ve settled on is the thought that sometimes being a Christian means trying to be as faithful as you can, even in the midst of the contradictions it creates.

Then again, maybe I’m contradicting myself.