Going green isn’t something I ever thought I would be interested in. From my view, greasy hippies wearing Birkenstocks generally accompanied anything “environmentally friendly”, so I have been quite comfortable burning my incandescent light bulbs, taking long showers, enjoying solo drives around town to “unwind,” and pursuing the hope of a big salary, a big house, and apparently a big ego!
Then, last summer, I got a phone call from Nancy Sleeth who, along with her husband and daughter, writes and speaks about “going green” from a Christian perspective.
“We’ve asked several people around town for a person who would be good at doing some PR for us, and your name is always the one that comes up,” she said. “We are really needing someone to help us get the word out and expand our non-profit.”
My first and immediate thought was, “Not interested — at all.”
I had my sights set on a glamorous first job in Washington, DC, whatever that might end up being. Anything political was my dream, I told her.
“Well, we intentionally steer clear of politics,” she said.
The offer was to do 10 hours of work each week for the Sleeths to help them get some media coverage and get some web traffic going. Not being very good at math, I got out my calculator and multiplied the extremely basic arithmetic sequence to figure out that I’d make $400 a month. For any last-semester college student, that sounds like a million bucks.
“I will absolutely be happy to do whatever I can,” I said.
As I began doing research as part of my job, I found that there was a more legitimate paradigm of environmentalism than the patchouli-rubbing, strung out kind I’d grown up seeing on television. There were very traditional, conservative people and organizations with large efforts on the ground doing all they could to urge people to be more responsible with our resources.
At first, I didn’t really care. Lots of people believe in lots of things for lots of different reasons, I thought. This didn’t seem worth noting.
I then read the Sleeths’ books and went with Matthew to Cincinnati for a speaking engagement at a conservative Methodist church. My sister, an environmental science teacher who lives in Northern Kentucky, met us there to hear his sermon.
I couldn’t help myself from being genuinely convicted after hearing his sermon. At the time, I spent $200 monthly on clothing, about $100 on eating out, and another $100 on my cell phone bill — as a college student! The extravagant wastefulness of my life was thrown in my face, and I didn’t like it.
After the service at the book sales table, my sister sat down in the chair next to me and, between selling books to Republican gray-haired grannies and grandpas whose lives had been changed by going green, told me that working for the Sleeths was my “break.” She said that it’s an important issue, I would have a chance to make a real difference, and that it would be glorifying to God.
On the way home, Matthew asked me if I’d be interested in working for them full-time.
No, I would not, thank you very much.
As I continued calling every possible Anyone who knows Someone in Washington, DC, all doors closed. Actually, they slammed. There are few people who have the professional experience I had when I finished college, and I was perplexed that none of the big-shot Washington folks wanted me.
But, the Sleeths did.
At that time, the economy of course started failing around the world. People who had worked for dozens of years doing the same thing suddenly were without jobs and an income to pay their bills and feed their families. It didn’t take long for me to start feeling extremely selfish in turning down a job where I could do something that matters on behalf of great people. I took the job.
Only a few months into my journey into what I once jokingly referred to as “Sleethdom,” I am unexpectedly slipping into a genuine concern for our planet. Matthew’s book, “Serve God, Save the Planet,” tells us that there is an average of 17 man-made toxins in all human tissue. With realities like this, the everyday trappings of my living-beyond-my-means life are losing their luster.
Today, I wake up to do my job with a sense of urgency, mission, and compassion for my neighbors down the street and around the world. I haven’t embraced a radical lifestyle change yet, but I want to. I’m slowly phasing out wasteful, environmentally irresponsible elements of my life.
I’m starting to recycle, making sure I keep lights turned off when I’m not in the room, using heating and air conditioning as sparingly as possible, taking a shower with a low-flow shower-head, and using real plates and silverware and cloth napkins. These simple steps have already caused me to see that I am throwing away dramatically less into my main garbage can and saving quite a bit on my monthly bills.
And I didn’t expect it, but it feels good — it feels right. It’s not always fun, but my electric bill, my conscience, and people around the world (whether they’ll ever know me or not) appreciate my efforts.
