Excerpt from "The Sagebrush Gospel"

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for they refuse to recognize the great danger posed to them and their children for all generations.”

But Jonah knew how the politicians of Ninevah belittled and humiliated such messengers before. Jonah didn’t want to be called “a liberal” for that is an abomination. He set out to flee from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. The mariners were afraid. They said to Jonah, “What is this that you have done!”

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Jonah said the Lord had told him to go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their politicians are misleading the people about the dangers of climate change.

These sailors had witnessed the rising level of the sea and the increased ferocity of the storms. They were aware of the warnings that climate change could produce the collapse of ice sheets, a rapid rise in sea levels, difficulty growing enough food, huge die-offs of forests, and mass extinctions of plant and animal species.

They threw Jonah into the sea. But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “If you will rescue me from the belly of this fish, I will do as you ask. I will speak the truth to those who do not want to hear it. I will challenge those who know the truth who don’t want it told. With the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will do.”

Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. He cited a United Nations report saying, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, the sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have risen. Forty years more, and Nineveh shall be no more!”

When Jonah’s news reached the king, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclaimed “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No coal, oil, or natural gas shall be burned, the kingdom shall invest in new infrastructure, upgrading existing highways and transmission lines, the people will buy less ‘stuff,’ weatherproof their homes, become vegetarians, stop cutting down trees, use energy efficient gadgets, and drive only plug-in hybrids.

“All shall turn from their evil, wasteful ways and from the violence that humans are doing to God’s creation. Who knows? God may relent and change God’s mind; God may turn from God’s fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

(An excerpt from Rodger McDaniel’s book “The Sagebrush Gospel” now available at sagebrushgospel.com and City News)

"for I was hungry and you…"

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“The King will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;” for I was hungry and you suspected I was a drug user and passed laws requiring me to take a drug test before you’d help, demanding that to feed my children I had to leave them at home and work at jobs with such low wages I could not pay for child care; you reduced the food stamp budget knowing it was already insufficient to feed the hungry children around your nation’s tables.

I was thirsty and you gave me water you knew was poisoned by the fracking energy companies while your politicians took their campaign contributions, telling me you didn’t believe experts who said my water wasn’t safe.

I was a stranger and you wanted me and 12 million others deported though I was brought to this country as an infant, grew up and was educated here, and now live in the only country I have ever known. Still you called me names like “illegal alien” though the Word of God says, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

When I was naked and homeless you divided God’s people between what you call ‘takers’ and ‘makers’ saying that ‘the least of these our brothers and sisters’ were takers and that you and your friends were ‘makers.’ You cried out that helping me would create an ‘entitlement’ society. You said I should just get a job even as you refused to require employers to pay livable wages.

When the nation’s economy nearly collapsed leaving millions unemployed for long periods of time despite their best efforts to find work, you bailed out the banks that caused the economic hardships and gave tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy. Even though there were far fewer jobs than job-seekers, and the long-term unemployed asked for help, you said that providing even minimal unemployment benefits would do us a disservice, make us lazy and shiftless; you ignored the reality of our lives, saying we should ‘just get a job’ or ‘start a business.’

When I was sick you decided it was far more important to make an anti-Obama political statement than to provide me with medical care; you had your health insurance and your family was secure in the knowledge that if they became ill they could afford care but you said that was their privilege, not my right.

I was in prison because you supported senseless drug laws, mandatory sentences, ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ and an unjust criminal justice system allowing private corporations to profit from higher and higher rates of incarceration until your nation imprisoned more of its people than any other on God’s earth…and even then you did not visit me.

“Then they will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

And that is the Gospel, the Sagebrush Gospel. You can look it up. (Matthew 25)