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Above the white refrigerator in my kitchen is a cabinet brimming with plastic shopping bags, the result of a post-grocery, pre-recycling ritual among me and my roommates. The idea is to wad up all the bags into a white or tannish-brown ball and stuff them into the cabinet, before a soft avalanche tumbles out onto our kitchen floor.

Two things, however, have become apparent. First is that our cabinet is quickly reaching maximum capacity. Second is that despite my roommates and my humble intentions to be Earth conscious, we don’t follow through as often as we’d like.

I imagine our predicament isn’t too different from most. For the past three years, we’ve all heard about the importance of being “green.” We’ve seen pictures of ice caps melting. Celebrities have told us to take shorter showers. We can finally even wash our clothes with chemical-free detergent.

But for all the increased attention environmentalism has garnered in media and the marketplace, few of us have significantly altered our habits. Nor has the weight of our impact on the Earth lessened. For many of us, the idea of environmental consciousness remains something we probably should strive for, but that somehow lingers as peripheral concern, clouded by more immediate matters of life.

A lot of green campaigns and media hype have been ineffective in provoking real change because they revolve around two things: celebrity and consumerism. Whether it’s Oprah giving “green workout tips” or Huggies organic disposable diapers, when sustainable living is marketed as sexy or purchasable, the result is another temporary trend.

What if our reasons for responsible living came from somewhere deeper within, or even above?

In a lecture given last spring in one of my journalism classes, environmental journalist and associate professor in the School of Journalism Simran Sethi argued that lasting motivation for environmental change could come not from external influences, but from within. She concluded that perhaps the greatest hope for lasting environmental change lay not in Hollywood or on Wall Street, but in the church.

For many, faith would seem an unlikely springboard for environmental activism. Yet more and more faith communities are taking declarative measures to care for creation. In a context of faith, the motivation has less to do with climate change and more to do with wisely stewarding the beauty around us.

In Romans 1:20 Saint Paul wrote, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

For Paul, the beauty of the natural world was so great that one couldn’t help but see God in it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, rivers, trees and mountains all interweave into divine metaphors. Even in Genesis, mankind is born from fresh soil and sacred breath.

What then would Paul say to a world where forests are shaved bare and mountaintops removed for coal? Does our dwindling of creation hamper how we see God in it?

For people of faith, sustainable living should be imperative not only to preserve the planet, but to preserve an integral way of experiencing the divine. It’s a lasting imperative with ancient underpinnings: the color of God is green.

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