What if you looked out your window and saw Jesus going through your trash can?
Would that surprise you?
The greatest illusion of our time comes in the form of waste. From landfills to micro-trash to invisible emissions to imperceivable pollutants to the factories and shores we never see… it’s all hidden away from our sight. However, the harmful effects of this global wastefulness reaches far and wide. It’s touching the lives of everyone you love, every place you’ve been, and every single thing you can imagine.
So, what if God is actually very interested in your waste?
What if your faith requires a greater awareness about the things you eat, buy, and throw away?
Could it be that your salvation is tied to all of God’s creation and that you have the opportunity to join God’s work of restoration?
While addressing the environmental challenges of our time, Garbage Theology, seeks to connect our Biblical call to keep and serve creation with how we live our lives today. Through personal stories extracted from years of working in the trash and recycling industry while pastoring a local church, author Caleb Cray Haynes, introduces and examines a theology of waste through the lens of Scripture and our story as the people of God in the context of our current global waste emergency.
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“
Garbage Theology is the best book ever written on our over consumption and how our lifestyle harms God’s beautiful creation. Bi-vocational Garbage-man Pastor Caleb Cray Haynes opened my eyes to wonderful biblical insights on waste, destruction, and renewal for our common home and our relationship with its Creator. With honest humor that is also troubling, Garbage Theology overturns poor biblical understanding with correct Biblical truth for defending God’s creation.
The Rev. Mitch Hescox
President/C.E.O., The Evangelical Environmental Network
Co-author of Caring For Creation: The Evangelicals Guide to Climate Change and Healthy Environment
Garbage Theology is a book addressing the Christian call to care for creation through a uniquely holiness lens. The book explores the ways individuals and societies have chosen consciously and unconsciously to participate in lifestyles of over-consumption and waste. Through telling his personal stories extracted from years of working in the trash and recycling industry while pastoring a local church, Caleb introduces and examines a theology of waste. The book leans on Scripture and our story as the people of God and looks at the context of the current global garbage emergency. It poses the question, “From the coral reefs to our cul-de-sacs our consumption habits are shaping our planet, so what does a Christian response look like amid such worldwide excess and waste?” It is of utmost importance in these days of unprecedented ecological degradation that the people of God grasp our inseparable connection with the ground we live on and all other life on Earth. Every item we eat and good we purchase has the potential to be a loving or harmful action in our world. As a people created in the image of The Creator this book addresses how we might faithfully respond to these issues in our world with holy loving action. The book highlights the areas in which we can better understand our role as earth-keeping Christians today.
At the end of this book, readers will have:
- A greater awareness of the Christian holiness response to the issues surrounding waste in the world today.
- A theological framework for how our eschatology speaks directly to our care for the earth as it specifically pertains to consumption and waste.
- Have a deeper sense of how our faith intersects with all materiality and how every purchase we make and item we choose to possess intersects with the kingdom of heaven Jesus announced was arriving.
- Tangible practices to engage in at home, work, and in the local church to reduce their waste footprint and enact the kingdom of heaven in their context.
- Other specific learning points will be around plastics, food waste, soil, burials, modern slavery, recycling, permaculture, and living low waste.
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“
If you intend to live in ease and comfort, you won’t read this book. But if you love your neighbor, and are willing to imagine what that looks like in practice, you will open yourself to new ways of thinking about trash, consumption, and simplicity. This book messed with my ease and I predict it might do the same for you.”
Dr. Dan Boone
President, Trevecca Nazarene University