c. 2004 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) Despite having no big-name stars, this summer’s first true blockbuster movie is the ecodisaster thriller “The Day After Tomorrow.” I saw it recently and was deeply impressed by its powerful depiction of the coming of a new ice age caused by our indifference to global warming and other man-made environmental threats. The movie raises profound questions about the future of human civilization.

No one is arguing “The Day After Tomorrow” has the realism of a science textbook. If we initiate such environmental devastation, it will almost certainly take far longer to develop than a movie has the time to depict.

But what is right about the movie is its implicit warning that the achievements of human civilization are fragile.

It took centuries to build the modern world and yet all of these efforts could be undone in a few brief moments or as a result of an accumulation of bad decisions. The result would be the death of millions and the destruction of large parts of human civilization.

The grandeur of civilization is symbolized by the achievements embodied in our most advanced cities. This is one reason why so many disaster movies are set in New York, as most of this movie is. Having lived in New York for two years _ walking its streets, riding its subways, eating its street-vendor sausages, sitting in its coffee shops and reading its newspapers on Saturday mornings _ I still find myself in awe whenever I fly into the city and see once again its recognizable forest of skyscrapers.

Some 10 million people live in the five boroughs of New York, a tiny patch of land, really, for so many people to find their home there _ a fragile human ecosystem dependent on the most advanced forms of human cooperation to sustain it.

It was easy before Sept. 11 to think of New York (or Washington, or Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Philadelphia) as more or less eternal communities. They have been there for decades, even centuries. They seem so solid, in all of their majestic concrete and glass, so sturdy that they will last forever. You can go to any U.S. airport any morning and get on a plane and by afternoon find yourself hailing a cab in New York. Surely that will always be so, won’t it?

Not necessarily. In “Armageddon,” the threat to New York (and everywhere else) was a huge meteor. In “Independence Day,” it was an alien invasion. (Not too realistic, but scary and slimy.) In “Fail-Safe,” the early 1960s Cold War movie, it was an atomic bomb. On the very real, noncinematic day of Sept. 11, 2001, it was two hijacked airplanes.

Today the threat of some fanatic detonating a radioactive dirty bomb, along with other ruthlessly ingenious terrorist efforts, is real enough to keep national security specialists awake at night.

The possible poisoning, bombing, freezing or burning of the grand city of New York, built laboriously by millions for over three centuries, is an apt and terrible symbol of the human condition. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr liked to say that the creative and destructive aspects of human nature are inextricably linked to each other and always competing with each other for pre-eminence. It was human beings who turned Manhattan Island into one of the world’s great cities and it will likely be human beings who render it uninhabitable someday, leaving it an archaeological site for future generations to explore in awe and wonder, much as we now explore the ruins of ancient Athens, Rome or Babylon.

There are many who recognize such threats but fall back on a complacent theology or philosophy in order to cope with them. Most of these views abandon human responsibility for what happens to human civilization. If we incinerate ourselves, it will have been foreordained by fate or God. Therefore we need not fear a thing as we go about our daily lives.

I am all for confidence in God. But I am also for human responsibility for human problems. The Bible does not purchase its confidence in God at the expense of downgrading human responsibility. Humans obey or disobey God; they make right or wrong choices; they act sinfully or righteously. They are responsible for their choices before God and neighbor and their choices have both earthly and eternal consequences, even in the broader context of the sovereignty of God over creation.

My understanding of Christian faith demands a morally strenuous engagement with the greatest threats to human civilization, whether they are ecological, biotechnological or geopolitical. We must fight to preserve our fragile but beautiful civilization from whatever threatens it, taking full responsibility for the world God has given us to manage on his behalf.

DEA/PH END GUSHEE