If we were built, what were we built for? …Why do we have this amazing collection of sinews, senses, and sensibilities? Were we really designed in order to recline on the couch, extending our wrists perpendicular to the floor so we can flick through the television’s offerings? Were we really designed in order to shop some more so the economy can grow some more? Or were we designed to experience the great epiphanies that come from contact with each other and with the natural world? Were we designed to witness the goodness all around us, and to protect and nourish it? Just as “the environment” is a context, not an issue, so is “consumption.” It defines at the moment who we are – and who we aren’t.
-Bill McKibben, Christianity Today, December ‘96
