Peter’s Progress – 12 December 2014

Our water restrictions have been in the news a lot.

Before I was a pastor I was an hydrologist. A water guy. I studied under Prof Roland Schulze and Simon Lorenz, among others, at Natal University (as it was then called). I worked for a year for an engineering companying that specialised in rural water supply and sanitation. I then went on to do a Masters in Environmental Management at UCT.

Because of this I became a pastor.

For a start, my studies took me to Cape Town, where I joined an Anglican Church that later invited me to be their full-time youth pastor.

While a youth pastor, I studied theology at Stellenbosch University and was later ordained in the Anglican Church. But it was more than that.

I found my original studies very discouraging. Much environmental and hydrological research lends itself to doom-and-gloom scenarios.

Think of the rhinos that capture our headlines, but multiply that across other species and ecological systems.

The practitioners working in these fields are comparatively few, often risking their lives in untenable situations.

The problem went deeper than laws or infrastructure. The problem came back to the condition of the human heart.

Like the time one of the reticulation schemes I was working on was vandalised by a plumber because another man was chosen from the community to do the installations and not he.

So everyone went without water.

Like the far reaching allegations of corruption around the trade in rhino horns and other endangered species.

Like the people who probably disregard the Siza Water restrictions because they can get away with it.

Like my inability to seriously conserve, reuse and recycle, when I ought to know better.

I feel like the Apostle Paul who said, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

Whether this is God’s instruction (Torah) as revealed in scripture or the much lesser law of water restrictions and environmental regulations established for our own good and the greater good, my heart seems wired to stray.

It is no surprise that our faithlessness towards God and injustice towards one another is manifest in our environment.

This is yet another signpost that points to our need of salvation – we need to be saved from ourselves. We need a saviour and he goes by the name of Jesus.

May I be prodded to rethink my faith and love of my neighbour every time the water is turned off.