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Grasshopper theology: Heading to the Promised Land instead of climate disaster

Today’s climate crisis provokes dystopian and utopian narratives of the future faced by humanity. To navigate the theological terrain between the present and an uncertain future, this article explores passages pertaining to the journey of Moses and the Israelites to the Promised Land. The guiding point of orientation for this exploration comes from a verse that captures the seeming powerlessness of the Israelites in the face of the giants inhabiting the Promised Land. Numbers 13:33 reads, “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Of crucial importance in coming to terms with such honest self-assessment is the period of discernment and growth that comes from being in the wilderness with the presence of a God who loves and empowers grasshoppers in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Because the future of the Body of Christ is inseparable from how the climate crisis is confronted, the journey through the wilderness becomes not merely a story for self-coping but rather a story about churches finding a way forward, even as some dystopian narratives place churches on the road to irrelevance and ultimately extinction. This article explores how the story of exodus provides a sacred ground for imagining a different, even if difficult, future.