How Much Gas is in Your Tank?
admin July 22nd, 2008
If we think something is important and we take it seriously, we measure it.
We do this so we know where we stand and what we need to do about it, and doing that is sometimes a matter of life and death.
For instance, we…
· Check the gas gauge in our cars – If you’ve ever had one that didn’t work right, you know how important that can be!
· Weigh ourselves when we’re trying to lose weight and stay healthy.
· Take our temperature when we get sick – it’s one of our vital signs.
· Look at the balance in our checkbooks so checks don’t bounce.
· Insist that the FDA measure a whole host of food and drug safety issues because we don’t want to die.
· Even monitor global warming to the extent that at least once each week those stats are in the papers or the evening news.
We measure what we think is in our best interest.
But most of us probably don’t measure the effects of our personal daily impact on the earth and on other people. And most of us probably don’t measure the results of our own improvement efforts in these areas either. In other words most of us don’t often measure how well we’re doing to live more as Christ intended.
We do think about it a lot, and hope for the best, but we don’t hold our feet to the fire and measure how much we do and how effective it is.
But if it is important to us to:
· Leave a livable, sustainable world to our grandchildren,
· Be good stewards of God’s earth,
· Create a socially equitable society for God’s people,
· Live as Christ taught us…
Then would we not also want to know how well each of us is doing on these issues as much as we want to know how much gas is in our tank? Wouldn’t we want to know if we are making any headway? Wouldn’t we want to know if we should be doing something better to make a difference?
Of course it is much easier and safer for our egos (in the short run) not to make ourselves accountable, even if only to ourselves. It is easier to just read the newest stats in the paper and think that we may have contributed something to their improvement (when we can find some).
But if it really matters to us, we would measure our personal or family performance on each issue we truly want to improve on. After all, most of these issues really are a matter of life and death for millions of people around the world.
And unlike the FDA, you and I can do something about our own performance today, and without an act of Congress.
It’s not so hard, and we would have a much more accurate picture of what we’re actually accomplishing.
One way to start is to regularly take the What is Your Ecological Footprint? lifestyle assessment on the New Community Project Web site at http://www.newcommunityproject.org/pdfs/ecological_footprint.pdf. The tool enables you to score you or your household on 21 categories and then compare your total score to a “sustainable footprint” that we should all be striving to live within. You could take the assessment a step further by creating your own set of performance goals within each of these categories and then re-take the test on a regular basis so you can measure your progress.
Want to know how full your tank is? This is the first gauge you should put on your personal dashboard.