Key Quotes from Chemicals and Christians: Compassion and Caution

• The message is simple: there’s a large but seemingly invisible group of people who are currently not only unreached, but actually shut out of corporate fellowship. They need to be seen, not only for the sake of ministering to them, but for the warning they provide to others, who can very easily join their ranks.

• As a culture, we’ve been deceived into thinking we need products that are actually harming us. When the extent of the problem is understood, it may seem overwhelming or impossible to address, but no step forward is wasted.

• An unavoidable and important fact is that the products in our environment are affecting all of us because any product in the environment will soon be in our bodies.

• Evidently, somewhere between a tenth and a third of the population consider themselves unusually sensitive to chemical exposures and the number appears to be rising.

• The changes that would allow the chemically ill to safely enter a church environment may also allow many currently healthy people to remain that way. Some changes are easy to make. Some are more challenging. Are they worth making? It’s a question that deserves serious consideration.

• Currently there are about 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the USA, with more than 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year. Of those 80,000 chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required testing of two hundred and regulates five.

• During these years of isolation, I’ve developed a new love for the description of God given in Genesis by a woman who undoubtedly felt very alone, abandoned, and mistreated. She had an encounter with God, which Genesis 16:13 describes like this: “Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, ‘You are the God who sees me.’” Those of us with toxic illness and other chronic conditions may often feel invisible to the world, but God sees us. God’s people will always fail to reflect God perfectly, but I pray that they will come to see us, too.