In 1972, scientists at MIT published The Limits to Growth, a report that dared to ask a question most of us still avoid: what happens when a culture obsessed with growth collides with the limits of a finite planet? Their answer was sobering. If we carried on with business-as-usual, industrial civilization would peak and then unravel by around 2040.
Half a century later, we’re still following that path. Not because we lacked warning, or technology, or intelligence. But because we lacked wisdom.
When the report was published, leaders scoffed. Economists ridiculed it. Why? Because it contradicted the creed of modernity: that progress means more—more wealth, more consumption, more speed. Growth was treated as a gospel, and questioning it bordered on heresy.
And so we pressed forward, eyes open, hearts closed, clinging to the illusion that creation was boundless and forgiving.
Scripture warns against this kind of blindness. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). We could just as easily ask: what good is it to expand economies endlessly, if the cost is the ruin of the earth that sustains us?
In 2020, researcher Gaya Herrington revisited the MIT model. Her findings were stark: we remain on track for collapse. The point isn’t that leaders failed, or that policies were weak. The point is that the entire system is built on sand. It consumes until there is nothing left. It is, in biblical terms, a house of idols.
We’ve mistaken GDP for God. We worship markets as if they were omnipotent, demand infinite growth as if creation were infinite, and sacrifice the poor, the land, and future generations at the altar of convenience. This isn’t just a technical flaw. It’s moral failure.
Calls for system redesign have been growing since at least 2009. Yet those who raised them were mocked as radicals, while governments offered only small reforms dressed up as solutions. This is the cowardice of half-measures: rearranging the furniture on a sinking ship, praying the water won’t rise.
Faith traditions warn against such self-deception. The prophets of Israel thundered against societies that “healed the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). That’s what incrementalism looks like: soothing words over a festering wound.
What does collapse mean in moral terms? It is not simply an economic downturn or a political crisis. It is creation groaning under the weight of exploitation. It is judgment—not from an angry God striking us down, but from the consequences of our own idolatry and neglect.
As Paul wrote, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). We have sown greed, and the harvest is instability. We have sown denial, and the harvest is disintegration.
But collapse is not destiny. Repentance – true change – is still possible. What would it mean to repent at the level of systems? It would mean rejecting the false god of endless growth and embracing economies built on sufficiency, justice, and stewardship. It would mean measuring success not in profits, but in the flourishing of people and the health of creation.
Faith offers us a different imagination: that life does not consist in abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15), that Sabbath rest is holy, that creation is not raw material for exploitation but a gift entrusted to our care.
The MIT study was never just about numbers. It was about truth-telling. And truth-telling always has a moral edge. Collapse isn’t something that will “happen to us.” It is something we are choosing, each time we bow to idols of consumption and profit, each time we mistake growth for salvation.
The prophets of old called people to turn before it was too late. Perhaps this is our prophetic moment. Perhaps collapse is the wilderness we’ve brought upon ourselves – and renewal is the narrow path out of it.
The question is no longer whether we’ve been warned. The question is whether we will repent of the system we built, or cling to it until it buries us.
