By Matt Guerino|Published Date: May 10, 2010
Reversing The Curse, part 7 of 8: Creation / Environment
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28
Doomsday
We’ve all encountered plenty of people these past few years who trumpet dire environmental warnings. With public interest heightened by Michael Moore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Al Gore has built a career as a professional environmental Prophet of Doom. He leads a chorus of voices that tell us certain and catastrophic destruction is in store for us at the hands of the environment if we do not radically alter our modern lifestyle. And soon.
Then there was University of Texas biologist Erik Pianka, who said in 2006 that we’re on target for ecological disaster, and the only hope for the human race was to reduce the world’s population by a whopping 90%. (How would we accomplish this “depopulation” – such a sterile term! – I wonder, and who would decide who gets to be included in the lucky 10% who remain?)
And in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, there was actor Danny Glover to help us make sense of it all. Glover explained that such catastrophes are what mother earth was doing to us because we failed to pass aggressive environmental accords earlier that year at the UN gathering in Copenhagen. And the list goes on.
Repudiation from the Christian community
But at least equally interesting has been the response to all this from the conservative Christian community, a response that can be described in some cases at least as sticking out our tongues, puffing out our cheeks, and blowing a big fat raspberry. The mere mention of Gore’s name or the phrase “environmentalism” is enough to get many Christians instantly worked up. Whether mankind is mostly the cause of global warming may be debatable, but the extent to which modern environmentalism causes many Christians to start warming is a settled fact.
Now, there is some good reason for this. After all, one can hardly say that the Michael Moores, Al Gores, and Danny Glovers of the world are operating from the vantage point of a Christian worldview. Much of the membership in contemporary environmentalism movements consists of people who operate on the basis of Naturalistic, New Age, or older pagan Polytheistic ways of thinking; or an eclectic mix of all three. Whether Christians can clearly identify and explain these worldviews or not, many of us rightly sense that what these folks are saying often completely contradicts a Biblical view of mankind and of the environment.
Dropping the all
And yet…
Is the “raspberry” reaction completely justified from the standpoint of Scripture? Rejecting paganism is surely the Christian thing to do. But should the mere mention of environmental care raise the hackles of a Biblically-minded follower of Jesus? Should the mere suggestion of curbing pollution or cleaning up rivers and oceans produce a knee-jerk suspicion and disdain? Should it be that merely entertaining the thought of living more sustainably or with a smaller “environmental footprint” feel like a betrayal of our core principles? Is this really Biblical?
In the first chapter of the Bible God tells us that even before sin entered and cursed the world, environmental stewardship was at the very heart of our reason for being. He gave Adam and Even the task of “ruling over” everything on the earth, including the environment itself. The earth is God’s, he tells us, and he entrusted it to us to care for on his behalf. While it is certainly true that from a Christian perspective the earth exists for man and not the other way around, it is equally true that at the very heart of our God-given reason for being on this planet is to care for it in a way that would make its Maker proud.
The Curse affected not only mankind, but the environment itself. The planet we live on experiences the same brokenness that we experience as a result of our sin. And the Bible tells us in Romans 8:19-22 that when God restores us to a sin-free, glorified state he will also restore the earth to a glorious, Curse-free state. His plan of redemption, then, includes redeeming the environment.
And for followers of Jesus, living a redemption-oriented life means helping fix as much of the brokenness in the world as we can. This extends to brokenness in the physical environment itself. If we fail to see this, and to act on it, we have failed to embrace a part of our entire reason for being.
Reverse the Curse
Modern American life offers Christians numerous easy ways to impact the environment in a positive way. Taking a few moments to sort recyclable trash, taking a half day to join a community park or beach clean-up event, or visiting “sustainable living” web site for simple, practical ideas can all be ways we help honor the environment our God put us in – and put us in charge of.
In the process of doing these kinds of thing you’ll no doubt rub shoulders with other people who are also doing the right thing, but who may be doing it for the wrong reasons. What a fantastic opportunity to explain how your faith in Jesus Christ as the climax of God’s plan of redemption makes you a conscientious environmental steward. Don’t look now, but you’re dangerously close to preaching the gospel.
That’s the kind of environmental stewardship every Christian should be excited about.
For additional insight to this topic, get the book, Redeeming Creation, by Fred Van Dyke, et al, from our online store. Or read the article, “Appointed to Rule,” by T. M. Moore.
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