2 weeks Ago
By Mark Wilson Today, April 22, is the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, marking the genesis of contemporary American environmental protection mindfulness. It is now the world’s most widely observed nonreligious holiday, commemorated by approximately one billion people worldwide, including businesses, schools, churches and many other organizations. The sentiment of that earlier era led President Richard Nixon to create the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Congress also enacted much of America’s landmark environmental protection legislation: the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973). Now, pause to consider our country’s present state of environmental consciousness. What’s changed since that previous flurry of effort half a century ago concerning safeguarding our environment and natural resources? Have we become such excellent stewards of our nation’s natural resources that our air, water, land and biological ecosystems no longer need protection? Or did we resume taking for granted something profoundly essential to our well-being? This isn’t about admonishing our president for once again pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, or similar nationwide administrative and/or legislative shirking of environmental and natural resource protection responsibility.
This is a direct call-out of a purportedly “Christian nation’s” failure to adhere to the Bible’s earliest divine mandate: humans being specially entrusted to care for the resplendent world that rightfully belongs to our Creator. Perhaps it is most clearly stated in the 24th Psalm, verse 1: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it (NRSV). For Bible-believing Christians, this world (including all of its resources and inhabitants) belongs to God, not to us.
“Caretaker” of the awe-inspiring, resplendent creation was the God-assigned inaugural vocation for humanity. The divine “prime directive” for humans was to ensure that all of the created works of God are properly managed to reflect His goodness. The late, Presbyterian theologian, Eugene Peterson’s award-winning “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language,” translates Genesis 1:26-28 this way: “26 God spoke: ‘Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.
’ 27 God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. 28 God blessed them: ‘Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.
'” Too many Christians today, including ministers, congregants, churches and , apparently, the officials inhabiting the new White House Faith Office, exhibit only vague awareness of the creation stewardship vocation God assigned to humans. This results from anemic Bible teaching that fails to generate convictions commensurate with the gravity of our divinely commissioned, primordial vocation. Shockingly, most adult Christians have never heard even one sermon about human responsibility to care for God’s creation.
There are many reasons churches hesitate to teach the keenly biblical topic of creation stewardship. They range from aberrant rapture theology, whose adherents believe the world exists under an imminent, divine death sentence (so why bother to protect anything), to reluctant ministers fearing to wade into the thankless job of sorting out contentious, politically-charged issues intermixing science and faith. The earth and its resources were created by God and declared valuable (“very good”) to Him independent of their human utility.
Christians should assign divine value to creation because God loves it and intends to restore it (Matt. 19:28; Acts 3:21, Rev. 21:1-5) concurrent with human redemption.
A Creator who cares only for humans isn’t the God revealed in Judeo-Christian scripture (e.g., Psalm 104).
Christians, be aware that your deep, innate awe and reverence for creation is the natural result of being an image of the magisterial Creator himself. You are instinctively drawn to and love what God loves. So, promote careful, faithful stewardship of what properly belongs to Him.
Heed the biblical mandates to care for the life and resources of the earth responsibly. Mark Wilson is a retired employee of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service residing in Loveland. He holds a master’s degree in theology from Harding University School of Religion; and is a Bible teacher, itinerant church minister, and religious lecturer..
