This Is My Father's World ... But it's mine too

I was listening to the radio recently and I heard some preacher saying that we didn’t need to worry about the world because Jesus is coming soon and He’s going to make everything new again.

It’s not the first time that I heard this; but it’s the first time that it bothered me.

In Genesis, God gives man dominion over the earth. We’re – for lack of a better analogy – the gardeners of the earth.

Gen. 1: 28-30 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.

That language seems pretty clear, God gave us the earth and all that it contains.

Flip over to Matthew 25 and the Parable of the Talents. In verse 26, the Master derides the wicked, lazy servant for burying his talent instead of using it. Imagine how angry the Master would have been had the wick servant destroyed the talent rather than just burying it.

As followers of Christ, we have an obligation to care for and protect the earth: fish, birds, every living thing. I am not a fan of generalizing, but when you compare Christians (especially more conservative Christians (like my church) against other religions (New Age, Pagans, Buddhists, even humanists), we fall behind them in our perceived (and I think actual) care and treatment of the environment.

I’m not (really not) advocating worshiping the trees or the earth-mother. All I am advocating is that we begin to see and live up to our responsibility and take our proper authority over the earth.

Is your church recycling the paper that it uses? Mine isn’t. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the importance of caring for our environment? Environmentalism – like many other politically liberal issues – seems to be out of favor with most conservative Evangelical churches. And I believe that we are missing a spiritual principle.

We should be looking for ways to make the trees, rivers, oceans better. Not just dump our crap into them and use them without thought for the future. We should be turning the earth that God gave us into something ten times better.

Something to think about: Does our* trashing of the environment have anything to do with the way our society is falling apart? Taking care of the earth is the first command that God gave us. Does not submitting to that command somehow influence everything else that we try and do? Would anyone treat their spiritual environment the way that they treat their physical one?

Just something to think about on this Earth Day Week.

Andy

Epilog: On a similar and much more personally painful tact, this same message goes for our physical bodies. When we are judged, when the Master returns and asks what we have done with our bodies – how will we answer? That’s certainly a wake up call for my not-so-narrow butt.

* Our – America’s, western civilizations, man’s: pick the one you like the best. Either way, it’s “us”.

Listening to: Jeremy Camp, This Man