Creation care

I am encouraged to read in various media about living sustainable lives and reducing our carbon footprint. I am beginning to hear some bold Christians advocating creation care. However, I am concerned that most of the changes that are advocated are superficial at best. While I agree that every little bit helps, and that you have to start somewhere, I am concerned that we move beyond token efforts to reduce harm to living a paradigm shift of viewing creation as something to be valued and cared for its own sake. Even amongst Christian circles who advocate being good stewards, I am concerned that we do so from a distant yet self-centered vantage point -creation is here for our benefit, our pleasure.

I believe that the self-centered attitude comes from a misinterpretation of Genesis two, where people believe that the garden was made for mankind rather than the other way around. We have a long history of self-centered thinking that probably originated in the garden of Eden when mankind chose to take control and eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than obey God. Our self-centered thinking makes us aware of how vulnerable we are. We try and hide our nakedness with symbols of prosperity, but death takes away the charade.

In our self-centered thinking we worry, plan, and manipulate the creation God made in order to provide for what we need. In trying to hide our vulnerability we confuse what we want with what we need. In our attempts at control, we destroy prairie, forest, and wet land, breaking up the soil and exposing it to the degradation of erosion by wind and rain. We select only a few species to provide for our needs and pleasures, importing them and their accompanying diseases, feed stock, and pests, into habitats they weren't designed for, displacing and destroying the creation God made for that location.

Over the course of time we have searched for way to guarantee that our needs will be met in the way that we have chosen to meet them. We have learned to irrigate, diverting water from its natural habitats and aquifers to our fields. In the process we destroy the long-term productivity of the soil through increased salt build up while simultaneously reducing or destroying the native habitats God created from which we took the water. We have learned to mine minerals and oil to create fertilizers, instead of using the plants and manure that God made to naturally fertilize the earth. By taking control, we end up destroying the microbial community that turns dirt into soil and causes plants to thrive. By taking control, we cause ecological imbalances in our rivers, lakes, and oceans, killing off diverse populations within those environs. As we kill the diversity of the natural ecosystem, we need more mined fertilizers to maintain the security of our harvests. We end up in a negative cycle that destroys rather than gives life.

With the use of technology, the negative cycle which destroys God's creation happens so much faster. Our machines give us the ability to cut down forests faster, destroy prairies quicker, and drain wetlands more effectively. Our machines not only deliver to our fields man-made fertilizers which destroy the native habitat, but poisons as well. And while they roam up and down the rows, they pollute the atmosphere and change the acidity of the ocean. With the use of technology we exchange a diversity of seeds that can withstand environmental changes for a few engineered ones that are designed for boom, but vulnerable to bust. We use technology to secure against the potential bust by creating chemicals that kill anything we don't want, -pest, weeds, and diseases. In the end, all our attempts to control end up in disaster. We are never able to out compete what we wish to destroy. And in the process of trying to control, we destroy the land we need to grow things on and poison ourselves as well as the nature around us.

For a long time people have attributed a fundamental change in nature because of Adam and Eve's sin. The rest of creation was considered to be 'fallen' -somehow less than the perfection God had made because mankind had sinned. But history shows a slightly different picture. Creation is still as good as when God made it, but because humans have sinned and disobeyed God, we have made a mess out of the good that God has created. Mankind has thought about himself instead of caring for God's creation. We sought and still seek after knowledge to control creation for our own benefit. In our search for control, in our desire to bend creation to serve our will and pleasure, we seek to become like God, and in so doing we destroy the good creation he made.

But there is good news: The Kingdom of God is at hand! We can be saved from our self-centered thinking that destroys us and the world around us. Jesus Christ has come to show us the way. He has come to bring us the freedom of forgiveness and the hope of the resurrection.

This is not a way of pride, but of humility. Christ shows us the way by humbling himself, giving up his glory in heaven; giving up immortal life for a mortal life filled with pain and suffering; being willing to endure the ignobly of the stable, the discrediting and slander of the religious leaders, and shame of the cross, so that he might demonstrate his love for us and redeem his creation -all of his creation from the ravages of our sin. He came that he might serve us, washing our feet. He asks us to be servants of others. And admonishes us that if we want to become the greatest in the kingdom of God, we will have to become the least.

When we follow Christ, we become part of the redeeming process. We must become willing to accept the role of a servant and tend his garden in such a way that the garden gives glory to God, its creator. The Lord of life receives glory when when all of his creation thrives, when the well being of whole is greater than any of the parts. And to do this requires great faith -faith that if we care about creation's needs before our own that our own needs will still be met. Jesus uses the illustrations of the birds and flowers to reassure us of the love and provision God gives those who obey him.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his lifeb?
28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Those who exercise faith in the way of Christ not only experience God's provision, but also experience God's love and forgiveness. The love and forgiveness God extends to us allows us to extend that same love and forgiveness to others. Through forgiveness we destroy evil. The hope of the resurrection that we have through Christ takes away our fear of death, takes away the self-centered thinking that destroys creation. We are empowered to endure through all difficulties, even death, and still forgive because we know that death is not the end. God's provision extends beyond the grave to new life, to eternal life. Because we have this hope, let us live into the way of Christ, not only of love and forgiveness, but in being obedient stewards of creation, caring for creation to the glory of God.