CREATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

CREATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The Bible starts with the powerful proclamation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). We proclaim this truth every time we recite the opening words of the Apostles’ Creed:

“I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.”

This must be our starting point for any discussion of creation and the environment. Creation reveals God as “the heavens proclaim his righteousness and all peoples see his glory” (Ps 97:6; see also Rom 1:20).

As Creator, God is both distant from his creation and in an ongoing relationship with it. Understanding this helps us to avoid two errors. The first is pantheism, which sees God everywhere and in everything. Pantheism confuses the Creator with creation. The other is dualism, which sees God as having no continuing relationship with created life. But the Bible teaches that although God is transcendent, and thus apart from the world, he is still immanent, that is, intimately involved in the real world he has created. Psalm 104.5 affirms that he is the one who has “set the earth on its foundations”. Paul states that “all things” are created by God in Christ, who continues to hold “all things … together” (Col 1:16-17).

Human beings are given a special place in God’s creation because we are made in his image. Unfortunately, we Christians have sometimes been only too happy to assert this while forgetting that with privilege comes responsibility. We have sometimes used God’s command to Adam and Eve to “rule” or “have dominion” over the earth (Gen 1:26) to legitimise arrogant exploitation of nature. Critics claim that such emphases have resulted in an anthropocentric (humancentred) attitude. No wonder some Westerners have been leaning towards Hinduism and Buddhism, which they see as more biocentric (nature-centred) and therefore ecologically sensitive.

But we should be neither anthropocentric nor biocentric; we should be theocentric, acknowledging that the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) has assigned us the responsibility of caring for his creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps 24:1). We are only caretakers. This relation between humanity and God’s earth is something that must be central to our environmental concern. Jeremiah underlines God’s ownership:

“With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please” (Jer 27:5).

The other Christian teaching we must never forget when thinking about the environment is the adverse effects of the fall. We cannot simply celebrate God’s glorious creation and ignore the fact that creation has been affected by human sin. But the fall has not totally obliterated the goodness ascribed to creation by God. And, the fall does not give us any right to dismiss the present world and creation as evil and remain apart from it while we await a future renewal. We need to work to counter the environmental degradation caused by human sinfulness.

We must do our part, but must also recognise that God has planned the final restoration of this fallen creation. In Romans 8:20- 21, the Apostle Paul refers to creation being liberated from its bondage to decay. This is generally understood as a promised reversal of the curse that creation was subjected to as a consequence of human sin (Gen 3:17-19). In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John foresees “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1).

In working to restore the environment, we need to recognise that God has not given us a haphazard assembly of organic and inorganic matter, natural energy and resources. Creation consists of ecosystems that are intricately woven together in interdependent cycles. The survival of all of creation depends on protecting these interdependent relationships.

We are called to be stewards, protecting this intricately planned world God has entrusted to us. Even more, we are called to be “responsible stewards” (Gen 2:15; Matt 25:20-21; 1 Cor 4:2; 1 Pet 4:10). Responsible stewardship demonstrated through God’s love will result in practical actions to promote sustainable living as well as right attitudes towards the environment. As Bible-believing Christians, we are called to care for creation in order to protect, conserve and bring healing to our wounded world.