The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
The world, and those who live in it. (Psalm 24:1)
In pictures taken from space, Earth, the blue planet, is incredibly beautiful, with its delicate atmosphere that keeps us alive. But this beauty and life are very fragile. The balance is intricate, a little more or a little less of certain chemicals, and it would be another place entirely, arid, and without life, like the surrounding planets.
Those of us who believe in a Creator believe that all this was done deliberately. The Earth was “without form and void,” and out of that void, God created a place where we could live. God created the earth, the seas, trees, plants, sea creatures, and animals, and called them all good. And then God created human beings and called them good, at least initially.
This beautiful place, carefully and lovingly made, is now in jeopardy. Ancient forests and jungles that create the earth’s oxygen are being destroyed, major rivers that provide life for millions of people are now polluted and toxic, and global warming threatens the whole planet with extinction.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth is the Lord’s. We don’t own it, we were told to care for it, and instead, we’ve almost destroyed it.
Stewardship
I recently visited a church where a worship team led an unfamiliar song. One stanza, projected in big letters on the screen, derided those who “save the whales and kill babies.” Environmentalists, who hold a wide range of attitudes on the abortion issue, were all labeled baby-hating tree huggers, leaving the impression that concern for the environment is antithetical to Christian morality. In truth, as a matter of discipleship, Christians should be at the forefront of the environmental movement.
In Genesis, we’re told that God entrusted stewardship of the earth to the first couple, with a blessing and an injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.” In the New Testament, Jesus tells a parable about good and bad stewards to let his disciples know how we’re to use God’s gifts (Matthew 25). The good stewards made the most of what the master had given them, the bad steward buried what the master had given him and was chastised. What would have happened to stewards who trampled and destroyed what God gave them?
The earth is a gift to all its inhabitants. But we humans are the ones who can make reasonable choices about its future, and we’re the ones causing its degradation.
We should be cultivating the earth and guarding its fecundity. Instead, species of animals and plants are going extinct at an increasingly alarming rate. Honeybees have started dying off from a mystery disease that many believe is caused by pesticides. Bees are tiny creatures, but their extinction would cause a huge environmental crisis. Their pollination is essential for over 130 thousand kinds of plants.
Apocalypse
Unless we change our patterns of consumption, we’re heading for a future of floods, droughts, famines, and plagues. These possible ecological disasters may sound like end-of-the-world scenarios. But we aren’t meant to cause this destruction and suffering, or stand by and watch it happen. The horrors described in the book of Revelation are a result of sin.
The U.S. once had an evangelical Christian called James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. Watt’s attitude toward the parklands and other natural resources that were in his charge was that ultimately they really didn’t matter. Since the earth was going to be destroyed anyway, preservation efforts were a waste of time.
Human beings, one could argue, are also all going to die, but we don’t accept murdering them or hastening their demise. When people are ill, we pray for their healing and hope for their recovery. When we hear about people whose lives are shortened because of inadequate care, we’re outraged. We need to have this same outrage, this same sense of care, and this same prayerful attitude toward the future of the earth.
If someone we loved was ill or dying, would we stop feeding and caring for them? No, our care for them would increase. The Lord told us that “no man knows the day or the hour” of his return. We’re not called to engage in endless speculation about when that hour will be. We’re called to live as faithful disciples while we’re here.
Martin Luther once famously said that if you believe that the world will end tomorrow, you should plant a tree. That is an argument for hope and for faithful stewardship of the earth.
Body and Soul
There’s a region of Appalachia where the tops of mountains are being blown off in an intensive new coal mining procedure. The process is degrading to the environment—ruining fishing streams, water supplies, and the area’s natural beauty. Some Christians who organized to protest the mining were told by a critic, “Christians should just care about saving people’s souls.”
The reality is that here on earth, where we are now dwelling, souls come in bodies. Scripture tells us that God cares about how we treat people—body and soul. Jesus cared about the physical well-being of the people around him. As he urged people to repent and believe and be reborn, he also healed them physically. Scriptures tell us that we’ll be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable among us, visiting those who are sick or imprisoned. If we give a cup of cold water in His name, surely it’s not meant to be poisoned.
Pro-Life
In recent years, American Protestants and Catholics have united to express concern about the beginning and end of life. Now, ecological damage threatens to destroy all life. As unpolluted water sources become scarce, children, the poor, and the elderly will be most at risk. The infant mortality rate, already high in the developing world, will increase dramatically worldwide. With increasing scarcity, competition for resources will lead to wars and deaths, not only of military personnel, but of civilian men, women and children.
In Sunday school, we used to sing, “Jesus loves the little children / all the children of the world. / Red and yellow, black and white, / all are precious in his sight.” If we believe that Jesus loves all the children of the world, we need to make the world a safer place for them.
The concern for the sanctity of life should lead Christians to the forefront of the environmental battle.
The Least of These
When I first became concerned about environmental issues, I sensed that some social justice friends thought this was a “yuppie” issue. Privileged, educated Westerners like me wanted to vacation in pristine beauty spots. The important issues were poverty, injustice, and peace.
But environmental issues are inextricably bound together with issues of social injustice, poverty, and war. Although environmental degradation impacts all of us, it is the poor who suffer most. In the U.S., major toxic dumps are located in poor communities, where people can’t move to safer areas.
Poor countries have few resources to allocate for waste clean-up. In China, 400,000 people die prematurely from air pollution every year. More than 70 percent of lakes and rivers (including the Yangtze) are polluted and unsafe to drink. The earth is groaning under this load of waste and pollution.
Pollution in one country harms all countries; the earth has one ecosystem. We really are the world. We learned this early on when airborne pollutants from U.S. factories caused acid rain in Canada. Some countries have signed pacts that limit fishing rights, but countries that don’t comply are rapidly depleting the world’s supplies. Species that aren’t fished into extinction may die off because of the oceans’ rising temperature
Since we in the U.S. represent 5 percent of the world’s population and use 26 percent of its energy, our attempts to get developing nations like China and India to cut back sound hollow. They watch our movies and see how we live—they want to live that way too. How can we tell them not to take the steps that we’ve taken toward our own prosperity? But the earth simply can’t sustain other countries consuming resources and creating waste at the levels that we in the U.S. are doing now. And it can’t sustain the increasing rate of our consumption.
The U.S. deforested most of its land long ago, and after depleting our own resources, we depend on oxygen from countries that still have forests. Throughout the Bible, we see that God has a heart for the poor. The Bible says that if we lend to the poor, God will count it as a loan to himself. Ecologically speaking, we’ve been doing the opposite, borrowing from the poor with no intention of repayment.
God’s Glory
The Amazon rainforest produces 20 percent of the world’s oxygen and has been called the lungs of the world. But these forests are being cut down at the rate of 7,500 square miles a year. The Amazon contains about 15–20% of Earth’s species, thousands of which have yet to be classified. Many rainforest plants have medicinal value, and many more may have. But the value is not only utilitarian. When Charles Darwin first saw the Amazon, he tried to describe “the sensation of delight which the mind experiences” and concluded, “the land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by nature for herself.” (It’s interesting that while Darwin can’t bring himself to mention God, he feels emotion as well as pattern in the created order.)
We would say that the Creator found joy in the creation. Scripture reveals a God who delights in the beauty of creation. Jesus tells the disciples, “Consider the lilies of the field . . . even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” In other passages, we learn that creation praises God: “Let the field exalt, and everything in it. Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy.” (1 Chronicles 16:33). Scripture also tells us that nature is a powerful witness to God’s character. People who’ve rejected God will be under judgment because God’s character is revealed in nature. We shouldn’t allow this reflection of God’s character to be defaced.
The Bible tells the story of God’s boundless love for humanity, ultimately shown in giving His son to live among us and die for us. But Scripture also reveals a God who cares for all creation. We know He cares for us, because “His eye is on the sparrow,” but he also cares about the sparrow.
In the book of Job, God asks: “Do you observe the calving of the deer? Can you number the months that they fulfill? And do you know the time when they give birth?” (Job 39:1–4). Clearly, God does observe these things.
After Job’s testing and insults from his friends, he questions God, asking why the righteous suffer. God answers his question: “I am the creator God, and you are a creature and can’t expect to understand my ways.” But first Job is taken on a whirlwind tour of the universe, ending with a description of Leviathan (thought by most translators to be a whale).
This tour of creation ends with a long description of the whale, including these lines:
It leaves a shining wake behind it;
One would think the deep to be white-haired.
On earth it has no equal,
A creature without fear.
It surveys everything that is lofty;
It is king over all that are proud.
(Job 41:32–34)
When Job hears this, he repents, saying, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” The whale is a testament to God’s glory. The whale is God’s concluding argument.
God created sparrows and whales and trees that clap their hands and stones that will cry out if God’s word is not preached. God also created humanity with the capacity to care for the rest of creation and the expectation that they would do so.
Let’s protect the future of this wonderful, good place that God created for us—for ourselves, for our children, for all the meek of the earth, and for all God’s creatures great and small.
(Originally published in Radix Vol. 14:2)
Sharon Gallagher was editor of Radix and Associate Director of New College Berkeley. She authored Finding Faith: Life-Changing Encounters with Christ.