Creation Care

[Tom Wetmore]

Let the Sea Resound

We can no longer act like creation care is a secondary issue.

A Christianity Today Editorial | posted 7/30/2010 09:51AM

The question is no longer, "Do you believe in global warming?" but, "What do you believe about the Gulf oil spill?" The BP spill has brought creation care closer to home. Whether global warming is a dire threat or not, human-made or not, we are all now more aware of our relationship to other parts of God's creation.

It goes without saying that one of our main callings is to care for the Earth. The Bible uses a variety of phrases to talk about this, such as "to work and keep" the garden (Gen. 2:15, ESV), to "have dominion" over all the animals (Gen. 1:28, ESV), and to "rule over" "the works of [God's] hands" (Ps. 8:6, NIV). Though some secular critics argue that the language of dominion and rule has led to exploitation, anyone familiar with the biblical context knows these words are about stewardship: We have authority, all right, but it is the authority given to a caretaker to manage things on behalf of another.

The main thing we are to manage is creation's ability to glorify the Creator. The Bible is replete with the idea that all creation—everything from rocks and trees to badgers and eagles—is to witness to divine grace: "Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord …" (Ps. 96:11-13a, NIV).

The Westminster Shorter Catechism put it well when, answering the question, "What is the chief end of man?" it stated, "To glorify God and enjoy him forever." We might add, in light of the biblical calling to steward the Earth, "and to ensure that all of creation glorifies God as well."

The problem with the Gulf oil spill is not just that human lives were lost and that the Gulf economy is destroyed and that pelicans and turtles and other animal populations will be wiped out. All of that is bad enough. But worse is this: A sea hemorrhaging black oil now suffocates life instead of nurturing it. The sea does not resound with the glory of God but instead has become a sign of human hubris and greed.

To destroy the environment is not only an economic problem—it is also a theological problem. More specifically, it sabotages worship, the chief end of man and of creation.

The church—created to glorify God—can no longer pretend that creation care is an issue just for 'sea huggers.'There seems to be little doubt that the Gulf oil spill is the United States' environmental 9/11. The news coverage has been relentless for months, and according to a recent Pew survey, the public thinks the coverage is just fine. A recent Gallup Poll determined that Americans have shifted from a "somewhat pro-energy stance to an even stronger pro-environment stance."

Christians are very much in step with this shift in popular opinion. Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore, in an eloquent lament about how the spill would devastate his beloved hometown of Biloxi, acknowledged that "for too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment." His essay was one signal to David Gibson of Politics Daily that evangelicals are "seeing the disaster as a moral challenge" and "repenting of their previous positions." A recent resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention condemning those responsible for the oil spill only reinforced his point.

We all recognize the incongruity when churches speak of redemption in Christ and yet their members do not attempt to live out that redemption, however partial, in this life. The same applies to our creation mandate. As Moore put it, "Will people believe us when we speak about the One who brings life and that abundantly, when they see that we don't care about that which kills and destroys?"

Churches can no longer be indifferent to those matters that signal—to our members and to the world we long to reach for Christ—whether or not the Earth can resound to God's glory. At a very practical level, it means not just preaching and teaching but also being faithful in small things: taking concern for how efficiently we heat and cool our buildings, encouraging recycling at church gatherings, starting a community garden, and doing a hundred other things that signal our commitment to living in a way that exemplifies God's intentions for his Earth.

The ground has shifted. The church—created to glorify God—can no longer pretend that creation care is an issue just for "sea huggers." We are the sea huggers. We must change our talk to embrace creation care, and eagerly walk that talk.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today.

[SivartM]

That's a great article, Tom. Thanks for posting it. The latest news I've heard about the Gulf is that the oil is all gone and there's nothing to worry about. I'm sure...

[abelisle]

Thanks Tom.

I've been talking about "creation care" as a subtext of stewardship for the longest time and have been continually rebuffed by GC officers who were more concerned about the financial aspects of stewardship. And some even gave me the distinct impression that since we are eagerly awaiting the 2nd coming, why should we be concerned about this planet anyway since it's going to be destroyed?

If we believe that the Sabbath is a celebration of God's creation, why aren't we showing more concern as God's remnant church? Holiness in time = Sabbath should equate with a daily respect for Nature - God's handiwork. We glorify God by how well we respect what He has made (which includes us > health reform)

Thanks again,

Alex

[GreatLakesGramma]

And some even gave me the distinct impression that since we are eagerly awaiting the 2nd coming, why should we be concerned about this planet anyway since it's going to be destroyed?

Alex

Haven't they read in the Bible where it says that God is coming to destroy those that destroy the earth? Seems pretty plain to me that it matters to God.

[phkrause]

Originally Posted By: abelisle

And some even gave me the distinct impression that since we are eagerly awaiting the 2nd coming, why should we be concerned about this planet anyway since it's going to be destroyed?

Alex

Haven't they read in the Bible where it says that God is coming to destroy those that destroy the earth? Seems pretty plain to me that it matters to God.

Excellent point GLG

[Tom Wetmore]

For those that may not have click the link and read theologian Russell Moore's "eloquent lament", here it is:

Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience

— Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 —

I’ve left my hometown lots of times. But never like this.

Sure, I’ve teared up as I’ve left family and friends for a while, knowing I’d see them again the next time around. And, yes, I cried every day for almost a year in the aftermath of a hurricane that almost wiped my hometown off the map. But I’ve never left like this, wondering if I’ll ever see it again, if my children’s children will ever know what Biloxi was.

As I pass that sign on Highway 90 telling me I’m leaving Biloxi, I can look out behind the water’s horizon and know there’s a Pale Horse there. A massive rupture in the ocean’s floor is gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, with plumes of petroleum great enough to threaten to destroy the sea-life there for my lifetime, if not forever. Everything is endangered, from the seafood and tourism industries to the crabs and seagulls on the beach to the churches where I first heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is more than a threat to my hometown, and to our neighboring communities. It is a threat to national security greater than most Americans can even contemplate, because so few of them know how dependent they are on the eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico. This is, as one magazine put it recently, Katrina meets Chernobyl.

I am leaving this morning, but I am leaving changed.

Someone once described Roe vs. Wade as the “Pearl Harbor” of the evangelical pro-life conscience. Pearl Harbor is an apt metaphor. Before that date of infamy, foreign policy isolationism seemed to be a legitimate American option. The “America First” committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.

After Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was. After Roe, what seemed to be a “Catholic issue” now pierced through the consciences of evangelical Protestants who realized they’d not only been naive; they’d also missed a key aspect of Christian thought and mission.

For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.

We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin.

Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”

The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesn’t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.

Caesar’s sword is there, by God’s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.

We’ve seen the issue of so-called “environmental protection” as someone else’s issue.

In our era, the abortion issue is the transcendent moral issue of the day (as segregation was in the last generation, and lynching and slavery before that). Too often, however, we’ve been willing not simply to vote for candidates who will protect unborn human life (as we ought to), but to also in the process adopt their worldviews on every other issue.

Moreover, we’ve seen some of the theological and ideological fringes in the environmentalist movement, fringes that enabled us to see them as not “with us,” and, frankly, to enable us to make fun of the entire question as a silly enterprise. But perhaps the void is being filled by leftists and liberals and wannabe liberal evangelicals simply because those who ought to know better are off doing something else. Working with our secular progressive neighbors on, for instance, saving the Gulf no more compromises the evangelical witness than our working with feminists to combat pornography or with Latter-day Saints to protect marriage.

We’ve had an inadequate view of human life and culture.

What is being threatened in the Gulf states isn’t just seafood or tourism or beach views. What’s being threatened is a culture. As social conservatives, we understand…or we ought to understand…that human communities are formed by traditions and by mores, by the bond between the generations. Culture is, as Russell Kirk said, a compact reaching back to the dead and forward to the unborn. Liberalism wants to dissolve those traditions, and make every generation create itself anew; not conservatism.

Every human culture is formed in a tie with the natural environment. In my hometown, that’s the father passing down his shrimping boat to his son or the community gathering for the Blessing of the Fleet at the harbor every year. In a Midwestern town, it might be the apple festival. In a New England town, it might be the traditions of whalers or oystermen. The West is defined by the frontier and the mountains. And so on.

When the natural environment is used up, unsustainable for future generations, cultures die. When Gulfs are dead, when mountaintops are removed, when forests are razed with nothing left in their place, when deer populations disappear, cultures die too.

And what’s left in the place of these cultures and traditions is an individualism that is defined simply by the appetites for sex, violence, and piling up stuff. That’s not conservative, and it certainly isn’t Christian.

Finally, we’ve compromised our love.

A previous generation of evangelicals had to ask the question, “Is the fetus my neighbor?”

As I’ve seen the people I love, who led me to Christ, literally heaving in tears, I’ve wondered how many other communities have faced death like this, while I ignored even the chance to pray. The protection of the creation isn’t just about seagulls and turtles and dolphins. That would be enough to prompt us to action, since God’s glory is in seagulls and turtles and dolphins (Gen. 6-9; Isa. 65).

Pollution kills people. Pollution dislocates families. Pollution defiles the icon of God’s Trinitarian joy, the creation of his theater (Ps. 19; Rom. 1).

Will people believe us when we speak about the One who brings life and that abundantly, when they see that we don’t care about that which kills and destroys? Will they hear us when we quote John 3:16 to them when, in the face of the loss of their lives, we shrug our shoulders and say, “Who is my neighbor?”

I’m leaving Biloxi today, with tears in my eyes. But I’ll be back. I’ll be back whether the next time I see this place it’s a thriving seacoast community again or whether it’s an oil-drenched crime scene. But I pray I’ll never be the same.