Stewards of the Earth (Best of Christianity Today)

Christianity and Creation Care

,

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781683595823
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Chapter 1

FULFILLING GOD’S CULTURAL MANDATE

Editorial | 1970

And God said, as he blessed man and woman: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it …” (Gen. 1:28).1 Mankind has prospered, and filled the earth. But now, as he is loosing the bonds that hold him to this planet, there is serious concern that he also has abused the legacy of God’s goodness bestowed at the Creation.

Among the alarmed are scientists, many of whom, speaking from a non-biblical view, assert that runaway technology, population, pollution, and consumption, if left uncontrolled, could spell the extinction of the human race. Soon.

“I suppose we have between thirty-five and one hundred years before the end of life on earth,” said a leading European biologist in answer to a question about how seriously we should take the new public concern about environment. “It’s not too late—but almost,” declares Dr. Barry Commoner, director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Science and Survival. He believes the United States is approaching the point of no return in its disruption of nature’s chemical balances and has about one generation left in which to reverse its suicidal course.

Other experts are even less optimistic. The United States now has six to twelve months to “make it” in the field of managing its environment, insists Dr. John B. Sheaffer, research associate at the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban Studies. Otherwise, he feels, public opinion to muster drastic measures to counteract the environmental crisis will lose momentum.

Clatter, clutter, and the signs of death already are upon us. Even as a suit was filed in Chicago recently to force twelve national and international airlines that fly in and out of the city to equip their planes with antipollution devices, eleven Chicagoans—nine of them infants—died of tracheal bronchitis in the seven-day period after sulphur dioxide pollution in the city’s air rose to critical levels.

One day, suddenly, billions of creatures may literally be struggling for a last breath. People and engines are using up oxygen at an alarming rate: one trans-Atlantic jet burns thirty-five tons. And some scientists are predicting that competition for food and raw materials will grow ever more savage as populations grow and natural resources shrink. The age of affluence has very much been an age of waste. The National Research Council warns that the planet Earth is running out of gas—natural gas. Already some substances essential to society—mercury, tin, tungsten—are short. In another fifty years petroleum and natural gas may be 90 percent depleted, forebodes the council’s report.

Then there is the problem of disposing of mankind’s waste products. The National Academy of Sciences disclosed that American motorists drop an average of 1,304 pieces of litter each month for every mile in the vast network of US highways. It is a sobering thought to realize that many young people today have never known unpolluted rivers or smogless skies. Water and air contamination are matched by another threat—“noise pollution.” Sonic booms, traffic noise, and rock music are credited with causing numerous ailments. Dr. Lester W. Sontag, director of the Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, thinks noise even disturbs unborn children.

Consider the vitiating effect of encroaching civilization on recreation and wilderness areas. Campgrounds become more crowded annually, even as the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation and other agencies strain to set aside and purchase more recreation land. Naturalists warn that eighty-nine species of wildlife and fish are on the brink of extinction. Men who killed passenger pigeons, bison herds, or whooping cranes a century or so ago might be excused; today those who thoughtlessly destroy the God-ordained balance of nature are guilty of sin.

Beyond its scientific, biological, and political ramifications, our environmental problem is basically theological and religious. Religious groups such as the National Council of Churches’ new Environmental Stewardship Action Team are coming to grips with the moral and ethical aspects of ecology. Dale Francis of the Catholic magazine Twin Circle has coined a word, theoecology, which he uses to refer to the responsibilities given to man by God to have dominion over the earth.

A panel of scientists and theologians under the auspices of a national ecological organization last fall called for use of “the deepest religious and ethical insight and the most advanced scientific studies” in solving ecological problems. Specifically, they said:

Population size and consumption levels must be proportional to the carrying capacity of the environment.… Social policies [should include] the price of preventing pollution in the cost of production.… A world community [should be developed] in which the conservation of natural resources, the systems of production and consumption, and the aims of economic activity are directed toward real human needs and are pursued in manners which support man’s continuing survival and well-being.

We agree with their statement, but for the evangelical Christian, the issue is at root biblical. The “cultural mandate” in Genesis 1:26 is often quoted as the justification for man’s subjugation of the earth and everything in it: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

God does admonish man in this text to multiply and to subdue the earth. As the doughty David Brower, former head of the Sierra Club and now president of the Friends of the Earth, puts it: “We have now done that, and the question is what do we do for an encore?”

There is another text in Isaiah: “Woe unto them that build house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth” (Isa. 5:8). That’s where we are now.

It should be noted that the Scripture tells man to subdue the earth—not exploit it. And to “be fruitful” means more than perpetrating an endless round of reproduction. Nothing can be fruitful unless there is a livable environment. The word “replenish” (Hebrew male) means not only to “fill with persons or animals”; it means to “perfect,” “to make good,” and to “fill with a source of inspiration or power.”

The Christian must remember that he is entrusted with the stewardship of all God’s earthly creation (Ps. 8:6–8), but that it remains God’s: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine” (Ps. 50:10–11).

Recently a new business called Ecology, Incorporated, announced the sale of 300,000 shares of common stock. The new venture proposes to convert urban solid wastes into fertilizer. “These shares involve a high degree of risk,” the prospectus says. But think of the peril to mankind if we fail to do everything possible to secure a poison-free environment. As God’s stewards, we can do no less than to work for that goal.

President Nixon is to be commended for his announced determination to salvage our environment. The task will require many billions of dollars, and public funds should be appropriated for this cause. Let us not deceive ourselves, however, as we have done so many times before, into thinking that money alone will solve the problem. Partisan politics should be kept out of it. We face many hard decisions in the fight against pollution, and to win we may have to sacrifice more than a few conveniences.

When God looked upon what he had made, he called it very good. The physical world is good. And even though we believe Christ will return before man can utterly destroy himself, future generations have as much right to enjoy this world—and make it fruitful—as we. Christians must ensure this right and so fulfill the biblical commission to subdue and replenish the earth.

Chapter 2

ECOLOGISM: A NEW PAGANISM?

Editorial | 1970

On April 22 America will have its first national environmental teach-in. Pollution will be protested; population growth will be deplored; politicians will pillory and be pilloried; and privileged industries will be pommeled. In the midst of it all, informative presentations will be made.

We like clean air, water, streets, and spaces as much as the next person (see the lead editorial in our February 27 issue). But we don’t propose to worship nature, any more than we take part in the worship of science, which is called scientism. Unfortunately, at least a few persons appear to have gone beyond legitimate concern for our environment to pervert the science of ecology into what might be called ecologism. These people are uninhibited in their opposition to orthodox Christianity (as well as to such derivatives as humanism and Communism), and to replace it they urge what is essentially old-fashioned paganism.

The Environmental Handbook, specially published for the teach-in by Friends of the Earth, a leading activist anti-pollution organization, was quickly sold out in its first edition. In it Keith Murray of the Berkeley Ecology Center says:

It seems evident that there are throughout the world certain social and religious forces which have worked through history toward an ecologically and culturally enlightened state of affairs. Let these be encouraged: Gnostics, hip Marxists, Teilhard de Chardin Catholics, Druids, Taoists, Biologists, Zens, Shamans, Bushmen, American Indians, Polynesians, Anarchists, Alchemists … the list is long. All primitive cultures, all communal and ashram movements [p. 331].

Because of the need to limit population growth, Murray urges us to “explore other social structures and marriage forms, such as group marriage and polyandrous marriage, which provide family life but may produce less children” (p. 324).

Another eco-activist, Keith Lampe, manages in two pages to urge the elimination of nationalism, capitalism, socialism, Communism, humanism, faith in technology, as well as Judaism and Christianity.

The first major article in the teach-in text is by Lynn White, Jr., a history professor at UCLA. He deplores the “victory of Christianity over paganism,” condemns it for being “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen,” and is incensed that “by destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.” White argues that “more science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.” He concludes that “orthodox Christian arrogance” is the culprit and that “since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”

Most of the handbook deals with specific wrongs that Christians can oppose within their own framework of belief. But it seems apparent that they should guard against identifying themselves too closely with persons and ideologies that are hostile to divine revelation. We too want to clean up pollution in nature, but not by polluting men’s souls with a revived paganism.

Chapter 3

TERRACIDE

Editorial | 1971

Many supposedly crucial social issues are really medium size problems blown up by opportunists. Concern for our environment is not just one of these inflated issues. Though it, too, may represent ego investment for some, the issue itself is real and great. There can be no mistaking that our planet is dying. It is a matter not of if but of when. Everyone suffers from the problem, and everyone shares the blame.

From a Christian perspective, we might ask: So what? It isn’t God’s plan that man inhabit the earth indefinitely anyway. Let’s satisfy ourselves with preaching the Gospel of redemption, which will save people from the wrath to come. There is no hope for the good green earth created by God, so why bother? Forget it. This fatalism, coupled with something of a resurgence of “easy believism,” now crops up in the Jesus-people movement.

God in his ultimate judgment upon the earth may indeed use the instrument of environmental disaster of one kind or another. But we are not certain from his Word that he will take this route. Even if he were to do so, he would hardly ask us to help by being indifferent. The wrath of God will be visited upon earth in his own time and in his own way, and it will come in spite of man’s efforts rather than because of them.

In the meantime, our mandate is to preserve life. This was of the very essence of the Incarnation. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal, to kill, to destroy; I have come that men may have life, and may have it in all its fullness” (John 10:10 NEB). To fail to respect life and all other environmental resources is to demean creation and to violate biblical principles of stewardship.

What is the basic problem in the environmental crisis? We agree with Dr. Carl Reidel of the Center of Environmental Studies when he says in the interview beginning page 4 of this issue that values are at the heart of the issue. Our unwritten national goal is an ever higher standard of living. It stems from our bent for acquiring material things to compensate for lack of spiritual fulfillment. The result is exploitation. The only answer to despoliation lies in lifting men above sinful inclinations to a new plane of life and thought—and biblical Christianity does this best of all. (See also “Ecology and Apocalypse,” lead book review, page 20.)

The attempt to make Christianity the ecological scapegoat is without foundation. To “have dominion” over God’s creation no more requires mankind to exploit it than having charge of a secretary requires a man to seduce her. The values system that is at the root of our environmental troubles does not come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible does not promote affluence. The fault lies not with revealed religion but with those who insist on a lifestyle that is at odds with it. The greatest damage to our environment by far has been done since the Bible ceased to be the cultural norm of the Western world.

The despoliation of our environment is neither a capitalistic nor a communistic problem. It is a human problem, and as such involves the fall of man and his depraved nature that overemphasizes self-interest.

Can something be done to arrest our increasing ecological imbalance? Surely doomsday is not inevitable. However, some of the directions in which modern man is looking will yield only disappointments. Technology, for example, is being appealed to. It can and should be used as an intermediate stop-gap, but experts say it eventually becomes self-defeating and therefore stops short of providing an ultimate answer.

The technological problem is further complicated by the growing population and the urgent problem of seeing that people on earth who can and will work can and will eat. It is problematical whether we can produce enough food to go around through non-pollutional technology.

If the problem is seen as one of values, which it is, then it will become apparent that there is no solution in presently prevailing views of man and his ethics. Ever ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Fifty Years of American Evangelical Thinking about the Gospel and Creation (Loren Wilkinson)
• Chapter 1: Fulfilling God’s Cultural Mandate
• Chapter 2: Ecologism: A New Paganism?
• Chapter 3: Terracide
• Chapter 4: Christianity and the Environmental Crisis
• Chapter 5: The Environmental Movement—Five Causes of Confusion
• Chapter 6: A Message to Polluters from the Bible
• Chapter 7: Global Housekeeping: Lords or Servants?
• Chapter 8: A Handful of Mud
• Chapter 9: Is There Room for Prolife Environmentalists?
• Chapter 10: Are We Our Planet’s Keeper?
• Chapter 11: Earth Summit: Searching for a Spiritual Foundation
• Chapter 12: Redeeming the Environmentalists
• Chapter 13: How Christian Is the Green Agenda?
• Chapter 14: Is the Earth Alive?
• Chapter 15: Eco-Myths
• Chapter 16: Christmas Unplugged
• Chapter 17: Greening of the Gospel?
• Chapter 18: God’s Green Acres
• Chapter 19: Heat Stroke
• Chapter 20: Environmental Wager
• Chapter 21: Imagining a Different Way to Live
• Chapter 22: One-Size Politics Doesn’t Fit All
• Chapter 23: The Good Shepherds
• Chapter 24: Second Coming Ecology
• Chapter 25: Not One Sparrow
• Chapter 26: A Feast Fit for the King
• Chapter 27: Whole Earth Evangelism
• Chapter 28: The Joyful Environmentalists
• Chapter 29: Back to the Garden
• Chapter 30: Three Reasons Why Evangelicals Stopped Advocating for the Environment
• Chapter 31: Oil Is a Gift from God. Are We Squandering It?
• Sources
• Scripture Index
• Old Testament