Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Environmentalism and the Gospel
March 2007 Care for Creation—A Major Theme of the Bible?
The way the Bible frames the question “What is Christian mission?” is to ask who Jesus is, and what it means to follow him as Lord.
From the beginning of Genesis to the final promises of Revelation, the biblical story is of God’s love reaching out to his whole creation, and supremely to people within it. Nothing else can explain the promise of the first covenant in Genesis 9:17, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on earth” or the ringing hope of Romans 8:19-21, “The creation itself was subjected to futility…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” The Bible understands that those who follow Jesus as Lord are led straight into relationship with him, and then toward the restoration of all their relationships—be them personal, social or with the wider creation itself.
Does Creation Care Matter to God?
It is impossible to imagine that God is indifferent to the widespread destruction of what he has created. Indeed, the closing chapters of Job reveal God’s compassionate, protective concern for the mountain goat, the wild donkey, the young raven in its nest and countless other creatures. To think that we can claim on the one hand to love God and then to be indifferent to his creation, or even worse to live destructively, is tragic. It has been well said that “it is impossible to say you love Rembrandt while you trash his paintings.” Set the wonderful promise of God’s redemption of creation against some of the statistics.
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To think that we can claim on the one hand to love God and then to be indifferent to his creation is tragic. |
In 2003 the World Conservation Union’s Red List said that more than twelve thousand species (out of forty thousand assessed) faced some extinction risk. This includes:
- one in every eight birds
- thirteen percent of the world’s flowering plants
- one quarter of all mammals
What we are witnessing is widespread, catastrophic destruction even while our awareness of the causes becomes clearer. While conservation organisations increasingly wonder why their cries for radical action have so little effect, the Old Testament asserts that environmental abuse is often the result of sin—the pursuit of quick gain through unsustainable exploitation or illegal action (Hosea 4:1-3, Isaiah 24:4-6). We are seeing the consequences of religious choices as human society on the Western consumer model opts for personal comfort at the cost of the survival of the wider creation.
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Peter Harris is international director of A Rocha. He and his wife moved to Portugal in 1983 to establish and run A Rocha’s first field study centre and bird observatory. In 1995 the work was given over to national leadership and they moved to France where they have worked for the last nine years with national colleagues to establish a similar centre which opened early in 2001. Peter coordinates A Rocha projects in sixteen countries worldwide. Barbara Mearns is part of the A Rocha international team. |