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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Christians
And Ecology My friend
spoke to a Sunday morning church group about “Christians
and the ecology” five
years before Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth appeared in movie theatres.
His point was simple. Christians have a responsibility to be good
stewards of God’s creation. In response, one lady told him that his
sermon wasn’t appropriate for a Sunday morning service because it
wasn’t spiritual enough for her liking. In his
documentary Al Gore says global warming isn’t a political or economic
issue. He says it’s a
moral issue. I go one
step further. I say it’s a
spiritual issue. I agree
with my friend. Christians
should treat God’s creation with the utmost respect. Genesis
1:31 says that God looked on what He had created and said that it was
“very good”. If
God says something is very good, you can bet it’s very good. In
Genesis 1:28 God told Adam
“to be fruitful and increase in number”.
In simple terms He told Adam to go and make babies.
Adam soon discovered that obeying this command was very enjoyable
and he planned on obeying it every day.
God also
told Adam “to replenish” (KJV), or “fill” (NIV) the earth.
I won’t debate the theology of the Gap Theory based on the word
“replenish”. You can
figure that one out for yourself, assuming you know what I’m talking
about. Lastly,
God told Adam to subdue and rule over His creation, a responsibility
that I think he forfeited when he fell from God’s grace.
Maybe Adam was just too pre-occupied with obeying God’s command
to make babies that he lost all good sense of judgment and failed to
obey the important command. It’s my
thinking the words subdue and rule means that God gave man the
responsibility to manage the affairs of the earth.
Yet Adam forfeited this responsibility by his disobedience,
resulting in God cursing the ground he walked on. (Gen. 3:17)
Adam fell from God’s good graces, and sad to say he took the
rest of creation down with him. Now
creation groans and waits with eager anticipation for the sons of God to
find their complete redemption when Jesus returns.
When this takes place all creation will experience restoration to
God’s original purpose along with those who have given their lives to
Jesus. (Romans
8:18-22) Ever
since God’s judgment that is found in Genesis 3 we’ve been unable to
manage God’s creation. We’ve
progressively treated creation with a great lack of respect and now
we’re beginning to reap what we’ve sown.
Non-the-less, this earth still belongs to God, and Christians
belong to Him. This fact
alone should cause us to think about being good stewards of what God has
created, even in its present fallen state.
The time will come when this earth will be made new again and we
will rule with Jesus on earth as we were intended to do in the first
place. (Rev. 21)
Until then we should treat God’s creation with the respect
it’s due. Here’s
an extra thought. Adam named the animals as if they were his pets. He
lived in peaceful harmony with them.
After he fell from God’s good graces God’s judgment brought
fear, dread and discord between man and animals.
Just
think. One day man and
animals lived together in loving harmony and the next day they woke to
fear and enmity towards each other.
I think Adam’s stomach turned and his heart fell to his feet
when he woke and discovered his animal friends were afraid of him and he
of them. I just can’t
imagine how he felt the first time he had to capture and kill one of
these animals in sacrifice to God for his sin.
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