Christian ecology

There's a strange, almost collective reserve among Christians ("conservatives" especially) when it comes to championing the health of God's creation, particularly that of earth itself and its collective environment.

There is in the Christian community:

• A consistent concern for preserving the moral purity of the humanity God fashioned from the dust of the ground and into whose nostrils He breathed life.

• A deep and far-reaching desire (especially among Seventh-day Adventists) to promote the physical health with which God created the human race.

• A strong stirring of the conscience when animals, even wildlife, are not treated with kindness and care.

• The principle of loving, respecting, serving, and preserving our fellow human beings who are God's workmanship, those whom, along with us, He made of one blood.

• A deep and widespread appreciation for "the beauty of the earth and the glory of the skies."

However, we often hold back when it comes to connecting our faith with the ecologically informed respect so necessary for the preservation of a high quality of life in our industrialized, hyper-populated age.

In his stimulating article, "The Theological Value of the Creation Account,"¹ Greg King exposed the foundational theological suggestiveness, and even the definitude, found in the first few chapters of the Bible. Without question, one of the most evocative theological features of God's creative magnus opus was the brilliant variety, balance, beauty, interaction, integration, and systemic coordination of His delicate yet resilient design and work. The words used in Genesis to describe God's work reveal a reverence for, or at least an innate deference to, God's creative work. These words call for us, as humans, to live life on this planet with the deepest respect for the primeval activity of God, and to obey the divine mandate to actively and properly "rule over" this work (Gen. 1:26-28).

The description of the personal act of God when He planted "a garden east ward in Eden" (Gen. 2:8), of God placing "the man" in the garden "to work it and take care of it"(verse 15) and God bringing to Adam all the "beasts of the field and all the birds of the air," "to see what he would name them" (verse 19), implies the need for humanity to understand his environment and God-given responsibility toward it.

God's act of simply putting Adam in charge of this magnificent garden is descriptive of the desire and commission of God for humanity in general to love, nurture, and care for what He crafted. Genesis 2:15-20 reveals the Creator placing the final and highest form of His creation humankind in loving charge of the rest of His handiwork.

It is interesting how easily we ministers (especially at weddings) see in the story of God's forming the woman and bringing her to Adam a formative pat tern of marriage applicable for all time, yet we find it difficult to see the ecological mandate that is just as implied in the Creation epic.

I believe two things discourage the indifference in which we may tradition ally have been able to luxuriate when it comes to the environment. One is simply the multiplied effects of today's massive proliferation of human beings all over the globe; the other is our now largely worldwide, hyper-industrialized, mechanized culture whose many manifestations are hostile to the original edenic ideal. Of course we should look to the time when God "will make all things new," but if we were to merely take that attitude about our health, our moral being, our spiritual development, or for that matter the viability of our marriages, we know what would happen.

We cannot be turned away from the calling to care for our world just because it's viewed as a "liberal" cause or because of extremists who give the ecology movement a bad name. We must, instead, seek to be more and more faithful to the original edenic mandate.

Clerical and ecclesiastical activism? I don't think so. Coming close to God's creation; loving it, understanding it, caring for it, being responsible for it, speaking out effectively for it of course.

How could we do any less?