Dominion

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. – Genesis 1.28-30

One of the things about that frustrates me about some of my fellow Christians is an utter and abject disregard for any environmental concerns. What makes it worse is that they try to use the passage to make excuses for their actions. A couple a years ago on Earth Day I saw a Christian pastor post on Facebook to say that he was going to go out and burn a stack of tyres to celebrate.

Now he night have been joking, but that does seem to be the attitude of many Christians about many environmental issues. “Hey, God put us in charge so we can do whatever we want! Drill, dig, burn; don’t worry about that liberal tripe like ‘recycle, reuse, reduce.’ Jesus is coming back so don’t worry about it, He’s just gonna burn it up anyway!’

When I read this I see it a whole different way. I am not ignorant, I realise that there is a green agenda as well, but that isn’t my point here.

I see God giving us the awesome responsibility to care for and protect and maintain His wonderful gift of creation. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to care for creation. Subduing the earth hardly means to destroy it. God says that we can eat the plants and animals, but even pragmatically speaking, if we keep destroying it there will be nothing left to eat. We are free to bring creation under our control – but not to wreck it.

God gave us this marvellous, beautiful, wonderful gift of creation. Shouldn’t we do our best to keep it as beautiful as we can until He comes again?