We Christians have a challenge before us. It is not a new
one, but it is one that still has not been resolved. It has to do with the term
“Creation Care”. Most Christians over 40 years of age in conservative circles
still feel a bit uncomfortable at the sound of this, thinking it means we are
“green”, or “tree-huggers” in the liberal sense of these words, and that we are
on a slippery slope. While I believe it is true that we all should be this as Christians from a biblical
stewardship perspective, it is certainly not true that we are liberal—not in
our theology, nor in our practice. So what is Creation Care after all?
To answer this, we first need to go to Scripture and
understand the spiritual, social, and physical environment of the biblical
Hebrews. If we try to understand his or her mindset and way of life, we will
see that they did not dichotomize between the spiritual and physical, the
supernatural and natural. No, they were intertwined. In our Hellenized
worldview where we dichotomize the spiritual from the physical realities, we
have boxed God and His commands into separate compartments in our lives. For
instance, we can go to our church building to worship God and thank him for his
provision in our lives, but when we
walk outside and see the beggar on the city street, we ignore the command to
help the needy. We have disconnected the spiritual reality we deeply cherish within the church walls from the
spiritual reality of the beggar outside the
church walls (in our flawed worldview we actually would classify as only a physical reality). Think of how
many times the spiritual and physical are intertwined just in the last two
sentences.
Our God is a very real
God, very involved in our physical lives—“In Him He holds all things together”
(Col. 1:17)! If it weren’t for the spiritual reality of our God, we ourselves
and all around us would immediately disintegrate, or implode…all of the
universe would fall apart! The fact is that we cannot separate our physical
world from the spiritual reality.
As a result of our faulty worldview then, the challenge
before us remains: the words “Creation Care” do not lend themselves to
“missions”, as missions stereotypically is understood. Believers tend to equate
missions having to do with people’s salvation—hearing the gospel and having the
opportunity to respond to it. Creation Care, as we see it at TEAM, incorporates
more than simply “caring for the created order”. Yes, we need to protect our
wetlands, our forests, our animals worldwide. These are important. But it is
more than simply protecting. It is making sure the water is safe to drink in
the village in Africa, it is helping the local farmer in the Andean mountains
control the erosion on his hillside farm, it is reforesting deforested
landscapes, providing for the return of the flora and fauna God established in
the ecology of that region—all these things giving glory to God because He
called it “good” at one point.
Creation Care, as we envision it, is carrying out God’s
first two commands to Adam in the book of Genesis:
1. To “fill the earth and subdue it”(Gen. 1:28)
2. To “work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15)
When we do this in a biblical way, we are enabling
believers, all believers, to share
the gospel one more way. Let me explain.
Caring for Creation is important—very important—but within
the biblical framework, and within TEAM’s Kingdom building efforts, God’s
creation is not the end result. Our end goal is to open more opportunities to
share the gospel with those who might never have a chance to hear it.
Many of the people our efforts help are those who are living
day to day trying to feed their families. They are working in their fields
(where rainfall is not erratic or almost non-existent), herding their animals
looking for pasture to feed (but it’s too dry due to desertification), or
digging in the city dump for daily food (because they can’t get a decent job to
provide for their family). They don’t get a break from the struggles. When we
physically and practically help these people, these communities, we are opening
a door to the spiritual emptiness in their lives that only Jesus can fill. We are
investing time in their lives, with plenty of opportunities to live out the gospel, but with many
opportunities to verbally proclaim
the gospel as well.
Another aspect of Creation Care is enjoying God’s Creation—why? Because Scripture teaches us that all
creation reveals God’s glory! Look at the Psalms. Look at Romans. The Heavens
declare His power! God uses His creation to point people to Him! When we cannot
see the stars in the sky at night because of our excessive pollution, does that
reveal God’s glory? When we look at the river and there are trash and
pollutants in it to the point that we can’t even eat the fish from it or float
down the river on inner tubes with our kids, does that reveal God’s glory? When
our hillsides are denuded and the soils wash away from the poorest man’s farm
on the hillside, are those mountains pointing to a wonderful Creator? When we
cut off the tops of mountains in West Virginia to get to the coal underneath, thereby
also polluting streams with toxic chemicals that cause cancer and death in
small towns in that area, does God smile at His creation?
We still want to enjoy Creation, do we not? And we certainly
want creation to point back to God.
From a biblical perspective, we are commanded to be good stewards and to “keep” the earth. When we do
this, we will be able to take non-Christian friends on kayak trips, hiking
adventures, and other wanderings, all so that we can revel in God’s glorious
creation and point to Jesus as the One who brings complete reconciliation. More
importantly though will be the fact that many more people will be able to live
off the land God designed for them to depend on—and they will hopefully be receiving
the “Bread of Life” they so desperately hunger for from the missionary who
helped them with a practical need.
I often say that if we took God’s commands more seriously, all of them, then this world wouldn’t be
such a bad place…because the Church, the Bride of Christ, would be shining
brightly and making a difference in each cultural context it is present in.
Isn’t it about time we take God for His word and start following Him
passionately? Let’s all change this world we live in, one person, one field, one
stream, one habitat at a time, for God’s glory, and our good.