Intro
As you might know, every year, Time Magazine comes up with a “person of the year”, someone who had the most influence on the events of that year. Sometimes it’s multiple people, usually it’s an American president, once it was you. Actually! In 2006, the magazine came with a shiny reflective cover, because you were the person of the year. Unless you weren’t born yet. It was the year of YouTube, blogs, and Twitter. Everyone had a voice, everyone got the award. For 2019, the award went to a 16 year old Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg, and Donald Trump was just choked. A few years ago, Greta began striking from school to protest inaction about climate change. Her protest gathered steam, and a year later she was addressing heads of state, gatherings at the UN, travelling around the world- zero carbon emission, obviously- and speaking at massive rallies. She was here in Vancouver and 10-15,000 people, many of them teenagers themselves, marched in protest of climate change inaction.
Her message is pretty simple. Adults have been negligent about the effect they’ve had on the environment, despite the long-standing evidence that climate change is happening. In her words, they have failed, they have betrayed the youth of our world by handing them an earth that is on fire, and she’s angry about it. Many have resonated with her message. Over the past couple of years, environmentalism seems to have reached a kind of tipping point. Climate change has become perhaps the major crisis facing the collective world (note: written before COVID-19!).
The question is, what does Christian faith have to do with this? Well, some would say it has everything to do with in a negative sense. Some have claimed that the Christian worldview is largely responsible for the mess that we’ve found ourselves in. Some, who have a bit more knowledge about the Bible, would point directly to Genesis 1, and to one particular word in Genesis 1, as the main culprit. The question today is, is this true? Is that a right reading of the Bible and the Christian worldview? And are there ways that Genesis, rightly understood, can actually help reframe environmentalism in a positive way? That’s where we’re going to go today.
Here’s the first bit of reframing we need to do, though. We’re into a series we’ve called “World Reframed”, where we’re looking at seeing the world, some of the big questions and issues in our world, through the lens of Genesis 1-3. Here’s the first bit of reframing: the word environmentalism, from a biblical perspective, needs to be reframed itself. What we’re talking about is not some neutral thing, we’re talking about the world that God created with a particular purpose in mind. So I’m going to refer to it as creation, not the environment, and advocate that we are to care for this creation. So, when you hear me talk about creation care, you’ll know why.
1. Reframing Genesis 1-2
a. Genesis 1
We’re going to go through a bunch of different texts in Genesis 1-2 that have a bearing on this, but let’s start with Genesis 1 as a whole. As we’ve talked about the last two weeks (“God” and “Science and Faith”), Genesis is clear that God has made this world, and that He made it good. Over and over again, God says that His creation is good. He likes it, He enjoys what He has made. A rough translation would be that He sits back, sees what He’s done, and exclaims, “yeah! I’m awesome! This is great stuff!” You even get a bit of that in Genesis 2, when we read about the trees in the garden of Eden. In verse 9, we read that the trees “were pleasing to the eye and good for food”. People have noted that in the Hebrew language, word order matters, and that often the more important thing is put first. In which case, despite the functionality of trees, it’s even more important that they are pleasing to the eye. It’s important that they have this aesthetic beauty to them. Artists are rejoicing all over right now. You’ve maybe thought about this, about the beauty of a sunset and how extravagant- and essentially unnecessary- the beauty is. Someone sent me a Tweet this past week from a Christian astrophysicist who said something like this about the galaxies; how beautiful they are, though there’s no reason it would need to be. God makes the world, He likes it, He values it, after all, it’s His creation.
You’ve probably felt this: this joy and satisfaction about something your hands have accomplished. I am completely helpless and incapable of making things, so the only time I get this is when I’ve put together a piece of IKEA furniture, and even then, it’s like a 50% success rate. But it’s a good feeling! And when you have it, you don’t want to see that creation damaged in any way. That’s really the biblical foundation for creation care. The world is not ours, it’s God’s, and He thinks pretty highly of it.
b. Genesis 1:20
Here’s another piece: the high status of other living creatures in Genesis 1. In 1:20, we read God decreeing that the water teem with “living creatures”, and again in 1:24 about the land:
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:24
You know what the word for “living creatures” is? It’s the Hebrew word nephesh, which is sometimes translated as “soul”. I don’t think this is an argument for or against little Fido, or your first pet goldfish, going to heaven. But it is to say that humans share this basic quality of being a living creature. You even see that with the way humans share a day with other animals. They are at the end of the creation account of Genesis 1, and they do have a special status- we’ll talk about that later in the series. But they share a day with the other land animals, and this has some significance. One scholar says this keeps humans from setting themselves up against creation, against animals.
c. Genesis 1:28
But, as I said, humans do have a special status given to them. They are created in the image of God. No other creatures get that designation. That’s going to be our focus next week. The focus here is on what God gives these image-bearers to do. Here’s verse 26-28:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 1:26-28
Two key words here: to “rule” and to “subdue. The word, “to rule”, is a government word. It’s a word that describes kings. It’s not usually connected with any kind of harshness, in fact, in some passages it’s exactly the opposite. It’s about a wise and compassionate kind of ruling. The word subdue, on the other hand, is the crux of the whole issue. This is the word that has sparked the accusations that the Judeo-Christian view of the world lends itself to abuse of the earth. It’s because humans are given such high status and because they are commanded- not just permitted, but commanded- to subdue.
And it’s true that this word subdue is a violent word. It can mean to rape and to pillage, to trample underfoot. And if this was the only word in Scripture about how humans were to treat creation, we would be in trouble. We would have nothing constructive to say in the conversation about creation care. But it’s not. And it’s not the only way to understand this word. It can also mean to bring something under control or to bring order to something disordered. And when you read that command in light of everything else we’ve seen and are going to see, there’s no way to understand it as permission to do whatever you want to do with the earth. Humans are placed here as kings. That’s the combination here, of rule and subdue- it’s kingly language. But what kinds of kings are we to be? Well, we were created in God’s image, to reflect and represent Him. So the question is, what kind of king is He? We’ve talked about this. He is a King who loves the world He’s made, He has brought about order and structure so that life can flourish, He provides for His creation, He blesses His creation. He’s the kind of king who ensures that His subjects have everything they need to flourish in the world that He has made. So, what does it mean for humans to rule and subdue? The context is image bearing, it means to be king in the same way that God is a King, which is to rule compassionately and wisely in a way that blesses creation.
What exactly this means practically Genesis doesn’t spell out. We’ll try to expand on it a bit more in the Work sermon in this series. But for now, I’ll say it probably involves agriculture. Shaping the land, creating gardens, cultivating the earth. Domesticating animals. It probably involves building cities- just, life-giving, aesthetically pleasing cities. It probably involves using the resources of earth- wisely, not greedily, using them in a way that brings blessing and respects creation.
At The Bridge Church, we engaged in a lengthy building process, and this what we believe we did. We had a piece of land, and we subdued it. We shaped it, pushed back on some of the wildness of it, cultivated it so that it’s suitable for what we want to do with it, which is to bless the community and bring life.
This required consulting all kinds of experts and professionals about how to do this while taking care of the natural setting, how to replant shrubs and trees, and so on. We’re grateful for the environmental requirements our municipality has, but I believe it’s also the kind of thing we’re called to do anyway. We’re called to give shape and form and order and structure to creation, the same stuff that God is doing in Genesis 1, in a way that brings blessing and life. Again, it’s not a question of whether we’ll rule over creation. We do. The question is how. What kinds of kings and queens will we be? How will we use this authority?
d. Genesis 2:7
All right, next passage. We’ll go through these next few a bit more quickly. In Genesis 2:7, we get another account of the creation of humans.
Then the Lord God formed a manfrom the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7
We’ll get into this more next week, but I want to pick something out from this. We read that the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The word for man is the Hebrew word “adam”. Yes, that’s the name Adam, it’s the same word. Adam simply means “man”. And the dust of the ground is the Hebrew word “adamah”. God forms adam from adamah. Some attempts at an English translation have included earthling from the earth, or human from the humus (which I found out is a word for soil and not dip for crackers- new vocabulary!).
Here’s the point: there’s this intimate connection between humans and the earth, the ground, the dirt. We’re linked. See, we’re not souls that have become trapped in these bodies and are just waiting to be evacuated to some purely spiritual place. As I’ve said many times before, the hope of the Bible is for a new heavens and earth and physically resurrected bodies. We are embodied, we are of the earth. One of the insights of modern ecology is that everything is connected, everything is linked. Guess what? Genesis 2:7 already said that, that insight is taken! Adam from the adamah. That’s going to have implications for how we treat it.
e. Genesis 2:15
The next verse to look at is 2:15:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Genesis 2:15
Work it and take care of it. Here’s what’s significant about those words: many scholars have noted how they’re often connected with priestly service. For example, Numbers 3:8, in outlining what the priests are to do in the tabernacle: “They are to take care of all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, fulfilling the obligations of the Israelites by doing the work of the tabernacle.” Take care of it and work it.
The humans are put in the garden to work it and take care of it. The garden, it’s widely recognized, is pictured as a temple, as a holy space, that the humans tend to as the images of the God whose space it is. Their work of tending the garden, which we’ll talk about more again in the Work sermon, is holy work. It is a natural extension to say that our work of taking care of creation is holy, priestly work that honors the One who made it.
f. Genesis 2:19-20
And then there’s Genesis 2:19-20:
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
Genesis 2:19-20
God has put the man in the Garden, but recognizes that he needs a helper to do the work God has asked him to do. So He brings him animals- we’ll get into this more in the relationships sermon. The point is the naming: “the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals”. The naming implies a couple of things. First, it’s an exercise of the authority that’s already been given to humans, authority to rule over creation. Giving a name is an exercise of authority.
However, it’s also an expression of knowledge and care, isn’t it? It’s something you generally do with beings that you love and have a relationship with. One of the long standing disagreements between me and Carolyn, is how Natalie came to be named. Carolyn went through a 28 hour labor followed by a C-section for Natalie to come into the world. This, obviously, was the best possible way to do it. I would highly recommend 28 hours of labor followed by invasive surgery for everyone. Anyway, the doctors cut Carolyn open, take out this infant, and put her in my arms. And my world instantly changed. I wasn’t aware of anything or anyone else. It was just me and this tiny human being whose existence I had helped bring about. So I’m just lost in this world, I’m weeping, I’ve never had a moment like this in my life, and I just go, “Natalie Charis Thiessen, Natalie Charis Thiessen, I love you.”
Meanwhile, Carolyn is feeling somewhat abandoned because I’m off in the corner with our firstborn while she’s still experiencing this traumatic thing, and feeling upset because apparently we hadn’t agreed on the name! I personally thought we were a solid 95-98% sure this was the name, so I felt totally fine naming our child. I felt it was mutual! Carolyn apparently wasn’t quite at that percentage and felt like she should have been more a part of the naming process. It’s weird, I know. You can correct her sometime. Naming is a big deal. You do it in the context of a close relationship, the kind of relationship a parent has with a child, the kind of relationship that humans have with creation.
You sum this all up, and the picture we get of human relationship with creation is not one of careless pillaging of the world for our own benefit. The picture is that we are stewards. We are caretakers. This world is God’s, He put us here and gave us a particular status and job to do. To represent Him and care for this world that we are intimately connected to and that He made, and to do this in a way that reflects His character as king.
2. Reframing environmentalism
Now, let’s reframe environmentalism. And I should say first, there’s lots and lots about modern environmentalism that we can gladly affirm and get on board with. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the science of climate change, but personally, I have no reason to doubt what the vast majority of scientists say. I have no reason to doubt that the world is getting warmer, and that human activity has absolutely contributed to that. In fact, I think it’s completely biblical that human sin- in the form of greed, gluttony, even relational brokenness- all contribute in various ways to the downfall of creation itself. We’ll see that more in the last sermon in this series. I have no reason to doubt that this is a huge problem, and that stuff needs to be done about it.
I also have no reason to contradict many of the solutions that have been put forward. I don’t do some of these things nearly enough, or to nearly the degree I should, but reading and thinking through this sermon has given me a renewed conviction. When people talk about eating differently, consuming less, travelling differently, participating in recycling and composting programs, those are really, really good suggestions about how we can care for creation. Again, there’s nothing in Genesis that really reframes any of that. There are lots of bridges here, lots of common ground that we share in the dialogue between Christian faith and environmentalism. What I think can be reframed are other aspects of the message.
a. Motivation
For example, the motivation. From what I’ve heard and seen, the major motivation in a lot of modern environmentalism is fear. The idea is to get people moving because if they don’t, the world is going to fall apart. I think Greta Thunberg is an amazing young woman in a lot of ways, I’m deeply impressed, but this is the motivational tactic. In her famous address to the UN, she told world leaders that all eyes were on them and that “if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.” She said to the Davos Economic Forum that “our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour.” What’s the message? Turn or burn. Repent or suffer the consequences.
See, this was the motivational technique among some evangelists. Not as much today but in a former day. Scare people with hell so they choose heaven. And it can be effective, it can get results. But many would say it’s not the greatest motivational technique if you want to see real, meaningful transformation. Once the fear is gone, what motivation does anyone have to act? Again, it’s not that the fear is illegitimate, it’s not that burning is not a real threat. But what Genesis gives us as a frame for our motivation is something much more positive and constructive than what I’ve heard recently in our culture. The motivation is to honor the One whose world this is, to serve Him and represent Him. It’s to do what we were actually made and created to do. And it’s to love our neighbours.
From a strictly secular point of view, it’s not clear why people in the West, who are to some degree immune to some of the immediate impacts of climate change, should care about people in developing countries that are much more vulnerable. Why sacrifice when it doesn’t make a huge difference to us? I’m not saying people don’t care about others on the other side of the world who they don’t know, because they often do. I’m saying that I’m not sure what the basis for that care is. However, in the Genesis point of view, if everyone is created in the image of God, and you are a child of God, that’s a significant motivation to act lovingly towards those who don’t impact you or benefit you in any way. I think the Bible offers a more positive motivation than the fear-based tenor of a lot of the green movement.
b. Means
Here’s a second aspect: the means. How will change actually take place? In environmentalism, as one Christian writer points out, it’s basically an appeal to enlightened self-interest. It’s people just making the decisions they need to make, because they know what’s good for them. It’s will power, pure and simple. Here’s Greta again, this time to the UK Parliament: “The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe.” We can do anything. We just have to do it.
On the one hand, the Bible is not nearly as optimistic about the ability of humans to make sacrifices of short term pleasure for long-term gain, at least not on a large scale. Because that’s what’s required here. You need a whole ton of people to willingly embrace sacrifice, sacrifice of the lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to, corporations to sacrifice profits, governments to sacrifice votes. The Bible tells a story that humanity is, on its own, bent in on itself and bound to sinful pleasure. What we need is not just more will power, we need to become different kinds of people. Which is actually what Jesus came to do. Not just to forgive our sins so we can go to heaven, but to show us what the image of God truly looks like, to cleanse us from our sins, and to give us the Holy Spirit so that we can be new creatures with renewed hearts. This is the connection, by the way, to the Gospel. Some of us are a little uneasy about this whole topic because it feels like one of those social justice causes that we think maybe just distracts us from the Gospel. It distracts us from the need people have to know Jesus. I get that. I have worried about that too. But it’s not true. The Gospel is a message of God restoring us, remaking us, to be the people He made us to be, and that was so drastic it took the death and resurrection of the Son of God to put into motion. We live out our salvation in the way we relate to others and to creation itself. It’s all bound up together. Now, lots of Jesus-followers don’t live into that all the time, or to a very great extent, especially with creation care. That’s partly because we’ve separated it from the Christian story. But if we can recover that connection, we can have power from God to live the way we need to in order to care for creation.
c. Hope
Here’s a third area to be re-framed: hope. I mean, frankly, there’s not much hope in the modern green movement. Like we said before, it’s a lot of doom and gloom, because there’s nothing really beyond this world. On the day of the big climate strike, I saw some teenagers going downtown on the seabus with signs, and one of them said, “there is no Planet B”. That’s clever, and of course in some ways true. But from a totally secular point of view, there’s nothing else after this life. This is all we’ve got and if it gets ruined, we’re all doomed.
A biblical perspective is quite different, because we do believe there’s something else. We believe that God has a plan and purpose beyond this earth. The hope in the Bible is that God will make a new heavens and a new earth, that there’s going to be this whole new creation that will be devoid of sin and death. That is not to take away the motivation for caring for creation now- remember, it’s based on love, not fear. But it is to say that we can do our work with the confidence of knowing that no matter what happens, our hope is in God who will renew all things.
d. Focus
Here’s one final piece: our focus in taking care of the earth. I learned a lot from preparing for this sermon. I learned that one of the main criticisms of Christianity as being to blame for our current crisis is that Christianity is human centred, it privileges humans as having this exalted status, and that this is the problem. The solution, according to some, is to shift from a human-centred view of the world to a earth-centred view where humans are no more important than trees or earthworms. Paul Watson, the founder of Greenpeace, says that he rejects “all world religions because they put humans at the center…I actually thought for some time that we need a new religion, a religion that puts us as part of a whole. If we are going to worship anything, we should worship nature.” It gets more extreme than that. I discovered this thing called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s this movement, with its own Wikipedia page, that says humans should voluntarily go extinct. They’re not advocating gencoide, they’re just saying everybody should stop having children. Let the human race die out, and the world will be a better place. What I don’t understand is why this movement isn’t more widespread, considering what a joyful and live-giving message they have.
There’s a misconception here, because Christianity is actually not human-centred. Alister McGrath makes a great point here, he says that “the most self-centered religion in history is the secular creed of twentieth-century Western culture…whose foundational belief is that humanity is the arbiter of all ideas and values.” (Doug and Jonathan Moo, Biblical Theology of Creation Care, 178) Right? If you’re secular, non-religious, where do you appeal to for validity on ideas and values? Yourself or other humans, but either way it’s going to be humanity. Christian faith, in fact, is not human centred, and it’s not earth-centred either. It’s God-centred. That’s the shift that needs to take place. That’s the focus we need to have, not on ourselves or on earth, but on the Creator of all things.
Conclusion
I used the steward analogy before, let me extend the illustration a bit to close. We said that the earth is God’s. That’s what Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” He’s made humans to be His images here, to rule as He does and care for this creation. He’s given us authority, but the authority is that of caretakers or stewards.
Imagine someone came to you and said that they had this amazing house somewhere in a beautiful place, and they gave you the keys to it. They said, I’ll pay for your travel, you go there for a month, the place is yours, use what’s there, eat the food that’s in the fridge, it’s your home for the next month. Remember, you don’t own it, but you’ve been given the keys and been given authority of the home during your stay there.
And now imagine that once you got there, you thought, let’s go crazy. And you had these raging parties, everything’s getting torn up, you’re playing floor hockey in the living room with your buddies, someone brings a moose into the kitchen and it’s pooping on the floor and ripping holes in the ceiling. It’s just a mess. And the owner comes at the end of the month to see how you’ve done. How’s that going to go? I mean, you’ve shown disrespect for the home, but you’ve especially displayed an incredible amount of disrespect for the owner. What does this say about your relationship with him? What does it say about your view of him?
How we treat the earth matters, immensely. It matters whether or not there’s a crisis. It matters because of the owner of the earth and His love for it and for us and for the trust He’s given us with the earth. So as part of your living out of the Gospel, of being a new creature, of being filled with His Spirit, recognize that how you treat the earth has everything to do with loving others and loving the God who sent His Son to lay His life down for you.
*Biblical insights mainly gleaned from three commentaries: Bruce Waltke (Genesis, 2001), John Walton (NIV Application Commentary, 2001), and Victor Hamilton (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1990), as well as Iain Provan (Seriously Dangerous Religion, 2014)
