God’s Calling to Govern the Earth:
The Environment and its Restoration and Preservation
God
declared in the beginning of His Word that He was the Creator of the Universe.
He was pleased with His creation and commanded mankind to take care of the
earth and its inhabitants (Genesis 1:28).
As
Children of God, Christians should take seriously God’s command to take care of
His creation. God desires that we govern His creation with the same mercy
and grace He has ruled over us. We show the rest of the world the face of God
when we take care of animals, for the “…godly care for their animals, but the
wicked are always cruel” (Proverbs 12:10, NLT).
Why
are we on the sideline when it comes to the preservation and/or restoration of
the planet? Have we focused so much on the Cross of Calvary that we have
forgotten that God is the Creator of the Universe? Are we so focused on God’s
redemptive plan that we have neglected His command to govern our planet?
We
cannot neglect God’s command for us to govern responsibly His creation. He
tells us in Revelation 11:18, that on the Day of Judgment everyone will be held
accountable for their actions, including the way they treated the earth and its
inhabitants. Will we be found guilty of destroying the earth?
Steven
Bouma-Prediger quotes Wendell Berry in Moral Landscape of Creation. “Christian
organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder
of the world and its traditional cultures. It is hardly too much to say that
most Christian organizations are as happily indifferent to the ecological,
cultural, and religious implications of industrial economies as are most
industrial organizations” (Bouma-Prediger, 2001).
We
have stepped away from the public arena when it comes to the environmental
issues we are facing today. We have allowed the environmentalist extremists to
take control of the topic of preservation and/or restoration of the earth.
Because of our silence, the environmentalists have been able to claim without
much debate that humans are destroying the rainforest and depleting all of the
forests throughout the world.
“Healthy
forests are a critical part of the web of life. Yet more than half of the
earth's original forest cover has been destroyed due to human activity such as
agriculture, development and logging. Much of the loss has occurred within the
past three decades. Protecting the earth's remaining forest cover is now an
urgent task” (Good Wood, 2011).
When
you look at their claim, truth is not on their side. According to J. Donald
Hughes, “The consensus of historians, geographers, and other scholars from the
mid-nineteenth century through the first three quarters of the twentieth century
was that human activities had depleted the forests to a major extent and caused
severe erosion” (Hughes, 2011). In other words, deforestation is not a new
problem. Environmentalists want us to believe that we have caused most of the
problems when it comes to our environment in the last thirty years, but that is
not the case. How have Christians responded to environmentalist? Silence (Good
Wood, 2011).
Environmentalists
always focus on the rainforest, believing that their destruction is increasing,
and the earth will be destroyed because of it. Environmentalists do not want to
talk about the fact that new forests are sprouting throughout “Latin America,
Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off
a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest—an iconic
environmental cause—may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for
every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest
are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by
natural disaster” (Rosenthal, 2009).
Environmentalists
claimed in 2009 that there are only seventy-five-million acres of forest in the
world. They also claimed that the earth was losing eighty-thousand acres of
rainforest a day, while another eighty-thousand acres are degrading every day (Measuring
the Daily, 2009). Not even taking into account their claimed daily degradation
of forests; it would take only nine-hundred-thirty-seven-and-a-half days for
the rainforest to be destroyed. That is approximately two-and-a-half years. It
has been five years since they have made that claim and the rainforest are
still on earth. We as Christians continue to stay silent.
Good
news concerning deforestation does not eliminate the need for a more balanced
approach to governing the planet. Christians need to look at the beauty of
God’s creation differently than others. He is our Father, therefore; we should
be leading the cause in saving as much of the beauty of His creation as we can.
In the United States, we have become more responsible. Loggers in Washington
State are now being regulated. On average, loggers plant three trees for every
tree they cut down. Things are getting better, but, as Christians, we should
have been the ones crying out for responsibility in the logging industry, not
the government (Timber Facts, 2011).
The
environmentalists are also global warming alarmists. They cry out that the
earth is burning and the icebergs are melting. George Henson, staff writer
for The Baptist Standard, wrote an article about climate change. He quoted
Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the University of Texas, who had urged
students at Hardin Simmons to change their lifestyles for the sake of our
planet. In her speech, she stated “a Gallup Poll asked a question concerning
doubt about the evidence for climate change…In answer to the question, ‘Is
there evidence that the earth is warming?,’ 66 percent of Americans polled said
‘No.’…‘Sixty-six percent say that there is no evidence—essentially that the earth
is lying to us, that it is making stuff up that is not true’” (Henson, 2012).
The
problem with her question is that the earth is not lying to us. The
earth’s temperature has been fluctuating throughout its existence. It was
warmer in the 1930s and began the process of cooling off in the 1940s. The
cooling temperatures did not end until the late 1970s. The rising
temperatures of the late 1970s ended in 1998. We are now cooling again.
Katherine Hayhoe, like so many other alarmists, is misrepresenting the truth by
trying to persuade her audience that we are destroying our planet. Facts still
matter (Ferrara, 2009).
Though
the environmentalist is guilty of inflating the numbers and causing mass
hysteria concerning deforestation and global warming, we are just as guilty by
pretending that the problem does not exist. We are guilty of turning our back
on the first command God gave mankind. God commanded that we multiply the earth
and also govern the earth and its inhabitants. We have failed by turning a
blind eye, or in some cases; joining the mass hysteria as if that is the
responsible way of responding to the issue.
We
as believers must begin to take all of God’s commands seriously, not just the
ones we like. Yes, we are living in the Age of Grace, but that does not
eliminate our responsibility to govern our planet. We need to be responsible
children of the God of the Universe. We need to take the lead in the issue of
preservation and restoration of our planet, using facts, not inflated numbers.
We need to be a Shining Light of God’s Amazing Grace to our planet and its
inhabitants.
As
Christians, God is our Creator, and we are His creation. God is our Father, and
we are His children. God is our King, and we are His servants. Let us stand up
and become the responsible environmentalists that He has called us to be. Let
us preserve and restore the beauty of God’s wonderful creation.
References:
Kruschwitz, R., Garland, D.,
Hornik, H., Wirzba, N., York, T., & Author Bouma-Prediger, S. (2001).
Moral Landscape of Creation. Christian Reflection: A Series in faith and
Ethics. Baylor University. Retrieved from http://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/Creation.pdf
Good Wood: How Forest
Certification Helps the Environment (2011). Natural Resources Defense Council.
Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/land/ forests/qcert.asp
Hughes, Donald, (2011).
Ancient Deforestation Revisited. Journal of the History of Biology: Special
Issue: Environment History. DOI 10.1007/s10739-010-9247-3.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/docview/ 858128023?pq-origsite=Summon
Good Wood: How Forest
Certification Helps the Environment (2011). Natural Resources Defense Council.
Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/land/ forests/qcert.asp
Rosenthal, E. (2009). New
Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science /earth/
30forest.html?pagewanted=all&r=0
Measuring the Daily
Destruction of the World’s Rainforest (2009). Scientific America. Retrieved
from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/
Timber Facts and Figures:
Washington Forestland (2011). Washington Contract Loggers Association, Inc.
Retrieved from http://www.loggers. com/timber _facts.htm
Henson, G. (2012). Students
Urged to Consider Others when Thinking of Global Warming. The Baptist Standard.
Retrieved from https://www.baptiststandard.com/
news/texas/13688-students-urged-to-consider-others-when-thinking-of-global-warming?highlight=YTo5OntpOjA7czo4OiJzdHVkZW50cyI7aToxO3M6NT
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ZWQgdG8iO2k6NjtzOjg6InVyZ2VkIHRvIjtpOjc7czoxNzoidXJn ZWQgdG8gY
29uc2lkZXIiO2k6ODtzOjExOiJ0byBjb25zaWRlciI7fQ==
Ferrara, P. (2009). Why the
World is Getting Warmer, Even Though it is Getting Colder. The American
Spectator. Retrieved from http://spectator.org/articles/
41975/why-world-getting-warmer-even-though-it-getting-colder
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