CHRISTIAN earth-keeping is neither new nor unknown but not much attention has been given to this subject in Malaysia compared with the western countries.
The recent 2001 NECF Survey of Churches, Pastors and Christians shows that only 2.3% of churches were involved in environmental protection activities as a social service for the community; only 1.8% of pastors say environmental issues for Christians should be a priority field of study by the NECF Research Commission; and only 3.9% of Christians participate in voluntary organisations involved in environmental conservation outside their church activities where there is interaction with non-believers.
Earth-keeping is certainly not high on the agenda of most local churches or individual Christians compared with evangelism or social action. Why is this so? I will attempt to answer this question and then see if there is anything we should and can do about the present situation.
Globalisation and the environment
As the world’s population increases, consumption increases and more waste is generated. The depletion of finite natural resources and the safe disposal of man-made waste present the greatest challenges to modern man as he races against time for survival.
Before the advent of modern transport and communications, such problems were localised to a certain extent affecting only some people in some spot on the globe at any one time. Even devastating plagues, such as the Black Death, were not worldwide in its effect. With increased travel and trade, it has become increasingly more difficult to stop the transmission of disease vectors although we have developed an array of modern scientific measures to fight them.
The main force that drives globalisation – unbridled consumption driven by greed – shall destroy us by destroying the environment that sustains us if left unchecked. Whatever happens across the globe has implications for each of us whether we are aware of it or not, for we live in a much interconnected world.
De Witt (2000) has observed that many people are getting increasingly alienated from creation and its testimony to God’s glory as they become increasingly separated from the natural world due to rural-urban migration when they move to expanding cities whose growing inner cores often displace and destroy nature. It also comes, he says, from the disconnection of human causes from environ-mental effects, as happens when people come to believe that food comes from a shop and petrol from a pump. This was forcefully brought home to me when I heard how some children, when asked “Where do eggs come from?” answered, “The supermarket”.
This alienation from nature is further aggravated in an ever-downward spiral through environmental degradation as when once-inspiring rivers supporting diverse life are trans-formed into open sewers, or when formerly clear skies are obscured by air pollutants.
Theological dilemmas – stumbling blocks to Christian earth-keeping
- A wrong interpretation of dominion in Genesis 1:28.
Many, particularly critics of Christianity, have pointed to Genesis 1:28 to show that the Bible is the root cause of environmental problems.
Dominion has unfortunately been interpreted by some earlier Christians to be the same as destructive domination and a licence to plunder the environment instead of responsible stewardship. This is of course unacceptable for surely God did not create the earth and then hand it over to man to destroy it. Man was created in His image, which involves trustworthiness and responsibility (Moule, 1964).
It is also important to remember that the creation mandate was given before the Fall when greed and exploitation were not part and parcel of exercising dominion over the earth.
- Why bother to care for the environment if the old world is going to be destroyed and replaced by a new one anyway?
De Witt (2000) has called this the “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through” stumbling block. The reason behind this excuse for not caring for the environment is: “Since we are headed for heaven anyway, why take care of this temporal Earth?” He argues against it by pointing out that the everlasting life we received when we believe in Jesus includes the here and now.
He went on to suggest that perhaps our learning how to take care of things in this moment of eternity is important for the care of things with which we will be entrusted later.
This view would of course lead to the other common excuse for neglecting earth-keeping, which is “Christ is coming back soon so and we have to concentrate our efforts on saving souls instead of taking care of the environment”. Can you imagine living in totally filthy conditions just because everyone thinks that rubbish disposal should be low in the Christians’ agenda because Christ is coming soon and saving souls is more important? We need to care for God’s creation in a sustainable way until Christ returns, whether it is tomorrow or 20 years from now.
What can we do for the environment?
An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation was issued in 1994 by the Evangelical Environmental Network (a joint initiative between the Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Au Sable Forum) to assert and emphasise that this Earth belongs to God (Psalm 24:1) and that we are responsible to Him for it.
This belief underlines the historical Christian doctrine that we are stewards of creation, responsible to the Creator for our treatment of the environment. The full text of the declaration and subsequent papers that commented on it were published in “The care of creation-focusing concern and action”.
John Stott in his foreword in the book stated three important truths we should keep in mind in relating to the Earth. First, we will avoid the deification of nature. We respect nature because God made it but we do not reverence nature as if it were God and inviolable.
Second, we must avoid the opposite extreme, which is the exploitation of nature. The dominion God has given us is in responsible stewardship, not destructive domination.
The third and correct relationship between human beings and nature is that of cooperation with God. God has given us nature and what we do with it is culture. We are urged not only to conserve the environment, but also to develop its resources for the common good. When we cooperate with God to transform the created order for the pleasure and profit of all, our work becomes an expression of our worship, since our care of the creation will reflect our love for the Creator.
In Stott’s chapter on “Our Human Environment” in his book “Issues Facing Christians Today”, he rightly points out that at the root of the ecological crisis is human greed, what has been called “economic gain by environmental loss”. We must be prepared to pay the additional cost of production without pollution, whether in increased prices or in increased taxes.
The other area that he says we must address as responsible Christian stewards of the environment is to recognise that the earth’s resources are not infinite so we have to strenuously avoid all wastefulness, not only out of solidarity with the poor but also out of respect for the living environment. In other words “live simply that others may simply live”.
This will be reflected in our lifestyles or how we spend our money and also our investments or how we earn our money.
Three practical steps: Awareness, Appreciation and Action
De Witt (2000) mentions that as most people have been alienated from the Creator and His creation, it is difficult to love, uphold and make right a world that we do not really know. Thus many will first have to become aware of creation and its God-declared goodness before we can move to appreciation and from there move on to stewardship by action.
Awareness involves seeing, naming, identifying, locating and knowing about God’s creatures. Appreciation takes us one step further in learning not just to tolerate but respect, value, esteem and cherish the role that God has assigned to each creature both great and small in His fascinating creation.
Action involves making the right use of creation, restoring what has been abused in the past, serving by keeping lovingly and caringly that which we hold in trust and entrusting to others what we have served, kept and restored.
In other words, environmental education is to be followed by environmental action. We can reduce the amount of rubbish we generate by recycling our waste and encouraging others to do so. We can cut down on our consumption of fossil fuels and contribution to the greenhouse gases by becoming economical in our choice of transport (one of the reasons why I ride a motorbike to work) and switching off the lights when not in use. We can save water by cutting down unnecessary wastage when we do our washing and recycle the water from the rinse cycle of our washing machines. We can support eco-friendly industries by purchasing their products in preference to others when available. We can start or join others to clean up the neighbourhood or some public facility such as a popular beach or picnic site. It is always good to teach by example to our children that we must not only clean up our own rubbish but that of others so that we leave a recreational site in a better state than when we found it.
Instead of spending time and money only at man-made theme parks and shopping malls, we can take our families for holidays and trips to waterfalls, nature parks, hikes in the mountains, snorkelling in the sea, fishing, camping, watching fireflies, bird-watching, caving and a host of back-to nature fun activities organised by nature groups or on our own. Grow some of your own vegetables and fruits.
Teach the children to love and respect God’s creation and they will not so wantonly destroy it as those who have been detached from it by the artificiality of modern living.
The idea is that every effort, no matter how small, counts. It is the cumulative effects of careless living, such as indiscriminate littering, that contribute to the unhygienic piles of rubbish in many of our neighbourhoods in a developing country like ours. Likewise clean rivers and towns such as is found in many developed countries, even those with high population densities like Japan, are the results of the combined efforts of everyone in that society.
Poverty eradication plays a very important role, as human poverty is both a cause and a consequence of environmental degradation. Poor people are forced to degrade the environment just to survive, for example over-harvesting of trees for firewood leading to soil erosion and desertification or indiscriminate dumping of rubbish and sewage into rivers in slums.
Conclusions
Having been informed, we become aware, which leads us to understand and appreciate God’s wonderful creation. But all that will go to waste if we do not put into practise what we have learnt about caring for His earth.
May the Lord help us to start doing something today, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem to back up what we confess with our lips – that we love You Lord and want to glorify Your name by loving and caring for the earth and its inhabitants that you have entrusted to us and to our children. – Contributed by the NECF Research Commission. To read the full article, go to the NECF website, “Signs of the Times” section.
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