Of course care for creation should be a priority, but when the Bible was written, there was no “environmental issue” as we think of it.
That there might someday be a human threat to the environment, to nature, did not occur to our ancient ancestors. Human “control” over nature was very modest, recent, and understandably seen as good. Only for about 10,000 years have some animals been domesticated for human use. Agriculture (as distinct from horticulture) is even more recent, originating in the fourth millennium BCE. With agriculture came settled life, a stable source of food, and cities and towns with walls that provided some protection against the wildness of nature. It is no wonder that the “control” of nature was seen as a boon to human life.
Thus we do not find, and should not expect to find, “environmental issues” addressed in the Bible. But the Bible includes larger understandings that are relevant to the environmental crisis of our time.
One is grounded in an understanding of “the earth,” the natural world. The author of Psalm 24 asks, “To whom does the earth belong?” and then answers the question, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” The earth (and all that is) belongs to God – not to us..
The book of Job includes the most magnificent affirmations about nature. In Job 38-41, the author displays to the character Job the wonders of nature in all of its beauty and savagery. Then, in Job 42, the climax of the book, the character Job exclaims to God,
“I had heard of you with the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes behold you.”
What Job the character has seen is the glory of God in nature. The glory of God is the radiance, the presence, of God in the created world. In this, Job is consistent with the prophet Isaiah’s famous vision in Isaiah 6:
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is filled with your glory”
– God’s glory, radiance, presence. Nature – the human world as well as the non-human world – is full of God’s glory.
And God loves the creation. The opening phrase of John 3.16, perhaps the best-known verse from the New Testament, affirms this: “For God so loved the world….” What does God love? Not just Christians, not just humans, but “the world.”
We are called to love what God loves – the world, the whole of creation. Christians have sometimes been afraid of loving the world because of fear of “worldliness.” But worldliness and loving the world are very different.
So, should Christians be concerned about the environment? The answer is “of course” – even as we must recognize that many Christians do not think so.
A land ethic, which recognizes man’s capability of damaging creation is more distant than ever for western civilization. Earth needs our attention and protection. Oil economy notwithstanding.
as a non-“progressive” Christian, I still strongly affirm this argument–it gets the context of environmentalism right relative to the scriptures