Rethinking Lifestyle

Climate Change and environmental concerns are (finally) becoming normal, everyday issues in Canadian society, inspiring political platforms and personal lifestyle changes. One area of our lives that these issues rarely touch is Sunday morning: for a number of reasons the church has a complicated history with the earth, and some of the biggest opposition to environmental stewardship has come from Christians in North America. In this two-part series, we’ll take a quick look at how the Bible teaches stewardship of the earth, from Genesis to Revelation.

John Calvin taught that God’s act of creation in Genesis culminated in humanity – that we are the peak of God’s creative activities, and that everything created before us was for our benefit or use. I think this is (mostly) true: God has given us access to and use of everything in the created world, and most theologians agree with Calvin that God’s intention in creating the world was ultimately to become a human being in Jesus Christ. This means that humanity has a special place in God’s plan. But we may have reversed the order of creation, and should look more closely at what we were created for.

While Calvin’s emphasis on the order of creation highlights the special place of humanity as being created last, I think the purpose and implications of that emphasis has been misunderstood. While we have typically understood that to mean that the rest of the world is here for our benefit, Genesis itself emphasizes that we are here for the benefit of the rest of the world. Genesis 1 not only describes God’s decision to create humanity, but also gives a reason: to rule over the world in God’s image. We have taken the words “rule over” and “subdue” to mean control as rightful owners, but we’ve misunderstood what it means to be “in God’s image.”

An ancient king would place statues of himself in the cities he ruled to remind the locals of their far-off ruler. The statue is not the king himself, but represents him – and the word used for such representative statues is “image.”

Similarly, the Bible talks frequently about the “name” of God, and Christians regularly pray “in Jesus’ name”. There is concern about “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” A steward would rule over provinces of an empire, and act in the name of the king – that is, they would do what the king would do, as if they were the king.

Being created in God’s image and acting in God’s name, then, means ruling the natural world in the way that God would. Can we imagine God strip-mining and clear-cutting His creation? Can we imagine God putting temporary jobs above the long-term viability of ecosystems, or Jesus making decisions that result in the extinction of species for the sake of corporate profits? Rather, Genesis describes humanity’s primary purpose as stewardship of God’s creation: we were made to care for the world, not vice versa.