As human beings, we are biological beings as well as spiritual. Our biological human life comes from the 'environment'. We need water; we need food that comes from the plants and animals, that are themselves dependent on creation/earth/environment. Caring for the earth is caring for ourselves. While God provides for our needs through the earth, he doesn't supply our material greeds. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. We can preserve the legal right of babies to be born, yet allow destruction of the life that sustains us all. The animals that we depend on for food can become extinct; water can be polluted (causing cancers and disease) or used up; trees and minerals on which our livelihood can be used to exhaustion. Caring for creation/environment is not an optional 'issue'.

Yes we need to be good stewards of the environment, but there are more IMPORTANT issues that require our attention & resources FIRST, such as the SALVATION of SOULS, feeding & clothing of the poor & stopping the legalized MASS MURDER of BABIES in the womb - called abortion - that has killed more than 50 million babies since 1976! Its a question of PRIORITIES!!! Those evangelicals who say we should hold back on the “ divisive " social issues and focus on the environment are COWARDS!!! As a GREAT MAN once said: "Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." The battle in America RAGES hottest over Abortion - that is over BABY MURDER – and that is where we NEED to be!!!

I think environmental concerns go deeper than we think. As Christ followers the gospel is important, as well as following Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we are forced to care for people. This can take many forms, and can take the form of environmental stewardship. Places depleted of natural resources with terrible environmental conditions are normally the places with intense poverty. Many times, you cannot fully help a group of people, unless you work on the environment. If you give them aid, but do nothing to help their way of life so they can sustain it, the aid is worthless.

I believe that both Al Mohler and Cal Beisner, though saying some significant things, miss the fact, like some responding here, that there are spiritual-relational duties for Christians, such as evangelism, and there are material-creational duties that are expected of all people, Christian or not: procreating; parenting; providing food, shelter, and clothing; and caring for the creation. I would say that these material-creational duties are of the first order--and that we have either misunderstood or forgotten them. They, indeed, have priority over the spiritual-relational ones: they are simply what God expects of mankind. After all, sickly and dead Christians (the result of bad earthkeeping in many cases)who ignore the primary things make poor evangelists--especially the dead ones! I'd say it's time for us to bury the hatchet with those pagan environmentalists and simply tend to what God expects of all human beings. Then we would see that what Jonathan Merritt says is dead on.

An important matter for Christians, since we are not Gnostics. I do wish Mohler would have looked forward to the "new heavens and new earth" that is promised in the message of the prophets and intiated in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Genesis 1 - 3 is not the end of the story but now finds its place in the larger sweep of God's work in Christ to renew and restore the creation for the praise of his glory. What if stewardship was not just taking care of "stuff" - but a way of living that expresses God's wisdom and love in all things? What do Baptism and Eucharist have to do with this, if anything? We are not only called to take care of things, but also to offer them to God with thanksgiving in union with Christ's offering to the Father. In this way creation is redeemed and sanctified. This is what we pray in the Lord's Prayer.