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Christianity Today, June, 2010

The Village Green

Creation Care: Depends on One's Gifts

How concerned Christians should be about environmental care.

Cal Beisner | posted 6/30/2010 09:17AM

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Cal Beisner, national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Jonathan Merritt, author of Green Like God, discuss how concerned Christians should be about environmental care.

I care for my aunt who has Alzheimer's disease and for her mentally handicapped daughter. That is, their needs are often on my mind, and I sympathize with them. My aunt's doctor hardly knows her, but in terms of outward, objective action,he cares for her more than I do. My daughter, who lives with them and manages their household, cares for them both subjectively and objectively, much more than either the doctor or I do.

How concerned should Christians be about care for the environment? It depends partly on what we mean by "care for the environment." Are we talking about subjective, emotional care, or objective, active care?

I suppose we all are capable of a good deal of emotional care for the environment,for what that's worth. But our resources are more limited for objective, outward care—time spent removing litter from a streambed, protesting toxic waste at a chemical plant, inventing a more fuel efficient and less polluting engine. Time and money and bodily energy spent on those cannot simultaneously be spent on HIV/AIDS care and prevention, hunger relief, evangelism, fighting human trafficking, or reading Bible stories to our children.

Prioritizing is inescapable. The apostle Paul's statement about gifts in the church applies: "There are many parts, but one body.The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'" (1 Cor. 12:20-21).

Suppose Julie dedicates full-time service to Earth stewardship and no time to her church's clothes closet for the poor. Ron does the opposite. Jean divides her time unevenly among homeschooling her children, teaching a women's Bible study, following up on visitors to her church, and contacting her state and federal representatives about public policy concerns. Is one of them wrong? "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand" (Rom. 14:4).

How concerned should Christians be about caring for the environment? It depends on the Christian and his or her gifts; it's not something we can generalize about. But we can state some principles, as I did in a monograph for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, What Is the Most Important Environmental Task Facing American Christians Today?

The more important tasks in caring for the environment include testing claims about environmental degradation and how to fix it, doing cost-benefit analysis of problems and proposed solutions, and promoting economic development for the very poor, since poverty is a great threat to the environment. It is also important to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in government structures, since good environmental stewardship depends in part on them.

Finally, we should remember that people are more valuable than many sparrows, and let that knowledge guide our priorities.

Related Elsewhere:

Cal Beisner is the national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Jonathan Merritt and R. Albert Mohler Jr. also weighed in on environmental care.

Previous Christianity Today articles on environmental care include:

Second Coming Ecology | We care for the environment precisely because God will create a new earth. (July 18, 2008)

The Gulf of Mexico and the Care of Creation | We exercise dominion over creation not only when we use it, but also when we conserve it. (May 3, 2010)

Why We Love the Earth | Our belief in a Creator, not crisis scenarios, drives our environmental concerns. (June 1, 2001)

Previous Village Green sections have discussed intelligent design, preaching, immigration, Lent, premarital abstinence, aid to foreign nations, technology, and abortion.

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June 2010, Vol. 54, No. 6

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Mary Roberts

July 01, 2010 2:18pm

This article is a travesty...and an example of taking scriptures out of context for one's own purpose. There is also scripture that reveals that not one sparrow falls but that the Father observes it. The sparrow is part of God's creation. So why are we having this debate

Roger McKinney

July 01, 2010 12:15pm

John, Jubilee does not do away with private property. It strengthens it. In reality, Jubilee prevented people from selling property in the modern sense and allowed just leases for 49 years. Private ownership is not a guarantee; there are no guarantees. But it is certainly far better that state ownership. The Chevron and BP examples you gave prove my point. In both the state owns the land, not private individuals. Private ownership would not allow BP and Chevron to damage the land. And I make my point again: the greatest environmental damage happens where property rights are least respected. That is an historical fact.

John Holmes

June 30, 2010 8:04pm

Re converting all to private property - ie extinguished the Commons to ensure that all is well looked after. Sorry that is only remotely feasible if the concept of the Jubilee is also established and enforced. Having been in LandCare, private ownership is not a guarantee of good management. Likewise look at BP’s record in Nigeria, or Chevrons in SA re oil production. The company digs the hole keeps the profit and leaves. Private ownership is not necessarily the best system for management.

Rev. Dr. Fritz Traugott Kristbergs

June 30, 2010 3:18pm

Beisner's article is the most shallow justification of continuing to disrespect God's creation. I expect better thought, better theology, better humanity!

Dean Ohlman

June 30, 2010 3:03pm

I believe that both Mohler and Beisner, though saying some good and important things, miss the fact 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. In fact, 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 Merrit says is dead on.

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