A Covenant with the Earth | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Home > 2010 > October

Christianity Today, October, 2010

A Covenant with the Earth

Why the work of Christ makes all the difference in our care of creation.

Matthew Farrelly | posted 10/14/2010 10:47AM

Comments (15)

Related articles and links |

1 of 5

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the most recent clear and present witness that environmental issues are not the intellectual hobby of the dilettante, but instead have everything to do with life and death.

Life: The holistic health and daily provision of countless men, women, and children of the Gulf region have been threatened. Death: human deaths are enough, let alone the death of the Gulf's ecosystem, once teeming with biodiversity. While recent reports suggest that the spill is dissipating much faster than we had feared, we won't know the full effects for years. And the present scope of the disaster has been bad enough, almost unfathomable.

The oil spill has raised the environmental consciousness of the American public. But if publishing trends are any indication, evangelicals' concern for the environment was surging even before April 20. In the past year, practically every evangelical publishing house has published or re-released a book on creation care. Some, frankly, are naïve: While the Bible contains many references to rivers, seas, mountains, and animals, and portrays a God who cares for the sparrow and a Son who commonly used agrarian images in his teachings, this does not qualify God as "green." Other books, thankfully, mine rich biblical themes.

Let me highlight four of these books, and then suggest one biblical theme worth exploring more deeply and broadly as we seek to learn what it means to care for creation as Christians.

An Environmental Sampling

Of the four books I highlight, three represent a common theology of creation care.

One of the most popular said books is Matthew Sleeth's The Gospel According to the Earth: Why the Good Book Is a Green Book, released by HarperOne this March. A former er doctor, Sleeth has been one of the more effective evangelists for creation care in the evangelical movement, a popular speaker on many Christian college campuses.

His book recounts the roots of his environmental conversion: "So, I asked myself, What, if anything, does the Bible have to say about caring for the earth?" He read the Bible from cover to cover, underlining everything that had to do with nature. "What I ended up with was an underlined Bible," he writes. Sleeth's intent is "[to explore] some of the deepest themes of Scripture—repeating patterns … that counsel us to lead lives closer to the example set by Jesus."

Unfortunately, with some exceptions, Sleeth offers a piecemeal collection of anecdotes and biblical passages that are often de-contextualized or merely contain nature imagery. For example, in examining the theme of work in Genesis 1-3, Sleeth challenges us to rethink our captivity to American consumerism and recommit to simple living. These are good admonitions, but his interaction with the Bible is frustratingly cutesy. He imagines the apple in Genesis 3 as a "labor-saving device" and Adam's temptation as avoiding the "honest work" that God prepared for him. From this, Sleeth challenges our over-dependence on labor-saving devices (think electric dryers) and provides practical ways we can care for creation by adopting "retro-technology" (think clotheslines).

Strangely, what motivated Sleeth's family to live in retro was "to honor the commandment to tend and care for the garden." However, he continues, "It is not the primary reason we continue to do it. We do this labor-increasing activity because it gives us more life." But doesn't honoring God and his commands always give us more life?

He calls for water conservation due to its ubiquity in Scripture: the Flood, human development in the waters of the womb, Jesus' "rebirth" (not "resurrection"?), and the fact that salvation is a rebirth through "water and spirit." Curiously, Sleeth notes how water is also a symbol of chaos, darkness, and danger in the ancient world, but emphasizes its positive associations in John 3, in Jesus' dialogue with Nicodemus. But amassing texts that include nature symbols does not suffice for supporting creation care.

next page... |

1 of 5

October 2010, Vol. 54, No. 10

Comments (15)

Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required.

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.

If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.

Click here for international orders

2-for-1 Gifts!

Displaying 1–5 of 15 comments

See all comments

grateful believer

October 19, 2010 4:36pm

Look at the Word of God: What is His priority for this world and our lives? (hint: Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 are only two of His clear statements about that.) I cannot agree with this quote: "Christ has ushered us into this new covenant—between God and us and all of creation." The NT (as seen most clearly in Hebrews) is clear that the new covenant is between God and us -- not creation -- sealed by the blood of Christ Jesus which was shed for us on the cross. Yes, we are to be faithful stewards of ALL that God has entrusted to us. However, we are to keep a Biblical balance; the earth is not our mother, we are not to worship creation (Rom. 1). The Lord has told us, through Peter, that this world, and all that is in it, will burn up. The Lord's great revelation to John shows us a NEW heaven and a NEW earth. The time is short. Our focus should be on unsaved souls! God is not willing that ANY should perish.

A Hermit

October 16, 2010 7:00pm

Satan loves to see people trapped in materialism and greed, destroying the creation that God loves. We are told to be in the world, not of it. Sinful lives do not bear witness to the love of the Creator, and render spoken words ineffective (thus betraying the 'great commission').

Maryann GE

October 16, 2010 7:58am

Thank you, Charles Bogle. Well said.

Charles Bogle

October 16, 2010 6:57am

Dear UK Brother Arthur Williams: thanks to mankind's God-given ability to innovate and create, economics and resources are not zero sum games even when those resources are nonrenewable. You seem unaware that the very definition of a resource is shaped by the material civilization that called forth a need for it. If not for the internal combustion engine culture that this nation developed (for better or worse) all of that precious oil would just be useless black ooze messing up some scenic deserts. It hardly seems fair to blame us for hogging what would not even be deemed a resource if not for our inventions and implementations. On the other hand, the next time you fail to stop a genocidal maniac in your own backyard, feel free to give us a call. We saved your bacon twice before and will be happy to do so again any time because yes, you are our brothers and sisters and we do love you, despite all of your off-point scolding. We've expended a lot of energy defending an ungrateful Europe.

A Hermit

October 15, 2010 4:47pm

Through the Word, God calls ALL creation into being; Man is a part of that creation. While Man is the head of that creation, we are not above it. The water we drink, and food we eat, becomes a part of our bodies. Our bodies are temples of the holy spirit; polluting the environment harms those temples. That is sin. The ignorance and greed that causes destruction of the environment beyond our true needs is sin. We are told that in Christ we are a new creation, and sin is no longer a part of that. Loving God is loving God's creation; that creation is the 'environment' we are a part of. America is not alone in giving materialism priority over God-centered living.

You must be a Christianity Today subscriber or have created a FREE registration to post comments