Christians should care for and use creation with love for one another and respect for God.
Introduction
Often when we come to talk about ethics- how we should behave or treat one another- we focus on the very personal (such as how should I treat the neighbour I don’t get on with?).
For the next few weeks, however, I want to take a step back and think about how the Bible and the Church speak to the big questions we face.1
The Church has a long and beautiful history of thinking and teaching about how we should view social issues – how we should think about the environment, about the value and dignity of life, about care for the poor or work or the family. These are big questions that we need to learn to think about from God’s perspective and then to act, pray or vote in accordance with what we believe to be in accordance with the way God views the issue rather than the tradition, prejudices or perspectives we inherit or absorb from others.
Before we start, I want to give a health warning.
Christian social teaching does not fit neatly into our political categories. Sometimes it might sound left-ish, sometimes right-ish. It sits in the middle or, more precisely, embraces and challenges them both.
My aim is not to tell you how to vote or anything like it. Rather I want to suggest the types of questions we should be asking of our politicians and proposing some of the values we can use to evaluate their answers.
More profoundly, however, questions of creation care, race or care for the poor are not just political, they are deeply personal. One of the most important principles in Christian social teaching is that solutions should always be as local and personal as possible – we are first of all asking not “what should the government do?” but “what can I do?”
This week I want to think about how the Bible and the Church help us to understand how we should relate to it and, in particular, what it means for us to be stewards of creation.
- The Heart of Christian Teaching
How things go wrong
Human attitudes to Creation go wrong in two ways.
First we can have too high a view of nature. At its most extreme this takes the form of a paganism that worships nature as a God. More often in the modern world this distortion tends to place care for the environment as the highest good, above the welfare of human beings or anything else.
This attitude can tend to lead to a knee-jerk hostility to development or scientific progress. In its more extreme forms it explicitly prioritises ideas or policy solutions that are anti- human for the sake of being pro-environment.
All of these distortions here at their heart the error of valuing creation too highly – of making the created world on the same or higher level as its Creator.
In the opposite direction we can have too low a view of the natural world. Here creation is not worshipped but despised. Its value is found solely in its usefulness to humanity rather than being worthy of love and care for its own sake. It is significant and worthy of care only if, and to the extent that, we can use it to make our lives more pleasurable.
This attitude can lead to an uncritical consumerism and expansion, seeing the natural world as a resource to be exploited for human convenience or luxury.
These distortions have at their heart too high a view of humanity-as separate from, and lord of, creation and too dismissive a view of the created world itself.
The Christian Perspective
All Christian approaches to creation begin from the idea that God made the world and it is good. It is valuable not because it is useful to us but because God made it and he loves it. It is intrinsically good.
Yet the fact that the world is created also means that it is not God. The environment, the natural world, is not the ultimate end or good – it is something that was made by God and it exists to serve him.
God made human beings as part of that creation, formed from within it. In the beautiful picture of Genesis 2, God takes the stuff he has made and uses that stuff to make people. We aren’t separate from nature or the environment; we came from it.
And yet we are also different from it. Humans are set apart from the rest of Creation. They are, in a sense, higher than all of the other things he has made. He sets them apart as made in his image. He breathes his life into them.
Pausing there, isn’t it amusing how accurate the poetry of Scripture captures who human beings are? At once the dust of the earth and yet also bearing the print of heaven.
Creation is given to humanity to use. Human life is of greater value than anything else in the world. In that sense it serves them. Yet they are given it to use as stewards, nurturing it, caring for it and bringing it to a sustainable life. We don’t own the created world-it has been entrusted to us and, while we are entitled to use and develop it, we will have to account to its the Owner for how we do so.
- The Implications of the Teaching for Ethical Judgments
What does this mean for us as we think about how we shall treat the world?
We should be willing to use the world around us to sustain and develop human life. It is good to do so. Part of the foundations of modern science was the Christian insight that the world is not God and therefore we can experiment on it. There is a hierarchy in creation in which human beings are at the top, with the privileges and responsibilities that implies.
However, we should always be suspicious of behaviour or policies that become exploitative or unnecessarily exploitative. We should be careful to avoid destructive behaviour, particularly where it is driven not by need but by greed, for the desire for “more” that can never fully be satisfied.
So how do we apply this as voters, as churches and as individuals?
As Voters
When Christians are thinking about creation care and environmental issues as they consider who to vote for, or how to lobby, they should be asking these sorts of questions:
- How will this party or person’s policies affect the natural world? This is a bigger question than just setting targets etc. It involves a wisdom judgement about what is actually prudent or workable.
- What is the human cost of these policies? Is it justifiable given that human lives are the highest priority?
As a Church
As a church we should be asking how we can care for our environment. That is everything from not being unnecessarily wasteful to considering whether together we can care for the natural world of our village or locality in some way. It is part of good stewardship and it is also a good witness to Jesus.
As Individuals
Finally as individuals we can take steps in our own lives to be good stewards. It is tempting to get caught up shouting, posting or campaigning about things that are remote and ultimately need other people to take action for us. But what about nurturing and managing a garden? Or litter picking on your road? Or trying to walk instead of driving?
These aren’t the exciting or fashionable things to do but they are all acts of faith and obedience, caring for the Creation and carrying out God’s command.
A Prayer
Here’s a prayer to get you started this week:
God our Father and Creator,
Your glory is expressed in the light of the stars, the roar of ocean waves, and the majesty of mountains. You have created a home for us in the goodness of the earth and have provided for us through its resources. Give us a right and proper attitude in our relationship with creation. Give us wisdom to build a culture that reverences nature and its resources, that preserves it for the sake of future generations, and that prioritises the good of all in what we make and how we consume. May we reach out to you, our Creator, through a right relationship with your creation. May wonder and discovery lead to innovation that glorifies you, reverence for the dignity of human life, and respect for goodness of the earth that you have made.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
- These ideas are found throughout the Christian Tradition. For these articles, however, I’ve found the materials published by Ascension Press on Catholic Social Teaching (these ideas as they have developed in a Catholic context) very helpful. The prayers are taken directly from their course entitled Connected: Catholic Social Teaching for This Generation. ↩︎
Deep Church 