This is a perspective that encompasses a number of things, from global overconsumption to personal responsibility. The work is mine, as was the choice to include the Dalai Lama and a Native American prophecy. While I feel that they contribute quite well to the flavor of this post, I'm sure some will question it. I freely give my research and time and effort to anyone who would like to take it and present it, just acknowledge me somewhere when you present.
Mago
Stewardship of the Land, a Christian Perspective
We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important thing is to be a good human being.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Scientific reports claim global warming is on the increase. Others say that it is an artifact of our earth, that there are warming trends and cooling trends in the larger pattern of our planet’s weather. Regardless of the debate, numbers and data suggest that we are rapidly approaching a tip-over point. Carbon dioxide outputs are rising dramatically as emerging industrial nations add to the output already spewed by first-world nations like the United States.
We have this earth, and none other like it, as our dominion. God Himself has told us that we have dominion; we are masters of this earth. In Genesis 1: 3, the Bible tells us:
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth (KJV).”
However, this brings about certain responsibilities. The word “dominion” itself contains many nuances of meaning, and we need to clarify what God meant by dominion when we speak of our dominion of the earth.
Dominion, according to the Random House Dictionary, is as follows:
1. the power or right of governing and controlling; sovereign authority.
2. rule; control; domination.
3. a territory, usually of considerable size, in which a single rulership holds sway.
4. lands or domains subject to sovereignty or control.
This definition marks several kinds of dominion – control over something, power, dominance in a physical area, and exercise of control. God expects us to be in total control of, and completely possess this earth and its resources as best we can. This is the completeness of the command set forth in Genesis. God has spoken to humanity – this is the earth, we as human beings are in complete charge of it.
Let’s take a moment. As of this moment, we have pumped oil, burnt forests and land to make room for our livestock, and consume the wealth that our nations have provided to us to enjoy. However, in doing so, we have also subjugated countless people into servitude to pay for our excess, despoiled lands and waters, poisoned bays and rivers with industrial waste, and left nuclear waste so poisonous it will be dangerous for millennia after we have gone, locked in caves underground that we hope will sufficiently seal it from us.
It brings to mind a Native American prophecy, one that echoes the way our path lays, should we continue:
Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Then will you find that money cannot be eaten (Wikipedia).
In the hunger for corporate developers to wring the last dollar from a resource, we can see how they will completely denude a resource of its profitable parts. In fact, many claim it is their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make as much as possible. This means that their highest care to the shareholders is to make as much money as possible, to maximize returns for the shareholders.
What of the Christian responsibility to the world? What is our fiduciary responsibility, our highest level of care, to the world we were given dominion over? Let’s revisit what God has given humanity, to see what we have a hold of, in the first place.
God states in Genesis that He has given us full dominion over the land, the sea, the air, and all the things that creep and crawl, walk and fly about it. He can do this, because, besides being God and therefore able to do whatever He wants, He owns it all. He owns the physical property, the concept, the rights, and the futures of the entire universe. We know this from the beginning of Genesis, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” He made everything; it belongs to Him in its entirety. However, this ownership is reiterated, just so we understand how complete our dominion is over the Earth, in John 1:3, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made (KJV).” This scale is what we have dominion over, everything.
We have control over it all. God gave it to us to control. He explains this in Nehemiah 9:6:
Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee (KJV).
This is the vastness of scale that we have dominion over – the earth and everything in it, the seas and all in it, and the heavens and everything in it. We are in charge of it all, land, sea, and air.
It’s a powerful charge, then, to have dominion over the earth. We have grasped this. Our power over the earth is indeed strong, because as we have seen in countless news segments, and television specials, we are taking down the forests, taking the fish from the seas, and pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the air. What is power but the ability to give and take away? We have been taking away from the earth.
Does this mean that because God has given power over the earth to us that we get to take it and pillage it without regard? Do we have the right to use something until it breaks, if we are given charge over it?
In Leviticus 25: 23-24, we can find the answer to how far our dominion goes:
The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land (KJV).
The land is not ours forever. The land is God’s land. We have dominion over it, but we are not native to it. We have power, but it is a physical control, much like a lending a car to a friend. There is a difference. Family borrows, but when dad lends his car to his kid, no matter what happens, if the kid messes up, it’s ok. He may grumble, and complain, but the child still gets access to the car. A friend gets a ticket, or worse, a fender bender, and that’s it, no if’s, and’s or but’s. We are alien in regards to this dominion – we are to take care of it the same way we would a friend’s vehicle.
We are not to run it into the ground! We are not to exploit so much that the land or its resources cannot recover. The resources are to be reprieved, not exploited into extinction. Yet we do. In 2005, blue fin tuna was in danger of being fished into nonviability. We had already done this in the first half of the 20th century in northern European waters. Even now, sixty years after commercial fishing decimated the northern blue fin tuna; it is rare to find mature blue fin tuna in northern Atlantic waters near Europe. In 2005, Mediterranean blue fin tuna was in a similar boat, so to speak. Massive overfishing in excess of quotas led to a massive depopulation. The World Wildlife Fund estimated that between forty-five to fifty thousand tons were harvested, well in excess of maximum quota of thirty-five thousand tons (WWF).
We have to exercise our control. Rapacious consumption of resources is the worst kind, using and discarding with no concern toward the health of the whole or future consequences. God Himself has an issue for those who are supposed to care for the resources in their charge, and don’t:
Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them (Ezekiel 2:3-4 KJV).
While here, he speaks to those who keep flocks of sheep, the wider implication is clearly visible – the resources are not simply to exploit and use up. The shepherds have a responsibility to care for the damaged sheep in the flock, not simply to use up the sheep and not care for the unusable ones. We, as the caretakers who are charged to care for the earth, this is our mandate- we are not to simply take the riches of the resources, like the fat to cook with, and the wool to make clothes, without caring for the resources left. We are not to exert dominion with cruelty, but with care.
There is no way to escape the consequences, should we continue to take and consume without giving back. To wax a little brimstone and damnation, one cannot escape the Lord. Jonah tried, Elijah tried. Even Jesus didn’t want to do what was required of Him, and he was God. What are the consequences of our current policies of overharvesting, overconsuming, and overexploiting our world? In Isaiah 24: 2-5, we find an answer:
And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant (KJV).
God will share his consequences equally, from leader to followers, from employer to employee, from lender to lendee. The land will no longer have people. The land will be spoiled, so it will not produce. The land will become a shadow of what it was, and fade, as will the way of life we know. Those who took and kept on taking will suffer. God mentions that the land will be defiled – defiled meaning that it cannot do what it is supposed to do anymore and must be disposed of. This is heavy material. Think of kosher laws. Cook nonkosher meat on a kosher grill, and it cannot be used for anything else kosher, and must be gotten rid of. It was defiled – it can’t serve its purpose. How much more so to find the land defiled – it cannot serve its purpose anymore.
The Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine is probably the most glaring example of defiled land. After the disaster, four square kilometers of pine forest in the immediate vicinity of the reactor turned ginger brown and died, earning the name of the "Red Forest", according to the BBC. Some animals in the worst hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Most domestic animals were evacuated from the exclusion zone, but horses left on an island in the Pripyat River six kilometers from the power plant died when their thyroid glands were destroyed. Some cattle on the same island died and those that survived were stunted because of thyroid damage. The Ukrainian government maintains a 19-kilometer radius zone of exclusion around the reactor building. This land can never be used for human purposes.
So, what are we, as Christians, supposed to do now? So much damage has been done, and in the pursuit of currency, wealth, power, and all sorts of ephemeral things. The first thing is to do no more harm. Examine your life to see where the desire for things simply to have them has crept in. It happens to all of us – human desire for the things we like encourages us to gather what we can while glancing covetously at those who have what we want. It is called “keeping up with the Jones” and it drives many things. In Luke 12:15, Jesus counsels us to “[…] Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth (KJV). We are not our possessions. We are not good because we own a 3000-square foot house, or because our SUV has the latest and greatest gadgetry. Materialism has no place for the Christian who is right with God. I thought of a shirt I’d found funny. It said, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.” I say that whoever dies with God on his side wins. Toys are irrelevant.
Jesus expands on this, in Luke 15:23, he says, “The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment (KJV).” Does this mean that Armani and Abercrombie and Fitch are sinful? No, but it means that you are more than the fashion statement you make. You are more than the labels you have on your stuff. In verse 34, He further states that “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (KJV).” If your treasure is in your possessions, it’s wasted. If heart is in God, it’s eternal, better than gold and platinum.
If you can, give up your car. Get on your bikes and ride. Imagine the money saved with less maintenance, no insurance to pay, and the health benefits. If you can’t go car-free, go car-light. Many people have managed to gas their vehicles up twice a month, because they commute more on their bicycles. Imagine the blessings, of health and fresh air, to the bike commuter. Less pollution, less wear and tear on the earth. A full-sized van in San Antonio costs about $70 to fill. Over a month, at once a week, that’s $280. Imagine only paying $140, and having more money in your pocket: a bigger tithe in the plate, a chance to enjoy something nice, or even giving a helping hand to a struggling family.
Is that too hard? It’s hard to wake up an extra hour early, or pack a lunch to take. It’s hard to go and deal with traffic and not be the top dog in the big Hummer or Jeep or Nissan. Yes, it is. However, God tells us it is worth the momentary pain. In 1 Peter 3:17, Paul said, “For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing (KJV).” Is the benefit to the earth, the world that God entrusted us back in Genesis, worth the discomfort of being car-light, or car-free? I believe it is, and I believe that God would expect me as a Christian to steward the earth better by not contributing pollution, or oil drips, or the dozens of ways cars foul the earth, when I could ride and be healthier in money, body, and spirit.
Why be another car in the pack, fuming at a traffic jam and wondering if you will make it to where you need to be on time when you could find a better way? Does your standing in the community become at risk because you don’t drive as much? Do you fear the peer pressure? In Exodus 23:2, the Bible says, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment (KJV).” Don’t follow a crowd, do what is right. This is coupled with testifying just to side with the popular stance. Do what is right. By God, his edict to handle what He has given you.
Find ways to be good to the earth. Grow a garden. Walk instead of drive. Ride if you can. Recycle. Don’t purchase just have something. Don’t be a victim of the need to fit into a crowd. Walk in the knowledge that you are doing what you can to help the earth recover. Right now, according to the Keeling curve, a measurement that documents the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the earth’s concentration of carbon dioxide was 315 parts per million. In 2006, the measurement was 380 parts per million. For several thousand years, before the advent of the modern industrial age, the earth’s concentration of carbon dioxide was roughly about 275 to 280 parts per million. The ten hottest years on record were recorded in the last fourteen years. The temperature record has been kept since 1880, over a hundred and twenty-five years.
