Christians and Creation

Genesis 1:28

Introduction

“We are killing the planet.” So says a steady drumbeat around us for the last couple of generations.

What is the Christian response to all of this?

Aren’t we supposed to be good stewards? Should we care for God’s creation?

Man and Nature

God created man and nature in harmony with one another (Gen. 2:5-9).

Then sin entered in and nature became hostile to man (Gen. 3:17-19).

God issued that curse, not man.

Man is to blame (but more on that later).

But the mandate remains (Gen. 1:28).

God occasionally gave specific instruction on the usage of resources (Ex. 23:10-11; Lev. 25:1-7).

He also gave instructions on the treatment of animals (Deut. 25:4; cf. 1 Cor. 9:9-10).

God is more concerned with how we treat our neighbor than how we treat the planet (Matt. 25:34-46).

False Prophets and False Gods

The foundations of their beliefs are faulty (Gen. 1:1, 26).

They don’t believe this is created or sustained by God.

As such they believe man to simply be a mere equal part of creation.

Or worse, they believe man is a parasite.

Their conclusions aren’t detached from these assumptions.

Too many people are constantly taking whatever the latest handwringing concern of the culture is and then running to the scripture to see how we can wring our hands too but still call ourselves Christians.

Earth becomes more important than the creator or the souls who dwell here (Rom. 1:25).

There is a simple test to determine whether or not to trust a prophet (Deut. 18:21).

Now, flubbed predictions alone is not the only issue here but it doesn’t help any.

Starting in the 60s, scientists began predicting the planet’s doom with regularity.

Paul Erlich (of considerable renown) said we were all going to starve to death.

Scientific consensus was that we were fast headed for a new ice age all the way through the 1970s.

When the trend went from cooling to warming, the predictions didn’t even check up.

"A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two or three days, and very rarely a week. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits.” - Thomas Jefferson 1770

When they aren’t worshiping the earth, they worship themselves (Jas. 4:13-15; Ecc. 1:3-7).

God in Control

The world will not end in flood (Gen. 9:11-13).

God makes firm promises about the ongoing course of nature (Gen. 8:22).

When the normal cycles are disrupted, it is because of man’s sin (Deut. 28:23-24).

In fact, when Ahab introduced the idol that was supposed to make everything green, everything turned brown.

This is not to say that every instance of inclement weather is directly due to some specific sin.

But when man gets the blame in scripture, sin is the reason (and the sin is not failing to properly sort your recycling).

Also, God uses weather VERY regularly to get man’s attention.

Conclusion

There are a lot of elements here that overlap with the sermons on justice.

Do what you can to treat others well and to make good usage of the resources God has made available to you.

But know that whatever you think man is doing to this planet, God is going to do a lot worse (2 Pet. 3:7-12).

God has made you of infinitely more value than this entire planet…this entire universe. Don’t get worked up into a frenzy by people who don’t believe that.