April 22 is World Earth Day – a day set aside to remember the importance of the planet on which we are privileged to live, and our God-given responsibility to care for it.
Some Christians are hesitant to become involved in environmental work as they argue we need to be careful that we don’t worship creation instead of the creator. The response other Christians make to this is quite simple – that our Creator has actually asked us to care for and steward creation (see Genesis 1-3 for examples).
This is why Christian should view World Earth Day as a fantastic opportunity to renew their stewardship efforts in creative and responsible ways.
Renowned Old Testament scholar Dr. Ellen F. Davis firmly believes that the two different creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 can shape and guide how we interact with the environment around us. I have included her thoughts below:
“Unquestionably, the editors who fused the two creation accounts intended us to see them as complementary components of a single story. Together, the two images give us a rich understanding of the derivation and the destiny of the human being: we are connected on one side of the family with divinity; on the other with fertile soil.
To use a phrase from the African-American tradition, we might say that the first chapter of Genesis give us a sense of ‘somebodyness.’ We are made in the image of God; we have a definite worth and high destiny. But the second creation account implicity warns us not to get a distorted opinion of ourselves.”
“The two biblical symbols – humanity made in the image of God and human from humus – belong together, but in practice most contemporary Christians separate them. I think it is fair to say that our self-estimation generally owes more to the first chapter than to the second. We rightly remember that we have something of God in us, but we tend to forget the equal claim that the soil lays upon us.
For us in this generation, the call to discipleship may well be a call to remember our kinship with the fertile earth. If we are listening to the Bible’s prophetic witness to the present rapacious age, then we should be as shocked and radically reorientated as were those (few, perhaps) who hear and heeded Amos or Jeremiah, when we are told that the soil is more like a relative than a resource: it is to be respected, and not just used. For us, heeding the prophetic call means turning away from the rampant materialism that infects our society to the healthy materiality that is the first principle of a biblical ecology.”
(This quote has been taken from “Getting Involved with God – Rediscovering the Old Testament).