This past week, while I continue to recover from bronchitis, the world celebrated “Earth Day 2013”. As Christians, we should celebrate God’s creation, remembering the One who not only created, but continues to sustain all things according to His perfect plan. We are also to be good stewards of the creation according to His word.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.So, the mission of humans, who are created in the image of God, is to responsibly exercise dominion over the earth. Unfortunately, the radical Green environmental movement has completely flipped these commands. Rooted in pagan religion (Animism, Pantheism etc), Eco-Utopianism, socialist economics, globalism, Eugenics and other unbiblical beliefs and agendas, this movement seeks to fundamentally transform our entire society, culture, and traditional values.God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen 1:26-28,31)
The results? The creation, rather than the Creator is now the object of worship. Man has become subject to nature. Unborn human children can be legally murdered, but don’t try this with a tortoise egg. Many want humans eliminated altogether so that the earth can return to her “natural” state. We’ll elaborate further on this movement in other articles, but we’d like to return to our subject of being a good steward of the creation.
One of the leading defenders of the biblical worldview of creation is the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of theologians, religious leaders, scientists, and other scholarly experts founded by our friend, Dr E Calvin Beisner. We received an email from Dr Beisner this week that contained an excerpt from a lecture given by his good friend, Dr Clyde Kilby, a long-time English professor at Wheaton College. Dr Kilby concluded a 1976 lecture with suggestions meant to provide or renew a sense of amazement at what it means to be alive in this world:
- At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.
- Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."
- I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.
- I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.
- I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.
- I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.
- I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."
- I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.
- I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.
- Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.