Why Christians Should Care About the Environment (Even if it is All Going to Burn in the End)

I have been wanting to write this article since the spring of 2018 after a brief discussion with my roommate at the time.  (This was for you, Jules 😉).  Since then, much has happened in our world (mostly COVID), and perhaps this piece is less relevant to the current zeitgeist than it was when it was first conceived.  And this piece will be quite different than what I would have written five years ago, and probably for the better.
Dedicated also to my “hippie” friends at Davis, with whom I got to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation through hikes and camping trips, and who inspired me with their faith-driven environmentalism.

I. In the beginning…

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Genesis 1:1.  The saga begins.
The Bible begins by orienting us to a fundamental truth about the world around us — that it is not the outcome of not an impersonal force, but the workmanship of a personal God, who at the end of the chapter declares His creation good, as He is good.

Creation Care as Worship

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

Psalm 19:1-2 (ESV)

Despite how overly quoted that verse from Psalm 19 is, it’s no less true.  Creation declares God’s glory.
As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever,” and I believe that the creation is one of many means that God has given us for this end.

“Creation Care”:  I’m going to use this phrase for the rest of this article.  By it I mean the God-centered environmentalism that seeks to honor the Creator by honoring His creation.  Not in a pagan “Mother Earth” sense that worships the natural world as supreme, but sees the supremacy of the Creator through the work of His hands.  I’ve always wondered whether Christians are so afraid of worshipping creation, that we refuse to worship the Creator through His creation.  Perhaps we fall into a willful neglect of creation, a sort of Gnosticism that honors the spiritual at the cost of dishonoring the physical.

Let’s push against this; Let’s affirm the goodness in the natural world, preserve it, and hold it up as a lens through which we see the glory and goodness of the One who made it.  With every species that goes extinct or every habitat that gets destroyed, perhaps we are losing another glimpse into the mind of our Maker.  Because every intricate design points to the intentionality of a God who both orchestrates the motion of the planets and works in the inner inclinations of the human soul.

Creation Care as Good Work

Caring for creation was God’s original job for humanity.  In Genesis 1 and 2, God creates all things, the earth, the sky, the sea, every plant and animal, and then finally mankind.  God then gives humanity this command: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth”  (Genesis 1:29, ESV).   Then, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15, ESV).  Man’s original purpose was to rule over creation, not exploiting and abusing it like a tyrant, but working to create order and help it thrive like a good ruler.

Even though we have long left Eden, what if this was still part of our DNA? As people in the image of God, the Creator, what if the good work of protecting, nurturing, and cultivating the creation was a way to be like Him?  People who care well for the works of His divine creativity that He has entrusted to us.

II. After the fall…

A quick look at the world around us tells us that we’re not in Eden anymore.

Genesis 3 tells us of the Fall, where relationships are broken—between humanity and God, between fellow humans, and between humanity and creation.  And we see it in every facet of our lives–our sin twisting the way we see God, the way we see one another, and destroying the world around us.

But then at the climax of the Biblical narrative, Jesus came into our world, the Creator entering the creation, to restore those relationships: first reconciling us to God, then to one another and to the world around us. 

Creation Care as Witness

There is a way in which Western Christianity today has focused on the first two areas of reconciliation (or arguably only on the first one) but has neglected to remember that our restoration to God entails a restored relationship to creation as well. 
I am not advocating that we de-prioritize the salvation of human souls in order to save the planet.  Jesus’s Great Commission to us is still to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19).

But as John Piper said, “mission exists because worship doesn’t.”  In some ways, it is a result of the Fall that our mission has shifted from conservation to evangelism.  If caring for creation is a way of worshipping God, what if our witness was as holistic as our worship?  What if the way we treat nature, as the worthy creation of a worthier Creator, was a way in which we pointed to the goodness of God to the watching world?  On the converse, when Christians choose abuse and exploitation of the environment for the sake of corporate profits, or regard the environment with a callous disregard, what does that say about who our God is?
What if our environmentalism was integrated with our mission, as we enter into the work of restoring humanity’s relationship with the natural world, in order to share the grander gospel message of restored relationship with God? 

Creation Care as Justice

Setting aside the hippie ethos of living in harmony with nature for just one second, there remains a reason for a faith-driven environmentalism that is rooted in loving others as He has loved us.  The beauty and curse of our world is that all things are intertwined.  The destruction of our natural world diminishes human flourishing, particularly for those that Jesus calls “the least of these”–the poor and marginalized.  These are people at the center of God’s heart, and people that we are unambiguously called to love.

Environmental issues disproportionately affect the poor and marginalized (The Guardian, Governing).  For the privileged, we see the clutter on our streets and complain about the heat, all without major threat to our lives.
Even within the United States, which is relatively affluent in the global scope, we see disparities in health outcomes between rich and poor due to the higher levels of pollution in neighborhoods that have less economic and political power (Scientific American).  If we look globally, we see the results of our consumeristic culture generating toxic fumes that poison children in less affluent countries, as they make a living by “recycling” our e-waste (World Health Organization).
As climate change induces cycles of drought and flooding, it endangers the livelihoods of farmers globally.  As sea levels rise, the poor will be flooded out of their homes, while the rich will simply be able to move to higher ground.  The luxury of being able to ignore environmental issues like climate change and pollution is a way that injustice plays out in our world.

Micah 6:8b asks “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  What if making environmentally conscious choices is an act of loving my neighbors, both locally and globally?

III. On the way to redemption…

Belief about the future influences the way we live in the present.  For the Christian, we know the future in the eternal scope.  2 Peter 3 tells us that the heavens and earth as we know it know are bound for destruction by fire.  And the finale of the Bible tells of the unveiling of a brand new heavens and earth.

So then we are left with the big why…
If God is going to destroy the world as we know it and make all things new, then why should we bother at all?

Creation Care as Picture of Redemption

Romans 8, one of my favorite passages of all time, opens with the promise of no condemnation for all who are in Christ, paints a picture of what life with the Spirit looks like, and crescendos into a grand conclusion that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of Christ.  But somewhere in the middle, it speaks of creation in this way:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

Romans 8:19-22 (ESV)

Why would creation be so eager for the revelation of the children of God?  How does our salvation through Christ have anything to do with the redemption of creation from the curse of sin?
What if God plans to make creation new in the same way he makes us new?

1 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”  But how many of us still wrestle with the brokenness in our own lives, even with Christ?  And yet God calls us new creations, even as we continue to live in our broken reality.  We live in the already-not-yet.  And God gives us the Holy Spirit to do the miraculous work of transformation in us, growing us more in holiness, more into the people we were meant to be, and more in the image of His Son.  If God promises that he will completely remove the sin nature from our future glory selves, then why must we endure the often painful process of sanctification during our time on earth, if not to prepare us for life in the kingdom?

After graduating from college I lived with a family who meticulously washed out their recyclables before putting them in the bin. What if this too was a form of faithful discipleship? *
What if our meager efforts to live in right relationship to God’s creation is a practice in growing towards our future when God does make all things new? 
What if God intended His people–people experiencing inner transformation, beginning to live out the Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven.”–to be part of His work in the redemption of creation?

Creation Care as Hopeful Futility

But even my best efforts to be eco-friendly and care for creation are tainted with sin and futility.
Every green product seems to have about 5 devastating side-effects, whether it’s the production or packaging.  Corporate greed still tries to sell us green campaigns that have no real impact. 
My showers are still too long, I still use too much toilet paper, and I never seem to have my reusable cup or straw with me at the right time.  And it’s truly disheartening, after all my efforts to sort out my trash, recycling, and compost at work, only to find that it all goes into the same dumpster at the end of the day.

Sometimes I wonder if my attempts to live out creation care are pointlessly futile.  But in so many of the same ways, my attempts to redeem the brokenness and society and relationships around me are just as futile.  And yet, God still calls us to act justly, love mercy, and walk with Him in every facet of life.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the proverb that “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly,” and I think it applies.  What if it’s not entirely about the end result but about who we are becoming as people?  People stumbling towards the light, productively struggling to do right, with a hope that is ultimately in the renewal that God will bring about at the end of days. 

What now?

I hope I’ve laid out something of a theological framework for seeing our relationship to nature in light of the goodness of creation, the effects of the fall, the work of redemption, and the future of the new creation.  The natural world, the created world, the environment, whatever you want to call it–is a reflection of who God is, and we were made to be in right relationship with it.

So how do we live that out?
I actually don’t want to give any prescriptions for what to do, because advice too soon becomes law.  Even with the best intentions, we already have enough disagreement about what it takes to run a church, or how to best address poverty, so let us be patient with one another even as we figure out how to best steward and care for creation.

A difference between a faith-driven environmentalism and a secular version of it is the hope and grace that God gives.  If we don’t believe that God will complete the renewal of creation, we exhaust ourselves to be the savior of the world.  If we don’t believe in the grace of God to cover our failures, we will beat ourselves and each other up when our efforts fail.  Holding this grace and hope in mind, there is much we can learn from (dare I say?) the secular world and the body of knowledge developed through empirical science.  We can joining into the seeing more wonder (and more of the creator) in the natural world, and learn together how to best care for it.
So let’s listen and learn well.  And do as best we know.*

* But please, no aspirational recycling.  It’s unhelpful, to say the least.  Now you know.

This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas–
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father’s world:
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King: let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let earth be glad!

“This Is My Father’s World” – Maltbie D. Babcock (1901)