And It Was Good

As a follow up to my piece All Creatures of Our God and King, one reader asked:

“So how would say, hunting or fishing fit into this equation. Are these things helpful? What about doing these simply for sport, like catching a fish or shooting a deer only to be on display?”

My answer…

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your excellent question. Since we see in the Scriptures the obvious delight that God takes in his own creation and  in the wonderful creatures He has made, we need to ask ourselves these questions. Some of this I am going to touch on when I address what our duty as an those He has called and assigned to exercise dominion over His creatures. I will leave a more complete discussion of until later.

We need to remember that permission to kill animals in order to eat their meat was given to man only after the flood, and then it seems as a mercy, to help man in the brutally difficult challenge of surviving in a fallen world. This permission had to do with our body’s physical need for nourishment only. It was about food, and only about food.

And so on a principled level I cannot make a case against the killing animals in order to eat their meat. On could possibly extend this permission to include meeting other basic needs of man.

Hunters and fishermen have done much good in terms of the preservation of undeveloped habitats. For that I am thankful. And on occasion, given the absence of natural predators, it becomes necessary to cull populations of different species to keep them from destroying the environment or facing massive die offs.

However, I see no place whatsoever for the recreational killing of animals. None whatsoever. I think it is a perversion of “dominion” and a revelation of soemthing twisted in the human heart.

There is pleasure in the hunt no doubt. But the pleasure in the kill is usually related somewhere deep down to blood lust. There is a kind of momentary high we get when we kill an animal we have hunted. I suppose there is a release of some sort of brain chemical that provides a rush. It is not dissimilar to the rush we get in sports like football when we make a great hit, or in boxing when we make a head popping hit. I have known all these rushes or pleasures. In sports however, if we’re being careful and following safety precautions, we don’t kill the person or even injure him. So I think of these rough sports as a way to release this pent up aspect of our nature.

When we kill for pleasure and enjoy it we are also reveling in this side of our fallen nature. It’s really about power. The difference as compared to a good hit in football is that the victim of our power rush is dead. Only

We see it in kids as they stomp on ants, and then as they start to shoot birds. My first experience with hunting was with bow and arrow. I would stand on my back porch and shoot frogs in the back yard. Mind you, I maybe only ever hit one or two, but I knew the rush. The had the same rush killing squirrels, and then killing birds.

Thankfully I came to my senses.

So, in short, I think the recreational killing of animals is a perversion. The higher the animal the more the perversion I think, thus the idea of killing a bear for sport is more offensive than killing a swordfish for sport, but I could not draw a hard line anywhere. There may be a good reason for our own safety to eradicate certain insects and spiders from around our house, but that is different than stomping on them for fun.

Back to killing animals for food…

I will speak to this later but I think we have long crossed a line in the manner in which we treat cows, pigs, and chickens for example raised for their meat. Those giant pig farms are not only are environmentally abysmal, but they are an exercise in systemic animal cruelty. Pigs are no less intelligent and relational creatures as dogs or cats. We would be thrown in jail for treating our dogs or cats the way large scale pig farmers treat pigs. It is a hidden tragedy of epic proportion, and I don’t thing God will overlook it in the judgment.

What is required is a changed view of what our role is as human beings vis a vis the animal world. I believe we are to be “kings” and guardian protectors.” We are to “use” animals in the sense of killing them only for our most basic needs. Otherwise we have been assigned the task of taking care of God’s world and guarding the well being of its creatures and its total environment.

But just so you’ll know I have not “arrived” I confess that I still find a certain pleasure in squashing cockroaches.

Joel

Today I am going to begin to go into more detail regarding  the The Christian and the Environment - Top Ten Reasons Evangelical Christians Should Care About the Earth, and All Things In It. I was looking at some pictures of an amazing local photographer who posts her photo’s on Flickr under the name “ucumari.” She is a volunteer at the NC Zoo and takes amazing pictures of our animal friends there (and at other zoos). I encourage you to check out her work.

Oh, and I make no assumptions as to she would agree with anything I write henceforth. But that’s part of the point. As human beings we seem to have a natural and collective love for and curiosity about our fellow creatures. That is an interesting fact unto itself.

So with animals on my mind  I thought I’d focus more time today on the sixth of the “Top Ten Reasons Evangelical Christians Should Care About the Earth, and All Things In It.”

In the sixth reason I spoke of God’s own love for all creation points. God lovingly cares for all of His wonderful creatures – and since He does we should too. Jesus said that “not a sparrow falls” without His Father’s knowledge. Can we even start to get our minds around that, how God keeps track of all the comings and goings not just of human beings, but all of His creatures.

I’m thinking here specifically of God’s love and care for our fellow living animal creatures, from greatest to the least. You know, we often think of “the environment” as something other than us. The very word “environment” lends itself to this perspective in that it suggests that which is outside of us, apart from us, something into which we are placed.

However, when we think of “creation” we find that we are on the same side of the great divide as all the other creatures. We all have been created by the same God. Yes, human beings uniquely are created in God’s image, and have a role to play as his representatives (# 3) and image bearers, but that does not change the fact that we are just one part of God’s creation – along with all the other creatures God has made. We stand with the ants and birds and bears and trees on this side of the Creator/Creation divide.

I am not going to undertake an exhaustive study here. I simply want to show from a few biblical passages why I believe that God cares for His creatures, and why, if He cares, we should too.

Genesis One comes to mind immediately. It is hard to read the account of the days of creation without getting a sense of God’s profound delight in His own handiwork. Looking out upon His work he proclaimed it to be good - “And God saw that it was good.” That means that He Himself was pleased, was happy with it, and found joy in it. It means that things were as they should be. It behooves us to remember that He said this about his creation even before human beings came on the scene. The creation, minus us, was declared to be good. The creation, minus us, brought joy to God’s heart.

It is also worth noting that God blessed His creation before mankind appeared with almost similar words as he blessed mankind. Of the sea creatures and birds, as well as the It says of the much of the same language is used to describe non human creation as human creation.  “And God blessed them.” “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

So we are struck at the Creator’s delight in all of his creatures, in their diversity, their noises, their colors, their ways of moving around, their reproduction, their beauty. He looked out over his handiwork and declared with joy, “It is good.”

Genesis Two (don’t worry, we’re not going to cover every chapter in the Bible!) also gives us a sweet picture of God’s care for his creatures. Adam was alone. He needed a suitable opposite. So God made many and various creatures from the ground (as he had made Adam) and presented them to Adam. Though none of them would be Adam’s suitable opposite (Adam needed Eve), one senses both in God’s presentation of the animals to Adam, and in Adam’s naming of them, a tender love and care for these animals.

Genesis Nine gives us a special glimpse into God’s care as well. Not only did God have Noah build an ark so that the many animal species would continue on after the flood (why bother if He cared little for them – it would have been a lot easier to build a smaller ark), but after the flood God made a covenant with every living creature that He would not again destroy the earth. Yes, God made a promise to all the animals that he would never again flood the earth. Wow!

I skip to the book of Job. When it comes time for God to shut Job up, he does so in most unusual fashion. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” And he goes in the next three chapters to describe the majesty and beauty and glory of the great creatures of the sea and land! Look for yourself in Job chapters 39-41. There is only one word to describe God sentiments towards the creatures He has made – and that word is love!

Off to the Psalms. The Psalms are rich in speaking about the animals of the earth. I love the hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King.” It is a rough paraphrase of Psalm 150 where every creature that has breath upon the earth is called upon to praise and give glory to God. The birds in their chirping and cows in their mooing are not JUST making animal noises – they are praising God – they are giving Him glory. And God gives them glory back. Read Psalm 104, an extended peon of praise of God the creator and sustainer of the universe. See the affection, the love, the admiration that the Psalmist has for God’s creation, and see how God cares in such detail for the animals of the earth, providing for their needs, giving life, and taking away life when it’s time. And all this concludes with “O Lord, how manifold are your works, in wisdom you have made them all, the earth is full of your creatures!”

I love the way it is put in Psalm 50:10-11: “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hill, and all that moves in the field is mine.” He not only made them and cares for them, He knows them!

Now to Isaiah. One of the sins against which the prophets spoke was abuse of the land, land that had been over worked, land that had not bene given its own sabbath rest, not allowed to lay fallow as required in the law. But the passage I draw attention to is Isaiah’s great prophecy of the New Heaven and New Earth. Not only will this New earth and Heaven bring peace to mankind, and remove the curse that has afflicted mankind so, it will bring peace to the world of animals, where, it is said, “the wolf and the lamb shall graze together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” Though we tend to idolize nature “red in tooth and claw,” this present period of time where animals devour one another without mercy does not seem to fit God’s intended will for them. It is not just human beings who will know the peace of the final kingdom, but the beasts as well. I mean, why even mention them if their fate is not significant?

And then there is Jesus. At first glance Jesus didn’t seem to speak all that much about the creatures of the earth. But looking closer he did say some important things. Of course he was a keen observer of creation. He loved to use animals in his illustrations. But perhaps most significantly, in a passage designed to show God’s care for His human children, Jesus also reveals the Father’s heart toward the least of the animals. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny. But not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Here we see that the Father’s care for even this lowliest of birds. He is aware when even one of them falls to the ground. The passage suggests that in so noticing God seems to care. It is not mere omniscience at work, but loving providence that is being referenced here. God’s care extends to the life and death of even the lowly sparrow.

Well, after a short visit to Revelation I’ll stop. But make note of this: when the 24 elders and the mighty creatures of heaven stand before the great throne of God, and give him glory, what do they say: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created.” By the Father’s express will all things, including the wonderful and varied birds of the air and fishes of the sea and creatures of the earth, were created. Each has a special place in God’s purpose. Each brings glory to God. And God is praised for his great wisdom in creating all things.

Even inanimate earth has significance as being created by God. But how much more even those creatures animated by the spirit of life (Psalm 104:30). Animals have a rightful glory and sanctity by virtue of the One who made them. No, they are not made “in His image.” But they do bring him glory and joy. When a lonely lost animal wanders out onto a road and is killed by a car, and is then run over time and time again, it reflects a callous disregard for that which God holds valuable. When species in which God obviously takes delight disappear due to our greed and carelessness and brutality, do we think that that makes God happy? Do we imagine that He is neutral on the subject? I don’t think so.

One day all creation will be both more wild and more tame at the same time. It will be more wild in that the curse will have lifted, peace will reign, and every creature will naturally be what it is most meant to be. They, the beasts, will live freely and without fear. But, the interaction of all creatures will be different. There will be no war between beasts, or between man and the beasts. There will be peace. All creation will have its rightful place in the abundance of life that gives glory to God the creator.

All life created by God is worthy of a certain reverence. Even if we are allowed to eat of the meat of other creatures, it should not be done callously, and the beasts should not be treated contrary to their nature and good  as if their only purpose is to bring us marbled meat to grill on a fire. How we treat our fellow creatures matters.

I have known few people mean to animals who were not also mean to people.

It does not lessen us to look more highly upon our fellow creatures. They are smarter, more sensitive, and more amazing than we have yet to realize. One day we will feel great sorrow over how we have desecrated and disrespected these wonderful fellow creatures. We can start changing attitudes now. I hope that we do.

Quite a while back I published a piece entitled “The Christian and the Environment - Top Ten Reasons Evangelical Christians Should Care About the Earth, and All Things In It.”

It seems fitting to reprint it here on my new site devoted to Christian Creation Care. I will be writing a separate piece on each point over the next couple of months.

1. Love of God demands it. We must care for God’s good earth because God does. We cannot love God with all of our hearts if we mistreat His world in our sloppiness, carelessness, ugliness, and greed. Period.

2. Passion for God’s glory motivates it. Creation is God’s master work which He declared to be “very good,” and it is meant to reflect His glory; when we despoil it in our greed or carelessness or callousness we rob God of glory due His name.

3. Our stated life purpose requires it. We were given very clear instructions to be stewards of His earth. This is clear both in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It’s like, duh!

4. Love of neighbor inspires it. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, which means that we care about his or her well being as much as our own. This includes what he or she has to breath, drink, look at, work in, or play in. We cannot love our neighbor and not care about the environment he or she has to inhabit.

5. Integrity screams for it. To act and live in integrity and love toward our descendants requires that we leave to them beauty, biodiversity, and ample resources for them to use and enjoy. Personally I am a little peeved at my ancestors for wiping out the Dodo Bird, the Woolly Mammoth, the Passenger Pigeon, and, possibly the Ivory Bill Woodpecker. Shame on them. Why would I do the same to my children and my children’s children?

6. God’s love for all creation points to it. God so lovingly cares for all of His wonderful creatures – and we should too. ‘”If not a sparrow falls…” If you’re in doubt about this read Genesis One and Two, and then Psalm 104.

7. Spiritual health requires it. How many times have you taken a personal day, a day of spiritual retreat, and then set up a chair in a parking lot? Enough said.

8. Physical health requires it. I mean that not only in the more obvious sense that breathing foul air, eating lead paint, and drinking polluted water is bad for us. I also mean it in the sense that the chemicals and proteins found in a biologically diverse environment may well hold the key to curing all or most major diseases eventually.

9. Consistency demands it. How can evangelicals have any credibility as we strive to protect unborn human children if we are callous about the air children will breathe, the water they will drink, the poverty under which they will suffer, or the ugliness they will inherit and endure. The two go together.

10. Justice cries out for it. Those who suffer the most from foul air, foul water, and ugliness are those who cannot afford “alternatives.” Environmental degradation hurts the poorest people the most. Care for creation is a justice issue.

And that’s it!

Dear Friend,

I thought it good upon setting up this new site to reprint this declaration, which I believe to be sound from start to finish. This declaration was first published by the Evangelical Environmental Network. I have submitted my name as a signee.

An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation

The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof - Psalm 24:1

As followers of Jesus Christ, committed to the full authority of the Scriptures, and aware of the ways we have degraded creation, we believe that biblical faith is essential to the solution of our ecological problems.

Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation.

Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator’s work.

Because in Christ God has healed our alienation from God and extended to us the first fruits of the reconciliation of all things, we commit ourselves to working in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of Christ in word and deed, to work for the reconciliation of all people in Christ, and to extend Christ’s healing to suffering creation.

Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator—whom we know dimly through creation, but meet fully through Scripture and in Christ. We and our children face a growing crisis in the health of the creation in which we are embedded, and through which, by God’s grace, we are sustained. Yet we continue to degrade that creation.

These degradations of creation can be summed up as 1) land degradation; 2) deforestation; 3) species extinction; 4) water degradation; 5) global toxification; 6) the alteration of atmosphere; 7) human and cultural degradation.

Many of these degradations are signs that we are pressing against the finite limits God has set for creation. With continued population growth, these degradations will become more severe. Our responsibility is not only to bear and nurture children, but to nurture their home on earth. We respect the institution of marriage as the way God has given to insure thoughtful procreation of children and their nurture to the glory of God.

We recognize that human poverty is both a cause and a consequence of environmental degradation.

Many concerned people, convinced that environmental problems are more spiritual than technological, are exploring the world’s ideologies and religions in search of non-Christian spiritual resources for the healing of the earth. As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that the Bible calls us to respond in four ways:

First, God calls us to confess and repent of attitudes which devalue creation, and which twist or ignore biblical revelation to support our misuse of it. Forgetting that “the earth is the Lord’s,” we have often simply used creation and forgotten our responsibility to care for it.

Second, our actions and attitudes toward the earth need to proceed from the center of our faith, and be rooted in the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ and the Scriptures. We resist both ideologies which would presume the Gospel has nothing to do with the care of non-human creation and also ideologies which would reduce the Gospel to nothing more than the care of that creation.

Third, we seek carefully to learn all that the Bible tells us about the Creator, creation, and the human task. In our life and words we declare that full good news for all creation which is still waiting “with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” (Rom. 8:19).

Fourth, we seek to understand what creation reveals about God’s divinity, sustaining presence, and everlasting power, and what creation teaches us of its God-given order and the principles by which it works.

Thus we call on all those who are committed to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to affirm the following principles of biblical faith, and to seek ways of living out these principles in our personal lives, our churches, and society.

The cosmos, in all its beauty, wildness, and life-giving bounty, is the work of our personal and loving Creator.

Our creating God is prior to and other than creation, yet intimately involved with it, upholding each thing in its freedom, and all things in relationships of intricate complexity. God is transcendent, while lovingly sustaining each creature; and immanent, while wholly other than creation and not to be confused with it.

God the Creator is relational in very nature, revealed as three persons in One. Likewise, the creation which God intended is a symphony of individual creatures in harmonious relationship.

The Creator’s concern is for all creatures. God declares all creation “good” (Gen. 1:31); promises care in a covenant with all creatures (Gen. 9:9-17); delights in creatures which have no human apparent usefulness (Job 39-41); and wills, in Christ, “to reconcile all things to himself” (Col.1:20).

Men, women, and children, have a unique responsibility to the Creator; at the same time we are creatures, shaped by the same processes and embedded in the same systems of physical, chemical, and biological interconnections which sustain other creatures.

Men, women, and children, created in God’s image, also have a unique responsibility for creation. Our actions should both sustain creation’s fruitfulness and preserve creation’s powerful testimony to its Creator.

Our God-given , stewardly talents have often been warped from their intended purpose: that we know, name, keep and delight in God’s creatures; that we nourish civilization in love, creativity and obedience to God; and that we offer creation and civilization back in praise to the Creator. We have ignored our creaturely limits and have used the earth with greed, rather than care.

The earthly result of human sin has been a perverted stewardship, a patchwork of garden and wasteland in which the waste is increasing. “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land…Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away” (Hosea 4:1,3). Thus, one consequence of our misuse of the earth is an unjust denial of God’s created bounty to other human beings, both now and in the future.

God’s purpose in Christ is to heal and bring to wholeness not only persons but the entire created order. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross” (Col. 1:19-20).

In Jesus Christ, believers are forgiven, transformed and brought into God’s kingdom. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (II Cor. 5:17). The presence of the kingdom of God is marked not only by renewed fellowship with God, but also by renewed harmony and justice between people, and by renewed harmony and justice between people and the rest of the created world. “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isa. 55:12).

We believe that in Christ there is hope, not only for men, women and children, but also for the rest of creation which is suffering from the consequences of human sin.

Therefore we call upon all Christians to reaffirm that all creation is God’s; that God created it good; and that God is renewing it in Christ.

We encourage deeper reflection on the substantial biblical and theological teaching which speaks of God’s work of redemption in terms of the renewal and completion of God’s purpose in creation.

We seek a deeper reflection on the wonders of God’s creation and the principles by which creation works. We also urge a careful consideration of how our corporate and individual actions respect and comply with God’s ordinances for creation.

We encourage Christians to incorporate the extravagant creativity of God into their lives by increasing the nurturing role of beauty and the arts in their personal, ecclesiastical, and social patterns.

We urge individual Christians and churches to be centers of creation’s care and renewal, both delighting in creation as God’s gift, and enjoying it as God’s provision, in ways which sustain and heal the damaged fabric of the creation which God has entrusted to us.

We recall Jesus’ words that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions, and therefore we urge followers of Jesus to resist the allure of wastefulness and overconsumption by making personal lifestyle choices that express humility, forbearance, self restraint and frugality.

We call on all Christians to work for godly, just, and sustainable economies which reflect God’s sovereign economy and enable men, women and children to flourish along with all the diversity of creation. We recognize that poverty forces people to degrade creation in order to survive; therefore we support the development of just, free economies which empower the poor and create abundance without diminishing creation’s bounty.

We commit ourselves to work for responsible public policies which embody the principles of biblical stewardship of creation.

We invite Christians–individuals, congregations and organizations–to join with us in this evangelical declaration on the environment, becoming a covenant people in an ever-widening circle of biblical care for creation.

We call upon Christians to listen to and work with all those who are concerned about the healing of creation, with an eagerness both to learn from them and also to share with them our conviction that the God whom all people sense in creation (Acts 17:27) is known fully only in the Word made flesh in Christ the living God who made and sustains all things.

We make this declaration knowing that until Christ returns to reconcile all things, we are called to be faithful stewards of God’s good garden, our earthly home.

As a Christian I believe that one day I will receive a new body. This will happen either, 1) at some point after I die in the general resurrection of the dead, or 2) in a flash, if I am alive when Jesus returns. In either case the new body will be a big improvement. It will be incorruptible, no longer subject to decay and deterioration, no longer able to get sick, and best of all, no longer subject to sin. I long to be clothed in my new body and to trade in this old bad of bones. I can’t wait to run and skip around in the new heaven and new earth!

Therefore, since I am going to get a new body, this one, and what I do with it, does not matter, right? Wrong. It does matter. It matters a lot. This body, coupled with the soul or spirit that goes with it, is made in the image of God. This body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This body is the means by which I bless or curse others. This body is the visible presence of me, in all the beauty or weird quirkiness with which God has made and molded me. This body has a sanctity attached to it.

Just because it will be made new or renewed does not mean it does not matter. Somehow, in a way that I do not understand, when I get my new body, it will still be me, recognizably me. There will be continuity.

The same goes for the heavens and the earth. I believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I also believe that in the end God will create a new heavens and a new earth. I don’t know how that will work.

In this new heavens and new earth, there will be no “curse” and no tears. I don’t think that people or animals will die from storms or predation or asteroids or heat waves. The earth part will be very real - no cloud floating here; it will be the earth, but renewed, made new.

Just as I groan inwardly waiting for my new body, so also the creation groans awaiting its renewal and freedom from bondage.

So, since this earth is going to be renewed and all, it doesn’t matter how we treat it, right? Wrong. This earth is God’s special creation. How we treat his handiwork matters, a lot. This earth is the home for his image bearers. Rendering this home unlivable for those made in His image is a serious crime. This earth is home to the wildest and most wonderful array of creatures, and which we are supposed to be looking after. The Creator declared His creation to be good and he blessed it before we ever even showed up.

Again, just because it will be made new or renewed does not mean that this earth does not matter. The new earth will still be recognizable as the earth, our home. There will be continuity.

This blog is devoted to the proposition that this earth matters, yes, even to Christians, and yes, even to those conservative types, the ones who still believe that stuff like “maker of heaven and earth,” “and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,” and “on the third day he arose again from the dead,” and “the Holy Spirit” and so forth.

Historic Orthodox Christians, especially of the Protestant variety, have too long given over the issue of earth care to political and theological liberals. Why, I have no idea. I am thankful that the Catholics and Greek Orthodox have not been so small minded.

It is my hope that this small little bit of the blogosphere will make some difference along the way.

Joel

this site coming soon