Christians must use creation wisely

Thursday, November 1, 2001

By GREGORY RUMMO

On a cool Saturday morning, I watched the sunrise from a perch on a massive granite outcropping along the shoreline of Butler Reservoir.

For me, a hike through the woods is an elixir. The cares of this world melt away, and the solitude affords more time to talk to God and to meditate on his Word.

The Bible has much to say about nature, the environment, and humanity's responsibility to the Earth. In Genesis we read about the first man, Adam, created in a beautiful garden. "Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed" (Genesis 2:8). But God didn't expect the first human to sit back and admire nature. He instructed Adam, along with his wife, Eve, to "work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15) and to "fill the earth and subdue it."

God also gave them authority to "rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Genesis 1:28). This story reveals humanity's original calling -- to be the caretakers of the Earth. As caretakers, we should remember that the Earth is not ours -- it belongs to God.

The Psalmist reminds us: "The heavens are yours, and yours also the Earth; you founded the world and all that is in it" (Psalms 89:11). In the New Testament, Paul writes: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it" (1 Corinthians 10:26).

While God expects us to love the Earth, he does not intend us to worship it as "mother" or "gaia." We are to rule over and subdue the Earth as an integral part of the environment. But that does not mean we are to rape and plunder the Earth. We are to respect it because it is God's creation, not the result of some accident from the cosmic past.

To be able to take care of our planet intelligently, we must be willing to learn about it and develop an appreciation for nature. I had an opportunity to do just that as a chaperone for my son's class trip to Spruce Lake Retreat in the Poconos, just past the Delaware Water Gap in Canadensis, Pa.

Every year, the seventh-graders at Hawthorne Christian Academy participate in a three-day program designed to teach young people about Jesus Christ through God's creation.

From the moment we arrived, we were reminded by Sterling Edwards, program director at Spruce Lake, that good stewardship starts with simple things like turning off lights when they're not needed, lowering thermostats during the winter and raising them in the summer, and not piling food on our plates at the buffet tables.

"Take all you want, but eat all you take," Edwards reminded the young people.

Jana Atwell, one of the instructors, spent the better part of two days with our group. On the first afternoon, we studied life in a pond and learned about animals such as the dragonfly, which undergoes a transformation from subaquatic nymph to air-breathing insect. Quoting 2 Corinthians 5:17 -- "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" -- Atwell explained that when we become Christians, our lives are transformed in an equally radical fashion.

The next day, she guided us on a three-hour hike to the top of Spruce Mountain. We walked through a hemlock ravine following a small creek filled with native brook trout. Atwell interwove Scripture along with her running commentary on nature, often quoting from Psalm 104. Especially appropriate was verse 10: "He makes springs pour water into ravines; it flows between the mountains."

On our final day, another instructor, Jeff Delp, taught us an elaborate game of tag called "Survival." On a wooded acre, we each played the role of a different animal in the food chain. The herbivores had to survive by gathering slips of paper with the name of a specific food written on each scrap. I was a rabbit looking for carrots.

But the omnivores and the carnivores were out to eat also, which meant they could kill the herbivores. We had to run and hide to avoid being tagged and consequently "eaten" by a predator. In addition to the various animals, other parts were the elements, disease, and man. Man didn't need to run after an animal and tag it to kill it. Man could kill simply by seeing you in the woods and calling out your name. An hour later, when the game ended, I had been killed seven times -- including once by man and once by rabies.

Delp followed the game with a lecture. "Because we are Christians," Delp said, "and stewards of God's property, we should be the ones out in front, leading the charge for the environmentally sound use of our natural resources, for their conservation and in some cases, when development is unwise, for preservation."

This was not just good advice. It was a biblical reminder to all of us of the way God wants us to view his creation. As I drove home, I realized that I had been given a fresh perspective on what "ruling over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" really means.

Gregory Rummo is a business executive who belongs to Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson, where he also serves as choir director. You may e-mail him at GregoryJRummo@aol.com

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