What is
Creation Care to you? What are some things you do?
Simply defined, to me and my family: Creation Care means aligning ourselves with part of God’s original intent for
humanity, in the Garden of Eden, through caring for God’s good creation by
practicing disciplines that reduce our carbon foot print, that take seriously
the ethical treatment of creatures within creation, that reduce the use of
artificial ingredients in our daily lives, that help us preserve natural
ecosystems and processes both locally and globally, and that promote justice
for humanity as well as balance in the global environment.
These lists aren’t exhaustive, but here are some examples of
the easier things I do/have done/ am trying to implement in the practice of
Creation Care (things anyone could easily implement into the fabric of their
daily lives):
•
Reusable bags
•
Recycling
•
Compact car w/ great mpg
•
Hang dry our clothes
•
Energy efficient light bulbs
•
Garden
•
Lower temps in our house in the winter/ higher
temps in the Summer
•
Pay a little more for
products that are better for the environment
•
Eco-friendly diapers
•
Wipes that were made in an zero-waste facility
•
ethically sourced eggs and meat
•
Natural hand soaps
•
Buy in bulk (not necessarily Costco/ Sam’s bulk –
bulk section. i.e. no packaging)
•
Keep most of our gadgets/appliance plugged into a
power strip in order that we can turn them off w/ a switch (helps prevent
phantom power use)
•
We practice the art of
cooking!!!!!
•
e.g. Homemade yogurt – I can ensure that my yogurt
has only yogurt in it,
•
E.g. Homemade bread has FAR LESS sodium, sugar,
and artificial leveners/binders
Here are some of the …harder and kooky things I do/have done/
am trying to implement to promote Creation Care:
•
Composting
•
Collect Gray water to flush
toilets (i.e. water that has already been used like laundry water or the water
that runs while one waits for the faucet to heat up)
•
Hand Washing Clothes
•
Home Made laundry soap (helps reduce packaging
waste, controls which chemicals are being put into our water)
•
Cloth diapers
•
When I can, I bike
places to cut down on emissions
How do you experience the
brokenness of the world uniquely because of the disciplines you do?
I think, I can
answer this in a several ways. First, Romans 8 tells us that creation is broken
and waiting for redemption. So, simply by being aware that our environment
needs protecting or that our actions can cause imbalance in creation is a
testament unto itself that, because of the Fall, creation is “out of whack.”
Another way I experience
brokenness through different practices of Creation Care is more inward. That
is, doing these practices often forces me to realize my own brokenness. As a
perpetual but also practical ritual, I truly understand the different things I
do within Creation Care as disciplines.
Thus, when I save
gray water, pack my groceries in reusable bags, make homemade laundry soap, break
down recycling, tend my measly garden, or whatever, the Spirit will often
gently remind me that I am doing it because I worship the Lord; it is an act of
discipline and of worship. On the flip side, I will often find myself sunk in
guilt, mired in sin, or having become apathetic toward my spiritual life. These
are the times when, as I practice creation care, I find myself saying to
(sometimes pleading with) the Lord, “I failed you in this area, Father! But, I
am partnering with you through these disciplines of Creation Care!”
Lastly, I see
brokenness in other people, sometimes, when I practice the things of Creation
Care. I don’t mean this in a judgmental way, but I am often still surprised at
how people can be affronted by my decision to be Creation conscious. Sometimes,
I’ll have friends who can only view my actions through a political lens and
thus will write off my ardent and serious acts of worship as
leftist-hippy-nonsense. So, that’s one way I see brokenness in others.
A different way
I see brokenness in others is when I notice that people have a hard time believing
that I would choose something other than whatever is the most convenient action
in a given situation. As a quick and easy example, even now (especially here in
CO) that it has become more popular to use re-usable grocery bags, I can’t tell
you how often I get stopped at stores or have to explain to clerks multiple
times that I don’t want plastic bags. They will often get a puzzled expression
and start looking for hidden cameras. Once, I even had a clerk refuse to put my
items in anything but plastic bags, because she simply could not wrap her mind
around the idea that I would do something that took a modicum of extra effort
for the environment. A lot of people just have a hard time comprehending the
fact that I would choose Creation over convenience.
How do
you bear the image of God through Creation Care?
Right, at least to some degree, I think Creation care is part
of what it means to align myself with the original intent of humanity and
thereby participate in what it means to bear the image of God.
To clarify, one way I view the Bible is by what some call a
“book ends” idea. That is, in the beginning of the Bible we see Adam in a
Garden and at the end of the Bible we see Christ in a City; these images are
actually related.
Now, in Genesis 1:28 Adam is told to SUBDUE the Earth and to
DOMINATE a milieu of creatures. We could follow a ton of exegetical rabbit
holes trying to understand what God is actually telling Adam he is meant to
dominate in this verse. Regardless, this language of subdue/dominate is very
strong, and I believe it has been exploited in the past to essentially mean that
we can let matters of creation or environmentalism go to pot simply because it
is ours do with what we will.
However, if one looks at the entire scope of the creation
narrative, what she’ll find is that part of what is happening is that the
narrative moves away from chaos toward order.
On the one hand, Genesis 1:2 says the Spirit was hovering over the deep
(chaos), and on the other we get Adam ordering the Garden. So, when Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam
in the Garden with the express purpose of working and tending it, one sees that
the narrative is actually filling out, in my mind, what it means to subdue and
to dominate. It has more to do with ordering and caring for creation rather
than taking advantage of it.
I mean, a garden by definition is not nature gone wild nor
creation gone amok! A garden requires someone to tend it. On the flip side, a
garden can’t truly be a garden if it is neglected. It literally cannot be a
garden without someone there to guide it. When one puts all of these elements together,
the Bible promotes the idea that the original intent of humanity’s relationship
to creation had more to do with STEWARDSHIP than abuse or exploitation.
So, that’s one book end. At the other end of the Bible, in
Revelation 21-22, the reader is introduced to a city - New Jerusalem. We often think of cities as festering, dank,
cesspits of human existence. In many ways, cities are thought of as essentially
the opposite of nature. But, that is not the picture described in Revelation.
No, the New Jerusalem is more like a city that is in harmony with the created
order. For instance, it is said that Christ sits where the Temple should be,
and his face is the light. The walls of the city are made from precious
gemstones, and each gate is made from a single pearl.
Read further and one sees that from the throne of Christ is a
river that produces trees on its bank, which are called trees of life. This is
actually a reference to Ezekiel 47, which also has a description of the eschatological
(or end times) Temple. In Ezekiel, this same river protrudes from the Temple
area and heads east toward the Dead Sea. On its way, it describes the same
trees on the rivers’ bank, and it says that they produce fruit every month and
their crops never fail. The river is literally a “river of life” that allows
the trees to flourish. Eventually, the river dumps into the Dead Sea, which is
called so because it is devoid of life from excessive mineral runoff. This Biblical
life-giving river, however, freshens the water and makes it teem with life.
If one thinks of the images of Adam’s garden and Christ’s city
as connected in the Biblical narrative, then the picture that Revelation paints
is one that shows Christ perfecting what Adam was meant to before the Fall –
ordering creation. Adam had a garden, but Christ will have a city. Adam was
meant to order creation, and Christ’s Jerusalem shows that done to the nth
degree.
This is significant when showing what Creation Care has to do
with bearing the image of God, because at its core Creation Care illuminates
part of humanity’s original purpose but also how history will ultimately bear
this out through Jesus at his return. Thus, when I practice the disciplines of
Creation Care, not only do I hold firmly to the history of (the very essence
of) what it means to be human and thus an image bearer, but I also align myself
with the trajectory of what the Bible says will be the outplay of image bearing
– Christ in a city that is in harmony with creation.
How is
this shaping you?
Well, let me first point to a couple of resources that have
helped shape my thinking on some of this. These resources aren’t exhaustive,
and I could list a bunch more. However, for the sake of time, these couple
books have had a real and lasting impact on me.
Sleeth
M.D., J. Matthew. Serve God, Save the Planet:
A Christian Call to Action. Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2007 - this book of
any other is the one that really hit home for me. It is a bit dated, now. So,
take that into consideration. However, I think Dr. Sleeth does an excellent job
showcasing why the argument for Creation Care is important for Christian
communities as well as showing practical examples of how to incorporate such
disciplines into the fabric of one’s life.
Dawn,
Marva. In the Beginning, God: Creation,
Culture, and the Spiritual Life. Downers Grove: IVP, 2009. - This book
is not specifically about Creation Care perse, but it does a great job going
through some of the intricacies associated with the Biblical creation
narrative, and there is a small section that helped shape my understanding on
why stewardship might be at the heart of the “subdue/dominate” language.
Beyond this, I would say, as I have mentioned, the practice(s)
of Creation Care are real disciplines for me as well as acts of worship. So, to
that end, I am continually being shaped through the practice by increasingly and
constantly being aware of the ways I am aligning myself with God. Perhaps, this
is simply a characteristic of disciplines in general. In this, however, I would
say, that it has given me a greater sense of what it means to worship through
discipline, as a Christian.
What I mean is this: we often think about disciplines as these
kinds of inconvenient and mostly uncomfortable things that we have to slog
through to show that we are pious. I mean, we may not want to think about them
like that, but in my experience, even the most ardent of Christians fall into
the trap being pharisaic with disciplines; we let the practice of our
disciplines become legalistic.
And, I am not saying I am perfect at this with Creation Care
or any other discipline, but because there is a practical side to disciplines
associated with Creation Care, I have found it is easier to think of them as
opportunities more than obligations. For instance, I can’t always flush my
toilet with gray water nor can I practically ride my bike to every destination
that I have. But, the times I do use gray water or am able to bike instead of
drive are OPPORTUNITIES to partner with God in preserving and promoting His
good creation.
For another example, a few years back (and for a few years
running) I had an EPIC home garden. Now, I did everything to care for this
garden on my own, and it was a pretty intense amount of work. I built all the
raised beds by hand, I grew ALL of our plants from seed, I was composting, I
was doing pest control, and watering and fertilizing and etc., etc. I don’t say
this to pat myself on the back, but to simply say that I really didn’t have to
do any of that. There were days that I wondered why I would add so much work to
my already (at the time) fairly robust schedule of grad school and caring for
an infant.
But, the truth is it was an opportunity. I chose to see this
as a way of worshipping God in a mode that the Bible describes as part of the
original way Eve and Adam were meant to be doing so. By worshiping God in this
way, I was not just checking things off my spiritual to-do list, but I got to cultivate
real and practical elements within my spiritual journey. Our Garden grew, our
lives were enriched, we partook of the literal fruit of God’s good creation,
and we had the opportunity to worship God through the entire process.
What might it look like for you
to confirm the gospel in your work?
For me, the
practice of Creation Care is a
witness to the Gospel itself, to some degree.
What I
mean is, sometimes “The Gospel” is reduced to the words we speak about the
message of Jesus. However, if we are called to be disciples, then part of the
message of the Gospel is to live out the change we experience as we grow closer
to God, which is partly realizing and chasing after God’s original vocation for
us. We have an intended purpose in caring for the Garden, and Christians can
still spiritually worship God by bearing witness to the goodness of God’s
original created design and by partnering with God in implementing a lifestyle
that aligns ourselves with the ultimate hope that the greater Gardener, Christ,
will fully redeem Creation when He returns.
So, the
acts of Creation Care help me declare the Gospel through all of these ways, in
one:
1.) I remember that I am aligning myself with god’s original intention for
humanity.
2.) In the here and now, I bear witness to the goodness of creation.
3.) I proclaim the hope I have that Christ will return to not only redeem humanity
but the whole of creation itself.
