Our Relation to God Through Creation (Part 2)

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south (Ps. 107:1-3).

Baby Jesus with bird

I have a friend who is a professor of ecology in a state university. He’s also a committed Christian. A few years ago, he was presenting a Christian view of ecology to an audience that included a nationally influential Jewish rabbi. At the conclusion of the presentation, the rabbi remarked to him, “Your talk almost convinces me that I ought to reconsider Jesus.”

My friend, of course, was amazed to hear such a confession. It affirmed for him that a Christian view of creation and its significance is rarely understood outside Christian circles—and only a little less rarely within Christian circles. From that experience, and many others, this university professor discovered that when the Christian truth about the earth is presented in the hearing of unbelievers, it compels them to listen.

[Many classical paintings depict the infant Jesus with a bird---symbolizing Him as both Savior and Creator, loving people and His creation.]

The biblical view of the origin, meaning, and destiny of the earth, in combination with the whole of the gospel, provides the only answer for the world’s environmental ills and crises caused by sin. In his book The Body, Charles Colson concurs:

We should be contending for truth in every area of life. Not for power or because we are taken with some trendy cause, but humbly to bring glory to God. For this reason, Christians should be the most ardent ecologists. Not because we would rather save spotted owls than cut down trees whose bark provides lifesaving medicine, but because we are mandated to keep the Garden, to ensure that the beauty and grandeur God has reflected in nature is not despoiled. We should care for animals. Not because whales are our brothers, but because animals are part of God’s kingdom over which we are to exercise dominion (p.197).

The sad fact is that the church has poorly understood and demonstrated the biblical principles concerning our stewardship role over creation. In his book on the Christian view of ecology, Francis Schaeffer talks about the responsibility of the church to address the environmental stress suffered by God’s creation:

A truly biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis. It offers a balanced and healthy attitude to nature, arising from the truth of its creation by God; it offers the hope here and now of substantial healing in nature of some of the results of the Fall, arising from the truth of redemption in Christ. . . . A Christian-based science and technology should consciously try to see nature substantially healed, while waiting for the complete future healing at Christ’s return (Pollution And The Death Of Man: The Christian View Of Ecology, p.81).

As followers of Christ, if we are not demonstrating care and concern for the handiwork of the God we say we love and worship, we are missing a great opportunity to show the world that the truth of God’s Word addresses all the world’s distresses. In addition, we will suffer from the spiritual anemia that comes from a failure to apply the whole counsel of God to our Christian behavior.

We need to understand that we cannot demonstrate respect for our Creator and Savior at the same time we are demonstrating disrespect for His creation. After all, we and creation will share in the eventual restoration and reconciliation of all things (Acts 3:20-21; Col. 1:20).

How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By taking every opportunity to demonstrate to the watching world a proper concern for all things that come from the hand of our Creator.