Creation Care and Stewardship

Today's Scripture

Genesis 1:28 — "And God blessed them. And God said to them, '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 2:15 — "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."

Psalm 24:1 — "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein."

The Big Idea

The earth does not belong to us. It belongs to God, and he has handed it to us the way a friend hands you the keys to something he loves. That gives us two jobs at the same time: develop the world ("work it") and protect the world ("keep it"). Most political fights about the environment happen because each side grabs one of those jobs and drops the other.

Reflection

Two commands, one garden

Open the Bible to its first page and you find a command that surprises people. God's first words to human beings are not "be careful." They are "be fruitful." Genesis 1:28 — "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."

"Dominion" is an old word for rule, or authority. Christians often call this verse the cultural mandate — God's standing assignment to take the raw material of his world and make something good out of it. Farms come from this verse. So do medicine, music, bridges, vaccines, and software. When humans plant, build, invent, and cultivate, they are not paving over Eden. They are obeying a command.

But one page later, God sharpens the job description. Genesis 2:15 — "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." Two verbs, side by side. Work it — develop it, draw out its hidden potential. Keep it — guard it, protect it, watch over it. The Hebrew word for "keep" (shamar) is the same word used later for priests guarding God's holy tent, and for God himself keeping his people: "The Lord bless you and keep you."

So the first human was not installed as an owner. He was installed as a gardener — and a kind of guard. John Calvin, commenting on this very verse almost five hundred years ago, drew the obvious conclusion:

"Let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses." — John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis

A steward is a manager of property that belongs to someone else. That one word holds both Genesis commands together. A steward who never develops the estate is failing his master. A steward who strips it bare is robbing him.

And notice that the working half is a gift, not a curse. Work shows up in the Bible before sin does. Tim Keller put it this way:

"Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul." — Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavor

God meant for the garden and the gardener to flourish together. The question of this whole day is what happens when we forget whose garden it is.

The owner's name is on the deed

Why does the Bible keep insisting we are stewards and not owners? Because the owner has put his name on the deed. Psalm 24:1 — "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." Not "the earth is humanity's." Not "the earth is the economy's." The Lord's.

God said the same thing to Israel about their own farmland. Leviticus 25:23 — "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me." Even the promised land — the land they fought for, farmed, and handed down — was, in God's eyes, a long-term loan.

Think about borrowing a friend's car. You drive it; that is what it is for. But you drive it differently than a rental you will never see again. You park it carefully. You return it with a full tank. Why? Because you love the friend, and the car is his. That is the whole biblical ethic of creation care in one picture. Use the world. Don't trash it. Remember whose it is.

And this particular owner is an artist. Calvin — not a man given to gushing — told Christians to enjoy the show:

"Let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beautiful theater." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Scripture says the theater is always preaching. Psalm 19:1 — "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." C.S. Lewis confessed that creation did exactly this work in his own soul:

"Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word 'glory' a meaning for me." — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins compressed it into one famous line:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God." — Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"

If that is true, then carelessness with creation is not just bad policy. It is something closer to scribbling on someone else's masterpiece. The Bible even makes our treatment of animals a window into the heart: Proverbs 12:10 — "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." How you treat what cannot vote, pay, or thank you reveals who you really are.

What each side sees — and misses

Now to the argument. In modern politics, the environment has become a team jersey. One side talks about jobs, growth, energy, and the dignity of human work, and suspects environmental rules of being power grabs that crush ordinary families. The other side talks about pollution, extinction, and a warming planet, and suspects industry of sacrificing the future for profit. Each side is staring hard at one page of Genesis.

The Bible refuses the either/or. It is unembarrassed about development — subdue the earth — and unembarrassed about protection — keep it. It never worships nature, the way some environmentalism drifts toward treating the earth as a goddess too sacred to touch. And it never treats nature as a mere warehouse of resources, the way some economics treats a forest as nothing but lumber that hasn't been invoiced yet. Creation is not God. Creation is not garbage. Creation is a gift.

Francis Schaeffer is worth hearing here precisely because nobody could mistake him for a fashionable activist. He was a theologically conservative pastor, and in 1970 he wrote an entire book scolding Christians for shrugging at pollution:

"Christians, of all people, should not be the destroyers. We should treat nature with an overwhelming respect because God made it." — Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man

Schaeffer's logic was simple and devastating. We do not care for creation because it is divine. We care for it because it is his — made by the God we claim to love:

"But if I love the Lover, I love what the Lover has made." — Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man

Imagine telling a painter you adore him while using his canvases as drop cloths. Imagine telling a Father you love him while wrecking the house he built for his children — including children not yet born. The right is correct that human work and human flourishing have God-given dignity. The left is correct that the creation is not ours to exploit. Both go wrong the moment they make either the economy or the planet ultimate. Only God is ultimate, and he has opinions about both.

The gardener of Easter morning

Be honest: this topic tends to produce either smugness or despair. Smugness, if creation care becomes one more way to feel superior to the other tribe. Despair, if you begin to believe the world's future rests entirely on whether enough humans behave. The gospel cuts off both.

Paul says creation itself is in pain — and in hope. Romans 8:20-21 — "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." Read that slowly. Set free. Not thrown away — set free. The world's story does not end in a landfill.

How can Paul be so sure? Because of who made the world and who bled for it. Colossians 1:16-17 — "All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Then comes the stunning next step: Colossians 1:19-20 — "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." The cross is not only for souls. It is God's down payment on a mended universe — "all things."

And here is a detail the Gospel of John seems to savor. On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene saw the risen Jesus and did not recognize him. John 20:15 — "Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, 'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.'" She was wrong about the moment — and accidentally right about everything. The new creation began at dawn, in a garden, with a man mistaken for the gardener. He is the true and better Adam, come to work and keep the world the first gardener failed.

So we do not care for creation in panic, as if its fate hangs on us. And we do not neglect it in apathy, as if God plans to abandon it. We tend our small patch of the garden in hope — because the owner has already paid, in blood, to make all things new.

Going Deeper

Take a ten-minute walk today without your phone — around your block, through a park, even across a parking lot with one stubborn tree in it. Notice five things God made and thank him for each one: "The earth is the Lord's." Then, before the day ends, do one small act of keeping — pick up trash that isn't yours, water something, repair something instead of replacing it. Nothing heroic. Stewards prove themselves in the small rooms of the estate.