The Earth God Made: The Politics of Christian Responsibility

Just a quick note before I make my point about this. I was talking to my friend Brad or Brad during lunch this week (see favorite lunch in the side column) and he put a nice term on a lot of what I’ve been trying to do here (as he and others are doing elsewhere): "reclaiming Christianity." I’m wearied, as is he, of the way in which the term “Christian” is employed to legitimate greed, the pursuit of power and the destruction of other people’s lives. We have to be restless in our efforts to reclaim the identity of Christianity. Worse, this abuse comes from Christians themselves who ignorantly confuse their (secular) cultural ideals with Christianity.

To the point:

Christians readily confess to “not being perfect, just forgiven.” Of course, there’s a big difference between reluctantly accepting our weaknesses as humans and happily ignoring our responsibilities. These days, most Christians are unaware of the theology which undergirds our behavior as a culture when it comes to our resources.

The theological condition of our cultural behavior is called the “cultural mandate.” It’s based on Genesis 1.28 “. . . subdue [the earth] . . . ” Here’s how the argument goes: since God told us to subdue the earth and since environmental concerns apparently have no similar theological basis, concerns about the environment are not Christian concerns.

So the cultural mandate has been used to legitimize how we assume we can go about using the resources of the earth. But is it really the case that there is a biblical mandate to do whatever we feel like with the earth God made? That is, is it the case that while, according to the Bible, humans are given authority over the earth, we can therefore abuse it? Think of it like this: parents have authority over their children (also a biblical principle), but does that mean that the parent can do whatever he or she feels like doing to the child? Of course not, the Apostle Paul even warns against it.

Surely it’s reasonable for us to assume that just because we believe we have “authority” over the earth, does not at the same time mean that we have no regard for the well-being of the earth.

Here’s another way to think about it: why not?! Why not bother to care for the earth? There’s only one single reason: selfishness. And let’s note that selfishness is the behavior most disdained by the teachings of Jesus and the behavior most opposed to dominant biblical ethic: love.

This selfishness manifests itself in our personal laziness, insofar as we simply do not want to be inconvenienced. We have a standard of living we are just not willing to give up, so we deliberately choose to ignore all the Christian ethics that question the legitimacy of that standard. The worst, though, is the way our selfishness manifests itself in the alluring green hue of the mighty dollar. This is where it gets insidious.

Currently, it’s the “Christian” (mainly evangelical) position to support political candidates who don’t support environmental concerns. Why? Because such political candidates tend to be politically conservative (whatever that means), and Christians equate conservative politics with Christian values. The same candidates, to the degree to which they reject environmental concerns, support the very corporations doing the most damage. Furthermore, these politicians (the ones assumed to be supportive of Christian values), use their political muscle to protect these corporations from having to either change their practices (which costs money) or invest in environmentally safe processes (which costs money).

Note these two things: (A) just this last week, the Supreme Court decided that the Federal Government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, (B) last week, the most dire report on the environment came out from a prominent panel of scientists from around the world. The big point of this report was not so much that the earth is warming and that much damage has already been done, and that there are countless tangible and measurable results (that much we already knew). The big point was that the effects of all this are going to hit with the greatest severity the poorest people on the planet. That is, the wealthiest are creating conditions which destroy the conditions of the poorest people. Surely we really don’t have to point out how profoundly un-Christian and unbiblical this is?

The United States is five percent of the world’s population (300m out of 6B). However, we produce twenty-five percent of the world’s green house emissions. Now, we also produce things for other parts of the world, but even so, the figure represents a certain poverty of global stewardship. If American Christians claim that we should be a Christian nation and influence the world thusly, then are we not all the more responsible to take care of that over which we were given stewardship? And let us note: we’re talking about the “whole earth” not just the USA.

You’d think so, but after the Supreme Court ruled this week, what was George Bush’s response? It was that (A) we’ve already done enough and (B) we’re not doing anything until polluters like China do. What kind of global leadership does this exhibit? More importantly, is it the Christian norm to say “I’m not going to stop sinning until that sinner over there does”?

Why would someone have this deeply selfish attitude? Let’s note it clearly: this is not at all a Christian perspective. This is about money and the power to make more money. It is not about right and wrong. This is not a moral or ethical issue for George Bush. It is simply and only about money. Admittedly, Bush and his advocates might attempt the feeble claim that this is about national security, which, in the end, only means they equate money with national security, because for Bush, security and peace come from power. These are not the politics of Jesus.

We’ve been given the earth (however we may understand that), and what an infinitely wonderful gift it is. But what kind of depraved people would we have to be to take that gift and destroy it before the one who gave it to us?

Is it really that difficult to accept that the gift of the earth comes with the responsibility to care for it? If we don’t accept that as a biblical mandate, can’t we at least accept that it’s not a bad idea to take care of a gift so deeply precious. And even if we still cannot even accept that, then surely we have to accept that to deliberately and knowingly hurt another human being is contrary to countless biblical mandates, since this is what we know our disregard for the environment has been and is doing at this very moment.