Celebrate Earth Day by Remembering Earth’s Creator

It’s offi­cially Earth Day in my time zone now, and before going to sleep, I thought I’d post some assorted thoughts related to Earth Day or envi­ron­men­tal­ism in general.

I don’t buy into global warm­ing or that mankind is some­how adversely affect­ing global weather patterns.

I think recy­cling is a good idea. Actu­ally, any­thing which results in more judi­cious use of resources is good. The fact of the mat­ter is, the earth is finite, and so its resources are nec­es­sar­ily finite as well.

I believe that God cares how we treat the earth, for mankind was com­mis­sioned to tend to the Gar­den. It’d be easy enough to dis­miss that as a com­mand relat­ing to Eden alone if it wasn’t for the con­tin­ued empha­sis on judi­cious use of land and resources through­out the Mosaic Law. Even the treat­ment of domes­ti­cated ani­mals was required to be humane.

I know that regard­less of your envi­ron­men­tal views, cer­tain prac­tices have tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits now, such as recy­cling alu­minum. Even if you don’t drink pop your­self, you could turn a profit by recy­cling the cans of fam­ily, cowork­ers, or oth­ers who don’t recy­cle. You’d be stu­pid not to (like me, until recently!).

But more than all of that, I know that the earth is not ulti­mate real­ity, and as large and won­drous as it is — Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel and oth­ers will never tire of remind­ing you of such — it is itself garbage in com­par­i­son to its Creator.

Ulti­mately, if we Chris­tians are going to cel­e­brate Earth Day, I think we should do so with a focus not on how des­per­ately this planet needs us to hug a tree — I promise you, the world will con­tinue more or less unhin­dered until Yah­weh Him­self engulfs it in fire — but rather in how incom­pre­hen­si­bly awe­some Earth’s Cre­ator is.

It is He who must be our focus, our source of hope… the object of our praise and affection.

Per­haps this Earth Day, in addi­tion to what­ever you nor­mally do, you could cel­e­brate by read­ing Gen­e­sis 1–2 and Romans 1 and by giv­ing the Cre­ator His due.

Remem­ber: You may live on the earth, but it is through the Cre­ator that you, the earth, and every­thing else has their exis­tence. With­out Him and His ongo­ing influ­ence on Cre­ation, there would be sim­ply void.