Some thoughts on Earth Day (a biblical perspective of clashing worldviews)

Last week our girls came home from school hyped about Earth Day. This elicited both positive and negative feelings in my wife and me. Positive feelings because we want to raise our girls to be good stewards of the environment. Sustainability and conservation are certainly qualities we want to pass onto the next generation. The negative feelings stem from the underlining political and social views that often accompany Earth Day discussions and celebrations. For starters the earth is not our “Mother.” Each of us are image-bearers of God who “created (our) inmost beings and knit us together in (our) mother’s womb.” This prompts us to praise along with the psalmist, “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14, NIV). Further the earth and its ecosystem belong to their Creator, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 21:1, KJV).

Our duty therefore is to be a steward of what ultimately belongs to the Creator. Genesis 1:26 sums this up, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” God’s command is that mankind “rule” and in verse 28, “subdue” the earth and its creatures.

Willful pollution and misuse of the environment has not occurred because of God’s command to “rule” and “subdue” but because mankind has done so without a sense of accountability to God. In other words, our highest motivation for caring for the environment is that we are called to steward what ultimately does not belong to us.

I came across a couple of stories in the news recently that I believe capture this clashing of worldviews. The first is about an amazing young girl, Deepika Kurup, the 9^th grader from New Hampshire, whose clean water invention won America’s Top Young Scientist-- 2012. Read her story, Young scientist of the year's invention could clean water for 1.1 billion here.

 

The second is Darwinist David Attenborough's asserrtion that mankind is a "plague on Earth." Read more here.