In Marine Studies, when teaching about pollution and care of the oceans we tend to focus on the legalities, but here’s another way to look at it.
featured article
CREATION CARE, WHAT CAN I DO!
Philip Summerton
October 23, 2022
Once we start to see that caring for all creation is something that is very important to God, our next step is taking actions which express this. This can sometimes feel very overwhelming and bring up questions such as “Where do I start? Can I really make a difference?”
I was talking to my 6 year old the other day about the rain and he said to me “You know daddy, even one drop of rain will change the level of the puddle.” It was this simple perspective that God used to challenge me about impact. Yes it might look like nothing has changed when a drop of water hits a puddle, but it has made a difference, and if more and more drops of water hit that puddle it will eventually overflow and flood the surrounding area. If we all take small simple steps in the possible towards Creation Care, then big things can happen. As a global movement we have the ability to take principles and spread them quickly, learning together and discipling the places we are called to. But I can hear you asking “OK, but what do we do?”
One of the easiest places to start is around “reduce, reuse, recycle”. When we think through our impact on the world and our neighbour, one of the easier places to start is thinking about what we purchase and it’s lifecycle. Where did it come from, how did it get to me and where will it go when I’m finished with it. A great question to ask is “Do I actually need this?” and if I do, “Do I need it new?” By taking a moment to reflect on that question we can often reduce our impact. Another way to look at this is what’s the product made from, ie “is it plastic or is it paper?” Paper if left outside will break down and return to soil, plastic if left out will stay around for 100’s of years. Also “What is it packaged in?” Here in the UK, a supermarket has the option of fruit and vegetables loose or pre-packaged. It might seem like a small thing but if lots of people started to shift their purchasing habits away from pre-packaged items to loose it would dramatically reduce the amount of waste we produce. This principle also works at an items end-of-life, take a moment to think about where it’s going after it’s been yours. Rather than just throw it away (because there is no away) can it be reused or repaired? Can I take it to a charity shop or put it on a secondhand marketplace or give it away? Can this item be recycled and if so how? If we can both reduce the amount we purchase and also the amount we throw away, our impact on the environment around us significantly. But taking time to think about where a product has come from before it reaches me and where it goes after me is an important part of understanding how we individually/as a community/as a society have an impact on our neighbours.
Another aspect of waste management is food waste and other organic material (such as a 100% cotton item of clothing). You can actually compost a large range of items, but start with something that is manageable for who you are and the size of your community. Then you can plan what to do with the compost once it is broken down. If you have a garden you can use it to help your plants grow, or if you don’t, you can look for and connect with a local group which does have growing areas and see if they would like to have it (this can be a great way to develop relationships with the local community). This helps to take the waste that would otherwise go to landfill and produce methane and recycles, reduces and reuses it into something that helps to bring life. From personal experience making this change within a larger YWAM community, it reduces the cost of bin collection, if you pay based on the amount of waste being removed. It also allowed us to grow better quality vegetables to eat with higher nutrient content, which in turn impacted the health of those in the community.
Another area to look at both on individual and location level, is energy and water use. A very simple thing to change are lightbulbs, from low efficiency to high efficiency (LED). They can cost a bit more in the short term, but they will use a lot less electricity saving money in the longer term. It’s also worth looking at the appliances being used, ie washing machines, fridges etc, and seeing if you’re able to change out lower efficiency items for higher efficiency ones. In the EU there’s a very helpful rating system for appliance efficiency. You’ll discover as you change out less efficient items for more efficient ones you’ll spend less on your bills, saving money in the long term. It also helps the environment as your location uses less power, less energy will need to be generated, which, especially if the power is generated by burning gas, has a knock on effect on the levels of Carbon pollution released. Our water usage also impacts the environment around us. For example rather than tossing cooking water down the drain it can be saved and used to water plants as the water will carry extra nutrients from the cooking process. Or quicker and cooler showers as this reduces the amount of water being used and the amount of energy needed to heat that water, which help to save money and reduce the environmental impact.
Cleaning products are another area to look at, we all want to keep our places clean, so we often purchase the things that we’ve always used or a company tell us we need. My wife purchased a book not too long ago to give alternative ideas for natural things we can use to gain the same cleaning results. For example lemon juice is a very effective stain remover especially on tomato based stains. It’s also helpful to understand how your waste system is set up, for example if your location has a septic tank then using a standard toilet cleaner is actually very detrimental to the bacteria in the system making the septic tank less effective. There are a lot of toilet cleaning products that are friendly to septic tanks, or you can use baking soda and vinegar.
Looking at the biodiversity of your location is another easy and clear way we can better care for our environment. For example we have seen a vast reduction in species of pollinators across Europe since the end of World War 2, which in turn affects our food production as most plants need at least some help in producing fruit/seeds. God designed an amazing system of interconnected elements to bring life and fruitfulness and when we lose part of that we often see things either collapse or one thing over dominating and the system not working well. We can allow our grass to grow long in an area, or be intentional about setting up a wild flower area of native species to your area. It can also be helpful to look at what is in your location and if it would normally be found there, if we can help to create a place where native plant species are able to grow it in turn helps with natural insect life which in turn helps with birds and small mammals etc all the way up to larger animals. The loss of biodiversity in an area leads to great environmental strain but when we help to bring restoration we help an environment better cope with extremes in weather etc. which in turn helps the local people to have a higher quality of life.
You can also contact your local and national authority. Here in the UK I can write to my MP to express my concerns asking them to raise these within parliament, it is not a perfect system, but the elected representatives are supposed to be the voice of the people who voted for them and if lots of people are writing to them about a particular issue then they should make that known. We can ask them to enact and develop policy that is to the benefit of our environment, such as funding for biodiversity projects and renewable energy and resist policy which would cause great environmental destruction or detriment to the people they represent.
There are many other things that we can do, these are just a few ideas. One of the questions that can often come up is what difference does this really make in the grand scheme of things? If we just look at it from a worldly point of view very little, but as I said at the start even one drop of water changes the level in a puddle, so no mater how small it seems it does make a difference. But from an integrity perspective it makes a huge difference in our authority to speak and pray into these issues. Our authority both spiritually and physically is tied to the integrity with which we approach things, and when we make choices in line with God’s nature and character we find that things can shift in a dramatic way, such as feeding over 5,000 people from a single meal.
featured article
WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF HIS CREATION?
by Ben Richards
Europe LLC
The European Leadership Learning Community is one-stop location for all your Leadership Development needs. Whether it is to find a speaker or teacher for your DTS or to browse a curated list of mentors, coaches debriefers – it is all here. We also provide videos, teaching and articles for a monthly theme centred around issues that are driven by you – the leaders who are at the sharp end of missions. On top of this there monthly drop in discussions, round ups and leadership lounges where various leaders from our area get to grips with the tough and challenging topics of the day. Finally, we offer resources – book lists, assessments, recommended blogs, events you should not miss and so much more. Why not recommend us to all your YWAM leadership friends?
October 23, 2022
The beginning of lockdown, March 2020. I’m sitting in the kitchen reading the news on my phone trying to relax. The news item? Another environmental problem – a familiar and sad theme but still strangely interesting. But this time I notice the Spirit is trying to get my attention to not just understand but pray about the article’s subject. This comes repeatedly in coming weeks.
For years I’d simply felt that surely God had these big environmental issues broadly under control and would sort them out – I’d be ok to ignore them and maybe it’s a specialist area for a few others.
It seemed that the more important calling was our mission to the nations and the “spiritual” things, after all, we are told to set our hearts and minds on things above, not earthly things. So how we treat the world around us must be a long way down the list of priorities and seemed separate from missions.
The general assumption in churches I had been in seemed to be that the New Testament priorities contained little interest in the non-human creation. We all love beauty and wonder in creation but deeply caring for its well-being? Not clear as any priority.
And I knew that for many Christians, the knowledge that God will bring a new heaven and a new earth means that we don’t have to bother much with looking after the current earth. I wasn’t sure I believed that last point but had never explored it.
Yet with these narratives being challenged in intercession, which was incessant for months, I had to seek God properly. Before long, I found other Christians also wrestling with these understandings- some in YWAM, some not. Soon I found that my reading of some Biblical passages had been pretty limited.
Let’s start to look at what can be found in the Bible:
There was a major theme of the whole Bible that I’d hardly begun to grasp – God had specifically created us for the task of delegated rulership of His creation. The objective? Show His glory by how we rule and partner with Him – to the point of a redemption of all things under King Jesus.
Let us start with one of our most familiar verses, Genesis 1:26, describing us as His image bearers. This truth is so deeply consequential that it appears in almost every YWAM teaching I’ve ever heard. But the verse also says something else that’s vital: “let us make mankind in our own image so that they may rule over” the … rest of creation. (NIV). Here, we have a deep reason we were created “SO THAT” – the mandate to rule. But what type of rule? It has often been interpreted as domination. However, the same hebrew word for rule (Radah) is used in Psalms 145 and 72 to describe an ideal King – who wants the best for his people. Far from dominating, the rulership we are made for is actually a servant leadership rule – just like we are trained to lead in our communities, to bring out the best in the people God has put us with. One Old testament scholar, Ellen Davis, translates the passage as “humans shall exercise skilled mastery over the rest of creation.” A much more artisan-like, creative application of skill.
Then, in Genesis 2:15, we are put in the garden “to work it and take care of it” which sounds just like a simple farming task – but the hebrew words (abad and shamar) can be translated “serve and protect” or “work it and guard it” or “care for it and maintain it”. This is not a command for unsustainable, utilitarian, maximum productivity; it is a loving, caring responsibility to seek creation’s flourishing- which will benefit humans as well as non-human creation.
But what about Jesus and the New Testament?
There are many verses about Jesus’ purpose which relate to more than humans in ways I had hardly noticed:-
John 3:16, that precious compact description of the incarnation: we tend to assume that it says “God so loved the people of the world”, yet the “world” that God loves so much is actually the greek word “Kosmos” – which normally means all of creation. So the incarnation and death of Jesus is about more than humans. What can that mean? While being wonderfully excited by what it means for us to be free from sin and death, have we missed that redemption also goes beyond humans to the rest of creation?
Colossians 1 :16,17 talks about all things being created by Him and for Him, echoing John 1:3 “through Him all things were made”. Redeeming all things to himself in Christ is the ultimate consequence of Jesus’ death on the cross (Col 1:20). Romans 8 talks about creation waiting in eager expectation for the glorious freedom of the children of God. Finally, in John’s vision, not only does every tribe and tongue declare Jesus King (Rev 7:9) but every living creature as well (Rev 5:13).
While this redemption will ultimately be seen in the age to come, it seems that some is seen now, in a similar way to our own lives- much redemption is visible in us now as we taste of the powers of the age to come (Heb 6:5) and pray for His will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven. As we obey the Genesis mandate, will we see creation tasting heaven? There are examples from revival settings of bumper harvests, and of sites where particular evil hashappened becoming barren. I consider there is hope here.
About that New earth….
I suggest that we have already seen enough Bible weight to know we are expected to seek the best for His creation. But there could be an elephant in this room for some Christians: verses about a new earth. Let’s address these as they have been used to suggest that we don’t need to look after the rest of creation – or not much anyway.
We do know that we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth (2 Peter 3:13) and that the existing world will be destroyed by fire when the day of the lord comes like a thief (2Pe3:10 paraphrased).
Here, as always, the words and context really matter. Two greek words for “new” were available: either neos or kainos. Neos means completely new- like a brand new car exiting a factory – whereas Kainos means new in some aspects or repurposed or transformed – more like a repaired second hand car that’s new to you but not newly created. 2 Peter 3 contains Kainos not neos. The same is true in Rev 21:1. The new heaven and new earth are RE-newed not brand new. There is a parallel to us being “a new creation”- recognisable but cleansed and redeemed (2 Co 5:17) or even the resurrection body of Jesus, whose wounds were still visible. And to understand the destructive fire in 2Pe 3v4-6, the context in the chapter is Noah’s flood, where the destruction was refining from evil not complete obliteration and re-creation of the world. The fire here, I submit (as do theologians much more studious than I ) is a refining fire, not a completely destroying fire.
The “new” earth will, I submit, have some continuity from this earth. This surely adds weight to our responsibility to look after what we can of this creation. But even if the new earth is a complete replacement, we have to obey the mandate from Genesis to care for all God made, and live with the expectation of creation’s future redemption.
Wrapping things up, ready for application…..
This is a brief overview of the extensive Biblical support that we should all care for His creation. If it’s true that this is a fundamental theme of the Bible and our purpose, we need to look in more depth- for which we have offered some further reading and the Creation Care forum in January. And we can explore what this might mean in Phil’s article on practical steps.
Possible ways to think of this relationship between humans and non-human creation; some helpful parallels to ponder:
1) It’s as if we have been lent God’s car keys – and he’d like the car back in one piece! But we do have the ability to crash it- that’s free will right there.
2) Are we tenants of a landlord called King of Kings? The Earth is the Lords and everything in it (Psalm 24). If so, we have a lease that includes us looking after the property.
3) Imagine if we knew an artist who created something good (or even very good), why would you wilfully damage it if you like or love that person?
4) Anyone who mistreats the poor shows contempt for their maker (Proverbs 14:31). So what about anyone who mistreats creation? Does it show contempt for the creator?
5) Is there a parallel with our own bodies- which we feed and care for (Eph 5:29) because we know He made our bodies carefully and loves us dearly? We know that if we don’t take care of ourselves, ill health is a consequence – and less Glory for our creator. Is our relationship with the rest of creation similar?
Ben has over 20 years of YWAM experience under his belt, before joining YWAM he undertook PhD in Paleoclimate studies but left this experience on the ‘shelf’ as he followed Gods call into cross cultural mission. Over the last 2-3 years God has asked him to pick this back up and look at it again from God’s perspective and help to bring a deeper understanding of God’s character to the wider body of Christ. Now based in Paisley he has helped to co-found a creation care hub to help serve YWAM in this area.