Earth Day

 

The 51st Earth Day is April 22. The first Earth Day in 1970 was meant to inspire Americans of all stripes to better care for the environment. It’s become fashionable lately for some folks to equate Earth Day and environmental activism with secularism. The truth is that caring for creation has always been a feature of Christian thought.

The first Christian hermits sought to live in harmony with creation. St. Francis called the animals brothers and sisters (as did Dietrich Bonhoeffer much later). When asked what he would do if he knew that Christ would come back tomorrow, Luther famously replied that he’d plant a tree. He wanted to be found doing God’s work. John Wesley reminded his hearers that, “We are not at liberty to use what God has lodged in our hands as we please, but as God pleases, who alone is the possessor of heaven and earth and the Lord of every creature…”.

John Muir’s upbringing in the Disciples of Christ led him to champion wilderness as sanctuary, and Rachel Carson’s Presbyterian love for detail led her to a life devoted to the often-ignored little things. Her book, Silent Spring, ushered in the modern environmental movement.

Scripture suggests two different but complementary ways of thinking about creation care. The first, environmental stewardship, reminds us that God declared his creation “good.” He cares deeply for the mountain goats and the creatures of the deep, the sparrow and the flowers of the field, and he gives us the task of caring for them as his representatives – his image bearers. One of the first tasks God assigns humankind is to tend and keep His garden, to rule it with compassion and humility – never to desecrate it as if it were a thing to use up and toss aside.

In the Hebrew Bible, God commands the Israelites to allow the land to rest, to treat animals and wild creatures humanely, and He reminds them that He takes pleasure in His creation apart from its usefulness to humankind, and it in turn worships Him with its very being. Environmental stewardship doesn’t end with the Hebrew Bible. New Testament writers saw the cross of Christ as the instrument by which God was reconciling all things, including the natural world. In Revelation those who destroy the Earth are condemned. The return of Christ will usher in the renewal of all things – but until then we are to steward what God has entrusted us with.

The second way of thinking about creation care is equally important; environmental justice. Here I am thinking of the Biblical mandate to love one’s neighbor as oneself and how that plays out with regards to natural resources and our environment.

In the book of Leviticus harvesters are to round the corners and leave some of the crop behind for gleaners. How one treats the land is related to justice. The prophet Ezekiel expresses a clear sense of environmental justice when he chastises the wealthy of Judah by asking, “Isn’t it enough for you to keep the best of the pastures for yourselves? Must you also trample down the rest? Isn’t it enough for you to drink clear water for yourselves? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?”

Throughout Jesus’ teaching ministry we see it too: the parables of Lazarus and the Rich Man, the Sheep and Goats, and the Rich Fool all point to a necessary realignment of our relationship to resources as part of the Christian Ethic. James the Elder returns to this theme when he warns the wealthy to pay fair wages to their field workers. We would be wise to remember that we live in one of the richest counties on the planet, and even a lower middle-class American is amongst the richest 10 percent of the world’s population.

Many of our environmental issues today are issues of environmental justice. A coal-fired power plant poisons downwind forests with acid rain and distant aquatic ecosystems with mercury contamination. You don’t pay for these costs in your electric bill, they are considered externalities – someone else “picks up the tab.” A recent study found that millions of people die prematurely each year from the effects of air pollution, much of it caused by extracting, transporting, and burning fossil fuels including oil. Frequently the most impacted are the poor who live in the neighborhoods where refineries are often located. The impacts of rising sea levels in a warming world, another consequence of fossil fuel burning, are also disproportionately borne by the poor of low-lying areas like Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands. Jesus called them “the least of these, my brothers and sisters.”

When Jesus said “love your neighbor” he included even your distant neighbors – the ones who aren’t in your social circle. That was the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan. When James said to pay your workers fairly, he meant to take responsibility for the deadly consequences your economic choices may have on others, even if you didn’t mean them to. In our times this means economic choices taken by you and me that have environmental consequences elsewhere that in turn adversely impact far off neighbors, in some cases to the point of death. These choices are morally wrong. Now we are supposed to make it right. And that’s environmental justice.

Let this Earth Day be a call to reconnect with what the Bible really has to say about the goodness of our planet and our responsibility to steward it. Let it be a reminder to love what and who God loves – to make good economic choices out of compassion, to seek justice for the least of these, and regain a sense of humility before the wonder of His creation.

Daren Blanck is the Pastor of Zoar Church in Tofte, MN, a Lutheran Congregation in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Pastor Daren holds a BS in Environmental Science from Bemidji State, a MS in Education from UW-Superior, and recently completed his MA in Pastoral Theology from Kingswood University in New Brunswick. In addition he studied theatre in the UK and trained for ministry through the LCMC’s Beyond the River Academy. He’s also a part-time teacher in Silver Bay.