Christians and the Environment

I am rather a skeptic when it comes to many of the claims of global warming and environmentalism. However, this skepticism about the prognostications of doom and gloom does not indicate that I am unconcerned about the planet we live on. It is quite the opposite, really. I want my skepticism to allow me to find better solutions than those posited by the green movement. I want my diagnosis of the problem and my understanding of solutions to be grounded in the Bible. I have been helped here by Francis Schaeffer and his book Pollution and the Death of Man. It is, in my assessment, still one of the best treatments of a Christian understanding of creation care.

Schaeffer begins with the reassurance that as Christians we are able to acknowledge what today’s secular humanists cannot: That mankind has been called by God to exercise dominion over the earth. We are not here by chance and we are not here by mistake. We were placed here by God to care for this planet and have been called to be faithful stewards of it. But like everything else in this world, our ability to exercise this kind of stewardship has been affected by our sinful state. “By creation man has dominion, but as a fallen creature he has used that dominion wrongly. Because he is fallen, he exploits created things as thought they were nothing in themselves, and as though he has an autonomous right to them.” We no longer consistently tend the world in love, but instead ravage and pillage it. Though we may not believe in all of the dire claims being made about the state of our planet and its perilous future, we must at least acknowledge that we have not cared for the world as God has called us to.   Continue at Tim Challies