"How Many are Your Works?" On Christians and Biodiversity
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
| Mick Pope
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) states that the current species extinction rate is some 1,000-10,000 times the natural rate at which species disappear. Habitats are being destroyed. Human polluting activities are destabilising ecosystems and contributing to climate change, yet biodiversity and healthy ecosystems are needed to support life and human civilisation.
Yet beyond simply an ‘enlightened self-interest’, three good reasons stand out for becoming involved in creation care and stemming the tide of climate change and biodiversity loss. The first is doxological. In their book The Cross and the Rain Forest, Whelan et al. claim that trees are not needed for worship; they are just a source wood. Yet the Scriptures prompt us to imagine even the trees as contributing to the worship of God (Isaiah 44:23) and not just as part of God’s earthly temple (Isaiah 60:13). John Walton points out in The Lost World of Genesis One that Genesis 1 tells the story of God establishing his cosmic temple. In that temple, everything that God has created and reproduces “according to its kind” takes its place to testify of his wisdom (Psalm 104:23). God loves his diverse creation and its wondrous variety calls forth awe and wonder—“How many are your works?” (v. 24)—as well as responsible stewardship: which brings us to our second reason.
Genesis 2 pictures us as God’s appointed gardeners: humanity was to till and tend the garden (Genesis 2:15). There were also ‘wild places’ outside of the human economy that God tends directly for its own sake (Psalm 104, Job 38-41). But in our post-industrial technological era, human activities dramatically affect the entire planet and the ‘groaning’ of creation of which Paul speaks takes on a more urgent meaning (Romans 8:19-20). As Derek Kidner notes in his Genesis commentary, a creation without humanity playing its proper role is like a choir grinding on in discord. If creation is to be liberated from its bondage in the future, why not work now for its preservation? Have you ever heard of a Christian recommending moral laxness because our complete sanctification lies in the future?
Finally, the imperative to love our neighbour as ourselves has never been sharper than in a globalised economy where industrialised pollution and environmental damage has extended to the third world. Greenhouse gases know no national boundaries. Of course, complex problems abound. If we reduce greenhouse gases (and hence impacts on the poor) by eating local foods, we deny growers an income in developing nations. Yet consuming cash crops, exported to pay unserviceable interest on debts, ruins local ecosystems. The link between ecosystems and economics is a close one in God’s oikos (household). Doing justice means looking after all of God’s household so that all people may live in peace and all of creation may flourish in anticipation of God’s final redemption.
Dr Mick Pope is a Meteorologist and heads up the ETHOS Environment think tank for ETHOS, the EA Centre for Christianity and Society.