At long last, the evangelical ship seems to be swinging around on the issue of environmental degradation being a legitimate concern for Christians.  Not too long ago, Christianity Today magazine conducted an Internet poll in response to this question: “Should evangelicals lobby on global warming?”  Some 10 percent still believed there was no global warming; 18 percent felt the science was still unclear.  But, surprising to me, 33 percent said, “Yes, it is our job to care for creation.”  Some 20 percent more felt that caring about the climate was an aspect of loving your neighbor or at least caring about it as a social problem.

Also telling is the declining number of those who say, “Our priority should be evangelism.” Around 14 percent affirmed that position.  As an evangelical who writes and speaks on the wonder of creation and the care of creation, I’ve often been asked the question, “Isn’t evangelism—saving human souls—more important than caring for the earth?”

This issue is probably number 1 in calling into question the validity of evangelical concern for the material creation—the earth.  The trouble is that the question is virtually meaningless as it stands.  This can be illustrated by asking another question: “Isn’t evangelism more important than good parenting?”  Whereas the first seems to call for an obvious yes, the second does not.  In fact, most evangelicals with children would likely answer no to the second question.

The reason is this:  Christians have spiritual interpersonal responsibilities that relate to our gospel mission as members of the universal body of Christ—the church; but we also have what I call our material creational responsibilities, which we share with all mankind (meaning that these responsibilities were given to all mankind in the beginning).  The creational responsibilities that all people have in common are these: being fruitful by having children and then caring for and protecting them [and the reason, according to the Bible, that homosexuality is not "natural"]; working so that we might obtain healthful food to eat and clean water to drink; protecting ourselves and our offspring with adequate shelter and clothing; and being caretakers of the earth and its fruitfulness so that it can continue to provide us with what we need in order to live and remain healthy.

As Christians, of course, we want to be both health-promoting and healthy servants of God.  Our creational responsibilities are implicit in the foundational chapters of the Bible’s book of Genesis, and it can be argued convincingly from these Scriptures that these responsibilities come before our spiritual interpersonal ones.  The reason is this: if these were ignored, very little evangelism would take place at all—simply because weak, diseased, or dead people are poor evangelists!

Evangelical Christians commonly hold that evangelism is primarily the preaching, teaching, and sharing of the words of the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Yet it is not likely that any of us ever spend the bulk of our time doing this.  We spend most of our waking hours carrying out our material creational responsibilities—which is as it should be.

In fact, when we carry out these responsibilities in a way that demonstrates the love of God for both the world of people and the world of nature that He created, we are “evangelizing.”  Living Christianly within the light of the Gospel with its good news about the restoration of the good cosmos when Jesus returns is likely to be just as important to the cause of evangelism as proclaiming the specific words of the Gospel.  Can Christians who ignore the basic material creational mandates implied by our Scriptures—like caring for our families and for the creation—be “evangelicals” in the fullest meaning of that term?

A believer is an evangelist primarily by who he is and how he lives—not by what he says.  What he says is important;
but unless his speaking tallies with what he is
and does, he had better keep quiet.
-Joseph Sittler, 1973

See you outdoors!

Dean