Our Relation to Creation (Part 2)

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it (Gen. 2:15). For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more (Lk. 12:48).

Everyone who is a parent knows well those times when you crawl into bed at night exhausted after spending the greater part of each day in service to your children. In the midst of your childrearing days, every activity seems attached one way or another to your children. Any thought you previously had about the glamour or the power of being the one in authority over your own children returns to mock you as you change a dirty diaper or try to quiet your terrified child while an emergency room physician applys a cast to a broken arm. “So this is what it’s like to be in charge!” you muse. [Photo: Christoffer Oliphint]

The previous points regarding our shared relation with God to creation all lead to a similar reality: God put man in charge of developing all the potentialities He built into the natural world. This is poetically described for us by David in Psalm 8:

You have made [man] a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! (vv.5-9).

"Man With a Hoe" by Millet

Just as our children are bundles of potential surrounded by forces that would destroy them, the earth is a huge ball of potential surrounded by dangerous forces. Through the Edenic curse God made the earth resistant to our total control because of Adam’s sin; so we are compelled to work hard to maintain proper dominion in a realm that is marked by tendencies for decline.

Some Bible scholars have aptly observed that mankind is the “servant species” on the earth. Although we have been given dominion by God the Creator, we are to carry out our dominion tasks in a manner that emulates the Servant-King Jesus who said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mt. 20:28).

In our dominion, we must understand that we are servants of God. In a sense, we are servants in the middle: We serve the Creator of the earth as well as His creation. This truth is highlighted in Genesis 2:15 where the task of tending and keeping the earth, in the fullest sense of the Hebrew words, means doing work for someone, serving someone, saving life, and observing, guarding, and protecting the land.

The English term that best characterizes our role is stewardship. A steward is one whom his master has left in charge. When all the biblical passages about stewardship and servanthood are summed up, they indicate this about our stewardship for God:

• We are expected to increase the yield of our Master’s property—which precludes wasting or spoiling it (Gen. 1:28; Mt. 25:14- 30; Lk. 16:1-2).
• We are to seek to exemplify our Master in dealing with others under our stewardship (Mt. 10:25; 18:23-35).
• We are expected to carry out our duties to our Master faithfully and in a timely manner (Mt. 24:45-51; 25:21,23).
• We are directly answerable to our Master and can expect consequences for failure to obey Him (Gen. 2:16-17; 3:14-19; Mt. 25:14-30; Lk. 12:45-48; 16:1-2; Rom. 14:12).
•We have reason to express our gratitude regularly to our Master (Ps. 1–150; Rom. 1:21; 2 Cor. 9:10-11; Phil. 4:6).
• We anticipate our Master’s return (Mt. 24:45-51; Lk. 12:35-38).

Approaching God’s creation with this understanding of stewardship will humble us. We have been given a great responsibility and a great opportunity as “earthkeepers” to take what God has given us, and to honor His name in its use and development.

Angelus by Millet

Because of the complicated division of labor in modern society and because of the economic circumstances in which we live, we are often unaware of the influence we have on the earth and on its capacity to remain fruitful. Most of us today do not directly till the soil to obtain our food—someone else does that. But we need to remember that every dollar we spend on food indirectly puts a tiller through the soil, applies agricultural chemicals, harvests produce from living plants, and turns ignition keys on motorized vehicles to get that food to us. The same is true for our clothing, our shelter, and our other necessities—and our wants.

We must be as diligent to consider the impact those activities have on the creation as was the farmer of old. He daily faced the reality that if he did not care for his land properly he directly threatened his own life and the lives of all who depended on his stewardship skills.

How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By remembering that ultimately we are either faithful or unfaithful stewards of God’s creation and that we are answerable to our Master for our choices. We are to aim for God’s “good earthkeeping seal of approval.”

[Jean-François Millet is one of my favorite 19th Century painters.  Read about him here.  -Dean]