The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1).

The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it (Psalm 89:11).

John Muir’s background was clearly Christian, but because of his father’s harsh, mean and unloving display of Christianity, John pretty much gave up on any formal Christian practice—indeed making him sound, at times, like a pantheist.  Certainly in many of his writings he continued to speak biblical truth, and because he recovered for us a due respect for the Creator and the creation that was rapidly being degraded by the Industrial Revolution, he can still act as a prophet for us.

Someday I would love to do an in-depth study comparing the life of Muir with the life of George MacDonald, who was his contemporary—but in Great Britain.  MacDonald, unlike Muir, had a Calvinist father who was wise and kind, who demonstrated great love for the Creator, and consequently great love for his own son.  MacDonald, like Muir, was fully captivated by the creation.  In fact, MacDonald remained a scientist all his life—even when he was becoming famous for his books.  He lectured for many years in chemistry and physics.  I wonder how much greater would have been the influence of Muir had he maintained clear allegiance to the transcendent, risen Savior and had understood Jesus to be the Creator he so revered.

MacDonald wrote a novel in 1886 that could have pointed Muir in the right direction.  The book’s title was What’s Mine Is Mine with a major theme being the true meaning of the earth and of money.  The Americanized version of it was republished on its 100th anniversary by Bethany House with the title The Highlander’s Last Song.  My reading of it became a profoundly spiritual experience—actually leading me to my avocation as writer and speaker on creation care.

The two main characters are brothers who are at different stages in their faith.  Ian, the younger, understands better the transcendent side of faith and seeks to wean Alister away from the love of possessing property.  While this pertained in part to Scottish clan property, Ian’s concern also included the wild moors and highlands.  I could almost imagine a discussion along these lines going on between George MacDonald and John Muir.

Ian speaks:

“Did you ever think of the origin of the word ‘avarice’?  I think it comes from the same root as the verb ‘have.’  It is the desire to call THINGS ours—the desire of company which is not of our kind.  We call the holding in the hand, or house, or pocket, or purse, or the power ‘having.’  But things can never be ‘had.’ ‘Having’ is but an illusion with regard to things.  It is only what we can ‘be with’ that we really possess.  A love can never be lost; it is a true possession.  But who can take his diamond ring, or his piece of land, into the life beyond?  These are not possessions.  Thus, only love and only God can be ours perfectly.  Nothing called property can be ours at all.”

“I know all that—with my head, at least,” said Alister; “but I am not sure how you apply that to me.”

“Do you not see that the love of our mother earth is meant to be but a beginning; and that such love as yours for the land belongs to that love of things which must perish? I say there is a better way of loving the ground on which we were born than to love it so that the loss of it would cause us torture.”

Alister listened as to a prophecy of evil. . . .  “Don’t be upset with me!” cried Alister, “I want to think and do what is right.  But you cannot know how I feel or you would spare me.  I love the very stones and clods of the land!  The place is to me as Jerusalem to the Jews.

“They loved the land as THEIRS,” said Ian; “and have lost it!  I am only afraid that your love for the soil will get all the way into your soul.  We are here but pilgrims and strangers.  God did not make the world to be dwelt in, but journeyed through.  We must not love it as He did not mean we should.  If we do, He may have great trouble and we must hurt before we are set free from that misplaced love. . . .  If He had to take from you everything in order to give you what He had for you, He would take everything from you. . . .  All is man’s only because it is God’s.  The true possession of anything is to see and feel in it what God made it for, and the uplifting of the soul by that knowledge is the joy of true having. . . .  We must never fear the will of God, Alister.  We are not right with Him until we can pray heartily ‘Thy will be done’!—heartily, not in sad submission.  When we wish what He does not wish, we are not only against Him, but against our real selves.  Only the will of God is desirable.  Nothing else will satisfy us, no matter how it seems that other things can.”

I find that it’s all too easy, as an advocate of creation stewardship, to make Alister’s—and John Muir’s—mistake of loving the creation perhaps more than the Creator.  MacDonald is a great mentor on this for me because he fought the same tendency.  I especially appreciate this statement: “The true possession of anything is to see and feel in it what God made it for, and the uplifting of the soul by that knowledge is the joy of true having.”

If those complaining about the  government’s denying them their “private property rights” actually were about seeing and feeling in their property “what God made it for,” I’d be far more sympathetic with them.  I wonder if even one Christian property owner in a thousand understands that property responsibilities come before property rights.  Nor do most live as though they really believe that God is the owner of all property anyway.  If all property owners recognized their role as stewards of God’s land, they could not help but place their responsibilities before their rights. [See the article "Principles of Land Ownership and Development for Christians.]  ["My Land" photo source]

As to Ian’s comment on our being pilgrims and stranger just journeying through, I don’t believe he was demeaning the value of earthly property, but pointing out that until the coming again of Jesus, all land passes from one landholder to the next.  You can’t keep land; you can only bequeath it.  It will perpetually pass from one should-be steward to another until it is transformed in the end into a Garden greater than Eden.

In the meanwhile, God’s good earth will suffer under the “ownership” of those who really do not understand that they are mere land holders who stand responsible before their descendants and their Creator for their use of it.

See Dean’s “Ambling” post today about finding a bioluminescent insect larva.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground (Genesis 2:4-5)

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15)

A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh (Genesis 224).

References to mankind’s original role and responsibility as defined in Genesis 1 and 2 have often been called the “cultural mandate.” Here is the definition of that term from Wikipedia:

“The cultural mandate or creation mandate is a doctrine among some evangelical Christians which teaches that the Christian faith provides principles that are applicable not only to be to one’s personal life and the life of the church, but also to the structures and governance of society, which if appropriately comprehended can assist Christians to thereby “redeem the culture” for the good of all. It is summarized by Nancy Pearcey in her book Total Truth:”

In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations—nothing less.

A further understanding is this: though the earth was created “very good,” it was undeveloped. It was God’s purpose for mankind to develop all the good potentialities of His good creation. I believe Nancy Pearcey’s book is an important read for every Christian who wants to dig deep into the meaning of “cultural mandate” and its implications for our use—and abuse—of the earth. Her definition of it is based on Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

This understanding of the cultural mandate has been mine for decades—as it has for thousands, if not millions, of Christians. But I’m beginning to feel strongly that everything that has been included in the concept—and especially all that has been excluded—have created major problems for mankind.

First, as I see it, when you add all the mandates for humankind that are issued before the Fall in both chapters 1 and 2, there’s nothing there that demands the extent of culture making Nancy sees: “’Be fruitful and multiply’ means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, ‘subdue the earth,’ means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music.’”

While other Scriptures might provide a basis to reach such an inference, Genesis 1 and 2 don’t. The mandates that appear there are these: First people are to have dominion over and subdue the natural world (1:26, 28). Second, like the animals, people are to multiply and fill the earth (1:28). Third, people (pictured by Adam in the Garden) are to cultivate the soil and care for it (2:15). Fourth, people are to form families from the reproductive process of male and female in sexual union.

Clearly implied in these is that people and the other living creatures are to become abundant on the earth through natural reproduction and that while people are in stewardly dominion over the earth, their stewardship involves cultivating, protecting, and caring for the soil and knowing enough about the nature of the other creatures to name (classify) them (2:20). This qualifies the terms “subdue” and “dominion” to mean that people are responsible to their Creator for the welfare of both the land and its other creatures—as we form our cultures.

This compels me to suggest that perhaps we should go elsewhere in Scripture for some sort of cultural mandate (may I suggest the Ten Commandments?) and refer to the directives in Genesis 1 and 2 as the “natural mandate”—which is more to the point of these passages.

One wonders what might have happened in the Protestant realm in the past five centuries if the Reformers had seen in these foundational chapters the importance of simply caring for creation and not complicated it with all the trappings of human cultural institutions, most of which quickly forgot the natural implications of the Genesis account. What if they had emphasized more strongly that the Creator’s economy has precedence over and provides the model for human economies? Maybe human culture would today show more respect for and take more responsibility for the natural world—seeking more to protect, guard, conserve, and wisely use it than to abuse and consume it.

The implications of a “natural mandate” are looked at more in depth in this article from the “Articles” page.

[The paintings shown here, from Wikipedia, have been favorites of thousands of people over the years---including me.  They are done by Jean-Francois Millet in a period of his life when he wanted to honor the country folk whose simple lives and dedication to the work of "cultivating" soil needed to be acknowledged and appreciated by all.]

God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.” So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease”    (Genesis 8:15-22)

It’s approaching the time of the year when I often prefer to stay out of the north woods.  The Weather Channel is predicting that for the week ahead daytime highs will be in the eighties—which is definitely above average for late May.  That’s more typical of July and August here in Michigan.  In the past few months nature has passed from the great intensity of frozen and suspended animation to the great intensity of reproductive preparation  and is now entering the great intensity of prolific production.  A week of eighty degree temperatures after significant rain will turn the forest into a factory where the natural elemental cycles and energy exchange will be going full bore in unending shifts.

Most of the first bird broods have hatched, and many fledglings are on the wing—like the freckle-breasted young robin I startled when I opened the drapes to the back deck yesterday morning.  It flew off with great confidence in its new-found aviation skill.  What a miracle it seems that this creature was wrapped in a sky-blue egg only a few weeks ago.  Goslings by the score are afloat and afield sporting yellow fluff mottled with predictive gray spots.  The swan pair in the nearby pond is down to just one cygnet after hatching two.  Out of sight, dappled white-tailed deer fawns are gaining their land legs.  Millions of such creatures have come to life, filling the ground, the lawns, the meadows, the woodlands, and the oxygen-rich moist air with life abundant.  Included in the lot are mosquitoes, gnats, bees, yellow jackets, spiders, and—to the north of here—black flies.

And that’s just the fauna.  The flora, of course, is exploding too—creating dense cover and food for these creatures.  In that factory is fresh poison ivy, nettles, wild rose, and hardy brambles—the source of a neat row scars on my upper right thigh caused in a long-ago “Man vs. Wild” rush to scale Caesar’s Head in northwest South Carolina. (You may have also discovered that brambles can root themselves top and bottom to make a good facsimile of barbed wire!)

So heat, humidity, biting bugs, brushy barriers, and keen memories of many poison ivy rashes tend to dampen my enthusiasm for the deep woods in the summer.  Give me open glades, quiet beaches, grassy stream-sides, and placid lakes until the frenzy of summer’s manufactory is moderated in preparation for the tranquility of autumn—about the only lull in the great intensity of the seasons that characterizes our upper Midwest latitudes. [Brambles photo source].

"Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hicks

Human adjustment to these natural forces that have gone on for eons according to God’s plan and promise, are a good reminder that He created the natural world we occupy for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11)—but accruing to the benefit of all things living.

It was not just Noah and his family that disembarked and it was not just Noah’s family that received the covenant of blessing. Our accommodating to and adjusting for the rest of His creation has always been and always will be our duty, for, as the apostle Paul reminded us, God the Son will one day—perhaps soon—be reconciling “all things” to God the Father. The gospel is good news for “every creature under heaven” (Colossians 1:19-23).  Therefore we celebrate the great creation, the great preservation, and the coming great restoration along with the natural world: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise Him all creatures here below!”

[Right click (in Firefox) on the Hicks painting and select "view image" to see it enlarged.  Then click on the back arrow to return to WOC.  Dean's images will be enlarged by left clicking on the photo.]

Hiking sticks are the topic of Dean’s new Ambling column.  Click on the “Ambling” button on the menu bar, or follow this link.