Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:15-20).

Last week Christianity Today published a significant editorial related to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster that is clearly “worth the read”: Let the Sea Resound.  Among its many thought-provoking statements was this one: “There seems to be little doubt that the Gulf oil spill is the United States’ environmental 9/11.”  I judged the editorial a five-star endeavor, but the comments that were made during the week that followed its publication showed extreme polarization among its readers—and a great deal confused thinking.

What did not appear in the comments was the clearly biblical understanding that followers of Christ have at least two kinds of responsibility: 1) material-creational ones and 2) spiritual-relational ones.  Our material-creational responsibilities are fundamental and take up a great deal of the first three chapters of the Bible’s first book: Genesis.  Summarized they would include the following: human beings have been given dominion over and a duty to rule the natural world (following the servant-master model given us in Jesus Christ); the job of cultivating, caring for, and protecting the earth, which is the source of all material life; and the duty of men and women to enter into a covenant of marriage and become one flesh—with the resultant procreation of children.

Inherent in these fundamental responsibilities, of course, would be using our God-given creativity to live and work wisely, to obtain life-essential food and water from the earth in a sustainable manner, to shelter and clothe ourselves, to marry, to bear, protect, and provide for children, and to honor and be grateful to the Creator who made it all possible.  Note that these material-creational responsibilities were given to all people, not just to Christians.  They are the fundamental tasks of being human.

Christians hold in addition to these duties the belief that we also have spiritual-relational responsibilities.  Among them are worshiping and loving our Creator who is also our Savior (Jesus), being light and salt in a dark and decaying culture, doing good and not evil,  being merciful, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, and sharing the “good news” (the Gospel) with fallen, sinful man.  These are all done, however, in the context of our fundamental material-creational responsibilities—because if such basic human duties are neglected, the earth is abused and people suffer and die.

My conviction is that when Christians say it is more important to “share the Gospel of Jesus Christ” than to care for the creation (the environment) that Jesus Christ made, holds together, died in part to redeem, and will one day restore, reunite, and reconcile fully to God (Colossians 1:15-20), we are making a meaningless distinction.  They are equally important aspects of a Christian’s day-to-day existence.

Further, we must realize that if we don’t first attend to our material-creational responsibilities we will not survive to attend to our spiritual-relational ones.  That’s why we should care about the ecological damage created by the Gulf oil spill.  Christians who call caring for the creation “nature worship” (as several did in commenting on the CT article) are wrong and are biblically confused.

[A more in-depth rendering of this argument is found on the "Articles" page: Caring for Creation or Presenting the Gospel].