Christian Principles for Environmentalism

I was walking with a friend to buy lunch one day. As we were walking down a tranquil neighborhood with blossoming Jacaranda trees and well kept lawn grass, my friend observes, “Look at all this concrete and how we are killing this beautiful earth.”
The temptation to inquire and object to his statement was quickly extinguished. He is not a Christian. In fact, he is a member of the Pagan Club at my school. The Pagan Club tend to be filled with, well, pagans, which have most members holding to a kind of pantheistic worldview. If not pantheism, then some other primitive form of nature worship. I’ve engaged with them before, and I’ve engaged this particular friend before and got nowhere fast, so because I understood the worldview from which he was coming from, I decided to avoid further conflict over such a trivial comment.

But is it trivial? While my pagan friend’s worldview is obscure, it finds an intellectual backbone in the Environmentalists. These are the Al Gores who cry “global warming!” and show us pictures of polar bears jumping off blocks of ice and people who are involved with organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency. They hug trees, save whales, and hate the Japanese for their treatment of dolphins. Regardless of which worldview their actions are motivated by, is there in fact something wrong with the way humans are treating planet Earth? Is there a particular approach that Christians should have when it comes to the treatment of this home we inherited? That is what I want to explore here.

From a secular point of view, which is the view most of these Environmentalists come from, it does not seem like there is a right or wrong way to treat the Earth. The Earth does not care if life is sustained or not. Mercury cannot be said to be less healthy or any less good than Earth because of the atmosphere it has cannot be home to any life. It just simply is. So this talk about “protecting” the Earth or environment is misleading. There is nothing to protect it from. Earth is not in danger as living things are said to be in danger. So what are we really protecting? It seems like we are really protecting ourselves. We are protecting an environment that is suitable for us humans.

But there seems to be a contradiction in the actions of many who want to protect the environment. Some of the policies by the environmentalists can be more damaging to humans rather than beneficial. For example, water was cut off from the San Joaquin Valley farms in central California. Cal State Fresno has good programs for those who want to get into the business of farming, which is appropriate since San Joaquin Valley has some of the most fertile land in the world. However, in order to protect the Delta Smelt, a fish about three inches long, water was cut off from this fertile land which resulted in a drought and destroyed much of the farmland. This is an example of animals being given more value or higher priority than human flourishing.

Is this Biblical? I think not. This is the first principle Christians should have in mind when thinking about the environment: Humans are the crowning achievement of God. Not other animals. Humans are the most valuable things created. Not the other animals.  As God presides over Heaven and Earth, we can infer that He is something like a monarch. As we are made in that image, we too share in that monarchy and royalty is bestowed upon us.  In some ancient near eastern texts such as Syria and Egypt, the phrase of being made in someone’s image meant that one shared in their their royalty, so this idea is not foreign. In this imago dei, the superiority of mankind is established (as well as our intrinsic rights that no government can rightfully take away). Jesus affirms this when he says in Luke 12:7, “Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows”  for there is implied that not all animals are created equal, and we are superior (see also Matthew 12:12).

The preservation of the Delta Smelt, which resulted in the human caused drought and demolition of much farmland, which means loss of food and a 14.3% unemployment, is by no means an equal trade off. This is one example of bad stewardship of the environment because it does not apply this first principle.

Now does this mean that we can lay the Earth to waste? No, it doesn’t seem so. We also inherit some responsibilities. In Genesis 1:28 we are commanded to subdue the Earth as one cultivates a garden. If we set fire to our garden, we have failed our duty. But our duty to the Earth and Creation goes much deeper than that. Generally, we look to Genesis as a reference point or a model of how a good life is supposed to be. The first chapter of Genesis, we see that God creates, that is, He practices his power and dominion, yet everything he creates is “good”. Not only does God glorify Himself, for everything good reflects His character, but because creation is made good, his dominion is also a practice of glorification of everything else as well. Like God then, we are to utilize the Earth not only for Human glorification, but for the glorification of the creation as well. Is this so far-fetched to think that even though we are royalty, and we share in God’s royalty in particular, that we ought to be servants to creation? Not if you consider that even though Jesus is God and Creator of everything, he was a servant and washed the feet of the disciples. We too must also be royal servants.

With this in mind, how do we approach the claims of Global Warming, which say we aren’t taking care of our garden? The basic claims of Global Warming can be stated in these four parts: 1) The temperature of the globe is rising 2) due to human activity and 3) will have disastrous effects so 4) we need to enact some policy to prevent these effects. Each of these four claims can be disputed. If all of these four claims cannot be met, then the claim doesn’t have much practical impact on us. Is the temperature rising? If not, then there is no concern. If it is rising, are we causing it? If not, then nature is simply going through phases. If we are causing it, will it even matter? If it doesn’t matter, then why the alarm? If it does matter, would the policies proposed even work? If not, then there isn’t much we can do about it since it is largely out of our control. A healthy skepticism towards each of these claims would be good, but from a Biblical perspective, it doesn’t seem like any such events will play out. When we look through Revelation, it seems like there is still a large amount of resources available for mankind to use up. There is no indication that resources and other environmental settings will be significantly disrupted. We will still have food, we will still have a source of energy, we will still have a habitable atmosphere, and everything will be normal if we take care of our resources wisely. This glimpse into end times should give some Christians well rested sleep knowing that Global Warming and similar environmental concerns is currently probably not a big deal under Biblical considerations.

Much more can be said about Christian worldview and Environmentalism, but these two principles, that we are the most important thing in creation and we have a duty to all other creation, should be sufficient to navigate through much of the issues.