oil staining the waters
Oh, Lord, redeem our failure to steward this glorious creation you have given us with care and foresight. Forgive us for greed and short-sightedness that has led to creation catastrophe.
I admit it, I’m pretty angry today. I also confess, I have to include myself in the ranks of people I am angry with, for historically I’ve been fairly apathetic about the issue of drilling off the coast. But now it’s hitting home, quite literally, as oil seeps its way toward the beautiful white beaches of the Gulf Coast, and I am thinking hard about the creation call to humans to exercise “dominion” over the earth. Listen to Cornelius Plantinga’s helpful words on the subject:
“Christians and others have sometimes taken dominion as justification for the ‘conquest’ of nature — language that once appeared routinely in social science textbooks. The language of conquest suggested that we humans were at war with God’s nonhuman creation, that roaming herds and burgeoning forests were somehow our enemy. Such language showed that we had lost the biblical portrait of shalom and that we needed to repent and recover it.
Nonetheless the Bible is not the problem here. The Bible speaks of dominion, not in the sense of conquest, but in the sense of stewardship. After all, how does God himself exercise dominion? How does God demonstrate hospitality in creation and providence?
In the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, dominion is never ‘lording over’; it’s more like ‘lording under’ by way of support. In the kingdom of God, to have dominion is to care for the well-being of others. To have dominion is to act like the mediator of creation. This means that a human steward of God’s good creation will never exploit or pillage; instead, she will give creation room to be itself. She will respect it, care for it, empower it. Her goal is to live in healthy interdependence with it. The person who practices good animal husbandry, forest management, and water conservation shows respect for God by showing respect for what God has made.” Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World
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