I was flipping through my copy of Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis today to re-read the parts I had marked. (It’s very hard for me to read a book without a pen or highlighter in hand…chalk it up to being trained in English classes to read analytically.) I came across this passage and I’d really like to share it with you. It’s a very relevant idea, especially since the environment is such a big issue in general and in the upcoming elections.
God empowers creation to make more and in doing so loads it with potential. It is going to grow and change and move and not be the same today as it was yesterday, and tomorrow it will move another day forward. Creation is loaded with potential and possibility and promise.
God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation, commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it. The words he gives are words of loving service and thoughtful use. From day one (which is really day six), they are in intimate relationship and interaction with their environment. They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence.
This is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues.
And until that last sentence makes perfect sense, we haven’t fully grasped what it means to be human and live in God’s world. Everyone is an environmentalist. We cannot live independently of the world God has placed us in. We are intimately connected. By God.
To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things.
0 comments:
Post a Comment