A Deeper Shade of Green

Creation Care

by Dr. Gordon Wilson on October 1, 2020

Featured in Answers Magazine

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The green movement is dominated by secular environmentalists. But when it comes to creation care, Christians have a deeper calling.

You can hardly visit a news website these days without reading about melting polar icecaps, an animal species threatened by deforestation, massive patches of garbage in the ocean, or any number of ways that global warming is seen to be threatening life as we know it. With their zealous outcries, secular environmentalists seem to care a great deal for the planet—even to the point of idolatry. But because they embrace Darwinism (naturalistic evolution) and reject the Genesis creation account, their sincere motivations to protect creation for us and future generations will always lead to misguided and sometimes extremely damaging environmental policies.

Genesis 1:31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” That was before Adam and Eve rebelled against God, marring his good creation with death and suffering, violence and sin. Thankfully, unlike an artist who might reject a ruined drawing, God didn’t abandon his creation. In fact, even when God sent the worldwide flood to destroy the earth, he commanded Noah to build an ark to “keep [the animals’] offspring alive on the face of all the earth” (Genesis 7:3). Think about that. Noah’s ark was the biggest biodiversity conservation act in world history.

Scripture encourages humans to treat animals humanely (Proverbs 12:10), reveals that God clothes the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:28–30), and tells us that God provides for wildlife (food, water, and habitat) and for us through the bounty of his living creation (Psalm 104). Clearly, he cares for creation, and he charged us to tend it.

Because the area of conservation has been so dominated by secular environmentalists, some Christians entirely reject the notion of caring for nature. But rather than abandoning the conservation issue to agenda-driven hype, Christians should protect and conserve God’s creation by exercising wise dominion in a distinctly biblical way.

Getting Our Biblical Bearings

Before we can act biblically, we need to think biblically. Genesis 1:28 says, “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (emphasis added). Bible scholars call this verse the dominion mandate. Dominion (the Hebrew word radah) is a strong word. It means “to rule, dominate, subjugate.” If we closely look at Genesis 1:28, we see that dominion is essentially the management of both wild and domesticated animals worldwide. Although ultimately God owns the universe (1 Corinthians 10:26), in another sense, he bequeathed the earth and all of its creatures to us to rule over as subordinate owners, or subregents.

Of course, human sinfulness can exercise dominion in all kinds of horrid ways. Righteous rulers use their sovereign authority to do good things; evil rulers use their sovereign authority to do evil things. Because the latter has been far more common, many secular environmentalists balk at the word dominion, misinterpreting this verse as God handing us the world as a blank check to use and abuse. But that definition couldn’t be any further from what God intended. The problem isn’t dominion; the problem is how sinful people wield dominion.

Yes, dominion is a strong word. Rather than soften the word, we should look at all of Scripture to see what righteous dominion looks like so we can exercise it with its full strength and full goodness. To see a picture of righteous dominion in a smaller context, let’s look at how Paul describes the marriage covenant in Ephesians 5. First, he teaches that Christ is the head of the church—dominion in the fullest sense.

Paul then goes on to say that a husband is the head of the wife in the same way. If we have a negative view of headship or dominion, we probably cringe at this passage. But how is a husband told to exercise his marital headship? The way Christ loved the church. Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. “He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28). A husband is to imitate this loving, sacrificial example in caring for his wife.

In the same loving headship described in Ephesians 5, our rule over creation should not be oppressive and exploitive. Creatures in our charge should thrive, flourish, and fill the earth. Of course, we can use nature for its resources, as long as we do so humanely and responsibly. We hunt animals and raise livestock for food. We make countless items with wood, cotton, flax, and leather. We derive many medicines from plants and animals. We breathe oxygen produced by plants and algae. Everything we eat and most of what we wear comes from plants and animals or their products.

But living things don’t exist solely for our practical needs. The aesthetic beauty of creation is of incalculable value. Consider how many of us enjoy outdoor recreation such as hiking, boating, rock climbing, and camping. Activities that allow us to bask in the beauty of creation revive our spirit in ways our cities and other urban locations don’t.

Our overall mission is to exercise wise dominion over the living creation. We are to maintain a healthy balance in the created diversity, providing good habitats if creatures are wild (Job 40–41; Psalm 104) and good care if they aren’t (Proverbs 12:10). We should control plants and animals that are hazardous to our herds, health, and happiness (Genesis 3:18; 1 Samuel 17:34–35). And we should delight in and praise God for our wonderful earth, even in its fallen state.

The Real Problem

The root of all environmental problems is sin. Greed and abuse have often forced creatures to extinction. Disregard for our neighbors results in litter as well as air and water pollution. Lack of care, deliberately or inadvertently, causes animals to suffer, and overuse depletes the land of its nutrients and resources.

References throughout the Old Testament mention the effects of sin on the environment. Hosea 4:1–3 is one particularly clear example:

Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.

There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

When seeking to address a real or perceived environmental problem, secular environmentalists factor God’s Word out of the equation. As evolutionists, they believe that humans are evolved like every other species, yet they think we are somehow responsible for taking care of all other life forms on our planet. Curiously, they don’t think chimps or dolphins or any other species are responsible for taking care of the planet. Innately, secular environmentalists understand our responsibility to exercise dominion. Unfortunately, they don’t acknowledge that it is a God-given command; therefore, they practice dominion according to the whims and fashions of humankind, not according to God’s Word—and that always causes problems.

The Real Solution

Because they reject the truths found in God’s Word, most secular environmentalists want to solve problems through political muscle power or coercion. Whether the issue is pollution, habitat destruction, extinction, overpopulation, or climate change, they distort or exaggerate the problem incessantly through liberal news outlets, secular websites, zoos, museums, and nature documentaries, while trying to impose new environmental legislation. Coercion through political force involves law enforcement, requires significant funds, and creates unreasonable restrictions. Thus, these solutions are often not very effective because, though they might force people to comply, they fail to make a lasting change in people’s hearts, which is the only way to change concern for and behavior toward the environment. But as Christians who love God and his creatures, we must acknowledge and address the root of the problem—sin.

We must acknowledge and address the root of the problem—sin.

The biblical solution to the problem of sin is very different from the solution that environmentalists propose. It isn’t political activism or reducing your carbon footprint or voting for a green candidate. It isn’t having 1.7 kids or buying fair trade. The solution is the gospel, being reconciled to the Father by repenting of our sin and believing in his Son, Jesus Christ, who died for us (Mark 1:15). When we’re reconciled to God, other broken relationships around us begin to heal. In his book Pollution and the Death of Man, Francis Schaeffer called these broken relationships “separations.” The major separation restored by the gospel is between God and man. But the gospel also repairs the relationship between man and nature, allowing us to exercise benevolent and wise dominion according to God’s Word.

Healing the brokenness doesn’t happen overnight. Like sanctification, it’s a process. When we are reconciled to God, his Spirit indwells us and empowers us to obey his commands. We begin to love and care more for his creation. We begin exercising dominion righteously and wisely. We begin seeking truth, beauty, and goodness in how we use our resources and run our homes, our businesses, and our factories. We seek to love our neighbors by keeping the air and water clean. We desire to maintain the diversity that God created.

The gospel isn’t limited to regenerating hearts—its work is much more comprehensive. It is meant to redeem creation by redeeming the hearts of men and women who were not only made in the image of God but were given dominion on day six of creation. Though creation groans because of our sin, the transforming power of the gospel regenerates our hearts so we can care for our Father’s world until the earth is liberated from its bondage to decay through the hope of the gospel: the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Environmental Issues Are Complex

When looking at proposed solutions to environmental problems, we must carefully evaluate every angle. Even a seemingly straightforward option brings challenges and drawbacks that are not always readily presented by those seeking to push an agenda.

For example, environmentalists sometimes present alternative energy such as wind and solar farms as the clean answer to other more conventional forms of energy, such as burning coal or fossil fuels.

It’s true that, once operational, wind energy cuts emissions by running on a 100% renewable resource. But is that the whole story?

Wind turbines and solar panels, along with the batteries required to store their energy, have a high monetary and environmental production cost. These upfront costs may balance out over time with low-operating costs, but for now, the power that wind and solar farms provide is more expensive than traditional power. This cost demands government subsidies that are likely greater than the reduced energy cost of the wind and solar farms. Additionally, wind and solar farms require vast areas of land that can change the natural aesthetics of a landscape and interfere with wildlife habitats. Bats and birds are often killed by the rotating blades or the concentrated beams of light, and the turbine vibrations produce sound pollution.

With complex environmental topics such as alternative energy, we must carefully consider the impact on our neighbors and God’s creation as we make wise dominion decisions.

For more on this topic, read A Different Shade of Green by Gordon Wilson (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2019).

Dr. Gordon Wilson, senior fellow of natural history at New Saint Andrews College, earned an MS in entomology from the University of Idaho and a PhD from George Mason University in environmental science and public policy. He is the narrator of the nature documentary series The Riot and the Dance and is the author of a biology textbook of the same name.