'Each month New Zealanders dispose of enough rubbish to fill a rugby field to 30 storeys high!' We live in a consumer society. Christians participate in this consumption as much as anyone. Is there a biblical responsibility with regard to consumerism and care for the earth?

Humans as Rulers and Servants

Before giving the command to humankind in Genesis 1:28, God states an intention to create humans as rulers over creation (1:26). The exact wording is, "Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule..." God gave rulership of the creation to the one creature who bears the divine image. Therefore, since as rulers we are image-bearers or representatives of God, the way we rule should reflect the way God would rule. In the creation account God's rule is characterized by appreciation ("God saw that it was good"), by blessings and by enabling the creatures to "be fruitful and increase in number."

To understand more fully the role of humans in creation, the words of Genesis 1:28 should be interpreted in the light of the second creation story in Genesis 2:15, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it". The word "work" means to till or serve, and is used through the Old Testament both in the sense of cultivating the soil and in the sense of serving God. The word "take care of" means to keep or guard, and is used through the Old Testament especially in the sense of observing religious duties...We should not be surprised at, or see a contradiction between, the command to rule in Genesis 1 and the command to serve in Genesis 2, as we have in Jesus a model of one who was both Lord and servant.

God has an Intimate Relationship with the Creation

...the creation entrusted to our care is alive and responsive to its Creator, and the Creator is still intimately involved with it. Psalm 104 tells us that God continues to sustain and care for all that has been made; God "gives water to all the beasts of the field" (104:11), "plants the cedars" (104:16) and all creatures look to their God, "to give them their food at the proper time" (104:27).

God not only sustains the creation, but also enjoys what has been made.

Christians have been accused of regarding non-human creatures as "physical facts" without any form of soul. While humans are the only creatures made in God's image, it does not follow that other creatures are mere machines. In fact, the "breath of life" (nephesh hayah ) by which the man of dust became a living being (Genesis 2:7) is the same breath given to all animals (Genesis 1:30).

The Creation is Integral to our Relationship with God

There is yet another reason why we must strive to safeguard the integrity of creation: the universe and its creatures, in their right ecological relationships, reveal God to us. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1) is echoed in the New Testament: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made" (Romans 1:20). The beauty of creation, its diversity (Psalm 104:24) and the hand of God in sustaining it (Psalm 147:9) inspire praise throughout Scripture and in the lives of many if not most Christians today. Any Christian would be appalled at the thought of destroying the last copy of Luke's Gospel or Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Yet species that reveal to us the character of God are disappearing from Earth at the rate of 3-4 per day.

Is There Hope?

Many Christians see the degradation of earth's ecosystems as a sign that Christ's return is imminent. This view stems from an understanding that when Jesus does return, the earth will be destroyed and Christian believers will be taken to heaven. For these people, hope is in the physical universe being replaced by a better, spiritual reality...Perhaps the most often quoted text that appears to describe destruction of the material universe is 2 Peter 2:4: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare." (Some translations say burned up). However, the Greek verb translated "burned up" in fact means "to find." The true sense of this passage is that God will examine and judge all things, not that everything will be destroyed.

Other passages in the Old and New Testaments describe a future of blessing for the earth. Romans 8:19-21 (NRSV) declares that, "...the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God".

This restoration is made possible by the death and resurrection of Christ. Just as the sin of the first Adam affected all of creation, so the saving act of the last Adam (Jesus) extends to the whole universe. This is the scope of salvation described by John 3:16 in its original Greek: "For God so loved the cosmos that he gave his one and only Son..."

How Then Shall We Live?

Since the future of the earth is one of renewal not destruction, we should expect that we will be called to be partners in reconciling all things to God. And in fact we are. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 Paul says God has given Christians, "the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the cosmos (translated world in English) to himself."

How shall we work out this ministry?...

1. "The degraded state of our natural environment today is primarily a result of the greed, selfishness and ignorance that are basic to human nature" In what ways have Christians made or not made the connection between personal sin and creation?