Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. . . . The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Genesis 1:26; 2:8, 15 (ESV)

Christians should be the people standing at the vanguard of the environmental movement. They are, after all, a people whose Holy Book begins with a dazzling account of a created order lovingly made and ends not only with a new heaven, but also with a pristine planet earth. In between, the Bible portrays man as both a lord and a gardener—a trustee who carefully watches over that which God has made.

The Bible says human beings are created in the image of God. Far more than just being a mere jumble of man’s capacities (i.e., rational, relational, and moral), the image of God conveys something fundamental about human identity—that man represents God’s rule on the earth. It is an idea that cultures in the Ancient Near Eastern embraced when they viewed their king as a substitute for their god. For example, the Egyptians called their king a “living statue” of a god and worshipped him for this very reason. As the one created in the image of God, man, therefore, is a king. Human beings are set in Creation as God’s image—His representatives—to rule over it as His vice-regents and to point the world to God’s ultimate reign. They are to have dominion over it and subdue it (v. 28), but never autonomously. Whatever authority man enjoys as king over creation is strictly derivative; he is responsible to God the High King, and as such is expected to rule by nurturing, developing, and caring for creation, just as God Himself does.1

The picture of such a nurturing vice-regent is further developed in Genesis 2. Adam, the reader learns, is to be a gardener. Any notion that the dominion language of chapter 1 implies exploitation is diffused with the imagery of the first human being tending attentively to plants and animals. Clearly, the man was special, set apart from the rest of the creation. Yet Eden’s teeming “biome” (complex biotic community) was in every way his home—a unique place in which Adam was an integral part.

With this background in mind, supporters of environmental causes should not be surprised when they find Christians around the table as fellow advocates protecting the natural order. They will find that adherents to the Bible’s message possess a balanced view on the issues as people who understand that humanity’s role toward the earth is both that of king and gardener. The former role tells believers that as a creation, the earth is to be ruled over and developed. The latter carries with it the imperative to nurture and maintain natural resources as a responsible steward.
 
 
Footnotes:
 
1  See on this Bruce Waltke and Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 65-66.
 
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article adopted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church is located in Perryville on Rt. 40, 1 and 1/2 miles east of Rt. 222.