No excuse to not celebrate Earth Day
Next Tuesday, April 22, is Earth Day.
Whether or not you celebrate Earth Day, and share its concern for the environment, typically falls out along stereotypically liberal vs. conservative lines. Ain’t much room for middle ground. And religion often gets caught up in the mix, it too falling along stereotypical liberal vs. conservative lines.
Except for this… Charles Arand, a theologian here at Concordia Seminary, makes a convincing case from a theologically conservative position for why religious people, and Christians in particular, should celebrate Earth Day. His thoughts center on the first article of the Christian creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”
Simply stated, Arand demonstrates that a belief in God as creator—a belief that transcends not only denominational lines but many interreligious boundaries too—should engage the believer, a fellow creature of God’s creation, in deep care and concern for the earth and for all life on earth. As such, a belief in God as creator isn’t so much about the origins of the cosmos as it is about the creatio continua, God’s ongoing nourishing and sustaining of life within it. Human beings are thus interdependently connected to their fellow creatures, rather than pseudo-divine dominators of them (a reality that really only arose after the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution).
These ideas work off of some of the most poignant lines Martin Luther ever wrote, in his Small Catechism. In explaining the first article of the creed, Luther says:
I believe that God has created me together with all that exists. God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides…all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life.
I added the emphasis. Notice how Luther focuses so intimately on the “together”-ness of all creatures, and on the gifted-ness of all creation.
Or, as Arand explains:
All that we have comes from the earth (more precisely from God through the earth). God remains present and active in this world working through the creatures of this earth as his masks (larvae Dei) and holding things together in spite of the human race’s best efforts to ruin his creation…. There is a rejoicing over our creatureliness here. There is also a recognition that everything on the earth is a fellow creature. We share a commonality of being created and we are interdependent upon each other.
Nearly 500 years before Charles Darwin was on the scene, and now over 100 years later, Luther and Arand sidestep the whole creation/evolution debate by focusing on the here-and-now of what it means to believe that God is the creator of the cosmos. It’s all about grace.
So now even the non-liberals among us can feel comfortable tree-hugging. And perhaps we even have a true common ground that goes beyond stereotypes, where people of many religious stripes can work together for the good of this world, itself the common ground for all life that God calls “good.”
Which leaves only one question: What are you doing next Tuesday?
Photo credits: NASA, Lutheran World Relief
Travis Scholl, 35, is managing editor of theological publications at Concordia Seminary. A graduate of Yale Divinity School (MDiv), he is an ordained Lutheran minister. Despite some time away, he and his wife are native St. Louisans, as is the child they are now raising. 
One of the reasons I do not enjoy or want to think about being a good steward to this earth is because it will take much change in the way I do things and more time which, both are very inconvenient for me. (SELFISHNESS). After admitting this I also see that I must began doing my part in being a good steward to the earth as much as I spend time in trying to be a faithful Christian, in fact they both go hand in hand.
I will learn more about what I can do, I guess I will began with recycling with my trash, light bulbs and paper bags at the grocery store.
There’s a difference between tree-hugging and stewardship. It’s all about heirarchy. Tree huggers put nature in a place of greater importance than man to the point of potentially deifying it and potential detriment of man. Furthermore we shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with conservation but rather management. Conservation ignores the fact that change occurs in nature, whereas management accepts this.
Yes, we are to be stewards of nature just as we are to be servants of each other, but let us not put nature above ourselves, our fellow man or especially our Creator in importance.
And I don’t need a holiday to highlight something I already do or take into consideration as much as possible.
I’ll be doing the same thing I’ve done every Earth Day for the past 25 years — hunting wild turkeys in the morning and picking morel mushrooms in the afternoon. While I’m not a believer in the sky gods, there is something deeply moving about sitting quietly next to a tree as the world awakens.
Have you ever hugged a shag bark hickory tree?
Seriously, why stop with Earth Day? Why not Universe Day? We are all effected by gravity and make gravity waves with our endeavors. If gravity is universal, why not endeavor? Where does endeavor come from?
We too, are like planets. We carry millions of bacteria that are probably doing more than generating gravity waves with their endeavors.
Thinking of endeavor, I need an excuse to celebrate Earth Day. Trying to do what God wants me to do, I don’t think I have time.
Let’s not be flippant about it, shall we? The concept of stewardship of the earth appears throughout the Bible, from the beginning of Genesis onwards. Consider the laws that refer to the sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee and what they say about allowing the tilled earth to renew itself.
Consider the words we use about natural resources: we “exploit” a mineral deposit, as one example. Since the beginning of the industrial age, we’ve treated the natural resources we’ve been made stewards of as if they were limitless and ours to keep. They are not. My reading of the Bible suggests that they are there for us to use, and use wisely.
I agree: this is all about heirarchy. But the inverse is true as well. Our capacity to “exploit” nature is based on the fact that we have placed ourselves so much above “nature” that I believe it borders on human self-idolatry. It’s exemplified in the fact that we commonly conceive of “nature” as something other-than-human. That’s what I like about Arand’s article. It emphasizes the fact that we are an integral part of the natural world, not separate from it. That’s the first step towards good stewardship.
And thank you, hs, for picking up on some of those great biblical themes. You forgot to mention that part of the Jubilee year was the forgiving of all financial debts. How nice would that be?!
And D. Walker, I’m struggling with you. It’s hard work.