The Green Preachers Creed
We are a small group of theology students at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Shatin, Hong Kong. We feel that part of our jobs as church workers will to bring our congregations into closer contact with the natural world and make them aware of environmental issues.
We do this because we feel that it is part of God’s work. We believe that God has placed us on earth not to be exploiters of the planet but to be good stewards of creation. Psalm 8 puts it: You appointed them over everything you made; you placed them over all creation..(v. 6).
Perhaps the most common Biblical text chosen to direct us as stewards is found in Genesis 1: 27 - 28).
So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them and said, “ Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control.” What we need to remember is that although God has placed us in his creation and given us everything, we are still to be creation’s managers. We do not own the eart, it still belongs to God. We are merely placed here as stewards to watch and care for it temporarily.
Dr. Jerry Schmalenberger writes that it should be like guarding something that has been loaned to us by a friend. We should take good care of it so that someday we can return it in as good a shape as when we borrowed it. The earth and its resources are not ours to do with what we please but loaned to us by God. We will be expected to give it back to him with an account of how we cared for it. (Schmalenberger,1987, p. 7)
In the creation story Adam and Eve are told that the creator God will require an accounting of their stewardship. What this tells us is that God is saying,” I have given you a world to live in, take care of and preserve for future generations; use is wisely will all the skill you have and love and manage it well.”
Unfortunately we have misinterpreted the scriptural admonition to “bring it under control” as justification to misuse and abuse our planet rather that guard, preserve and love it. Signs of this abuse are everywhere.
For Christians it should be a religious question to consider how to manage the resources, how we produce food, how mining is affecting the land, what we are doing about waste, and how we are harming the earth with uncontained development. (Schmalenberger,1987, p. 11)
We need to become aware of our relationship with God’s creation and how our pursuit of the “good life” is affecting the sustainability of the quality of life for everything on the planet.
