Our Bible verse for today: “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.” Genesis 2:15 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “Who is determining your thinking about environmental issues?”
A terrible thing has happened to conservative Christians with respect to environmental issues. To a large degree we have allowed our thinking to be negatively influenced by left-wing environmental extremists. What I mean is that those on the political left have adopted environmental issues as one of their pet projects, one of their favorite causes, and consequently environmentalism is too often equated with political liberalism and the progressive agenda.
Then, in something of a knee-jerk reaction, or perhaps out of revulsion for anything thought to be politically liberal, conservative Christians have a negative reaction to environmental issues simply because liberal progressives are in favor of it. As a result, creation care has become a blind spot for many conservative Christians. There are precious few sermons or Bible studies (or daily devotional messages) about taking care of our planet. The subject has become too closely aligned with the political left and therefore conservatives tend to avoid it, or worse, dismiss it as liberal hysteria and hyperbole (although granted, some of it is).
However, the Biblical truth is that the earth is God’s creation and we His people have a stewardship responsibility to care for it. Creation care isn’t a political issue it’s a Biblical issue. Rather than ceding the issue to political liberals we should be the ones leading the way on it. That doesn’t mean that we sign-on to “The Green New Deal”, but it does mean that environmentalism was a Biblical cause long before it was a political cause and we, the people of God, need to reclaim the issue as our own.
All this month we will explore the theme of creation care and we will relearn what it means to be good stewards of God’s beautiful creation.
Oak Hill Baptist Church