Sunday, November 18, 2012

Restoring relationship between creation care and mission



We live in exciting times. All over the world the church is recovering the truth that the gospel is concerned with restoring three areas of relationship. Principally it brings peace between people and their God, through Jesus Christ the Redeemer. Secondly it can restore relationships between people, through Christ who breaks down all the walls of hostility. Finally it makes possible a renewed relationship between people and God's Creation itself.

At the very moment that Isaiah’s yearning heart was mourning over the defects of his spiritual life, saying, “Woe is me,” the seraphim (types of glorified prophets) were crying, “Heaven and earth are full of God’s glory,” for they saw the
presence of God moving through every atom of nature and providence.

“I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause: Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number: Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields”—Job 5:8-10.

I do not know how it may be with you, but I scarce ever hear the rolling thunder but I begin to forget earth and look upwards to my God.

Is not God the King of kings, and the Ruler of the whole earth?

I love the picture that God paints for Job when he is interrogating Job about creation. In Job 38:4-7, God queries, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements–surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God (angels) shouted for joy.”

The future, even more so with the unknown when we think, "But we are looking forward to the
new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God's righteousness." 2 Peter 3:13

Today, there is the “The
Green Bible” has been published, the New Revised Standard Version with 1000 verses dealing with the care of the environment highlighted in green.

Two biblical principles: First, that the
Bible grants to humanity a ‘dominion’ over nature, which has encouraged us to exploit nature for our own ends. Second, that the Bible privileges humanity – which alone is created in the image of God and alone will be redeemed – over the remainder of the creation.
In Jesus we see God's paramount expression of love, compassion, reconciliation and justice. In Jesus we experience God as a caring shepherd who is faithful to the flock, who knows them intimately, who frees and saves. Jesus demonstrates by his own life what we have been created to be — fully human, fully alive and able to participate in the life and love of God.

Some who consider themselves more spiritual than technological, are exploring the world’s ideologies and religions in search of non-Christian spiritual resources for the healing of the earth. As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that the Bible calls us to respond in four ways:

First, God calls us to confess and repent of attitudes which devalue creation, and which twist or ignore biblical revelation to support our misuse of it. Forgetting that “the earth is the Lord’s,” we have often simply used creation and forgotten our responsibility to care for it.

Second, our actions and attitudes toward the earth need to proceed from the center of our faith, and be rooted in the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ and the Scriptures. We resist both ideologies which would presume the Gospel has nothing to do with the care of non-human creation and also ideologies which would reduce the Gospel to nothing more than the care of that creation.

Third, we seek carefully to learn all that the Bible tells us about the Creator, creation, and the human task. In our life and words we declare that full good news for all creation which is still waiting “with eager longing for the revealing of the
children of God,” (Rom. 8:19).

Fourth, we seek to understand what creation reveals about God’s divinity, sustaining presence, and everlasting power, and what creation teaches us of its God-given order and the principles by which it works.

Only in the larger story of God’s action and reconciliation in Christ can we see such places not only as the deeply broken places they are, but as sites where God’s “new creation” has come to interrupt our stories of division, violence, and fragmentation, making conversion and new history possible.







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