Fill the Earth

The last article left me as a “doomsday” prophet-of-sorts, stretching our minds to imagine the oil valves being shut off to our country.

No, I was not prophesying, just speculating on what could happen politically and economically if we do not wisen up to the fact that a growing number of people in the world despise us for the way we guzzle resources.

We shall leave politics now, and stop at religion a bit, while I wax preacher. How’s that for a change?

I take it for granted that most of the readers of the column would claim to be Christians. Narrowing that down even further, a majority would probably consider themselves “Conservative Anabaptist” or at least “Biblically oriented” believers.

Does the Bible speak of a sustainable lifestyle?

No, you will not find “sustainable” in the Bible. But you will find the principle. In fact, you cannot get very far into its pages until you bump into a command to “live sustainably”. Check out Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Basically God told them (Adam and Eve), “Here is the world for you to use.”

But notice that He commanded them to “replenish” it. The term used here simply means to “fill it” with descendents.

Now, one could easily suppose that God gave Adam and Eve the right to just “live it up”; after all, he gave them dominion over the animals, and told them to “subdue” the world he had just made for them.

But let us reason a little bit.

To fill the earth would take quite a number of generations. In fact, the earth still is not full. To all the naysayers preaching over-population, I say take a flight over the Amazon basin: over 2,000,000 square miles of basically empty, but usable, land.

Now if Adam knew he was supposed to fill the earth with his descendents, and that it would take several hundred generations to do that, do you suppose he could honestly ignore stewarding the land for the future generations? Could he wantonly misuse or waste resources since during his lifetime no-one needed them at the moment?

Can we? Can we begin to think that we are exempt from God’s command to “fill the earth” with people? Or, should we think, like many today do, that we can ignore God’s command and live only for the here and now? Dare we think that we can let the future generations fend for themselves while we live it up?

Much more could be said about Biblical sustainable living. For the moment, we will only touch on what the KJV calls stewardship. In our modern American English, we would probably use the word “caretaker”.

Consider the following, taken from 1 Corinthians 4:2: “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”

I realize that this verse is primarily concerned with the stewardship of the Gospel. But it certainly applies to natural things as well. Simply said, caretakers are, well, people who “take care”.

Caretakers do not squander the goods of the boss. They do not waste them, disregard them, use them selfishly, nor sit and watch them rot. He will certainly lose his job if he does.

So we have been given this earth to take care of until the next generation comes along. Can we escape the justice of God if we waste its resources, mis-use them, squander them, or use our journey through this life as a joyride?

Can we kill an elephant just for his tusks to make jewelry, letting the rest rot away? Can we dig up coal and leave the land scarred and useless afterward? Can we apply overdoses of chemicals that will damage the soil for years to come, just so we do not have to sweat with a hoe for a few hours?

Good questions to ask ourselves, unless we simply do not care. But caretakers are caretakers, not don’t-care-takers.

Ponder the difference.