Called and Sent · Stop 4
What does faith say about how we treat the earth?
The opening line of the Bible is that God made everything, and looked at it and called it good. Not useful. Not ours. Good, on its own terms. That's where the Bible starts.
Start this stopThe Earth
Luther's Small Catechism says God has made me and all creatures. Not me and then the other stuff separately. All creatures. The fish and the trees and the soil are part of what God made and still keeps. The First Article plants the whole created world in God's hands.
The word the Bible uses for the human role in creation is tend and keep. God set the first humans in the garden to care for it, not to own it. Psalm 24 says the earth is the Lord's. That means we're the ones taking care of what belongs to someone else.
Many Indigenous peoples across North America have long taught that creation is sacred and worth protecting. Their practice of living on the land, where humans are part of the web of life rather than above it, is wisdom many Christians, including Lutherans, have learned from. The earth isn't a resource to use up. It's a household to keep.
Christians care for creation because of what they believe about God. If God made the world and called it good, and if God works through the world to feed and sustain us, then treating the world carelessly is treating God's gifts carelessly. The question Luther would ask is the same one he always asked: what does this mean, for how I live today?
Read it in your Bible
- Genesis 1:1, 1:31. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. After making light, water, dry land, plants, sea creatures, birds, and every land animal, God looked at everything that had been made and called it very good.
- Psalm 24:1–2. The earth is the Lord's, along with everything in it. The world and all who live here belong to God, who founded it on the seas and set it on the rivers.
The First Article, from Luther's Small Catechism
I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, and still preserves them; in addition thereto, clothing and shoes, meat and drink, house and homestead, wife and children, fields, cattle, and all my goods.
He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me.
Words to know
- Creation. Everything God made, including the earth, the creatures, and you. You aren't separate from creation. You're part of it.
- Steward. Someone who takes care of what belongs to someone else. If the earth belongs to God, we're the caretakers, not the owners.
- Tend. The word God used for what the first humans were to do in the garden. Tending is different from owning. You care for what you tend. You can't do whatever you want with it.
- Creature. Anything that was made, including you. Luther's catechism says God made me and all creatures. The word all matters.
- Good. What God called the world after making it, not useful or mine but simply this. God's first word about creation is good. That's the starting point.