We shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence but to serve man.
—UCLA Historian Lynn White Jr.

Imagine that you’re sitting in class. Because Earth Day is coming up, the professor decides to hold a class discussion about the environment. It isn’t long before one student, an environmental activist, begins blaming Christianity for "destroying the environment."

"It’s right there in the Bible," he says. "God says that humans should rule over the earth and subdue it. Everything was made for us. So we can just plunder the earth."

The professor looks around the classroom. "Anyone want to respond to that?" she asks.

The room is silent for a few moments. Then suddenly a student from your dorm, seated in front of you, turns to you and says, "Hey, you’re a Christian. Does the Bible really say it’s OK to plunder the earth?"

Everyone turns to face you …

So what do you think about the Bible and the environment? Are you half afraid that the activist is right—that the Bible really does promote trashing the environment? Do you feel like you have to distance yourself from such unenlightened teachings?

If so, take heart. Although some people have seized on isolated passages of Scripture to argue that the Bible promotes a slash-and-burn view of nature, the truth is exactly the opposite. Taken as a whole, the Bible provides a comprehensive framework for addressing environmental issues humanely and responsibly.

In the Beginning ...
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve probably heard that Genesis 1:1 is fundamental for understanding the environment: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

But why is that important? Does it show us what to do about water pollution? Does it tell us why low ozone levels have been recorded over Antarctica? Of course not. It’s important not because it shows us how to solve our problems, but because it provides a proper framework for understanding them.

From a secular point of view, which excludes God, the most important thing to understand is nature itself. And how we treat nature depends strictly on our own ethics and preferences.

But if there is indeed a God, and if that God created the heavens and the earth, then it is vitally important to learn not only about the heavens and the earth, but about God Himself. Who is He? What is He like? What does He expect? What will He do if His expectations are not met? These questions suddenly loom large in light of Genesis 1:1.

Who Is God?
In the 18th century, at the height of the enlightenment, it became fashionable in intellectual circles to think of God as a distant figure — a God who set the universe in motion and then left it to its own devices, who would never dream of tinkering with His creation. This kind of thinking is still prevalent today, even among some Christians.

The Bible, however, paints a very different picture. Unlike the deity of enlightenment thinking, the God of the Bible takes a personal and continuing interest in everything He created. In fact, far from being a detached spectator, He seems almost an incorrigible meddler.

Throughout Scripture, God continually intervenes in the affairs of both individuals and nations. God has no compunction, for example, about telling a man to leave his home and relatives and travel to a distant land (Genesis 12:1). Or taking a young man to Egypt as a slave, and then making him the prime minister there (Genesis 37:2ff.). Or turning a shepherd into a king (1 Samuel 16:1-13), or a proud emperor into a madman (Daniel 4).

He likewise has no reservations about raising up whole nations if He must — and then dashing them down again. Star Trek’s Prime Directive ("Do not interfere") has no claim on this Deity.

Nor is nature itself immune to His "interference." From Noah’s Flood (Genesis 6) to the Plagues of Egypt (Exodus 7ff.) to the Calming of the Sea (Matthew 8:24-27), He alters the course of nature whenever or wherever it suits Him.

The God of the Bible not only is active, but has a profound sense of morality and justice. Indeed He is the Author of both, and as the Lawgiver and Supreme Moral Authority, He must act when His standards are brazenly violated. Some of His most spectacular interventions are a result of human sin. Noah’s Flood, the greatest environmental disaster next to the Fall itself, is a compelling example of this: "Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).

From a biblical point of view, then, the physical state of the world is intimately linked with its moral state.

This has profound implications for how we should view the environment. If God is really who the Bible says He is, some of our environmental problems may be insoluble by purely scientific or technological means. Sometimes the solution may be moral or spiritual:

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

This is not to disparage science and technology. Nevertheless, any environmental philosophy that refuses to consider the moral and spiritual dimensions of our condition — that refuses to consider the possibility of divine action — will ultimately result in futility.

A License to Pillage?
As mentioned earlier, the God of the Bible has high moral standards, which He has no qualms about imposing on humans. Some of these standards have to do with how we care for His creation.

One of the first commands God gave us was to watch over His world:

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Genesis 1:28).

Although many people have charged that this passage is simply a license to pillage the earth, that kind of thinking is poles apart from the biblical view.

Such a view confuses authority with autonomy, the idea being that ruling involves the total absence of accountability. In the Bible, however, authority involves not a lessening of accountability, but rather an increase.

This principle is forcefully illustrated by Jesus as He explains a parable to His disciples:

Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time ...? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. ... But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

... [F]rom the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked (Luke 12:42-46, 48).

This is the antithesis of the modern idea that humans can take their fate into their own hands. That view was articulated by the late Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan:

We have been dismantling ancient institutions that no longer serve, and are tentatively trying out others. ... [O]ur ancestors have bequeathed us — within certain limits, to be sure — the ability to change our institutions and ourselves. Nothing is preordained.

The Bible, by contrast, paints a picture where the servant’s duties are preordained and inescapable — and cannot be "dismantled" without consequences.

Thus, the charge to rule over the earth should be understood not as a license to pillage it, but a command to care for it in the way God would. Nor can we evade our responsibility by arguing that the Lord is coming soon anyway. Let’s put it this way: If your apartment were a mess, and you knew the landlord might stop by at any time, wouldn’t you be motivated to straighten things up, just a little?

A Place for People
Although the Bible charges us to care for the created world (Genesis 2:15), that task is not the be-all and end-all of our existence. We have a higher calling: namely to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).

Supremely, this means that we may have no god but God. We must remember this not only for our own sakes, but for the environment’s. Some environmentalists have urged our society to shake off its Christian past and embrace a more "environment-friendly" religion — usually some form of paganism. But "environment-friendly" religions that provoke the Creator can never truly be good for the environment.

Similarly, we must never allow environmental concerns per se to trump our compassion for our fellow humans.

This runs afoul of the biocentrism advocated in many environmentalist circles. Biocentrism seeks to remove humans from their "privileged" position in the world and treat all living organisms as equally worthy of protection and care. This view was articulated by Arne Naess, a prominent environmentalist thinker, who believes that "all particular things are expressions of God, through all of them God acts. There is no hierarchy. There is no purpose, no final cause such that one can say that the ‘lower’ exist for the sake of the ‘higher.’"

Some of the more extreme thinkers long for a kind of holy war against humankind. Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman proclaimed, "It’s time for a warrior society to rise up out of the earth and throw itself against the human pox that’s ravaging this precious, beautiful planet."

Such thinking is alien to a biblical outlook. Scripture not only affirms the worth of humans (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 8, Luke 12:6-7, John 3:16), but makes it clear that God takes personally our treatment of other people. Indeed, He has made it a matter of eternal judgment:

Then He will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed ... For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

Christians must therefore think carefully about environmental policies that affect human welfare. For example, hydroelectric dams are abhorrent to many environmentalists. But in Third World countries, such dams can be lifesaving. Along many rivers, they prevent seasonal flooding that annually claims thousands of lives. And the electricity they generate makes it possible for people to refrigerate food, thereby reducing spoilage.

Moreover, by providing an alternative to cooking over wood or dung, hydroelectricity can reduce indoor air pollution, which causes an estimated 2.8 million deaths annually.

This does not mean that Christians must endorse a destructive, freewheeling developmentalism. Indeed, the Bible promotes a robust standard of liability and restitution (see, for example, Exodus 21, Deuteronomy 22:8). But just as we must not sacrifice our neighbors on the altar of self-interest, so we must not sacrifice them on the altars of aesthetics or biocentrism.

For we are not mere organisms. We are creatures who God Himself died to save. And that is an honor beyond all the treasures of earth.

This article was originally published April 19, 2001.