November 8, 2005--Creation Care
On this Election Day I find myself wondering again if God is a Democrat or a Republican.
This is not as absurd as you might think. For anyone tracking politics in the US during the past couple of decades, it would not be inappropriate to conclude that He (yes, He) is not only a Republican but also quite a conservative one.
This was brought to mind again yesterday when, from a story in the NY Times, it appears that God has entered the debate about the Environment (link below). Some Evangelical Republicans are claiming that the Bible calls for us take care of God’s creation—“The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” So says Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAofE). The Sierra Club, among others, has welcomed this support.
But on the other side, different conservative Republican Evangelicals contend that there is no such biblical sanction to care for the earth. Senator James Inhofe, for example, the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, asserts that “You can always find in Scriptures a passage to misquote for almost anything” (emphasis added).
Sorry Senator, but Genesis 2:15, in the King James version, says:
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it (emphasis added again).
Not much to “misquote” here.
There is a long history of the different views about what the Bible or God actually has to say about the environment. For those Evangelical Pre-Millenialists (who think the Rapture is imminent, that this will trigger the coming of the Antichrist, the Second Coming, the Millennium, the End of Days, and Final Judgment), there is not much motivation to care for the earth, much less people, when all of these good things are about to happen and life as we know it will thankfully end. James Watt, the notorious former Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration articulated this view quite well when he said, “Since the End is near, who needs trees?”
On the other hand, Post-Millenialists (including the folks from the NAofE) believe that we are now, right now living during the Millennium, that it has already occurred; and thus we have a God given obligation to “dress and keep” the earth, to provide “creation care.” We need to do this well, to follow God’s commandment, in order to help assure the Second Coming and all that will follow.
But things are always a little more complicated, when it comes to biblical exegesis . . . or politics.
Though liberals are welcoming this Evangelical support for the environment, they are pleased that God has weighed in on this, they are less happy to invoke God or the Bible about other issues. Say, about homosexuality or abortion or evolution.
And so it goes.
This is not as absurd as you might think. For anyone tracking politics in the US during the past couple of decades, it would not be inappropriate to conclude that He (yes, He) is not only a Republican but also quite a conservative one.
This was brought to mind again yesterday when, from a story in the NY Times, it appears that God has entered the debate about the Environment (link below). Some Evangelical Republicans are claiming that the Bible calls for us take care of God’s creation—“The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” So says Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAofE). The Sierra Club, among others, has welcomed this support.
But on the other side, different conservative Republican Evangelicals contend that there is no such biblical sanction to care for the earth. Senator James Inhofe, for example, the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, asserts that “You can always find in Scriptures a passage to misquote for almost anything” (emphasis added).
Sorry Senator, but Genesis 2:15, in the King James version, says:
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it (emphasis added again).
Not much to “misquote” here.
There is a long history of the different views about what the Bible or God actually has to say about the environment. For those Evangelical Pre-Millenialists (who think the Rapture is imminent, that this will trigger the coming of the Antichrist, the Second Coming, the Millennium, the End of Days, and Final Judgment), there is not much motivation to care for the earth, much less people, when all of these good things are about to happen and life as we know it will thankfully end. James Watt, the notorious former Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration articulated this view quite well when he said, “Since the End is near, who needs trees?”
On the other hand, Post-Millenialists (including the folks from the NAofE) believe that we are now, right now living during the Millennium, that it has already occurred; and thus we have a God given obligation to “dress and keep” the earth, to provide “creation care.” We need to do this well, to follow God’s commandment, in order to help assure the Second Coming and all that will follow.
But things are always a little more complicated, when it comes to biblical exegesis . . . or politics.
Though liberals are welcoming this Evangelical support for the environment, they are pleased that God has weighed in on this, they are less happy to invoke God or the Bible about other issues. Say, about homosexuality or abortion or evolution.
And so it goes.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:18 AM
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