Do you have a garden? How important is it for you to recycle or compost? Should we buy organic? Is it worth the effort to use glass instead of plastic, or to create your own natural cleaning solutions instead of using options with harsh chemicals? Do you value things like nature conservation and wildlife preservation? How important are issues like global warming, climate change and air pollution?
The answers to each of these questions will vary from person to person, certainly. Depending on where we grew up, our cultural background and what we’ve been taught, we each hold strong feelings for or against some of these practices.
In the city of Austin, TX, where we live, all-things-natural, homegrown and organic are king. There are urban incentives to raise your own chickens and participate in community gardens. Local stores don’t even offer plastic bags for your groceries or clothes. Instead, you’re expected to bring your own reusable bags from home. Supporting local farms is also important, and shopping at farmer’s markets is highly encouraged. Some of these things took a bit getting used to, but we’re learning and adapting, and even enjoying the process of becoming more natural and local in our day-to-day living.
The changes that we’ve made in our lifestyle over the years have given us a good bit of room to contemplate the role of nature in our lives. We’ve often asked ourselves, “Is nature conservation and cultivation a personal preference or a biblical mandate? Should we shop local and care for animals just because it’s a current urban trend or is there something inherently Christian about this way of living? If you’ve pondered these things, you’re not alone, and we want to walk this road together, looking to Scripture as our guide for moving forward.
Nature and Man as Diffusive Meshworks
So, let’s start at the beginning. In Genesis 1-2, we see the beginnings of a give-and-take relationship between humanity and all of creation.
God creates the world in six days, and on each day he brings something new into existence, which serves to nurture and sustain human life. As Lisa Sharon Harper puts it in her book The Very Good Gospel: “The sun, the moon and stars serve humanity and the rest of creation by providing sustenance for our bodies and light for night travel. The stars tell people – especially in ancient cultures – when to wake, sleep, harvest, and sow. Plants serve animals by offering themselves for food (see Genesis 1:30).” In return, “we see humanity serving and protecting the ground when God calls man to till (abad – to serve) and keep (shamar = to protect) the earth (see Genesis 2:15) and to serve the animals by naming them (see Genesis 2:19-20).
The picture that we see in Genesis 1-2 is a mesh of engagements between the human and the non-human. Both are coexistent upon the other for their very survival. Man and nature interact, or “intra-act” as physicist Karen Barad has described them, meaning that we, as human beings, are always part of our material surrounding, and engaging with real and living matter. Neither relationship is one-sided. Rather, our bodies and our surroundings are porous, sharing equal causes and effects, while also holding and providing different functions.
There is an important and fundamental mindset that we, as Christians, should hold: God created us to be connected to our world. We are created to be in relationship with one another, and that means we need to care about each other. This doesn’t mean that we need to take up the mantle of every environmental cause, nor are we required to petition and protest every bill that we feel is not nature conscious. However, we should care about the land and animals around us, and we should see that what negatively impacts one of us will eventually hurt the other, in turn.
Humans and nature are created to be in relationship with one another, and that means we need to care about each other.
– Dr. Michelle Reyes
Created to be Gardeners
But, let’s take a quick step back before moving forward. Genesis 2:15 is a very important verse within the creation account. Right after creating Adam and Eve, God gives them their first job. The verse states, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Do you realize what this means? Humanity’s first task was to take care of a garden. Adam and Eve were gardeners before they became anything else!
Christians like to focus more on part in Genesis 1:26 where God gives man “dominion” over the earth than the description of humanity as gardeners in Genesis 2:15. However, we must read these two versus in tandem. Yes, humanity’s most basic vocation is to exercise dominion, but in the capacity of a gardener. What does this mean? In its simplest form, this means the we are to serve, protect and cultivate the wellness of the rest of creation.
To do this will require deep examination of our personal and communal habits, our city systems and structures, even our national policies. For what do gardeners do, essentially? They give. They put into the ground more than they take. They invest in their garden for its livelihood and its future, and they share its harvest with whomever they can.
What would these sorts of cultivating actions look like for you today? How might you better see yourself as a gardener, and in what ways could you give to creation more than you take from it? Perhaps that really does mean supporting your local farms and building your own garden in your back yard. Or, perhaps, it simply means becoming a better listener and follower and supporter to the voices and causes in your community. Each of us has a role to play. We were created to be gardeners. How can we better step into this role?
God created us to be gardeners. So, let us give. Let us put into the ground more than we take. Let us invest in our "garden" for the sake of its livelihood and its future, for its own good and for ours. Click To Tweet
