The Discipline of Responsive Stewardship

This week my wife and I saw the movie 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen', an improbable story that can still reel you in. It’s romantic comedy and political satire, not an environmental film, but one of the sub-plots contrasts a vision for developing a barren landscape against antagonists who would rather destroy the environment to advance their political ends. The downstream results are devastating (though, since the film is a comedy, not ultimately terminal).

That’s a light-hearted backdrop for the weighty and timely theme of ecological stewardship. In previous posts we’ve looked at two important disciplines for living joyfully and responsively in our flawed but wonderful world: the discipline of reverence, worship and awe and the discipline of gratitude. These disciplines focus our outlook and attitude towards creation and instill a sense of wonder and privilege. The discipline that I want to highlight in this post is

The Discipline of Responsive Stewardship.

Partnering with God in God’s creation initiative is one of the high privileges of being human. God has given us extraordinary capabilities so that we will cherish and protect the created world on God’s behalf and bring it to its full potential. We show respect and reverence for God as Earth-maker by treating our environment with care. We should be as focused in caring for the earth as God was in creating it, giving it dignity. Our vision is to see the whole earth enjoying the shalom of God.

Each generation has its challenges and its own unique opportunities to respond to the changing needs of the world. Melting glaciers, dying rivers, species declining towards extinction, lost woodlands and wetlands, and changing climate all cry out for responsive stewardship and for balancing the needs of both people and the environment today with the needs of future generations.

Some environmentalists reject the notion of stewardship, seeing it as an expression of human arrogance and the sense of entitlement that recklessly plunders the earth with a bull-dozer mentality.

A biblical view of stewardship begins with the notion that “the earth is the Lord’s” and has been entrusted to us as humans who can reflect God’s image in the way we till and keep the earth on God’s behalf. Since God is not domineering but sacrificial and self-giving, our task is to carry out a pattern of self-giving service towards the earth that the Creator himself has modeled for us.

Responsive stewardship requires both creativity and restraint in the conservation and enhancement of creation. Restraint curtails our impulse to plunder creation and exploit its treasury for selfish or short-term gain. Creativity calls forth the best of our imagination and efforts to assist nature to fulfill its life-giving purpose in God’s world.

This week-end a few hundred million of us will deliberately turn off our lights for Earth Hour as a symbolic expression of our commitment to work together for a more sustainable future for our planet and fellow creatures. Stewardship invites us to make that just the beginning of a hint of how we can respond to God in stewarding our world downstream from Eden.

Image Sources:
Fly-fishing - Wikipedia Commons
Year of the Ocean Poster - Steve Shachter
Polar Bear - Wikipedia Commons
Earth Hour - Earth Hour