This quote from the book of Luke says that sparrows are of less worth than humans but god still however loves every single sparrow.
‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.’
Luke 12:6
So although god loves every part of his creation humanity is the most important to God. It is this fact which causes many Christians to believe that we should not harm animals unnecessarily when we can relieve their suffering. Roman Catholics however think that so long as there are humans suffering we should not worry excessively about animals and we should not be excessively spoiling with our treatment of pets while there are people that need help instead. The Church of England’s view on the human position in creation is that;
‘The dominion given to human beings over the natural order is that of stewards who have to render an account’
Part of the motion carried from the Lichfield Diocese by the General Synod
July, 1992.
This quote means that humans cannot do what they want with God’s creation because we ‘have to render an account’, in other words we have to justify our actions because we are all answerable to god. Many Christians believe that since creation and humanity are interdependent (they rely on each other) we must care for it, not just for the sake of doing our duty to god but also for our own sake since without the rest of creation we cannot exist .It is positive for us to do our duty to God.
In short, most Christians believe similar ideas about our relationship with God’s creation, we must care for it, and it is our duty to God, as stewards not to exploit it, this is also to our advantage because we have to use the world’s resources in order to survive. There are many variations in the way different Christians act on these beliefs; this is what I am going to investigate in the next section of this coursework.
As we can see from the previous section, Different Christians share similar beliefs about our position in regard to God’s creation they do however, have several different views about what we should do to protect the environment and god’s creation, or even whether we should do anything, This is what I am going to investigate in this part of the coursework. One way Christians could interpret the bible and act towards their beliefs, would be to say that since god made the earth for us and we were given “Dominion” (or power) over the earth and its resources we can use them how we like. Therefore taking care of the environment is not a compulsory action and it is not very important that we try to stop its destruction. Another view is that since they believe that, according to the bible we are going to have another life with God in heaven, after our lives on earth; we are just passing through this world, caring for this earth and this creation is an irrelevant and pointless task. The view that some of the different branches of the Christian faith are now trying to promote is that we must actively care for the earth. The different denominations of Christianity envisage different ways of doing this.
The Church of England encourages people to take these general steps to try to preserve and protect the environment:
Part of the motion carried from the Lichfield Diocese by the General Synod
July, 1992.
The Orthodox Church beliefs tend to be of a more down to earth manner, working more locally to changing the views of the people of its church.
- Initiating programs of Christian environmental education at all levels.
- Involvement by parishes in local initiatives, such as organizing recycling programs, conserving energy in buildings, and encouraging less use of the car.
- Holding educational gatherings covering fields from theology to environmental sciences, in order to aid the Church in further practical involvement in environmental and bioethical issues. These should involve Church members and non-Orthodox experts in scientific and ecological fields.
- Mobilizing Orthodox young people to initiate projects of environmental action.
From an inter-Orthodox conference on protection of the environment- was convened in Crete in November 1991
Many churches take an active roll in preserving the environment on a local level; they do this by collecting foil, paper and other recyclable goods to be recycled. Many other churches take a less active roll, instead they collect money for the various charities which raise money to preserve the environment on a more national or international level by. Because, however many Christians believe that human life is sacred the many Christian charities are based on making the lives of disadvantaged humans better rather than improving the whole of creation. However even those who try to help humans try to help the environment also.
Here is an example of just such a Christian charity which attempts to protect the environment as well as humans:
cafod (Catholic agency for overseas development) believe in,
Integrity of Creation
we recognise the intimate relationship between protecting and sustaining the environment and promoting human development and we seek to take proper account of ecological sustainability in our work.
Taken from the cafod web site ()
This shows that even though human lives are often thought of to be of greater value than those of other creatures Christians often do care for them too. Many Christian churches are putting their beliefs into practice in regard to this issue and this is helping to educate church communities in the importance of caring for the environment because, people now realize that we need to respect it not take advantage of it or shun its many problems.
In this next part of this coursework I am going to explore one opinion, how Christians react to this and also how I feel towards this. Some people may say that God made the world so he should look after it. They would probably say this because they feel that if an all-powerful all-loving God exists he should care for his own work rather than leaving it to lowly humans with only a tiny proportion of the power of God. The people most likely to think this would be non-believers (atheists) and people who aren’t sure about their religious beliefs (agnostics) this is because this statement is doubting and questioning of the viability of the Christian ideas of God. This however is most definitely not the view of Christians; a Christian would say to someone with this belief that that though God gave us the earth he did not say that he would fix all of our problems for us. God told us, they would say, to care the environment and this is shown to us many times in the bible. Relying on God to do our job would be both irresponsible and also god would not wish to do this for us because, again we would become more like children and less like the free thinking free doing people that we are and, (as is told in the bible) god intended us to be when he first created us. My beliefs are similar to those of a Christian, I agree that we should not depend on someone else i.e. God, to do our dirty work. I personally think that since we have to live on this planet and we are the ones to need it, not God (if there is a God) we should care for it for own sakes and for the sakes of our children and the generations of the future.
Helen Crutcher
