Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Be Christian stewards of nature

The recent "meditation" Communion and Stewardship by the International Theological Commission drives home the importance of environmental concerns to a coherent Christian world view. If one accepts the Christian belief that the human person is created in the image of God, it has serious implications for relationships among man, technology and nature.

The relationship between humanity and nature ought to be one of stewardship, not control, the theologians maintain. It is a "profound misunderstanding" to see the Christian tradition as maintaining that man has unaccountable sovereignty over the created world. We are instead called to treat the natural world as God would. We are stewards acting on his behalf.

The vast increase of scientific knowledge and technological know-how has tempted us to reach beyond being stewards to acting as though we are gods ourselves. The theologians say, "Technology's advances have greatly increased our ability to control and direct the forces of nature, but they have also turned out to have an unexpected and possibly uncontrollable impact on our environment and even on ourselves."

We are not gods. Our call is to be responsible, not controlling. Control over nature will never be ours in any event. While humans are able to control some aspects of nature to our material betterment, we will never foresee all the consequences of our incursions into the natural environment. Responsibility ultimately means caution and respect in how we treat the earth and its creatures.

It is perhaps timely the theological commission's meditation was released during a summer filled with so much wacky weather. One cannot put the blame for any particular weather event on human violations of the environment. But we ought to take with utmost seriousness the warnings of scientists about global warming, the elimination of thousands of plant and animal species, and more localized incidents of pollution such as that stemming from sour gas wells.

What ought to concern us also is that, by and large, political candidates in federal, provincial and municipal elections are not addressing these issues as a top priority. There is a wide spectrum of issues that ought to be of concern to voters and politicians. But those such as the environment, poverty, war and human rights violations ought to have highest priority because they have major implications for the future of humanity. Ultimately, history will judge us on how we deal with those issues.

The theological commission does not offer "a technological recipe for the resolution of the ecological crisis." That is beyond the scope of theology and Church teaching.

But merely by stressing the importance of environmental stewardship, the theologians point us in certain directions. Can we brush aside international agreements such as the Kyoto Accord because they may lead to short-term economic dislocation? Should we make major economic concessions to foster oil sands development while offering nothing to develop renewable energy sources and promote energy conservation? Should we design cities so that people are required to drive everywhere and mass transit becomes both irrelevant and underfunded? The questions go on.

Our political process is flawed in many ways. One flaw is the focus on pocketbook issues at the expense of long-term solutions to the massive problems that face humanity. To be sure, many of those problems require global solutions and there is no effective, democratic global organization to deal with them.

But we have the responsibility to take what steps we can take at the local and national levels. The International Theological Commission has reminded us that if we are to be true Christian stewards, we need to do what we can to respect the environment and to respect the human person created in the image of God.

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