Creation Care (also know as environmental protection)

Creation care is the idea that God expects his people to take care of the earth that he created for them to enjoy.  This topic is near to my heart possibly because until about three years ago it had no place in my life.  I grew up thinking that environmentalism was for those liberal, tree-hugging fanatics.  I realize now how judgmental and short-sighted that was.  The same God who cares for me also cares for the lilies of the field, and He expects me to care as well.

The case for creation care can be found in many places in the Bible:

Genesis 1.31 says, “God saw everything He had made and behold it was very good.”  All of creation was deemed ‘very good’ by its creator.  Man might be the height of God’s work, but the land, the water, and the animals are all valuable to him.

Genesis 2.15 “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”  This was the first job given to mankind – to take care of the garden.  God could have made the earth self-sustaining, but as in many things, He chose to include humanity in the process.  It is our responsibility to be caretakers of the environment where we live. 

There are so many more examples of how important creation is in scripture, but I will only highlight one more.  This one is a warning.  Revelations 11.18 “The nations raged, but your wrath came, the time for the dead to be judged…and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”  That is pretty intense.  God’s final judgments will include punishing those who have participated in the destruction of the earth.  I would venture to say that includes all of us to some extent.

Although these scriptures resonate with my spirit now, my road to creation care did not start with the Bible.  It started with stewardship and decluttering.  A few years ago, I was cleaning out and organizing my daughters’ craft room.  I had a bag for supplies they did not need that we could give away.  I also had a bag for trash.  The trash bag filled up quickly over and over again.  It had never bothered me to throw out a little paper here and there, but suddenly those bags full of paper bothered me.  I knew that paper could be recycled into new material if I only took the time to sort it and take it to the local drop off.  I began to compare throwing that usable resource away to throwing away money.  If I put it in the trash, then companies would cut more trees, process more paper and sell it.  I was feeding a machine that was wasting natural resources as well.  I was not stewarding all that God had put in my hands.  That day I labeled a box for paper recycling and put it in our kitchen.  It took many hours of research and phone calls to find out what our small town could recycle and where the drop offs were, but soon I had four labeled trash cans in my kitchen for glass, tin, plastic, and paper.  I had joined the green team.

Recycling was a very small beginning, but it got me started.  During my research, I began to read about the problems with trash in general.  I knew that certain things, especially plastic, did not degrade well.  What I didn’t know is that nothing degrades well in a landfill.  It does not break down and return to the earth as I had imagined.  It actually gets entombed with no oxygen to help the disintegration process.  One archeological type dig done in a landfill found a 50-year-old newspaper that could still be read. The material in a landfill also mixes together and forms a toxic sludge called leachate.  Modern landfills have a plastic liner to keep this liquid out of the water supply, but they do crack and leak sometimes.  Landfills also cause Methane gas.  So, everything we do to reduce our contribution to landfill trash protects the earth.  This realization led me to analyze my trash creation.  Before recycling, we were putting out two large bags of trash every week.  Recycling cut that back, but I wanted to do more.  The next step was eliminating disposable items.  Bye-bye paper plates and napkins.  Hello, pretty cloth napkins, reusable water bottles, and cloth face wipes.  I also looked for ways to buy products with less packaging.  Thrift stores and bulk grocery items are great for this. 

The next realization my research brought me to was the misuse of plastic.  How can it be ok to take a limited natural resource like oil, create a flimsy item like a plastic bag or cup that is used for a very short time and then thrown away to possibly never degrade or even worse end up in the ocean where plastic molecules now outnumber plankton?  Talk about waste and destruction!  So, the next step was to reduce plastic usage.  I gradually replaced my plastic containers with glass ones.  I didn’t want those toxins leaching into my food anymore anyway.  I bought a glass water bottle, and of course, started using reusable bags when shopping.  I’ve explored alternatives to Ziploc bags with limited success.  Yes, you can freeze food in glass containers, but those bags fit so much nicer and in the long-term glass storage promotes freezer burns sooner.  Sometimes I wash and reuse my plastic bags and sometimes I’m lazy and throw them away.  I console my guilt with the knowledge that I’m doing so much better than I was before.

My environmental journey also brought me back to food.  In my life, it seems that all roads lead back to food.  I began to explore the idea that processed food was bad for the environment and bad for my body.  The extra packaging and the chemicals had to go.  I began to learn to cook with real ingredients.  I increased the amount of fresh vegetables in my diet.  I started cooking and freezing my own meals so I did not have to rely on fish sticks and Lean Cuisine.  Then I started learning about meat.  Between Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie Food Inc, I knew I no longer wanted to eat industrially produced meat.  I didn’t want to contribute to animals living tortured lives even before they were killed for my plate.  I didn’t trust all the chemicals, antibiotics, bacteria, and disease running rampant in this system.  However, I was not ready to go vegetarian.  This was a problem.  I looked for alternatives.  For me, the answer was respectfully raised, grass-fed, free-range, organically fed meat.  I found resources online and my local health food store had options.  Then I was blessed to find three local ranchers who were selling meat.  I could visit the farm, ask questions about their philosophy and eat their products guilt-free.  I may go vegetarian/vegan someday, but for now, this fits my values.

There are many other steps I’ve taken and so many others I still need to explore.  I imagine I still do many things that would qualify as destroying the earth, but I also know I am treading much lighter on the earth than I used to.  I am also more aware of my actions and looking for ways to care for this beautiful gift God has given us all.