Everyone has heard much about God’s love. But do we sufficiently
comprehend the extent of that love? Probably not. This article about God’s love
is adapted from the first section of the eighth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs To Know Now (TTT), available in
its entirety by clicking this link.
God’s Love Is Not
Just for Humans
To begin with, it is important for us to realize that
God’s love is not just for human beings. Perhaps Christianity through the
centuries has been the most anthropocentric of all of the world’s religions.
There are, however, many references to God’s concern for
nature in the Hebrew Bible that Christians call the Old Testament, and
Christian environmentalists have increasingly called attention to those
passages. For example, Psalm 145:9 declares, “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he
has made.” But have we really thought what it means for God to love all creation? Probably not sufficiently.
Emphasis on God’s Beloved Creation
To
address the lack of adequate concern for the natural world, back in 1983 at the
Vancouver Assembly, the World Council of Churches (WCC) encouraged member
churches to commit publicly to addressing environmental concerns as part of a
common effort to promote Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation. That
became known as the JPIC process. (The image below was the logo of that Assembly.)
Then in
1990, the WCC sponsored the World Convocation on Justice, Peace, and the
Integrity of Creation in Seoul, Korea. One study unit in this program was
called “Creation as Beloved of God.”
Creation,
the physical universe in its entirety and not just human beings, is loved by
God. That was the important emphasis of the WCC in the 1980s and 1990s.
There
has been a similar emphasis in the Catholic Church: Pope John Paul II’s message
for New Year’s Day 1990 was titled “Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All
of Creation.” Reflecting upon that important message, Elisabeth A. Johnson, a
noted Catholic theologian, wrote in 2001 about “God’s Beloved Creation.”
God’s Love and Our Love for Creation
Most
people seem to have long thought that the purpose of the natural world—the
purpose of all the plants, animals, and minerals in the world of nature—is
primarily to supply the needs of human beings.
The
creation story found in the first chapter of Genesis certainly does sound as if
humans are the “crown of creation.” When the first human couple was created,
“God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill
the earth and subdue it; and have dominion . . .” (1:28).
The
English words subdue and have dominion, however, may not be the
best to convey what the Biblical writer really had in mind. To grasp that maybe
we need to consider more fully the implication of these words: “So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them” (1:27).
The
idea of humans created in the image of God has nothing to do with how we look;
it has everything to do with our capacity to be loving and caring as God is. If
God loves the physical world—and certainly God does—then we humans created in
the image of God must love and care for the world also.
Since
God loves all of creation—which includes
the physical world, the world of sticks and stones, of plants and animals, the
whole world of nature—it is incumbent on us human creatures to love/care for
the natural world also.
My fear
is that we are failing in that sacred task.
