Christians’ Environmental Responsibility

This article first appeared in the September 2004 issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine. Subscribe today or get a gift subscription for someone else! Call 1-877-322-5527.

I was driving down a bucolic back road last summer—a route I pray that other commuters don’t discover. The beautiful drive definitely beats being surrounded by aggressive SUV and sports car drivers in their quest to get just two more car lengths ahead on the highway.

And then I saw it. The irony—or hypocrisy, really. A commercial pick-up truck for a recycling company was driving along in front of me. The slogan on the back said something like, “Doing our part to keep the earth clean.” And then the driver tossed trash out the window. Nice.

What about Christians? We sing “For the Beauty of the Earth” and appreciate the poetry of Psalm 8. We praise God as the Creator. And then too many of us do nothing to exercise proper dominion over and stewardship of God’s creation.

Fortunately, not all Christians are dismissive of environmental responsibility. In fact, there are so many Christians involved in the issue that viewpoints on our duty differ greatly. But Christians are engaged.

With that in mind, in the September 2004 issue of BreakPoint WorldView, we presented two very different viewpoints on caring for the environment. Dr. Terry Morrison took what some might feel is an overly generous position on environmental regulation policy; other readers may wholeheartedly agree with him. But to those wondering if Christians are at all involved in environmental issues, Dr. Morrison puts that skepticism to rest.

The Rev. Robert Sirico reminded readers that we must take into account the real economic impact of the policies we set—because they can negatively affect societies, while not achieving any lasting, positive effect on the environment. He encouraged readers to look at the bigger picture.

In his October 2003 “Notes from the Wasteland” column, Roberto Rivera noted how the religious zeal of some environmentalists can distract from the important points: recognizing the dignity of every person and our created role as stewards of the earth. “Stewardship and gratitude,” wrote Rivera, “not some displaced religious impulse, is why we should [care for the environment]. Of course, that requires holding the people you’re exhorting in the proper esteem, which is hard to do when your ‘religion’ [radical environmentalism] insists that they’re the problem.”

It is that starting point—upholding human dignity—that both acts as a catalyst for caring for creation and also guides in setting policy.

In his National Review article “Blue Is True,” Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, “Human beings are made by their unique endowment of liberty to be provident over their own destiny. One important way to exercise this providence is to take care not to foul our habitat.” Novak proposed three guiding principles: realism (seeking accurate and non-politicized science); liberty (“creating markets in which both positive and negative incentives function well, in the interest of the environment as well as that of individuals”); and raising up the poor. “Our deepest motivation for trying to help the poor gain a more becoming affluence,” Novak wrote, “is for their own liberation and basic dignity—so that they might become all that God has given them the potential to be.”

It is my hope that those skeptical or seeking will read Dr. Morrison’s article to be motivated and find places to begin, and then read Rev. Sirico’s article for ideas on framing their advocacy. God has given us incredible responsibility: While we should not put the earth on a pedestal, we also should not be complacent about our stewardship responsibility.

Catherina Hurlburt is the assistant editor of “BreakPoint” radio and managing editor of BreakPoint WorldView.