Earth Day 2011--Another Opportunity to Worship the Creation Rather than the Creator

(Kevin) For the record, this post is recycled, which makes me feel all warm and environmental inside.

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If you plan to celebrate Earth Day today, Gentle Reader, consider well before you do. I am not a big fan of Earth Day because of its history and goals.

Celebrated each April 22 since 1970, Earth Day is the brain child of Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI). Nelson, who was also a big advocate of the Zero Population Growth movement, believed that stablilizing population growth was a necessary pre-requisite of enviromentalism. He said, "The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become ...We have to address the population issue."

The outworking of Nelson's vision has been a dramatic spike in radical enviromentalism, explosive growth in the abortion industry, and the creation of a new-Socialism that seeks to promote its wealth redstribution programs behind cute pictures of polar bears or heart wrenching images of starving, crying children.

In their own words, organizers seek to,

"Mobilize public action and support for effective climate policies and a strong global agreement; large scale investments in renewable energy; a comprehensive green jobs program; poverty-alleviation measures that are compatible with sustainability, and other public actions that will support a resolution of the climate crisis." [Epmphases added]

Innocent enough sounding words but their adoption would lead to dramatic loss of freedom and massive increases in taxation, as the highlighted buzz phrases imply.

What is the common denominator in all this? Simply put there are two:

1. 
   

   The Creation, and not the Creator, become the focus. Nowhere is God mentioned in Earth Day literature. Rather the earth is personified in an almost idolatrous fashion, as people everywhere are called upon to help Mother Earth. 
2. Man becomes the greatest enemy of Creation, and not the steward of it. Modern enviromentalism believes that man is the greatest threat to the planet, but not all of us. Reading between the lines demonstrates that it is usually the affluent West (especially the United States) that is the locus of all environmental and social evils in the world.

Both views are unbiblical. Genesis 1-2 clearly teaches that God created everything, out of nothing, by his powerful word, in six days, and all very good. The Creation itself testifies to the existence of God and puts on display indisputable proof of his majesty, glory, and power. (Psalm 19) The problem is that man looks at the evidence and rather than glorifying God in heaven, he turns to worship the Creation rather than the Creator.

The second problem is that the Bible does not cast man as the enemy of Creation, but the steward of it. Genesis 1:28 says:

And God blessed [the man and the woman]. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Far from being the enemy of the world , mankind was created both to use it and to be its protector. Here however, is where Christians need to be careful. In aligning ourselves with Earth Day we align ourselves with a movement headed by idolaters and murderers. That is not the sort of company God's people should keep.

We can, however, by environmental in a redeemed way. Christ died not only to redeem his people but also to redeem Creation. That does lay upon believers, then, an obligation to be careful with what God has given us and to try to leave the Creation in good shape for subsequent generations. But it also reminds us that human efforts will ultimately prove fruitless. In the end, this world and everything in it will pass away. We look for a new heaven and a new earth to appear when Christ returns.