"Why bother with creation care if Jesus didn't talk about it?"

As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the messiah of the world, and we are called to be his followers. A barrier that some Christians face when thinking about creation care is that Jesus barely spoke about it. This post offers two reasons why we should bother with creation care even though it seems like Jesus did not talk about it.

 

1. Caring for creation is to live out Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbours

From Matthew 22:35-40, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28, we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”. By carrying out actions that show care for creation, we are also extending that care towards our fellow brothers and sisters.

 

Take fast fashion for example. Fast fashion is incredibly unsustainable, contributing to pollution and textile waste. On top of that, garment workers are often treated poorly and paid lowly, especially in sweatshops.

Our lives, our neighbours’, and how we treat creation are all interconnected. The clothes we buy and how they are made affects our neighbours. What we purchase reflects our care for creation and how we love our neighbours.

How is irresponsible production of clothing reflective of our love for God who creates and sustains the earth in His love, and our love for our neighbours who suffer the consequences?

 

2. Jesus didn’t talk about many things, but we believe that Scripture is sufficient in helping us understand and navigate complex issues

Jesus didn’t directly address subjects like abortion, dating, democracy, and also climate change, simply because they weren’t issues present during his time. Today’s climate crisis is a looming issue that we need to grapple with.

Hence, we can and should still look towards Jesus for the understanding of what it means to be human, what it means to rule over creation, how we should be responding to the climate emergency and creation’s goal in the new creation.

Even though Jesus didn’t talk about creation care directly, and teachings about the created world are relatively sparse in the New Testament, we know that Jesus was a Jew well familiar with the scriptures which is rich in its teaching on creation.

Dave Bookless puts it well in his article,

“He never revoked the creation command to look after God’s world and its creatures. Rather, he fulfilled the Genesis vision of humanity reflecting God’s image in our relationship with creation. Just as the first Adam (literally ‘made from earth’) was told to tend and keep the garden, so Jesus, the Son of Man (the son of, or second Adam) appreciated and cared for creation’s gifts. He based most of his parables on nature’s wisdom, building on the Psalms, Proverbs and Job in seeing nature as a commentary on scripture.”

 

This was originally posted on our Instagram as part of an FAQ series. Read more at: https://blog.arocha.org/en/why-didnt-jesus-talk-about-creation-care/

 

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