Statement on the Care of Creation

The Earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof

Psalm 24:1

As followers of Jesus Christ, committed to the full authority of the Scriptures, and aware of the ways we have degraded creation, we believe that biblical faith is essential to the solution of our ecological problems.

Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation. Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator's work.

Because our relationship to God is closely tied to our relationship with the lands we inhabit, we commit ourselves to working for the ecological and social peace and prosperity of the places to which God has called us.

Because in Christ, God has healed our alienation from God and extended to us the first fruits of the reconciliation of all things, we commit ourselves to working in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of Christ in word and deed, to work for the reconciliation of all people in Christ, and to extend Christ's healing to suffering creation.

Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator — whom we know dimly through creation, but meet fully through Scripture and in Christ.

We recognize that our children face a growing crisis in the health of the creation in which we are embedded, and through which, by God's grace, we are sustained. Yet we continue to degrade that creation. We recognize that it is the very poorest people in our world who are suffering the most from the effects of environmental degradation, but yet did the least to cause it.

We recognize that many concerned people, convinced that environmental problems are more spiritual than technological, are exploring the world's ideologies and religions in search of spiritual resources for the healing of the earth. We also recognize that men, women, and children, created in God's image, have a unique responsibility for creation. Our actions should sustain creation's fruitfulness and its powerful testimony to its Creator. However, too often we have ignored our creaturely limits and have used the earth with greed, rather than care.

We believe that in Christ there is hope, not only for men, women and children, but also for the rest of creation that is suffering from the consequences of human sin. We recall Jesus' words that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions, and therefore we urge followers of Jesus to resist the allure of wastefulness and overconsumption by making personal lifestyle choices that express humility, forbearance, self restraint and frugality, and stand alongside all who suffer as a result of environmental degradation.

In Christ, the presence of the kingdom of God is marked not only by renewed fellowship with God, but also by renewed harmony and justice between people, and by renewed harmony and justice between people and the rest of the created world.

Therefore we call upon all Christians to reaffirm that all creation is God's; that God created it good; and that God is renewing it in Christ. We also call upon Christians to listen to and work with all those who are concerned about the healing of creation with an eagerness both to learn from them and also to share with them our conviction that the God whom all people sense in creation is known fully only in the Word made flesh in Christ, the living God who made and sustains all things.

We make this declaration knowing that until Christ returns to reconcile all things, we are called to be faithful stewards of God's good garden, our earthly home.