To respect nature or exploit nature... that is the question.

Genesis 1:1 "in the beginning God created..."

I stepped outside of my house this morning and was greeted by a beautifully warm December day in South Carolina. My days of the froze Indiana tundra are behind me and I like it fine that way. If I do not receive a certain amount of outdoor exposure or "my fix" each week I develop a sort of cabin-fever or maybe structure fatigue. Just today I was wrestling with the impulse to drive to NC and set up a tent for the night. It seems right to me to be in the wilds. To be able to walk through grass that comes to my knees, pump water from a running stream, gather wild blueberries to put into pancakes on a mountaintop morning, to sweat hiking a 10 mile stretch of Pisgah trails or squirm into a sleeping bag inside a tiny one-man tent. Why does this all feel so right??? Well it was created. It was created first. It's basic... it's our roots. God's creative nature spilled over into all we see today. God's creative order causes the world to work as it does. (where we have not somehow intervened)God creating is where we begin. So when I am with... in... a part of God's first creative outlet I sense a nearness with my creator.

Everything I experience in life, both good and bad are product from a previous "good" creation. Food was meant for us to sustain life, but we have turned it into a way to pass time and destroy our bodies. Sexuality, once created by God for us to enjoy a relationship between a man and a woman in the context of marriage... oh and populate the world, we have turned it into a multi-billion dollar business and a way to use and abuse one another. Creativity of our own... we have taken it and made movies and music that glorifies us and degrades anyone we can get our hands on. BUT FIRST AND FOREMOST... we have taken the creation itself and exploited it for our own monetary gain, to prove points, to indulge our own cravings. No I am the first to admit I am guilty of taken God's created perfection and twist it into something else... something "perverted", but that doesn't mean I HAVE to. Simply because I am exposed to food or outdoor wilderness areas does not mean I will automatically exploit and "pervert". On the contrary I think unless I am exposed to these things at all I will never have the choice to respect these things.

Without an experience in such areas of the created world as food, sexuality (in the right context and right arenas),creativity and creation we as humans will never choose to respect rather than exploit.

Genesis 1:26 "Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them RULE over the fish of the sea and birds of the air, over the livestock, over ALL the earth, and over all that creatures that move on the ground." (bold added)

The word RULE does not actually mean to control and exploit. In fact, it more accurately means to be responsible for. So, though I can go into Pisgah National Forest and camp out for a few days... I am responsible for how I treat God's creation. After all... how I love the earth is how I love God.

You are the solution to pollution,
Trevor