Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

Greenblading

The Sixth Day

And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ 
So God created humankind in his image,
 in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.God blessed them, 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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Climate change, environmental destruction, threats to the food supply, loss of species, pollution, economic suffering, and the constant media focus on all of these create an environment that fosters apathy, paralysis, and depression. The phenomenon is not new but is happening now on such a large and relentless scale that it is creating a hopelessness and melancholy that is contrary to the vision of creation as it was at the end of the sixth day when God, almost as an after-thought, created humankind.

On the sixth day, human beings were given responsibility for everything that had already been put into place and the word that was used was ‘dominion.’ Tragically, “fill the earth and subdue it” has been taken to mean we were being given permission to plunder. While new interpretations of the Genesis story attempt to recast our understanding of the word ‘dominion’ as something closer to ‘stewardship,’ we are still left with the stark reality of the word. Its truth is not in doubt. Humans do have the power of life and death over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. Although this has come to mean death to them, it need not be so. If we have been given the power to destroy we have also been given the power to heal.

Genesis tells us that God surveyed what had been put into place and called it, not ‘good,’ but ‘very good.’ We must not forget that. The word ‘dominion’ keeps tripping us up because we don’t want to face it. We don’t want to accept the word or its connotation that Craig talks about of ‘dominance,’ ‘power over.’ It puts us in the same boat as those who willingly sully the beauty of creation for the sake of greed. How much could we change if we came to see the destruction as the dark side of our power and that, therefore, such power can be turned to good? This is the fundamental belief of Greenblade – that it is still within our power to heal.

Comment