Let’s say your Father gave you a car. A really Nice, high-end car. Maybe a Bugatti, with leather interior, W16 engine that purrs like a kitten and delivers instant power. A RRRRRREEEAAAAllly sweet ride. Dad toses you the keys and says “it’s all yours!”.
Now, yeah, it’s your car, you can do what you want. But how do you think your Father is going to feel when he sees you scraping the paint off on guard rails, your rowdy friends on the hood holding on to the windshield wipers, the oil Way past time for a change, fast food bags and stale french fries all over the seats, engine miss-firing because of all the over-revving, the beer stains… Maybe you don’t care what Dad thinks, but, come on, couldn’t you do better? Wouldn’t that be respectful of your Father and what He gave you?
Suppose Dad didn’t just buy you the car, but made it Himself? Wouldn’t you feel just a bit bad about trashing it?
And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” – Genesis 1:26 (KJ21).
That sounds like we were handed the keys to a world. A RRRRRREEEAAAAllly nice high-end world. A world lushly upholstered with life that all works together like a well-tuned W16. Shouldn’t we be taking care of it? Keeping it clean? Keeping it running smoothly, as it was designed to run?
I was just out picking up garbage along a little ~0.5km stretch of lake shore.
Come on, can’t we do better?`
As stewards of God’s creation we often don’t give it the care and respect it deserves. The Bible also tells us that the world is broken because sin entered into it. To fix that, Christ went to the cross and died for the sins of all so that all of us could be in right relationship with God. When Christ returns, all things will be made new again and the brokenness of the world and it’s inhabitants will be healed.
I donno, that kind of makes it sound like it’s all ok because it’ll all get fixed. The car (to stretch my analogy) will get repainted, the interior reupholstered, the engine replaced… Is it OK to sin because it’ll all be forgiven?
And when will that occur? How long do we drive around (if the engine even keeps running) with broken windshield wipers, sitting on stale french fries and smelling old beer?
Bluejay – You are right that we have been given the responsibility to be caretakers of the world and we fail every day and, SIN is the reason that we fail. As you quoted from Genesis 1, Genesis 3 tells how man gave in to temptation and didn’t have faith in God’s goodness. In Revelation, we do also read about how God is going to restore the world and all creation and remove sin completely.
I’ve had similar thoughts as yours in regard to questions about timing and response now given knowledge that the future will be better. But, as I read and understand what Christ has done, on my behalf, my response can not be to continue to live the same way as I did before. As I understand more fully the extent on my sinfulness and the cost to have those sins paid for, I couldn’t say “Well, let’s just keep doing the same things because Christ has paid and my sins are forgiven.” Our hearts have to be changed so that we desire and want to follow Christ in response to the love that we’ve been shown. We can’t earn salvation – it’s a gift. But once the gift has been received, we want to thank the Giver and draw close to Him.
Thank you for being willing to clean up the shoreline!! You were modeling good stewardship and that is fulfilling the role of “caretaker of the garden”.