9 · Creation, Stewardship & Dominion

"The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it." — Psalm 24:1

We met the word dominion in Chapter 5, where it was wrongly stretched into a political program. Here we return it to its home soil — the opening chapters of Genesis — and discover that it was never a license to exploit. It was a commission to care.

The same God who crowns humanity with dignity sets us in a garden "to work it and take care of it." Our rule over creation is meant to image God's rule: generous, life-giving, and good. When the Church recovers this, it heals a false choice the modern world keeps offering — between treating nature as a mere resource to consume and treating it as a god to worship. Scripture rejects both.

Declare

✝On creation and stewardship

We declare that the earth is the Lord's, that creation is good and loved by its Maker, and that humanity's "dominion" is a vocation of servant stewardship, not exploitation. We are tenants and caretakers who will give an account. We renounce the greed and carelessness that ravage God's world and harm our neighbors — especially the poor, who suffer environmental harm first and worst — and we commit to tend creation as those who love its Creator.

Psalm 24:1NIV↗ Genesis 2:15NIV↗

Where we are

The evidence of strained stewardship is hard to miss: polluted air and water, degraded soils and forests, vanishing species, and a changing climate whose disruptions — floods, droughts, failed harvests — fall hardest on those least able to bear them. Creation care is therefore not a niche concern competing with justice; it is a justice issue, because a wounded creation wounds the poor and the generations not yet born.

Christians have sometimes been slow here, occasionally even suspicious that "environmentalism" is a rival faith. The suspicion is not baseless — creation can be idolized — but the answer to nature-worship is not nature-neglect. It is biblical stewardship: loving the world because we love its Maker, and refusing both to bow down to creation and to trash it.

What Scripture says

Creation is not an accident or a mere stage; it is God's good work, and it belongs to him.

Genesis 1:31NIV↗ Psalm 24:1NIV↗

The "dominion" of Genesis 1 is immediately defined by Genesis 2 as service and protection — the Hebrew words mean to serve/work and to keep/guard.

Genesis 1:28NIV↗

Genesis 2:15NIV↗

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

God's care extends to creatures and the land itself — even commanding rest for the soil, and delighting in a world far beyond human usefulness.

Leviticus 25:1-7NIV↗ Job 38-39NIV↗ Matthew 6:26NIV↗

And the scope of redemption is cosmic: creation groans for liberation, and in Christ God is reconciling "all things" to himself.

Romans 8:19-22NIV↗ Colossians 1:19-20NIV↗

Discern

Christians agree on the principle of stewardship; they disagree, often sharply, on the prudential questions — how urgent particular threats are, and which policies or solutions are wise. These are matters for humble, informed judgment, not gospel essentials.

⚖ How should Christians act on creation care?

▸Personal discipleship

Begin with repentance from greed and waste: simpler living, gratitude, contentment, and care in how we consume. Strength: roots care in the heart and in obedience. Caution: personal virtue alone can't address structural harms.

▸Public and political engagement

Stewardship has a public dimension; Christians should advocate for just policies that protect creation and the vulnerable. Strength: addresses harms at scale. Caution: prudential policy judgments are disputable and shouldn't be confused with the gospel.

▸Cautious / prioritizing

Some urge caution about specific scientific or policy claims, or prioritize other urgent needs, while still affirming stewardship. Strength: guards against over-politicizing the faith. Caution: caution must not become an excuse for neglecting a real, God-given responsibility.

Avoiding both ditches

Scripture steers between exploitation ("it's all here for us to use up") and idolatry ("nature is divine"). Creation is neither our god nor our garbage dump. It is God's good gift, entrusted to our care, for which we answer to him.

Reflect

✎ Reflect & Respond

If you are a steward who will give an account for how you treated God's world, what would you want that account to show? Where is the gap between that and how you actually live?

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✎ Reflect & Respond

Environmental harm tends to hurt the poor first. How does seeing creation care as a justice issue (not just a 'green' issue) change the way you think about it?

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Self-check

?Does 'dominion' in Genesis mean humans can use creation however they please?

No. Genesis 1:28's "dominion" is defined by Genesis 2:15 — to "work it and take care of it" (literally, to serve and keep it). Human rule is meant to image God's own generous, life-giving rule, exercised as stewardship for which we give an account. "The earth is the LORD's" (Psalm 24:1NIV↗); we are caretakers, not owners.

?What are the two opposite errors Scripture rejects about creation?

Exploitation — treating creation as a mere resource to consume without limit — and idolatry — treating nature itself as divine and worshiping it. The biblical path is stewardship: loving and caring for creation because we love its Creator, neither trashing it nor bowing to it (Romans 1:25NIV↗).

Go deeper

• Read next: Technology, AI & the Human Person.
• Connect back: This redeems the "dominion" misused in Nationalism, Kingdom & Dominion and applies the advocacy of the previous chapters.
• Scripture for a week: Psalm 104; Job 38–41.
• See the Glossary for dominion, stewardship, and Sabbath/Jubilee.

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