A Rocha USA Blog

by Robert Campbell*

Did you know know there was a Green Bible? I don’t mean green in color, but green in perspective. That is, an environmentally friendly, ecologically responsible Bible. It is printed on recycled material and all the biblical passages which emphasize creation care are printed in GREEN, kinda like the old King James printed the words of Jesus in red. The Bible’s website says, “With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth.” Sure that is nearly mock-able right there, but that is not my beef with The Green Bible. The great value of this printing of the Bible lies in the introduction packed with fantastic essays on creation stewardship by internationally leading thinkers and authors. People such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Bishop NT Wright and Matthew Sleeth, formerly with A Rocha USA, an organization to which I am heartily dedicated.

Now, by these descriptions, I am a “green” Christian. I believe that when God created men and women in His image, He instilled in us the responsibility to act as He would act towards His creation. It is His creation; we are stewards. I believe that Christians CANNOT be responsible to the biblical great commission to evangelize and disciple people if we ignore the place where they live. In fact, I believe that a Christian cannot love people without loving the place those people live. I live a life that seeks to exercise personal stewardship for both the people and the place God has placed me among. My neighbor eats and drinks; my care for his food and his water is love for him. So, know that my beef with The Green Bible has nothing to do with environmental responsibility.

On the other side of things, my beef with The Green Bible is not that it could possibly imply that there is a neutrality between Christian creation care and secular environmental activists. Non-Christians approach the subject with their own religious presuppositions, such as the Sierra Club who endorses The Green Bible. The Green Bible demonstrates common ground, but that must not be misconstrued as neutrality.

My real beef is with the cows in the Green Bible. Here is what I mean. One of the most beautiful passages of holy scripture that addresses God’s sovereign care of creation is Psalm 104. In Psalm chapter 104 God causes the rain to fall on the mountains, God carves the beds of streams that lead the waters from the mountains to the plains where it waters the grasses for cows to eat…and people eat the cows. It is a beautiful divinely ordered picture of creation in which we are reminded of something forgotten in our day, cows eat grass, which we cannot eat, and produce from that grass milk and meat, which we can eat.

So, the problem? It lies in where the green letters turn black. Nearly the entire Psalm is printed in green letters, as it should be. But the there is this one black verse in the midst of sea of green. The black verse, 23, reads this way,

“People go out to their work, and to their labor until the evening.”

Really? Do people and their work not fit into “passages that speak to God’s care for creation?” Cows, water and grass are part of God’s care for creation, but people  and work are not. This is the presentation of The Green Bible.

The Bible itself, regardless of color, tells a very different story. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tells the story of God, who eternally exists as 3 persons, creating all things that culminates on the 6th day. On the 6th day God creates living creatures that move on the earth and differentiates between their kinds and He is differentiated as a Trinity. God then creates mankind, male and female, equally bearing God’s image, again differentiated in gender as God is differentiated. And then culminates in the assigning of male and female to rule under Him for the good of the whole creation. Genesis chapter 2 elaborates on day 6 by making it very clear that God created the garden first, then put people there to work it! The man and the women were to cultivate the garden so that God’s goodness and glory built into it would be more clearly seen when the people leave than when they arrived.

This is a biblical view of creation care. Mankind, living under the rule of God, working hard so that both people and place are better, more clearly reflect God, after our use. We are stewards, not owners. Psalm 104:23 should be in a darker green! A biblical ecology hinges on the way that people work the land they actually live on.

So, simply stated, my beef is that The Green Bible, at least in Psalm 104 presents a highly unbiblical view of ecology.

* Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church in Santa Margarita, CA.