Theology

A Personal (and hopefully not too heretic) View : The Theology Behind Seeking A Sustainable Life Style, by Ely Wapler

In the order of creation as told in Genesis God first created the universe. But “When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants on the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no one to cultivate the land” (Genesis 2.5). So He created man, in His own image (2.7). Then He planted Eden (2.8). Then “He placed man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it” (2.15).
As humans it seems we are inherently cultivators (in charge of development) and stewards or guardians (in charge of conservation) of God’s creation.
But after the fall God says to Adam, the fallen man, “You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again.” (3.19)
Prior to his crucifixion, Jesus spends time face to the ground in prayer with God - sweating blood - in the garden of Gethsemane, weighing the implications of His ultimate choice before He is able to go with the Father’s plan, freely, “Not my will but Your will”.
Christ’s humanity and humility (both from the Latin “humus”, soil) before the Father should inspire us as Christians in the way we take our responsibilities as cultivators and guardians. Again, we “were made from soil, and [we] will become soil again.” (3.19)
Three days after the passion, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb looking for Jesus’ body. When she sees Jesus standing next to her at first she mistakes Him for the gardener (John 20.15). She is looking for the body and she finds a gardener who is, as she soon finds out, the resurrected Christ.
If we are the body of Christ together, then we want to make decisions the way Christ did: anticipating and weighing the implications and consequences of those choices.
Christ’s resurrection is not the repair of a previous ungodly choice but it is the awesome consequence of His responsible Godly choice. This event does restore the world through the forgiveness of sin and freedom. If we choose to follow God’s plan for us and His creation we can bring new life to the world, “replacing fear, guilt and control with facts, forgiveness and freedom” (Thriving with Nature and Humanity, address delivered by Malcom Roberts to the Australian parliament in 2009)
For some it can be helpful to view the whole of God’s universe as the body of Christ (see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) glorifying God and worshipping the Creator. If we do look at things this way then it implies that our role would be releasing God’s creation into worship as we steward it. Allowing it to worship is allowing it to testify of the Lord’s goodness. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”!